Any thoughts on the suppressed Silencerco muzzleloader?

[Open_Wire]

Speaking only for myself I wish the muzzloading season whould be restricted to a traditional style of muzzleloader :
Matchlock
Wheellock
Flintlock
Percussion
Be that as it may...I have often won rifles matches against those who were using inlines or even a modern scoped centerfire rifle with my Hawekn rifle , which is pictured below...

And with all of the above said...
You can always use your muzzleloader in "Modern Rifle Season"...I've done that before when I've had hunting partners who do not have a proper muzzleloader.

Always fun when you run into a game warden then , when he checks your partner's Remington 700 or what have you...then he sees that I am carrying one of these three...Especially the bottom two as they are original rifles...one from around 1800 the other the late 1830's or so....
Andy
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Nice guns. I've got a Hawkins .54 and a basic .50 CVA thingy buried in storage. Had a smoothbore Springfield that made it through the Civil War, but sold that off a while back.

 

[RVTECH]

Pushing the edge is usually how we get progress.

Yea this worked real well with bump stocks.

 

[tac]

Well, this morning I got up, made myself ready for the day, milked the chickens, checked the wheels on the ol' chariot, put on my woad and thought - 'I wonder who I'm going to make happy today?'

As instructed by Mrs tac, I drove over to the fang doctor lady, who checked out my teefs, and she smole at me as I left, for I had carried out her last instruction to the best of my ability. I had been flossing until I was all flossed out, and used her approved teef-paste and the result made her happy.

Result!!

And then I thought, let's just think of the yin and yang thing - I've done some good, and made somebody happy, so now it's time to make somebody sad, and if not sad, just to irritate them, maybe p*ss them off a bit, to keep the balance of the universe and all that stuff, y'know?

So I came home and read through all the posts here - remember that I'm at least eight hours ahead of you guys and gals, right? And I found a post that was so much at variance with the 'be nice' ethos of this great forum that it made the perfect target for my 'let's irritate/p*ss somebody off' post.

This post was just so patronising, so superior-sounding, so putting downing and just so plain smallifying to a large section of this forum that I could hardly bleeve my 73-y/o eyeballs. It simply trash-canned the ethos behind a very large proportion of the shooting and hunting population of the USA, and in particular, the wonderful PNW that I call my home for part of the year, that I had to put fingers to keyboard, more in grief than in anger. More than that, this post implied that many of my friends on this forum were backwoods dicks who could hardly operate a spoon unaided, let alone a cartridge-firing gun, and that just ain't right.

Hence my post above, at #16.

It got the resplone I expected, at post #20.

Result!!

So, Mr Open_Wire, if my post got up your nose and cause you some irritation, then it has fully achieved it's aim. Your 'holier-than-thou' attitude to your fellow American hunters and the belittling of their 'aesthetic and romantic ideal' has done little, no, make that nothing, to follow the 'be nice to each other' ethos of this forum.

Jeremiah Johnson is shaking his head.

Have a great day.

 

[Roundball58]

And that is exactly the kind of attitude that is irritating. A healthy dose of romanticism combined with a willful handicapping using obsolete technology, all in the interests of promoting an idealized view of hunting, which probably sells well to the kinds of urban non gun owners who infest government regulatory bodies, all combine to give "real" hunters all sorts of special treatment. That then spills over to what a "real" muzzleloader should be, and it basically boils down to promoting an aesthetic and romantic ideals.

All of which are well and good, and even fantastic. I just don't think it worthy of special treatment, and I think it's a shame there is a carefully cultivated divide. In fact, that's the main reason I rarely take my muzzleloaders out and never hunt with them. The cultural baggage that is attached to them these days is weird.

Our modern archery hunts and later muzzleloader hunts came from an attempt to create more opportunity to hunt. Given lower success rates, more people could hunt without impacting the resource. Like most things humans do, the arms race quickly started and rapid improvements kicked in and success rates started going up. Fortunately, the increased success rates coincided with a whitetail population explosion (in the east) so there was no attempt to rein in the technology and in fact some states are now allowing single shot cartridge rifles in the "primitive" season.

Unfortunately, Oregon did not share in the increased game populations of the east so we were faced with increased success rates from improved technology but with declining game populations. In the mid 90's ODFW gave us a choice between reduced tags (opportunity to hunt) or reduced technology. We (muzzleloaders) chose to reduce the technology so we could get more opportunity to hunt.

What you call "cultural baggage" is what the rest of us call tradition.

