Back in the 70's the bi-centennial caused quite an increased interest in people shooting muzzleloaders, and in those days most of the guns were built to shoot round balls. A very slow twist stabilizes a round ball, and it takes a faster twist to stabilize elongated bullets like minie balls and their modern equivalents. Because a round ball has such lousy ballistics, some states granted an extra season just for muzzle loader hunters, so they weren't in competition with the hi-power guys, and had an opportunity to stalk the animal without a million more hunters in the woods. And that was the down fall of traditional muzzle loading. People then got into shooting muzzle loaders for the extra season and cared nothing about the history or traditions, so except for the die hard buckskinner traditionalists, now days, in my opinion, muzzleloader hunting and shooting has gone plumb to hell. The bolt action enclosed priming, inline muzzleloader leaves me cold. Back before my X wife got the property, I had a place with lots of deer, and in the 70's and 80's on that place it was round ball muzzleloader hunting -- period. On the far side of the hay field, if someone gets in there with a detector they will think there was a war fought. We shot targets, we had shooting matches, we hunted deer and squirrels. And a time or two we had cannon matches. The largest cannon match we had 27 guns lined up across the hay field shooting at a mock fort and an old car body. Ah yes, the good old days. The ground is full of round lead balls, there are trees full of lead. Needless to say, a good time was had by all.
well now I know not too now...beginner mistake.
