time, money, and effort to make sure their Minutemen were well-armed. For example, Captain Isaac Davis who was a gunsmith in his civilian occupation built a firing range on his farm to train his men in firing and drill. He also made sure that every men in his company had a good musket, cartridge box, canteen, and bayonet. This was one of the reasons that his company was in the lead of Colonel Barrett's Middlesex Minutemen regiment as the Rebels marched down to face the regulars at the Old North Bridge at the Battle of Concord. There were still some cases where men in the Minuteman companies had to be provided arms. In Concord's two Minutemen companies, fifteen of the 104 still needed to be provided with muskets from the town's arsenal. Their experience suited irregular warfare. In the colonial agrarian society, many were familiar with hunting. The Indian Wars, and especially the recent French and Indian War, had given colonials valuable experience in irregular warfare and skirmishing, while British line companies (light infantry and grenadier companies were called flank companies and trained in skirmishing) troops were less familiar with this. The long rifle was also well suited to this role. The rifling (grooves inside the barrel) gave it a much greater range than the smoothbore musket, although it took much longer to load. Because of the lower rate of fire, rifles were not used by regular infantry, but were preferred for hunting. When performing as skirmishers, the militia could fire and fall back behind cover or behind other troops, before the British could get into range. The wilderness terrain that lay just beyond many colonial towns favored this style of combat and was very familiar to the local militia. In time, however, loyalists such as John Butler and Robert Rogers mustered equally capable irregular forces (Butler's Rangers and the Queen's Rangers, led by Englishman John Graves Simcoe). In addition, many British commanders learned from experience and effectively modified their light infantry tactics and battle dress to suit conditions in North America. Through the remainder of the Revolution, militias moved to adopting the minuteman model for rapid mobilization. With this rapid mustering of forces, the militia proved its value by augmenting the Continental Army on a temporary basis, occasionally leading to instances of numerical superiority. This was seen at the Battles of Hubbardton and Bennington in the north and at