Looking for muzzleloader success? Find the deer, then proceed with caution

As the chaos of various general firearms seasons comes to a close, a new group of hunters emerges. They used to be the kind of folks who you might see wearing genuine buckskin, and who expected to be engulfed in a cloud of smoke if they were lucky enough to shoot at a deer.
Most muzzleloader hunters these days are a bit different from the old-school hunters. They use inline smokepoles that can group downrange as tightly as your average deer rifle. This, along with the option to scope their muzzleloaders, often leads folks to hunt like they would during the general firearms season.
That can be a big mistake.