Photo by R.E. ILG.

Back in 1979, I was hunting the opening morning of primitive-weapons season on a private tract of land adjoining the Homochitto National Forest in Jefferson County. Not yet having acquired the luxury of a tree stand, I cleaned off a spot at the base of an old hickory tree overlooking a red oak flat along Hurricane Creek. Acorns littered the ground, and a number of scrapes were visible along the creek bank. From my vantage point on the end of the finger ridge, I could easily spot any deer moving through the bottom.

Retrieving a No. 11 percussion cap from my possibles bag, I seated it firmly onto the nipple of my new Thompson Center .50-caliber muzzleloader. Having loaded the gun back at the pickup, I took care not to let the sidelock hammer slip from my frozen fingers as I lowered it down onto the copper cap. I then slowly pulled the hammer back until I heard the soft click that let me know it was locked in the set position. All that was left to do was sit back and wait for daylight -- and for the buck that had been making those scrapes.

As so often seems the case with greenhorns, that first morning out I encountered what had to be the biggest buck in the county. He was slipping through a cane thicket and quartering away when I pulled the trigger on my smokepole. With a slight hesitation the muzzleloader belched thunder, lightning, and a giant cloud of blue smoke. The explosion was still reverberating down through the creek bottom as I clambered to my feet and fanned an opening in the cloud of smoke before me.

After several moments, I was finally able to make out the body of the giant buck. But instead of being piled up on the bank of the creek, he was just standing there, staring back at me: Somehow I had missed!

Frantically, I attempted to reload my smokepole. With speed that would have made Daniel Boone envious, I poured a fresh charge of powder and rammed home a Maxi-Ball in record time. But that's when things went south. Instead of focusing on the task at hand, I made the mistake of glancing up to see if the big buck was still there -- which he was! In the meantime my now-trembling hand found, but dropped three of the small percussion caps before finally getting one out of the possibles bag and seating it on the nipple. Still fumbling with the hammer, trying to get it cocked, I looked up -- just in time to see that buck of a lifetime disappear into the thicket.

To say I was frustrated and disappointed would be the understatement of the century. However, that unfortunate event served a good purpose, in that I learned a great deal about loading my rifle properly. That aside, the mischance set me ablaze with enthusiasm for hunting whitetails by means of blackpowder rifles.

WHY BLACKPOWDER HUNTING?
Advances in modern-day weaponry enable a shooter to take a deer easily at 200 or even 300 yards. So why in the world would any sane hunter choose to reduce effective killing range by using a muzzleloader? Ask a dozen smokepole hunters this question, and you're apt to get at least as many different answers. However, after talking with hundreds of Magnolia State muzzleloader enthusiasts, I've come to the conclusion that, when you get right down to it, two types of hunters shoot primitive weapons.

The members of one of these groups view primitive weapons solely as a way to extend deer season. By taking advantage of the Magnolia State's two primitive-weapons seasons, they can stretch out their pursuit of whitetails by 28 days in Zone 1 and by a month and a half in Zone 2. These folks couldn't care less about the method -- or more about getting in more time afield. And in a state with a severe deer overpopulation problem, that may not be such a bad thing.

The other type of blackpowder hunter looks at the muzzleloader from a nostalgic point of view. For these romantics, hunting with a smokepole keeps alive the spirit and the craft of a long-vanished era. Sure, they want to put venison in the freezer, but to them, the way in which that goal is met is far more important that the meat. The appeal lies in a combination of the lure of history and the challenge of hunting at a far simpler level of technological development. They relish being able to harvest a whitetail with essentially the same rifle used by the likes of Jim Bridger and Daniel Boone.