I have hunted with an ML exclusively for the last 4 years... during every season it was legal to carry a firearm. This last year I chose to hunt with a conical and #11 cap gun... it just so happens that ML is a White inline. I have never had so much fun with an ML, slinging those 460 gr conicals down range.
The packaging is different but it is still a conical gun, based upon Whitworth's guns, designed to specifically use conicals and #11 caps. Is it primitive because of it's ignition, bullet type, and rainbow trajectory? Some would say, yes. Others would say, no, but only because of how it looks. It has never failed to go off... well, there was that time with a couple of bad caps.
I know this has been said before, but I think Doc White said it best:
"Now a true traditionalist doesn't shoot a machine made gun, it has to be hand done, just like the stitching on his clothes. But for the majority, the fact that modern sidelocks, just like in-lines, are made utilizing modern industrial techniques, and are wax cast, sintered, cup cutter carved, CNC machined, machine inletted, sanded, and finished, could matter less. In fact, modern in-lines and sidelocks are made on the same machines for the bigger part and are all the more closely related by that fact."
The majority of today's "trad" ML's are only modern semi-replica guns. Based loosely on what was used back whenever, because back then everything was a custom, hand-made job. The "trad" ML's of today are more closely related to "in-lines" than they are the ML's of back whenever. They are more reliable, have better steel, and tighter tolerances in the majority of cases. They perform every bit as well as an in-line when the shooter does his part, just as the in-line will perform every bit as well the "replica" ML when the shooter does his part.
I do not like the broad brush strokes some of the radical, extremist, replica shooters paint with. For the simple reason that my concical, #11 cap ML does not look like what they personally like.
Have fun with what you like to shoot... but keep your personal animosities to yourself. Share the joy of your personal preferences without cutting down others and judging others because they wish to take advantage of a special season.
Every season comes under the same heading - Hunting. That is what it is all about... if the primitive season is all about getting into the woods with a primitive weapon and not about the hunting, then go stalking around in the summer. It all boils down to the possibility of coming back with game... that is why we go, that is the foundation... HUNTING.
