There might not be that much bang for the buck in the black powder making business. BP substitutes have taken a big chunk of the muzzleloader propellant market with folks who primarily hunt deer as an extra season using guns we don’t discuss here. It would be interesting to know trends in how much BP is consumed here by shooters since the 1970s. A lot of shooting clubs are diminishing in numbers over the past 10 years. Others are doing well.
Food for thought....However, with the rising cost of smokeless powders, primers and casings the BP segment is not the only one feeling the pinch so to quote Buffalo Springfield, "there's something happening here"....
.......With that said, I totally agree that the BP market is in decline which could effect things. Back when I was a young man it was fast growing, along with traditional archery. It seemed that wherever you turned someone was going afield with a new TC, CVA, or Lyman rifle.Parts, barrels and stocks abounded and they were reasonable. I became so enamoured with traditional tackle 35 years ago that I sold off all my modern rifles, shotguns and pistols, opting instead for long guns, smoothbores and BP revolvers and pistols. Longbows and recurves became my early season weapons and still are, and till this very day, and the only guns I take afield are loaded from the muzzle and nothing has changed. Trips to the Traditional Archery gatherings and Dixon's yearly event were delightful for the wife and I.
But alas, the world around us has changed. Young able bodied men going afield with crossbows, "Muzzle loaders" that look like tactical weapons that can shoot further than I can see, and graphite arrows being launched from "traditional longbows". Whats a fellow to do?...
When I speak of the ALR to my friends I call it out of affection....the "old man page" I belong to. Old men in the sense that they are the last to remember that "Golden era" of American history when men took to the old time tested ways to go afield. When the destination was nowhere near and dear to our hearts as the journey was.
