RW, you never " used to have that same view" , or at least it wasn' t apparent last year when you seemed very new to muzzleloading - you had NO view on the subject as far as I could tell at the time.

It' s a personal limit that I haven' t exceeded. I also prefer large conicals to zippy little saboted bullets. It is NOT " wrong" to have such a view for one' s self - it cannot be so unless contrary to law or one' s own morality. I set my own limits and the use of Lil Gun or any of the other undeniably smokeless powders commonly used in the Savage is not something I crave.

At what point DO we draw the limit and say this just is NOT muzzleloading? It may take a very talented man to load a 30-06 from the muzzle but someone may yet figure out how. Putting the primed case in the breech first is no longer an obstacle as evidenced by Cecil Epp' s Hornet mod to the Encore. Other efforts have preceeded that experiment and more will follow.

Much has been said about the intent of regulators when they first set up Black Powder/Muzzleloader/ Primitive seasons. I don' t know if that is completely relevant as the times and the herds have changed, but there can be little doubt those people then (or even now) ever foresaw any muzzleloader season as a time to use the equivalent of a .270 to harvest deer. Not possible to achieve that performance you say. I say not yet.

So draw your own lines in the sand, but do not tell me mine are wrong. They are merely mine. And when the line between modern centerfires and muzzleloaders is so thin as to disappear (it' s very thin now) perhaps we can eliminate muzzleloaders altogether. I mean, why bother?