When I graduated high school, I got several nifty graduation gifts... but none topped the muzzleloading rifle that Dad bought me. It was a Thompson/Center Seneca, and even back then, in 1987, it had been discontinued for some silly reason. It was pretty much a scaled-down version of their Hawken... a nice slim octagonal 45-caliber barrel, with a trim stock and excellent balance - and it shot well with any bullet we crammed down the bore. I loved that gun - heck, I love it still!
Hunting with that gun, a sidelock percussion rifle, was great. I took a couple deer with it over the years, and even managed to miss one or two. Years later, I built another traditionally-styled muzzleloader from a kit, and it was nice to hunt with that heavy sucker, considering all my time and sweat that had gone into building it, though it wouldn't accurately shoot anything but round balls.
During all this time, muzzleloading was changing around me. Even before I got the Seneca, a new twist had been introduced to the muzzleloading world - the modern inline rifle. Me, I sneered at inlines. Knowing they were probably fine guns didn't help - that probably kindled even more dislike of them. Somehow they were TOO good to be used during muzzleloader season. I even wrote an article several years ago, about how I thought sidelock guns were the way to go for muzzleloader hunting.
Through the years, I hunted with my sidelocks and was happy. Other hunters could pursue deer with their inline guns, but I tried not to think about that too much, though every now and then I helped friends and acquaintances with their new inlines. I had a peep sight on my T/C just as I had on my Ruger 44 carbine that I used exclusively during general gun season, and that worked just fine for me. I was happy enough.
Then a few years ago I made the switch to scoped bolt-action rifles during modern gun season, using them for most of my deer hunting since I'd found myself hunting places where longer shots were probable. I have always disliked how a scope negatively affects the balance of a rifle, but I soon grew to appreciate scopes more and more... just as deep down, I had known that I would. Eventually, I started feeling the itch to try an inline muzzleloader for myself, REALLY try one, but I didn't go out of my way to procure one. Self-denial, or just plain denial, was at work within me. I eyeballed them at Wal-Mart or looked for a lowball deal on a used one, but never seriously hunted for one.
Then I got drawn for a muzzleloader hunt in an area that has antler restrictions - if a buck didn't have at least three one-inch points on one side, it wasn't legal. Of course, on the first morning of the hunt, I had a nice buck with two-and-a-half points on one side posing in front of me at a range of ten feet! But the real clincher was another buck which showed up that afternoon, which hid behind some brush where I couldn't see him well enough to count his points, though he was only about fifty yards away.
Now me, I don't believe in counting points until after the buck is dead, but I do like to obey the law, so of course I didn't shoot the buck for inspection. I had left my binoculars in the truck and was hunting with my old peep-sighted Seneca 45, so I couldn't get a better look at his rack. When that buck walked away from me, and when it turned out to be the last deer I saw from my stand on that hunt, I made a decision. I wasn't consciously aware of the decision until a week or so later, when I thought that by golly I wanted to hunt with a scope - and the best possible hunting tool - whenever I could!
Looking back, the decision wasn't really abrupt at all - I had been moving toward it ever since I had started using scopes, realized that crossbows weren't a bad thing to have in the woods during archery season, and experienced other such sensible epiphanies. Now, as they say, the die had been cast - I was going to put my hands on a modern muzzleloader of my own, tune up a load that I liked, and use a scope on it whenever possible. (Continued)
