Along the vein of the thread started by BPMS, part and parcel to keeping our hobby alive is getting kids involved. Let's face it cynically speaking, if you get someone involved who's retired, over 70, questionable health, how long is your time investment going to yield any benefit to the hobby? I'm not saying ignore adults, but kids are the future. Your time is a finite resource that is nonrenewable and nothing you can do will stop is flowing through your grasp. The real question is, what are you going to do with it?
I had a very interesting conversation with someone well placed in the higher levels of Scouting. It looks like there is a "perfect storm" of things brewing in the background and without going into everything, our work in summer camp has been noticed at the highest levels of Scouting and there seems to be a desire to be able to replicate what we're doing with kids in muzzleloading and the "mountain man" experience part of summer camp. Replicating what we do isn't going to be that hard except for one glaring issue- lack of qualified instructors who know and are passionate about muzzleloading and have a desire to share that knowledge with kids in a fun way. To become an instructor isn't easy, nor is it free, but then again, most worthwhile things in life aren't. To invest your time and knowledge in a youth about muzzleloading can have a long lasting, positive effect on the kid and may well result in someone young who enjoys muzzleloading. The effects of being a positive role model in one on one interaction is as they say, priceless.
View attachment 170132