They also change their tune when they see you killing game- particularly if its game they MISSED with their modern guns! Have fun.
20 years ago, I was deer hunting with my cousin- who was a police Detective in Chicago. He used a pump shotgun and slugs, while I carried my .50 cal. Rifle. He gave me grief ;every day about using a flint lock, but admitted that he had never shot one. At the end of one day, we had to unload my gun( at time, you could not transport any muzzleloader with a charge in the barrel: thankfully, that law has been changed here in Illinois, so that as long as its unprimed, or has no percussion cap on the nipple, its considered unloaded for transportation.)at the end of the day. We were at the NE corner of a small pond, and across the pond, about 100 yds, was a slab of concrete from some sidewalk. I aimed at the middle of that slab, and hit as centered as you could see. He was impressed. SO, I loaded the gun up again, and showed him how to hold it, and how to shoot it, and he aimed and fired, and his ball hit within a couple of inches of my own. HE was Much more impressed, and surprised that it did not recoil very much. That was the last bad mouthing I heard from him about hunting with my flintlock.
I have hunted with both friends, and strangers with my BP shotgun, and gotten strange looks from the modern gun hunters, until I cleanly took the birds they missed out of the air, DRT! The much loader muzzle blast of any BP shotgun or rifle scares the heck out of them the first time they hear you shoot, and they usually think something must have blown up to produce that huge cloud of smoke, and all that flame that came out of your muzzle, but after you assure them its Normal, and they see the next shot, they calm down. THEN, they get interested in how you load it, and "DOES IT RECOIL??? a lot???", and a thousand other questions. If the hunters don't reload their own shotgun shells, or any other cartridges, they are fascinated by the process of RELOADING! When you tell them its just like loading a cartridge casing, only the barrel is the casing, and you only have one shot at a time, they begin to see that this is NO GREAT LEAP BACK IN TIME from what they are shooting. If you can get them to shoot your gun a couple of times, you will usually have them "Hooked". :blah: :rotf: :rotf: :surrender: :hatsoff:
