The Bighorn is an very good reliable and accurate muzzleloader. As mentioned it is an older style rifle using what is commonly called a 'plunger ignition' system. Using an open breech plunger system does result in a very dirty breech area and does take more time to clean. With the Bighorn you can choose the type of ignition source you might want to use, caps #11 or Musket or you can install a shotgun 209 primer system.

IMO the Bighorn is a very good short season gun, in that I mean if you are only interested in shooting a ML a few days a year it will certainly do the job. Even if you choose to shoot it a lot it will work very well. I would also suggest that it probably should not be considered a BH-209 shooting gun because you will need to use shotgun primers for ignition and the is a possibility because of the progressive burning nature of BH that you might push the 209 primer back out of the breech plug and expel out of the breech.

If you are considering the Bighorn, I would also suggest that look one model up to the Knight DISC Extreme. It is a far more versatile gun in the fact that it allows you more choices of types of uses that may meet the needs of all the different ML hunting rules you might encounter.