Particularly fitting that today is Fred Bear's birthday. And yeah its archery but applies to traditional muzzleloaders as well:

"When a hunter is in a treestand with moral values and with the proper hunting ethics and richer for the experience, that hunter is 20 feet closer to God."

 

[Open_Wire]

[/QUOTE]

Well, this morning I got up, made myself ready for the day, milked the chickens, checked the wheels on the ol' chariot, put on my woad and thought - 'I wonder who I'm going to make happy today?'

As instructed by Mrs tac, I drove over to the fang doctor lady, who checked out my teefs, and she smole at me as I left, for I had carried out her last instruction to the best of my ability. I had been flossing until I was all flossed out, and used her approved teef-paste and the result made her happy.

Result!!

And then I thought, let's just think of the yin and yang thing - I've done some good, and made somebody happy, so now it's time to make somebody sad, and if not sad, just to irritate them, maybe p*ss them off a bit, to keep the balance of the universe and all that stuff, y'know?

So I came home and read through all the posts here - remember that I'm at least eight hours ahead of you guys and gals, right? And I found a post that was so much at variance with the 'be nice' ethos of this great forum that it made the perfect target for my 'let's irritate/p*ss somebody off' post.

This post was just so patronising, so superior-sounding, so putting downing and just so plain smallifying to a large section of this forum that I could hardly bleeve my 73-y/o eyeballs. It simply trash-canned the ethos behind a very large proportion of the shooting and hunting population of the USA, and in particular, the wonderful PNW that I call my home for part of the year, that I had to put fingers to keyboard, more in grief than in anger. More than that, this post implied that many of my friends on this forum were backwoods dicks who could hardly operate a spoon unaided, let alone a cartridge-firing gun, and that just ain't right.

Hence my post above, at #16.

It got the resplone I expected, at post #20.

Result!!

So, Mr Open_Wire, if my post got up your nose and cause you some irritation, then it has fully achieved it's aim. Your 'holier-than-thou' attitude to your fellow American hunters and the belittling of their 'aesthetic and romantic ideal' has done little, no, make that nothing, to follow the 'be nice to each other' ethos of this forum.

Jeremiah Johnson is shaking his head.

Have a great day.

A counterpoint, I was thinking the exact same thing while being lectured on the innate moral superiority of the muzzleloader, which was based on those "aesthetic and romantic ideas"

It's an interesting thing to consider, especially given some of the reaction to a suppressed muzzlestuffer.

I never once said a thing about hicks, or technological incompetence. I did point out my aversion to special treatment of hunters simply because they choose to handicap themselves, and also pointed that there is quite the attitude that goes with some elements of the muzzle stuffer community. And like it or not, it is based on romance, idealism, and aesthetics, under the guise of tradition.

There is nothing wrong with that, until it becomes a foundation for special treatment, and a sense of somehow being the purer, better group. Which is exactly the attitude I got when I thought (1) a suppressed muzzle stuffer is cool and (2) made an offhand comment favoring equality in hunting seasons for firearms users.

 

[Open_Wire]

Yea this worked real well with bump stocks.

Some advances are dead ends. We don't know how bump stocks will end, especially based on the legal challenges. It is possible a legal victory could open up some very fascinating doors.

 

[Open_Wire]

Our modern archery hunts and later muzzleloader hunts came from an attempt to create more opportunity to hunt. Given lower success rates, more people could hunt without impacting the resource. Like most things humans do, the arms race quickly started and rapid improvements kicked in and success rates started going up. Fortunately, the increased success rates coincided with a whitetail population explosion (in the east) so there was no attempt to rein in the technology and in fact some states are now allowing single shot cartridge rifles in the "primitive" season.

Unfortunately, Oregon did not share in the increased game populations of the east so we were faced with increased success rates from improved technology but with declining game populations. In the mid 90's ODFW gave us a choice between reduced tags (opportunity to hunt) or reduced technology. We (muzzleloaders) chose to reduce the technology so we could get more opportunity to hunt.

What you call "cultural baggage" is what the rest of us call tradition.

Particularly fitting that today is Fred Bear's birthday. And yeah its archery but applies to traditional muzzleloaders as well:

"When a hunter is in a treestand with moral values and with the proper hunting ethics and richer for the experience, that hunter is 20 feet closer to God."

I have always struggled with the "improved technology" claim, considering at their heart, a scoped cartridge rifle is just civil war era tech with better propellant. Or if you want to differentiate between smokeless and BP cartridges, early 1890's tech. There isn't anything fundamentally different in the woods in 2019 than there was in 1900 that wasn't already commercially available. I have always felt there were better ways of spreading opportunity around without incentivizing and sometimes favoring "primitive" weapons.

