Go Primitive: Hunt with a Traditional Muzzleloader
Everett Headley 12.07.22
Selecting a Smoke-Pole
Two years ago, Montana opened up a Heritage Muzzleloader season. Late in the year and brief, it was designed to offer an opportunity to those who would brave the winter weather and limit themselves to loose power, iron sights, and open ignitions. Naturally, I decided it was for me. What helped me along was a desire to increase my hunting in other states and a proficiency with a smokepole would increase those odds.
I met up with some trappers at a rendezvous to get suggestions straight out of the 1840s. More accurately, I found my local mountain men reenactors and sought their advice on a modern equivalent and the necessaries along with it. Many modern inline muzzleloaders have a convenience and accuracy much closer to rifles than their ancestors, but I wanted something more akin to what Bridger carried as he made his way unaided through the uncharted west. I settled on a Lyman Great Plains Hunter, .50 caliber, percussion ignition. Heavy and solid, it carries a vintage feel from a period many of us long to have lived.
Finding a Hunt
As it happened, the great people at the Idaho Department of Fish and Game rewarded my attempt to resurrect the past with an antelope tag in a muzzleloader only area. Challenging enough with a rifle, getting within my effective range of 100 yards would require stealth and patience. A short scouting trip between my Idaho and Montana archery elk hunts found a suitable number of antelope, but the terrain was near-flat, sagebrush prairie and not ideal for making a stalk. My only grace was the incoming rut distracting the bucks. My first few days of the hunt left me seeing plenty of pronghorn, yet never being closer than a couple hundred yards. However, a chance sighting of movement, nearly a mile distant while I stood in camp, created a frenetic energy . It turned out to be a young buck doggedly pursued by one older and heavier.
Making the Harvest
Hastily I picked up my muzzleloader and binoculars and picked up the chase. I was on the only ridgeline around and the hills before me broke into small paths giving me the cover I needed to close in. This young buck had clearly entered into the other’s territory and was paying the price. Snorting and raking, he made it known only does were welcome. Then both bucks froze as a doe appeared behind me on top of the ridge. She eyed them, and probably myself from her vantage, and then continued on her way without concern. Inexperienced as he was in these things, it didn’t prevent the yearling buck from bleating his way up to her at a pace only antelope can lay down. For all of his display, the older buck only moved slowly up the hill. That delay allowed me to slip down and around to a position that brought him just under fifty yards. As I saw his black horns bob into view, I pulled back my hammer, raised my barrel, squeezed the set trigger, settled my sight just behind his shoulder and touched the second trigger. There is a tradition that a rifle can only be named after its first blood. Since this one shattered the love triangle at play, “Casanova” seemed right.
It was a smooth, but complicated action. Primitive weapons require more steps and that increases the likelihood human error will cause a miss. It makes the hunt difficult. It brings us as close to what it was like before technology and near the experiences of the voyageurs we romantically recall. There is a pride found when game is harvested by a method that is not so easy to master. Learning the techniques of load development, blackpowder shooting, and the use of accoutrements in your possibles bag is not overly difficult. Yet it has been removed from our tradition for long enough that finding it again requires a dedicated effort. Thankfully there are those who have kept the practices willing to bring us into the fold.
What I have discovered is more than just a new method of take. It is an appreciation for those who hunted where I do (only two hundred years earlier), although without the modern conveniences I enjoy. I can buy powder and shot with a few clicks online; they had to make their own and often from inferior resources. If I miss, I still have food at home; if they missed they went hungry. I also hold in common with them an intimacy of knowing my weapon and caring for it in a way that modern rifles do not require. There is a greater need for fieldcraft, tracking, and stalking to close the distance that a scope eliminates.
For some, once they succumb to the allure of blackpowder, everything else quickly fades. My conversion is not that complete, nevertheless I have found a new love in traditional muzzleloading. My bow, rifle, and shotgun have each cemented their place in my hunting, but just a little more room has been made in my safe. I hope Jim Bridger would approve.
