Deer hunting with muzzle loader surprisingly low in USA

[X-farmerdan]

I guess I'm way behind the conversation. I'm still stuck on the number that only 6% - 10% of hunters are muzzle loaders. Being a numbers geek I had to go figure the Virginia count. It's complicated. There about 49 different types of hunting licenses sold here in the Old Dominion. I would think, if your semi-serious about hunting you wild need at least a couple. For what it's worth...

Looking st VDGIF numbers, in 2015 there were 156,232 resident and 4,490 non-resident hunting licenses sold. That gets you in the door. There are some combination licenses not included, but let's ignore them for sake of simplicity. Nex,t to hunt deer, bear, and turkey ya' gotta' buy tags. There were 194,052 sets of tags sold. If you want to hunt with a muzzle loader, you need to buy a third license. Combining resident and non-resident there were 94,354 such licenses sold. Now, you can make of it what you will. No matter how you slice it, muzzle loaders are a big deal in Virginia!

 

[OKbio]

I bet it is higher than that in Oklahoma

In our last Big Game Report it showed about 80,000 ML hunters, about 100,000 archery, and about 180,000 rifle. Its hard to tease out how many of those are "unique" hunters and how many use multiple methods (and are thus double/triple counted). That would put our ML hunter percentage at 22% at a minimum (it would increase as you start reducing total hunter number when accounting for multiple methods). Archery hunters have been outpacing our ML hunters for several years now, with 26.4% and 15.8% of the harvest, respectively.

You can make statistics do most anything you want. With the churn in our hunting community, if you look at total unique deer hunters within say the last 5 years and then the number of ML hunters only in 2016, it wouldn't be too surprising that that number might be 6-10%.

 

[Chainsaw]

When we first started muzzle loading whenever the first dedicated muzzle loader seasons were it was a lot of fun. A few of us used to get together and shoot a lot as well as at club type competitions. There were no scopes and there was so much smoke from the shot that you would not see which way a deer ran when shot. We had to actually really pay attention after the shot hoping to even hear a deer bound to give you an idea of his retreat direction. I enjoyed it so much that for many years I used a muzzle loader only even during rifle when hunting Maine when the average number of standing deer sited per week per hunter was one.

And then upon getting older I bought a newer muzzle loader (Thompson Center Encore, a very proficient gun) with a scope and black powder was replaced with Pyrodex--with little to no smoke. Deer sightings had jumped from one a week to thirty plus in a great sit. Moved to NY with its eight week rifle season and bought a 7mm barrel and a scope for the Encore. It was and is just so easy and simple--put three shells in your pocket and you are good to go.

The muzzle loader kick isn't what it once was and evidently many others feel that way as well. Some years I hunt the late muzzle loader season and sometimes not. And the early season comes while I'm still doing habitat work. I think the NY seasons are simply too many and too long and the enthusiasm for muzzle loading has faded, a sad event but that is change or maybe a toll of getting older as is much of the deer hunting population. Shockingly the days of few deer were some of the best!

 

[useyourbow]

It was mentioned before but I believe it is because of when the ML seasons are scheduled especially in the states I have hunted. Most are sandwiched in between bow (30 days or more) and general gun. The dreaded "October Lull" so not much interest plus in most states you can continue to use your bow so for the sake of affordability most probably stick with their bows rather than buy a ML.
Now if a new bow didn't cost $700 and a new fancy ML didn't cost $400 people might be inclined to do both but in today's world of keeping up with the Jones it's go big or go home so that can't afford to do both. Plus with most states opting to allow the use of crossbows during regular archery that takes another chunk out of the would be ML hunters.