I suppose though at this point, there is little that can be done about it. The die has been cast.

 

[Roundball58]

I have always struggled with the "improved technology" claim, considering at their heart, a scoped cartridge rifle is just civil war era tech with better propellant. Or if you want to differentiate between smokeless and BP cartridges, early 1890's tech. There isn't anything fundamentally different in the woods in 2019 than there was in 1900 that wasn't already commercially available. I have always felt there were better ways of spreading opportunity around without incentivizing and sometimes favoring "primitive" weapons.

I suppose though at this point, there is little that can be done about it. The die has been cast.

FWIW, Oregon's tech is capped at about 1840.

Given the rapid adoption of the modern in-line rifle and just as equally rapid abandonment of more traditional firearms I would argue that "improved technology" is in fact a significant factor. The improved success rates ODFW found in the 90's is evidence it does make a difference.

"Nice guns. I've got a Hawkins .54 and a basic .50 CVA thingy buried in storage."

Would be an interesting comparison splitting a hunting season between a traditional RB rifle and the modern thing in the OP.

 

[Open_Wire]

I hauled the CVA out a couple times during modern season because that's what I had a tag for. It had been a regular deer slayer in Alaska according to the person who sold it to me.

I was indifferent to the whole thing. Didn't see any game, and carrying it around was about the same as any other rifle, only with the added benefit of looking somewhat cool.

There are clearly a finite number of deer and opportunities to kill the deer. One way or another the system that distributes the chance to kill those deer will have to limit somewhere. I find it irritating that it favors what really is a carefully manicured cultural identity around a particular type of weapon. Any kind of compromise will piss people off, but I believe favoring one weapon in the eyes of the law over another is risky, because it propagates an idea to people who know nothing about guns, about what is an "acceptable gun" and what isn't. Which is why we have people thinking a Civil War era musket is the ideal hunting rifle, and that an AR-15 is an abomination in the woods and "no true hunter" should ever use it.

By telegraphing to the world (as some in this thread have) that muzzleloaders (and only certain kinds at that) are the only moral, ethical and the most sporting (again, romantic idealism) gun to hunt with, then that becomes the baseline by which people who know little about guns judge what guns they consider socially acceptable, which fuels the anti's ability to use half truths and lies when promoting bans. "You don't hunt with this gun or that gun" "no sportsman needs X..."

 

[Roundball58]

Pretty sure the "anti's" aren't even aware of muzzleloader seasons or bow seasons for that matter and if they are they don't really care as to them its all evil. We shouldn't be changing what we do to accommodate them because they're going to continue to use half truths and lies to push their agenda anyway.

Enjoy hunting with your new rifle. I hope it works out for you.

 

[Open_Wire]

Pretty sure the "anti's" aren't even aware of muzzleloader seasons or bow seasons for that matter and if they are they don't really care as to them its all evil. We shouldn't be changing what we do to accommodate them because they're going to continue to use half truths and lies to push their agenda anyway.

Enjoy hunting with your new rifle. I hope it works out for you.

You'd be surprised. There are a lot of people who have a similar idea of what "real" hunting is as is promoted in some parts of the muzzleloader community, and that influences how they perceive guns and gun rights. I've had more than one person express such concepts to me, and I had to spend a lot of time walking them through the realities of gun ownership. Usually they can be brought around though, but some are pretty set on their ways.

 

[Ura-Ki]

Gentlemen, Please remember Rule #1 Be excellent to each other.
Divisive and abrasive posts are not welcome here!

 

[Andy54Hawken]

I do like history and yes the fur trade era of the American west is a favorite.
I also hunt and do historical displays and talks about that same era....
I am however under no illusion or suffering from "romantic idealism" when hunting , shooting or giving a lecture or display.

To me using a traditional muzzleloader is no handicap , nor a example of superior whatever...its simply my choice.
I take pride in my
Shooting talent...
Hunting skills...
Knowledge of history...
Owning , displaying , teaching about , hunting and shooting traditional muzzleloaders gives me a chance to combine all of those.
To me that is not "cultural baggage"...but what I know about history and shooting , is knowledge worth sharing.
Andy
Edit to add :
Speaking only for myself :
You do not need to dress like Daniel Boone...
Shoot like Kit Carson...
Own a original rifle....
To be a "muzzleloader".
But...
Do not try and tell me just how much "better" a modern inline or other modern muzzleloader is over my choice in traditional muzzleloaders.
What is "better" for one person, may be the worse choice for someone else.

