The reason I get worked up is because there are plenty of buddy f**krs out there who call themselves hunters that will gladly throw me and my way of hunting under the bus so that they, in their selfish elitism, can have their ML season totally exclusive to their preferred style of ML. Their desire to reclassify my ML the same as CF rifles/shotguns does nothing but drive hunters out of the woods. With the numbers of hunters declining every year, ever shrinking numbers of hunter/voters will bring the ultimate demise of ALL hunting a lot faster than my Savage with smokeless will.

The fact is that my Savage offers no practical advantage over any other inline ML, regardless of powder used. Mine still loads from the front one component at a time, just like any other, and mine still must be primed in a separate step before it can be fired. I can shoot 2 shots from a clean bore no faster than anyone else (and slower, in fact, than pellet users, since all smokeless is loose powder). The only "edge" I might have is that I don't have a blinding cloud of smoke that obscures my view of a wounded animal, which allows me to more quickly access if my shot was true and gives me an initial direct to start tracking, improving the chances of recovering the animal. That's it. Every other advantage is a matter or economics and convienience. But the elitists completely ignore the truth and continue to lobby for ever more restrictive rules and regs on state ML seasons through their legislators and state DNRs. These rules will alienate more and more people who want to hunt with a ML that has been removed from the legally permitted weapons for reasons that don't matter in the woods. Many of these guys (and probably gals, too) might just say "to h*ll with this", and hang it up. One less hunter, one less voter who thinks or cares about hunting in the voting booth, and one step closer to the anti's getting exactly what they want.

That's why I get ticked off.

Mike