Traditional percussion

[dave951]

It isn’t going to happen.

Sadly the writing is all over the wall. Go to any muzzleloading shoot or trade show and about 95% of the participants are white haired Caucasian males 60+ in age.

This is absolutely, no doubt about it, an old man’s sport. There is just not nearly enough new blood entering the hobby to sustain it at its current level. It just will not happen. And, the market is not going to invest in such a thing.

I imagine in 20-30 years the hobby will be a husk of its former self as technology marches forward and the old ways are lost. This might seem very dour but it is realistic. I pray another muzzleloading resurgence gets sparked somewhere along the line, as it happened in the 60s and 70s here, but I’m not holding my breath.

As a young man in the hobby these are just my thoughts as “an outsider looking in”. If I am proven wrong in time, believe me, I’ll be the first to be happy about it.

And that is entirely my point. We HAVE to change that and it won't happen unless we work with kids and young adults whenever possible.

 

[Bledfor Days]

Unfortunately I think it might go the same way that ham radio is going. I enjoy the morse code side of the hobby and its lost a lot of its appeal due to the internet. I used to think it was cool working stations thousands of miles away on 10 watts and a wire antenna. Young people today are like 'meh, no biggie.'
I dont think muzzleloading will completely die out. Like ham radio and non electronic marine navigation, it'll become another one of the dark arts.

 

[vince-m]

Ok so how to peak interest, if one company would put out 1rifle and advertise it and we all give a little bit of our time then maybe.

 

[SamTex1949]

Well when I got into making smoke from a front stuffer that was back in early 70s and then there were "old white haired" folks shooting then , now I am a old white haired front stuffer . So is it declining ? or just on its own plane. If you look at some of the old books like the ones from Walter Cline (1942 version) there were "old white haired" shooters then too. Maybe its a trend ??

 

[FishDFly]

Imagine a world without Pedersoli, Uberti and Pietta today!!

 

[Col. Batguano]

It's somewhat analogous to stamp collectors--another declining hobby. The median age of stamp collectors is about 70. There are half as many now as there were 20 years ago, and half as many then as 20 years before that.

i was sort of interested in stamps, but not all THAT much. My father-in-law was though, so I talked with him about them (I like to learn things about things I don't know much about) every time i was with him. He sadly passed away in February this year, and now we have inherited his rather extensive collection (43 volumes). Now, out of respect for him and as a way to preserve his legacy, I'm learning more and more. The more I get in to it and read, the more I'm interested in it. So it could be too that as more of us gray-hairs pass our collections down a generation, the more replacements for us there will be.

The other thing about ML'ers too is that (for most) it's something that you "graduate to" rather than start with. Something you do after you've experienced what else there is out there in the firearms world, and you are looking for an avenue to challenge yourself, learn, and experience more in. But in order to get there, we have to have hunters, shooters, and gun enthusiasts first. Let's hope that that is still possible for generations after us.