9.3x57,

Keep in mind that the M1 Abrams tank came out with a 120mm rifled barrel, but that the newer, more advanced M1A1 has a more accurate and more effective 120mm smooth bore barrel. Advancements are advancements. If rifled shotgun barrels weren't legal, we would be shooting the 12ga and 20ga versions of the M1A1's gun.

I still hunt with round ball guns, cap and ball revolver and 54 cal muzzle loader, though less frequently than when other alternatives weren't availble. The revolver is a revolver, and it has its own and my limitations. But the 54 cal gives up little to either the newer muzzleloaders or the rifled shotguns, except for two areas. One is foul weather, and the other is clean up. But little in terms of effectiveness on game, and they are ussually more accurate at that. I've never killed a deer (not counting with a centerfire rifle) further away than a round ball rifle's effective range. In fact, well inside, the longest shot being about 85yds.

There is no escaping the clean up and it kills time compared to either a similarly capable in line or shotgun. For example, you need to remove the load from a cap lock after each day's hunt, or you face likely probable ignition difficulty if not out and out impossibility, especially given our area's and the East Coast as a whole's humidity. Even snapping a few caps to ensure the rifle is bone dry leads to clean up since the caps are corosive and the residue hydrotrophic. Throw in some not uncommon rain and, well, leather gaurds, Saran wrap, duct tape,... you need to cross your fingers and toes too and then pray when you begin to squeeze that trigger.

But time is the critical element. Whether it is time not hunting because of unfavorable weather - for a cap lock, or time eaten fufilling the imperitive to clean a cap lock, and so eating into family or work time, displacing current or future hunting time, that tilts the balance to the newer technology, no differently than the effect of not dissimilar developments some 150 or 125 years ago.

Daryl's new inference regarding the capabilities of hunters who choose the newer technology over the old, that they do so out of despair, with some sort of niave but hopeful promise of instant accuracy or instant success, without a learning curve, is just another canard, and that duck don't fly! The more so because it is a heck of a lot easier to get a round ball rifle shooting better than an inline or rifled slug gun.

Regarding our deer seasons here in MD, We have two areas, one much more limited than the other. The more limited area is in the mountains to the west, where food is more scarce and winters harsher. In the less restrictive area, which includes some suburbia and much farmland and saltwater marsh, there is a season open from September 15 through January 31, more or less, whether it is bow or cross bow or muzzleloader or "firearms." I think I can legally take 45 deer utilizing the full quota for each season (cross bow and bow share the same quota,) and then there are areas where there is no limit at all where I could hunt to enhance my legal take, if I were inclined. After the first buck for each type of weapon, you are required to kill two does before you can kill another buck with that weapon type, and so on for each buck. When I began hunting, some three decades ago, we were limited to one deer per year!

JPK