OK, time for me to squeak out my opinion from the peanut gallery. I think that smokeydays has hit the nail on the head. Here is my perspective:
thirtyish years ago, the nation had a surge of interest in all things colonial due to the bicentenial. The interest in muzzleloading seemed to mushroom at about that time. Well, my father was an avid outdoorsman and he got interested. Being military, we moved a bit, but we were able to get some muzzleloader kits (the ubiquitious CVA guns as well as some higher quality stuff) to assemble and we had a grand time working on them. No, they were not all period correct, but they were mostly traditional firearms. We moved back to the states, the guns get packaged away and life goes on. Dad dies and years later I get the guns that I thought were lost to the ages. All that I knew of muzzleloading at that point (a couple of years ago) was that I helped Dad build a couple. Well, I stored them away and they would occasionally creep out - only to be stored again. This year, I finally scraped up all of the odds and ends needed to shoot them (not exactly like picking up a box of shells there...) and a buddy and I shot them off his back porch. His knowledge of black powder is that they sold such guns at Wal Mart... We both agree that if you are going to shoot black powder, then the traditional type guns (not necessarily period correct, but rather sidelocks) are the way to go. The inlines are OK, but not our cup of tea. We harbor no ill will towards inline shooters, but don't really get it.
Flash forward a bit. If I had not been reading this forum for a couple of months, this thread would leave me DEAD COLD about the sport of muzzleloading. The traditional guys really enjoy reliving the old ways of doing things. More power to you! The problem that I see is that there is a HUGE animosity agains the inline guys.
A lot of traditional guys have such contempt for inlines that they would ostracize them completely. The argument is that they are not in the spirit of traditional guns. Hogwash. They are a development, pure and simple. Some of the traditional guys even look down on the caplock guys. Almost all seem to disparage Pyrodex or any other non-black powder as blasphemy.
The reality is that inlines can be a transitional weapon. If someone was sort of interested in black powder, but not sure that they want to buy all of the stuff to do it, the prepackaged inlines make it SOOO easy. Lets look at the math of it. At Wal Mart, you can buy a complete inline set - gun, powder, bullets, lube, etc for about $185. Complete instructions are included and since the gun looks a lot like the bolt action rifle that Joe Sixpack was using, it is not that difficult to get into the groove of shooting it.
Compare a sidelock. The synthetic Bobcats were the cheap entry guns. Wal Mart had them for $60ish, BUT you had to know that they were there and ask for them. The wood stock version went for $100ish. Then you had to find someone with a clue that knew where they were in the back. After a half hour, you may get lucky and have one come out. Now you have to buy powder ($17), bullets ($20), lube ($8), a cleaning kit to get the jag and bore brush ($15), bore solvent ($10) and some caps ($6). Now your getting close. If you don't have guidance locally, you search the web and lo and behold, you find
[url] muzzleloadingforum.com[/url]! Here you see that a lot of guys truly despise the CVA guns. These guns are not period correct, so another pack of guys look down their noses at you. No one near you carries true black powder since the feds have made it such a PITA for businesses to stock it, so yet another pack look down on you for shooting pyrodex and all but admonish you for not seeking out real black powder - even if you have to buy 25lbs of it and have it delivered from across the US. It looks like you are fast becoming the unloved redheaded stepchild. Sure makes sense at that point to take it all back and just get an inline, doesn't it? Heck, none of your buddies will know that it is different unless they pull it out of the rack.
My point is this, if you want to be as period correct as you humanly can be, then go for it! Just don't look down your nose at someone because they think that donning buckskins and carrying a rocklock out into the frost is not for them. Caplocks, inlines, thinsulate, goretex, etc are OK. Like I said, I like the traditional guns, but I am not going to shun someone because they like a stainless and synthetic inline. Heck, I still wear my combat boots with my Levis when I go hunt. I don't get the whole buckskin thing, nor do I get the Mossy Oak Breakup thing. If I had not been on this board being a bit curious, I might just have stuck the guns back into storage thinking of them as a quaint reminder of my departed father rather than getting another person excited and into the sport. When you consider that I did not even buy a hunting license, nor set foot into the woods on a hunt this year, I think that my "recruiting" rate is pretty good. My buddy is so excited that he shot off all the powder that he had Sunday after church. If I had not shared my enthusiasm with him, he would never had fired one of these. Would he have done that if I expressed the list of negativity I oulined above? I think not...
I am off the soap box. Feel free to load up a magnum charge and fire away at my opinion.
eace:
