Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Do you find traditional front stuffers funner than in-lines?

"...100% Flintlocks for all hunting for the past several years, including smoothbores...most enjoyable hunting and weekend shooting period of my life..."

As a general comment, not a direct response to any post, I thought it was worth mentioning the correct view about the reliability of sidelock muzzleloaders, and in particular, Flintlocks...which is that they're perfectly reliable year round under all weather conditions.

The failure is the hunter/shooter...not the Flintlock (or caplock)...to blame the Flintlock is like blaming a pencil for spelling errors.

We have to remember that Flintlocks obviously work year round under all weather conditions because the world used them for about 400 years...our own country for 200-300 years itself as it was discovered and settled using Flintlocks...put food on the table...fought wars...won our independence with them, etc.
(the caplock period was actually a very brief period of time from about 1830 to the Civil War, then cartridge rifles began appearing).

The problem which keeps perpetuating the erroneous myth about sidelock muzzleloaders being unreliable is that people try them without investing a little time studying/learning about them, then they have a bad experience because they don't have a clue about what they're doing, they quit, they blame it on the side lock, and keep repeating their tale over and over again for years after that.

As to reliability in all weather conditions, the old saying about "keep your powder dry" is real...and its very simple:

1) Keep the muzzle pointed down so water does not run back alongside the barrel into the pan and kill the priming charge;

2) Keep the lock area up under your coat next to your warm dry body until you're ready to take a shot;

3) Refresh the prime every hour so that even high humidity/foggy conditions don't have a chance to affect it;

Unfortunately, most people now in our modern society have an 'instant gratification' mindset and won't put out even the little bit of effort it takes to read a couple of articles and study/learn how to use a traditional sidelock muzzleloader...they want something right off the shelf in Walmart that is modern just like their Remington 700, so they can go hunting that afternoon.

We've all seen the result...the feeding frenzy for modern high performance scoped inlines with centerfire ballistics, now some with smokelss powder, now some with electronic ignition, etc...most people don't have any interest in understanding real muzzleloading as it existed in the early American traditional muzzleloading era...most if not all, just want to take advantage of the traditional ML seasons that were already established to get another chance at a deer, then the inlines are put back in the closet for another year.

The good news is that occasionally a small percentage get their interest piqued about real muzzleloading & black powder, and begin going backwards in technology...learn what it's all about...start filling their tags with them every year, etc.