The recent muzzleloading hunt in Kentucky with my son got me to thinking about my past experiences with muzzleloaders. By virtue of my best friend’s addiction to muzzleloaders, I spent a lot of time in the woods and on the range with traditional muzzleloading rifles. In fact, when I returned from basic training, my friend and I started a muzzleloading club that met and had competitions every month.
That all seems like ages ago, but up until shortly after the turn of the century I hunted with muzzleloaders a great deal – hunted just about everything you could hunt in West Virginia with a muzzleloader. Because of that experience, when I began writing about guns professionally, I did a lot of writing about muzzleloaders. This was partly due to my experiences with them, but partly because at that time it was the height of the in-line muzzleloading craze.
I learned a lot about muzzleloaders. Things like, I hated cleaning them, that blackpowder is better than any substitute powder, that round balls kill game very well, and that you don’t need a 50-caliber to do it.
For 2021 I may have to break out my old Walker cap-lock muzzleloader that I call “Sin Killer” and do some of it all over again. Hell, if the liberal anti-gun crowd get their way, old cap-lock muzzleloaders will be the only thing we can have.
After a squirrel hunt behind the old farm. (1986) 
Newfoundland woodland caribou with an in-line. (2002) 
After winning the WV off-hand muzzleloader championship. (2004) 
Deer hunting in Virginia (2005) 
A WV whitetail doe from behind the house. (2004) 
Late season WV muzzleloader hunting. (2005) 
Winning target from a muzzleloading match. (1995) 
Rio Grade gobbler taken with an in-line muzzleloading shotgun. (2006)