 

[Open_Wire]

I am however under no illusion or suffering from "romantic idealism" when hunting , shooting or giving a lecture or display.

Not everyone does, but it comes out a lot when interacting with the muzzleloading community.

I work as a historian, I love this stuff, but sometimes there is an overbearing aspect from *parts* of the muzzleloading community that elicit the kind of statements I made, especially when it comes down to certain forms of purity. That more than anything else just made me leave mine in storage, and has left me uninspired to even put my 1851 Navy back together.

 

[Andy54Hawken]

sometimes there is an overbearing aspect from *parts* of the muzzleloading community that elicit the kind of statements I made, especially when it comes down to certain forms of purity.

Sounds like you need to hang out with some different muzzleloaders...LOL
I too have heard from many self appointed experts :
That theirs is the only true path , way or knowledge...
Luckily I do not have to accept their notions....

left me uninspired to even put my 1851 Navy back together.

Not wanting to tell anyone what to do...but I would ask :
Why let someone and their actions and or words , control what you do... ?
Why not put your '51 Navy back together and enjoy it...?
Andy

 

[RVTECH]

I did point out my aversion to special treatment of hunters simply because they choose to handicap themselves,

Choose to 'handicap' themselves? I think it's more of a case of 'enlightening' themselves.
Lets get something clear - Muzzleloading was not recently developed, (or reintroduced) as way to create a 'carefully cultivated divide' or to appeal for 'special treatment'.
Muzzleloading for all intents and purposes has always been with us. While it no doubt faded to near obscurity after the introduction of cartridge firearms it gained a resurgence of interest in the 1930s and really got a boost in the late 50's early 60s with the first manufacturers of 'reproduction' Muzzleloaders.
This was in response to many who were becoming interested in the sport, history and tradition of it and it grew rapidly with organized gatherings, tournaments and competitions.
The 'special treatment' came later but more accurately described as 'Special Seasons' for muzzleloader hunters only and was in response from those who were simply asking for nothing more than a specific season were they could hunt alongside their fellow muzzleloading hunters and in some way to relive tradition and history.
If there is anything that has caused a 'carefully cultivated divide' it has been the unprecedented rise in the popularity of the 'modern sporting rifle' over the approximate last 20 or so years.
This has not only paralleled the rapid decline of interest in muzzleloading but has also served to create a 'carefully cultivated divide' among hunters & sportsmen of different 'persuasions' but I'll leave it at that.
In conclusion this is a classic 'which came first' story.....

 

[Ura-Ki]

So, this has always been "My" issue, I have a fine and growing collection of Colt Revolving percussion rifles Circa 1860 to about 1874, these were plenty good enough to harvest game in their day, and yet some how they are not legal to use except for general rifle season! WTF!
So, my question, who makes up the rules, and based on what? What evidence do they turn to that says one of these Colts isn't capable of humanely taking game? Is this not the very essence of traditional hunting, using historical significant arms from a period not far removed from what "They" determine traditional? This is most irritating to me, and makes absolutely no sense at all!

 

[Open_Wire]

Sounds like you need to hang out with some different muzzleloaders...LOL
I too have heard from many self appointed experts :
That theirs is the only true path , way or knowledge...
Luckily I do not have to accept their notions....


Not wanting to tell anyone what to do...but I would ask :
Why let someone and their actions and or words , control what you do... ?
Why not put your '51 Navy back together and enjoy it...?
Andy

One of these days, I want to replace a couple parts in it, that's probably slowing me down as much as anything LOL

 

[Open_Wire]

So, this has always been "My" issue, I have a fine and growing collection of Colt Revolving percussion rifles Circa 1860 to about 1874, these were plenty good enough to harvest game in their day, and yet some how they are not legal to use except for general rifle season! WTF!
So, my question, who makes up the rules, and based on what? What evidence do they turn to that says one of these Colts isn't capable of humanely taking game? Is this not the very essence of traditional hunting, using historical significant arms from a period not far removed from what "They" determine traditional? This is most irritating to me, and makes absolutely no sense at all!
View attachment 555530

Those are sexy.

I'd think they'd pass muster in WA? But I'm not sure on the finer points offhand beyond "exposed ignition".

 

[Andy54Hawken]

One of these days, I want to replace a couple parts in it, that's probably slowing me down as much as anything LOL

They are fairly easy to work on...I have done work on many a Colt and Colt replica...let me know if you need some help...
Andy