POTD: Bayonet for a .22 – Remington No. 4-S American Boy Scout Bayonet

Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a bayonet built for a rifle chambered in 22 Short. This is the bayonet for the Remington No. 4-S American Boy Scout rifle.

The story needs one correction up front. This was not a Boy Scouts of America product. In 1913 there were competing scouting outfits in this country, and one of them was the American Boy Scouts, founded in 1910 by William Randolph Hearst. That group asked several makers for a cheap military style rifle and settled on Remington’s answer: a solid frame No. 4 rolling block dressed up as a musket, with a handguard, barrel bands, a stacking swivel, and a lug at the muzzle for this. Five dollars to members. BSA passed on the whole idea.

The bayonet itself tells you what it was for. Ten and a half inches overall with a 6 3/4 inch blade, flat edged and round tipped, which is to say it will not cut or stab anything. It is a drill piece, and drill was the point. Boys learned the manual of arms with it, and the whole rig showed up in the American Boy Scouts drill manual that year.

Remington renamed the gun the Military Model in 1914 once the scouting sales failed to materialize, and the Boy Scout marked rifles number maybe 1,500. Bayonets are much scarcer still, and the long running theory among collectors is that mothers got a look at them and made them disappear.

Most of our POTDs utilize images from our friends at Rock Island Auction Company, the premier firearms auction in the United States. Take some time to browse their current auctions – who knows, maybe you’ll find a piece of history to take home!

“Rare Bayonet for the Remington 4-S Boy Scout Rifle.” Rock Island Auction, www.rockislandauction.com/detail/4097/69/rare-bayonet-for-the-remington-4s-boy-scout-rifle. Accessed 31 July 2026.

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