i changed my mind, spear only no other kind of hunting allowed. the only exception is by snare.

i'm for havign the greatest advantage i can. challenge and tradition dont mean as much to me as harvesting a trophy does, and i want to do it by any legal means possible. Im amazed my all the high technology optics and would find much more excitement in dropping a deer at 500 yards with a well practiced rifle shot then i would dropping one at 50 yards with the muzzy. The traditon don't much matter to me, i dont think it matters to the deer either because they are at a disadvantage either way. Heck, all our neighboring states allow it, might as well hop on the band wagon especially since we already have such a high population of deer and numerous zones in the state are intensive harvest or lottery harvest zones.

Maybe thats the problem, you, like some other rifle hunters never get a deer to walk close to you. I would rather shoot a deer at 10-30 yards, watch it drop, and not have to track and pray I made a good shot. I know at that range its going down. When you have a deer with 10 yards of your stand, your heart just starts pounding, doesn't even matter the size. If you have never experienced that, especially with a nice buck, I can see how a scope would interest you more. I'm all for saving the 500 yard shots for the prairie dogs and streaky gophers. I always let all the deer I shoot get as close as I possibly can. I use all my bow skills with the firearm but don't have to worry as much about concealment because I am not moving as much. To me, getting them that close is just a rush..

for sure, 96. I hunted with my shotgun this year, and then took another deer with a scoped 30-06. It was like cheating! I mean it was great to pop a deer with it, but the rush wasn't nearly the same.

What I love most about hunting is the up close and personal with nature. Heck even if I don't see a deer but see a bunch of cool wildlife and a beautiful day from before dawn to sunset, I'm way happy

My father has had 20/15 vision his whole life and in the past 5 years or so he has needed glasses for reading and night driving. The problem, for him at least, is when it comes to focusing on three things at once, the back sight, the front sight, and the target. He has some troubles with that even whith his glasses on. He is currently hunting with open sights, but has the slip and all he needs to do is have it signed by the eye doc.

Yo goblue, I certainly don't want to put 500,000 gun hunters out there without a scope. In a perfect world you could,this is 2008, but too many safety issues for me, now that rifle season is done how many put their deer gun away until next deer season, the answer is too many and too many live inside city limits where it is tough to get the practice they should be getting, for me I can walk out the back door. I think scopeless rifles would create a lot more wounding issues/deer making it onto someones land injured, maybe even a few more hunters injured or killed. We always have to err on the side of caution and safety. I agree leave muzzleloaders scope free unless vision issues.

ok, i'm gonna try to make one last push for the scoped muzzle-loader. i dont know what distance you feel comfortably taking a shot at, but it mite b safe to say that most of us would agree they feel confident shooting up to 50 yards farther with a scope than with open sights, or at least 25 yards farther. Would you rather have a trophy, i mean trophy like 180 inch deer, walk by 25 yards out of your confident shooting range w/ an iron-sight muzzle-loader that you could then only look at with binoculars? OR would you rather be able to put the crosshairs on that booner and harvest that trophy buck. To me, harvesting the trophy buck would b way more important than preserving tradition that is no longer even tradition due to high tech muzzle-loaders that are untraditional. If i cant sway anyones opinion with this one i might just hav to give up.

And just curious, has there been anyone on this thread who has agreed with me on the scope thing, im too lazy to go through all the pages and check.

Scopes on rifles because rifles are accurate weapons out to alot further yardages! It's all about ballistics...muzzleloaders aren't meant to be shot out at distances further than open sights can handle...no matter what the new advances are! If you can't make the shot at a deer with open sights at a certain yardage...news flash...don't attempt the shot...pretty simple!

scopes have been around since the late 1800's and if anyone out there dosen't think back then, nobody ever put a scope on the old smokepole your foolin yourselves.

That deer might always be 25 yards out of my range. What would you do? If I had a scope and was confident at 100 yards, he'd be at 150. Not to be a smartaxx, but what your saying doesn't hold water with me. I had a boone and crocket buck within 10 yards of me, caught me drawing back, if only I'd had a crossbow. You have got to draw the line somewhere. I believe thats why they call it hunting. There are a lot more what ifs.

If everyone is so concerned about tradition then why don't we just go back to the loose powder, patch and round ball. The muzzy's today don't really offer that much of a challenge. Even back 10 to 15 years ago I used to hear about miss fires and what not. I've personally never had that happen once to me, pull the trigger and boom, bullet flies straight and true every time. Just look at how easy it is to load an inline now days, what's it take, 8 to 10 seconds whereas it probably took any where from 20 to 25 with the older style guns. They keep saying hunter numbers are down, well this would be a chance to get some more people involved in a sport and bring in more revenue. It just baffles me that some people actually think a scope on a muzzy would be like shooting a rifle, you still only have ONE shot. I'm not 100% for scoping a muzzy, but not 100% against it either, what ever the law reads is fine by me, I just dont understand some reasonings behind not allowing scopes, lol.

That I can agree with. I dont' think I would be out there if I had to use an old school musket and flint lock. It is definitely "convenient" using the pellets, sabots, and primers.

I think part of our economic trouble even goes hand in hand with the technology that keeps replacing technology, once somebody has something we buy, then that gets replaced and we buy it and things become obsolete. I shoot a 370 grain maxiball with original black (loose) powder and a cap. That is the way I'll continue to musket hunt regardless of our laws, it's dead on at 100 yards and I just choose to hunt where that would be my furthest shot. The toughest part for me has been early/late of course that is peak deer movement time where I hunt and my binoculars just don't cut it, meaning trying to analyze heads of the deer in thick terrain, I have a limited amount of shooting lanes and windows so by the time I use binoc's, they are usually gone or rearranged so a scope would be a big plus for me, but not a big plus for the deer.