The bottom line is that there are more deer now than when Christopher Columbus landed on the western hemisphere. So whats the beef? I believe this topic is alive ONLY because of the political desires and "powertrips" of the buckskinners in our sport who are politically involved enough to have a voice in some states. Whats next, bow and muzzleloader season in the spring for turkey?

The more deer we kill, the more they breed. Hunter rates have been edging downward for 15 years as herds have increased despite our "harvest per man effectiveness" having gone up. That tells me that regardless of WHAT weapons we use, there really wont be any serious damage done too our herds (inside of safe and sound biologically principled management and harvest guidelines of course. I'm not talking about throwing all caution too the wind and cutting em all down with reckless abandon). Its plain and simple GREED by the buckskinners that is driving this debate. They want the seasons and some falsely percieved glory from some imagined "audience" so they feel threatened by modern equipment. On that note lets not forget that a percussion cap weapon is NOT the first generation nor the oldest of muzzleloading weapons. What about the manually lit smoothbore weapons of several hundred years ago? A 150 year old percussion Kentucky longrifle would make them look practically archaic. But I don't see the guys willing to give up their #11s for such fare!

25-30 years ago the same debate ran among the traditionalist archers regarding the then new, mass produced compound bows. Yet we see that even the BADDEST cam bow of today with its potentially double range over most stickbows did absolutely NOTHING to harm the deer populations. What a hunter uses or doesn't use (within sane and moral guidelines of course, I'm not suggesting C4 or landmines for hunters) should be up too them by broadly setout guidelines. Bow season should be that, BOWS! Muzzleloader season should be just that, front stuffers. And firearms seasons should be anything legally owned as defined by our current system of laws concerning firearms ownership in this country.

Personally I think we should ALL put aside our differences and concentrate on defeating the MANY groups that seek to stop us ALL and know that our most vulnerable state will be that of a divided group! [:'(]
RA

Not really. Modern inlines just bring the sport to the world of fast or highly processed food. In the old days people actually had to cook their food. Nowadays one can go to the grocery store and buy a complete meal in a box, go home stick it in the microwave for 3 minutes and have a meal to eat. Same deal with modern inlines, you buy a kit, insert tab A into slot B, and 5 minutes later you are shooting. Just like home cooked versus instant food, the old way tastes better but takes more skill and time to prepare.

Another analogy is two people stnding on top of a mountain. person number 1 climbed hte mountain while person number 2 was dropped there from a helicoptor. Both can enjoy the view, but the man who climbed actually accomplished something nd probably enjoys the accomplishment more. The end of the journey isn't always the most important, but how you get there.

I don't care which route people take, but to say that an old flintlock that can be fired using a knapped piece of stone, a ball cast by the shooter, and even possibly homemade gunpowder, is somehow inferior to a modern inline that can pretty much only fire stuff that has to be made by someone else, is quite off.

Mossy and a bad one at that. So you actually believe you can harvest more deer since you got a inline? And considering 90% of deer killed here in MD I bet are shot under 60 yards.

First off, how can you say my opinion is bad? I hate old M/L's I love inlines.....I would say more people agree with me than you. If they loved the old octagon Hawken's style muzzleloaders so much, we wouldnt be having this conversation, and inlines would have faded out of existance. If I were to hunt a spot where my only shots were say 10-25 yrds like you do, I would bow-only hunt them, but where I hunt a 60-90 yards shot is a common place and my Ruger M77 inline with a 2-10 Aetec will shoot 1.5" groups at that distance. So to me the old style M/L have no use......if you wanna hunt with one, thats your choice. I was just explaining my opinion.

Your right. I don't know what to say. How can someone hate a nice sidelock TC hawken is beyond me. But Mossy, even though you don't have any class when it comes to ML, I still will hang out with you.

We are limited to iron sights with our ML season. That tends to be a bigger issue than the ML itself, with my inline anyway. I harvested one with a ML last year at 140 paces. So the range is there with an inline, but bearing down with iron sights can be challenging as the yardage increases.

I hope they keep the separate season. It's really nice as of a couple of years ago when it allowed us to hunt both Rifle and ML season on the same license and tag. Now we can deer hunt for basically 6 weeks.

The late season ML is a significantly different hunt as well. During rifle season, we are usually pretty close to the rut. By muzzleloader season, the deer location and habits are completely different because of rifle season, fewer hunters, and the timing with the first rut.

Access to private land improves, public land is usually void of hunters. It can be cold though!

I believe what Mossy is trying to say is that he prefers the performance of an inline over an old sidelock.....and it is hard to argue against that point. And I also believe he feals the same as I do that we would both love to have an old sidelock in our gun cabinet, if not for anything else but a conversation piece.

But I thought you fellers said you only shot 95gr of pyrodex?

Wow, I must really be lucking out with the old Hawken. I've had it since 1981 and I didn't realize it was so inadequate until I read this thread. It has never had any problem hitting a deer where it is supposed to, and I have worked up many different loads for many different applications including a light round ball load for when I get the urge to go after the squirrels that infest our deer woods.

The one thing I have never tried to shoot though is a barn. I'll give it a try, and get back to ya'll.

C. Davis

I prefer underhammers, because they ignite as well as in lines, and look old. H & A first produced them in 1835, so that'll hold off most buckskinners.