Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t the ML “season” originally not even a season on its own? It was simply an extension of the rifle season that people could get a stamp or something similar and get an extended season added on to their rifle tag? And I do not believe there were any restrictions on weapons outside of caliber and energy. (Not dissimilar to the restrictions on our rifle weaponry today.) This all predates my hunting and particularly my hunting with muzzleloaders, but this is what I’ve found in my reading up on the topic.
That does not sound like a primitive hunt to me. I guess we can get caught in the weeds on what the definition of “primitive” is and go round and round over semantics, but can you point to any official sources from the state of Utah calling it a primitive weapon hunt? And further, what qualifies something as “primitive?”
I maintain my statement on intent and primitive vs just another season to hunt. I’m happy to be corrected if you can show me where I’ve got it wrong.
I had the same difficulties as Shadow had, finding specific dates on Utah’s muzzleloader hunt history. Here are my personal experiences at that time how ever, not that it really matter at all but I would guess the UDWR has written minutes of the meeting in the 1970’s in their archives.
Jeremiah Johnson was a movie released in 1972, Staring Robert Redford and Will Gere about a Mountain man and his quarrel with the Crow Indian Tribe. Johnson found an old fur trapper wounded and frozen dead, at the foot of a pine tree, in his lap was a (Thompson Center) 50 Caliber Hawken style muzzleloader, with a note attached, giving it to whomever found it.
This movie sparked a large interest in the western sport hunting community in the early 70’s.
Prior to the movie the interest in muzzleloader shooting was from a small group of Pre Civil War and Civil War groups and a few Eastern States Colonial and Revolutionary War enthusiasts. Military re-enactments and Colonial Days celebrations were held in the States, primarily east of the Mississippi River. Most of the muzzleloaders prior the early 1970’s were either the Eastern Flintlock, Kentucky style Long Rifles, (in pre 1920’s they were made for traveling and hunting one foot and not on horse back) or the Military type muskets like the long barreled, often smooth bore muzzleloaders. A common muzzleloader used by early modern day sport hunters was the Zouave Rifle.
The Jeremiah Johnson movie sparked a lot of interest in muzzleloader ownership and muzzleloader shooting. Most purchased the Thompson Center Hawken style rifle but because they were cheaper, some purchased the Zouave Rifles from places like the Dixie Gun Works etc.
CVA sold a cheaply made muzzleloader and was consider to be hardly more than a risky piece of scrap by most modern traditionalist muzzleloader hunters. (They have come a long way since then.)
I can not give the first year specifics and the first year a separate muzzleloader hunt was held in Utah but for sure it was a year or two before 1975 maybe three years before. I know this for a fact because I moved to Utah in 1975 and the muzzleloader hunt was in place before I arrived here. In 1075 it was a primitive weapon hunt, specifically regulated to 45 caliber or larger, only muzzleloading, it was an over the counter tag, the season was nine or ten days, as I recall, it limited to four or five units only. (Out of 62 units). I don’t recall all five but I know two for sure where the Wellsville Unit and the Boulder/Parker Mt. Unit. The hunt was in August and if I remember correctly it started the same day the archery hunt opened.
I was not in Utah the first year it started but I was informed it was an experimental, five year trial season. The experiment ended in 1977 or 1978.
From this point in time forward, I was personal involved on both the local level and the State level. In the 1970s there were 15 or 20 local active muzzleloader clubs (Cedar City, Beaver, Richfield, Emery County, Carbon County, Unitah County, Vernal, Salt Lake City, Brigham City, and Logan were some I remember, there were more.)and a State muzzleloader organization. Most all of the clubs belonged to the State organization.
An old muzzleloader enthusiast from Monroe, Utah had been elected as the President State Muzzleloader Organization, I was elected Vice President.
After the five year trial hunt ended in 1977 or 1978, the State Archery people and the State modern Rifle hunting people were up in arms. They had both been raising hell with the DWR…… the archers were mad because they had loud guns being discharged during the archery season, on the five units and they dang sure were not going stand for a State wide muzzleloader hunt in August during the archery season. The rifle hunter groups were also angry because they feared if the muzzleloader season became a State wide season, preceded the any weapon (rifle) hunt, it would ruin the rifle hunt……. the tradition Utah deer hunt.
