Aw, back to talking blackpowder again. I would loved to of stayed out of the scoped inline world but my vision fell apart in my early 40's. I took a 50 yard shot at a deer back then and blew a leg off at the knee. I went and bought my Knight and never looked back. I was a practicing a lot too but just did not want to admit my vision was falling apart. I guess someone like me would not be allowed to bp hunt in Colorado if scopes were not allowed.

This is exactly why I feel everyone should have there choice how they wanna harvest game. But on another hand, can you get a permit or something from a doctor to over ride that?

I think that a traditional Hunter using a flint and a Hunter that knows the in and outs of shooting a rock sparker will get ignition equal to a person using caps. Caps are not as fool proof as a lot of people think.

To be honest, any feed back I got about them was they were just about full proof. I know the caps I shot on Whites were 100% reliable but maybe we are talking two different things.

some times i'll get a cap thats empty but thats pretty rare. As long as its good ol black powder and you have a good nipple and clear powder channel, a sidelock ( or mine in general) is pretty much fail proof.

You have to really know what you are doing to have real reliability with a flinter. Overfilling and underfilling your pan can result in the hated "flash in the pan". Keeping your channel clean and clear. Even the position you have your powder in the pan comes into play. Then you have the quality of your flash powder as well as keeping it dry and clean. Stone angle and frizzen cut can be real shot stoppers as well.

As far as the date of caps, MD is correct. The reason they weren't widespread was because they were a brand new technology and at the time VERY hard to make with any reliability. Took a while to get the manufacturing process down. They were also ridiculously expensive at first so very few could afford them. Let alone a rifle/pistol that used them.

I only got to shoot a flinter a few times. It might have been the way the owner set it up but the lag time bothered me. On my 54 I never had a #11 fail to go off but did have trouble with the nipple getting clogged on the range. Bought an after market hot shot type nipple and that solved the issue.

More in the east Jon. They didn't hit the west until later. The MM resisted turning to them anyway even if they were available.

With a cap you have the breech channel to navigate. It needs to clean, and the powder needs to get into it. otherwise you can get hang fires, or even misfires. A cap can also get wet.

A flint has a straight shot into the powder charge, As long as that's clear, and you get a good spark they're pretty reliable.

The most reliable ignition i've ever got in a sidelock is when I switch to a musket cap.

We are allowed to use those here too. Its called an atlatl. I believe they are allowed in all of our seasons.