Well.
For a start, very few hunters use Black Powder, they use Pyrodex.
Black Powder is highly explosive and dangerous to store, carry and use.
1: Reloading and casting your bullets brings the cost down to almost nothing. A few cents for the powder, a few cents for the primer.
2: Combination? Read my point on 18
4: Varying powder loads is easy if you reload. Plus you can use vary the projectiles considering weight, expansion rate, material and so on in a contemporary cased round. Including home cast lead alloy bullets ranging from round balls, wadcutters to torpedo.
5: so can a modern gun, if you are just as crazy.
6: see 4. Casting own bullets for a cased round is just as easy as casting a round ball for a muzzle loader
7: True. If you have all the components. The only component that is easy to make is the C powder. But you get an end product of varying quality and power/ strength, which makes ethical hunting challenging.
Also it is a fairly dangerous thing, to make your Black Powder. Ask your home insurer what they say you doing that!
9: you can use modern propellant this way too. It is even better as it burns slower. No flash to roast your hands and face, plus ignites the grass, tinder or twigs better.
12: I have never had a non functioning primer. Misfire due to a badly seated one yes, but then it fired the second time.
13: no need for wadding in a modern cartridge. Can be used when reloading shotgun shells if you run out of the plastic cups though.
14: depends on the country, right?
15: see above
16: To compare a .32 with a .22 LR or SR is stupid and wrong. Apples and Oranges.
A .32 round ball has far less energy than any modern .30 round.
A .32 round ball has far less energy than any other .22 ammo, LR and SR excepted.
(.223 - far, far more powerful, and so on....)
.32 more accurate over a greater distance? Is the author completely out of his mind or just suffers from wishful thinking? 22 ammo is hyper accurate up to 100 meters or so compared. Any other calliber including and beyond that range.
A round ball fired from a smooth bore muzzle loader can never, ever be as accurate as a modern round.
The trajectory is more parabolic due to lower speeds. Plus the aerodynamic form of the projectile. The accurancy is lower du to the no-spin of the projectie.
You can use shots in ammo .38 or bigger using the plastic shot containers developed fir this purpose.
Poachers in Scandinavia take moose with a .22 LR rifle. It is not the size, it is where you put it......
(I even think a .22 Magnum is more powerful than a .32 roundball from a musket?)
17: Stupid claim. Sure the damage is huge. But I can produce a bigger wound canal by using a .22 calliber bullet.
How? By bending the tip of my .233 FMJ so it spins. Plus I can choose to hit a front leg in 150 meters. You can not do that with a smoothbore.
Hitting anything with a .75 smoothbore pistol would be challenging. In fact I did not know they made .62 or bigger pistols.
18: Mixing a ball and shots in the same load sounds crazy. You are introducing one more unmeasurable variable.
Even if you have extremely consistant ball/ shot mix ( exact number of shots, exact weight of each ball and shot)
The accurance and range of the ball will be compromised as the shot take away a lot of the energy.
And claiming that you can take multiple targets - like what? A sitting flock of birds? Highly unethical. Immoral.
19: A .32 has far more recoil than a .22LR or .22 SR
Loads of people hunt with muzzle loaders. Or bow and arrow, blow gun, airgun, crossbow.
Yes you will get the game.
But at what cost? A modern expanding bullet will give a quick, humane death to the animal. To achieve this with any other method is difficult, as you with those need to achieve a clean heart hit.
It is well proven that game suffers far more for longer on average using those techniques.
trying to catch diner I'd say....
