The BIGGEST Threat to Muzzleloading

I get asked on a near-daily basis, “Ethan - I love muzzleloading too, what can I do to help grow the sport and the community”. I love answering these questions but I spend a lot of time doing it, it makes more sense to get this information organized and published so I can do more shooting and less emailing.

In this series, we’re going to chat about muzzleloading as a whole, from art and living history to competition to hunting.

I’m going to focus on leveraging the internet to promote the sport of muzzleloading. We all know about the clubs, organizations, and magazines, but the internet is the cheapest way to promote muzzleloading and the one that is often improperly used.

We’re going to start simple, but as always if you have ANY questions please let me know. Your questions help me develop these videos to continue to try to support muzzle loading.

Part 1: Community

Any topic, and I mean any topic has a few people that enjoy it. No matter how large or how small, these people make up that community. Muzzleloading is a LARGE community, maybe not in the sense of number of people interested, though estimates show there are nearly 4million muzzleloading enthusiasts in the United States. When I say muzzleloading is a large community I mean it more in the sense of there are a variety of specific niche interests in the community. These smaller groups or really even smaller communities within the larger muzzleloading community can normally be categorized as one of the following:

1. Art

2. History

3. Competition

4. Hunting

No matter who you talk to, their interest in muzzleloading will fall under one of these categories.

It used to be that our “muzzleloading community” was location-based. My grandfathers traveled around the country to compete in muzzleloading matches during the late 1900s, but even then, they could only be in one place at one time and interact with so many people at a time.

Over the last 20 years, we’ve taken that concept of the muzzleloading community, being tied by calendar dates and geographic locations, and we’ve ran over it like a freight train with the internet. If you like muzzleloading in 2022 you can read, watch, listen, and discuss literally any aspect of muzzleloading with anyone 24/7 365 days out of the year.

This is not to say that events and in person relationships are outdated, they certainly are not - each of these things is SO important, but for many either starting out or maybe not healthy enough to travel across the country, the internet has become the primary way we all interact with the muzzle loading community.

Each time you participate in a discussion, comment on a picture, or hang out on a forum, you are being an active part of the muzzle loading community. **

So why do I bring this up, what is it about “community” that matters so much? Shouldn’t we all just make posts and videos about safety and how to load and how to clean our muzzleloaders? Aren’t those the questions that newcomers want to know?

I mean, they do, but I bring this up for a totally different reason.

I bring this up because I receive far too many emails and messages coming from newcomers to muzzleloading wanting to learn more, but are sick of being yelled at, berated, and otherwise harassed for not knowing everything.

I see it on the forums, I see it on facebook groups, it’s on youtube, it's everywhere. Not to rag on ya buddy, but in some of my first videos, I received a comment making fun of my glasses. Imagine if I had quit right there, with 5 videos under my belt, and just stopped. That’s what happens every day when someone leaves a nasty comment, message or email to a newcomer. That right there is the #1 detriment to the muzzleloading community.

It’s not anti-gun folks, it’s not video games, it’s not the education system. The #1 detriment to the sport of muzzleloading is when people are jerks.

Now, I’m right there with you, sticks and stones. I’ve endured my fair share of ridicule, and I will forever. I make a lot of goofs on these videos and I own em! That’s why you see me showing when my rifle doesn’t go off or I spill the stuff off my bench, or when I shoot a mediocre target. But we can’t continue to complain about new people not being interested in muzzleloading when we continue to tolerate people being nasty to newcomers looking for help.

Put yourself in a newcomers shoes, not when you got into muzzleloading, but where a newcomer is now. Imagine you’ve never been to an event or club. You saw some videos online and think getting a muzzleloader will be cool. You scrimp and save several hundred dollars to get a muzzleloader and some gear and the first time you take it out you are made fun of, yelled at or demeaned for not having the best gear.

I don’t care how tough you are, that sucks, and that will always suck.

If we want to promote muzzleloading, and I mean truly promote it in a meaningful way, we need to take a step back from what we’ve all thought the basics were for the last 40 years and make sure that first and foremost we are being kind.

How to help build the muzzleloading community

So how can you help build community in muzzleloading? How can you help folks feel welcome? As always there’s the golden rule, treat others as you want to be treated. Be kind to newcomers, offer them sound advice and point them in a few directions to learn more. Odds are that if you want to promote muzzleloading you know a thing or two. Your advice and knowledge is so valuable to a newcomer, share it with them openly and honestly. You’ll make a lifelong friend and you’ll actually be doing something to help the sport.

Another way to help is to call out folks who are being jerks. Just like in the schoolyard if you see someone being a jerk, it’s okay to call them on it. You don’t have to publicly either. If a newcomer is being harassed, reach out to them privately. Let them know that we all aren’t like the jerks and offer up some advice or help with what they need.

Don’t joke about the quality of someone’s gear. You never know how long it took them to work to save up for what they have. Many of us start at the bottom and work our way up, that’s okay, that’s what we need. If the community pushing newcomers out because of a brand of a muzzleloader or the stitches on their pants, they’ll never stick around.

We don’t need to see a nationwide muzzleloader season put in to save muzzleloaders, we don’t need a new Jerimiah Johnson, the only thing we, as a muzzleloading community need to do to see this great sport continue, is make it as open to anyone wanting to try it out as possible. The easiest way to do that is start with how you talk online.

We can’t depend on politicians or Hollywood to help this sport, it’s never going to happen, but we can count on each other.

I know this is a bit of a different video, but thanks for sticking around. As the series continues I’ll talk about things like taking pictures, promoting your club, and more things to keep this discussion going. As always if you agree or not, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Let me know in the comments what you think and how we can all work together to promote all aspects of muzzleloading.