A lifelong love of muzzleloaders

I’ve often wondered where my fascination with muzzleloaders began, and why I’ve never moved on from the more traditional style of rifle, with an outside hammer that falls in an arc. I stumbled on this photograph of me and my brother, Tim, when I was the ripe old age of 5, standing next to my grandfather’s sedan (a Dodge?) in 1954, with a buck stuffed into the trunk. He’d obviously just returned from his Houghton County deer camp east of Twin Lakes in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and we were proud as peacocks to pose by the deer.