Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 7, 1994 TAG: 9412270003
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: SPORTS EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BILL COCHRAN OUTDOOR EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"This year, we've probably sold eight out of 10 inlines vs. the traditional stock," said Gerald Tobey, the general manager at Blue Ridge Sporting Supplies in Salem.
Even from a short distance, the inline black-powder gun looks like a modern bolt-action rifle. It lacks the long barrel, the side lock, the graceful stock, the hefty weight of the traditional gun - either the one that great-great-great-granddaddy owned or a replica.
About the only thing the two guns have in common is that both are loaded from the muzzle, which is required by law.
"I think a lot of people are getting into this season because it is another two extra weeks of a firearm deer season," said Matt Knox, the deer research biologist for the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "I don't think they are getting into it because they want to hark back to the old days."
The lure of muzzleloading to many newcomers is the chance to be afield two weeks before the modern firearm season, when the weather is likely to be favorable and the deer just may be in the peak of the rut. For them, range and reliability are more important than tradition when choosing a gun.
No little attraction is the fact that the past two muzzleloading seasons have gone on record as prime time to kill a trophy buck. The top three deer in the 1994 Virginia Big Game Trophy Show were from last year's two-week early muzzleloading season. The season before that, Virginia's all-time record buck was taken by a hunter out during the early muzzleloading season. Three of the top 10 bucks in the Longhunters Society, the keeper of national black-powder records, are deer killed in Virginia the past two seasons.
Little wonder that interest in the season is soaring. Last year, when the early season went from one week to two, muzzleloading license sales leaped by more than 25 percent, setting a record of 62,256.
Gun shop owners, like Tobey, believe just as many newcomers are entering the sport this year as last.
"As a general rule, I would say about half of them are younger hunters," Tobey said.
"I am making the prediction that there will be over 80,000 muzzleloader hunters this year," said Knox.
The black-powder deer kill last year was 25,995, an increase of 115 percent over the previous year. That represented 12.9 percent of all the deer reported killed by hunters.
So far, few people are expressing concern that the sport is getting too big or that the inline rifles are moving too far away from the primitive intent of the season, Knox said.
"I don't like to get into that traditional vs. new debate, the sidelock vs. the inline," he said. "A lot of people are saying they [inlines] aren't the old, traditional muzzleloaders, but as soon as you look down the barrel and they still have iron sights, I say you have a great equalizer. I don't think there is any question, as long as they remain iron sights - and I am for that, personally - and there is one shot, then there is the element of challenge."
That makes the early muzzleloading season an important and worthy part of Virginia's hunting opportunities, Knox said, "because people are voluntarily accepting a handicap.
"The muzzleloader is not a real effective weapon in the modern sense. There are deer hunters who are getting into it because they think it is easy, easy, easy. It is not that easy."
For one thing, more skill is required to shoot a muzzleloader than a centerfire rifle, he said. You don't just grab one off the rack and head for the woods.
"Everyone has to learn what their sight picture is and how that sight picture relates to the target," he said.
Then there is the limited range, and the fact that it will take 15 seconds or more to get off a second shot, Knox said.
The manufacturers of inline rifles, including White Shooting Systems, Inc. and Modern Muzzle Loading, Inc., advertise accuracy, light weight, balance, stopping power and improved ignition.
"Most of the guys come in here and tell us they are getting an inch or inch-and-one-half accuracy at 100 yards," said Tobey.
But you return to the fact that all muzzleloaders used during the special season must have iron sights, and such sights will just about cover up a deer beyond 50 yards, said Knox. "They aren't like crosshairs, that you can put right behind the shoulder of a deer."
by CNB