I grew up in a shotgun-only zone in southern MI. The clip-on sights of the day were terrible and I got fed up with bad shots on deer even at short ranges. This anger peaked when I shot a doe twice at 70 yards only to learn that a walk through the brush had bumped my cheap sight off and I gut-shot her twice, never found her in a 2-mile tracking job.

Being a poor farm kid I could not afford a good slug gun (which did not exist back then like it does now anyways) or a fully rifled barrel for the gun I had. However a neighbor had bought a Traditions Deerhunter from Kmart the previous season and shot a deer with it, and suggested I try a ML. So I went to Kmart and bought one for $119 at age 15.

There was no internet. I had nobody to teach me how to shoot the thing. I got some lead balls and tried that, patched with squares cut out of old shirts. The results were terrible. Sabots were pretty new and some random person told me they were dangerous so I got some Buffalo Ball-ets. I took a doe with the setup that year, but was not impressed with the pencil-thru wound. When ML season arrived some acquaintances brought out some MLs and they were using sabots with no issues, so I worked up a load of 85gr Pyrodex and a 240gr Hornady HTP. I went on to take dozens of deer with that gun, right up until I could no longer find the HTPs (around 2001). I never did find another load it shot with comparable accuracy, and it developed a migrating zero that required the rear sight to be pounded over each year to the point it was near useless.

I got into inlines and have not gotten back to a percussion gun yet. I had never owned a scope until 2001 (shot competitively small bore with open sights) so I have had many years of new challenges and play time with inlines.

So I got into it primarily for accuracy, with increased range being secondary. Right now range is a primary reason, if rifles of comparable ballistics were legal here I would probably switch back and forth depending on my mood. There is just something nice about shooting a ML. Truth be told I use mine during regular firearm season, and am rarely still going out come ML-only season. If I am I typically take an open-sighted ML.