About 10 years ago I also decided to do all of my hunting with a traditional muzzle loader. I hunt squirrels and rabbits with flint locks in .32 & .36. My deer hunting is either with a .58 cap lock or a .58 flint lock. There has been only a few days in the past 10 years that I did not use a muzzle loader for deer hunting and those days were either raining, or snowing. On those days I hunted with my T/C Contender handgun with .375 barrel. You will not regret going back to muzzleloading. It puts the hunt back in hunting, because you have to get closer when using iron sights.and the range is limited using a muzzle loader.