In response to these complaints from the majority of the Utah hunting community and it’s hunting clubs/organizations, the Utah Division of Wild Resources, represented by Norman (Norm) Hancock , Chief of Game Management, proposed to the Utah Board of Big Game Control Agenda (today’s Wildlife Board) that the five year experimental hunt demonstrate that it would be counter productive, and it was the Utah DWR m’s recommending to the Board that muzzleloader hunting not have an individual and specific hunt season, limited to muzzleloaders.
So I can not speak to who or why the original five year muzzleloader experiment was started, in the early 1970’s but I suspected it had something to do with a gentleman by the name of Lee Robertson, who was Utah’s Father of the Utah DWR’s Hunter Education Program, who was probably the most influential muzzleloader in the State of Utah at that time. Lee was a died in the wool primitive muzzleloader and a highly regarded leader in the DWR agency and throughout the hunting community.
The organized hunting public’s response to Mr. Hancocks agenda recommendation, to not have a primitive weapons muzzleloader hunt in Utah………the following is mostly what I posted in Item #33 of this thread, last week.
Rather than retype it, I’m just going to cut and past it here:
In 19777 or 1978, sportsmen asked, 100% for a Primitive Muzzleloader Weapon hunt. 100% driven by the long gone Utah State Muzzleloader Federation, represented by Al Rucksaker President, and supported by Utah State Archers and the all powerful (pre 1993) and also long gone, Utah Wildlife Federation. This hunt was vigorously opposed by Utah’s Department of Wildlife Resources, represented by Norman Hancock, in all five public hearings, to the Utah Wildlife Big Game Board during the late 1970’s.
The request to the Board was this:
The Utah Muzzleloaders are requesting a specific Muzzleloader Deer Hunting Season. We asked that we be allowed to dress in tradition mountain man/fur trapper clothing, have the opportunity to camp in primitive teepees and trapper period leantos, and shoot period lead balls and with blackpowder in our muzzleloaders.
We requested a season was for after all other mule deer hunts were over, so as not to offend any archers or any weapon (rifle) season hunters. Muzzleloader’s agreed to take, “the left overs” in order to hunt with a primitive weapon. 100% driven by hunters wanting a primitive weapon, non-archer, hunting season. We told the Board we didn’t care when the hunt was held and would be perfectly happy to hunt after both the archery and any weapon seasons were finished. After the other hunters had shot most of the bucks already.
There were five public hearings, basically in the same places the RAC meeting are held now days. Mr Rucksaker and I took time off from work, attended and presented at all five meetings, along with support from the archers, the any weapon representatives and numerous local sportsmen but mostly other muzzleloader enthusiasts. We all attended the sixth meeting, in Salt Lake DWR office Board meeting. At that meeting the Board of Big Game Control voted to establish a State wide muzzleloader season for 9 days, the first week of November, opening every year the same day as the traditional pheasant hunt.
At that time, in 1977 or 1978, all muzzleloaders were “primitive”. That is there were no in-lines, no sabots, no scopes, no range finders, no commercial shooting sticks, no 209, I do believe some folks were starting to use Pyrodex but it was frowned onby the “traditionists” but to no avail.?
The first inline muzzleloader didn’t come to market until 1985 by Tony Knight, of Knight Muzzleloaders.
To my knowledge Utah hunter never register a strong position against in-line, fast twist barrel muzzleloaders. After they became popular and the new found muzzleloader hunting interest numbers over took the traditional hunters, technology enhance too, over took the muzzleloader hunt.
Jerry Mason, a sportsman’s representative on the Utah Wildlife Board recommended 1x scopes, because he and other older hunters were complaining they could no longer see with open sights. Out of the “aged hunter” argument, the Board passed his recommendations, that was in the mid to late 1990’s, as I recall.
In all reality, I personally wish I/we had failed and Mr. Hancock and the DWR had won. In the 1970’s sportsmen including muzzleloaders had no idea mule deer numbers where going to crash and muzzleloaders and people like myself are every bit to blame for allowing it to happen by demanding more and more and more opportunity, with more and more lethal weaponry. Not to mention elkassassin’s other fifty reasons.
Lee Robertson early DWR employee and avid early muzzleloader.
