Muzzleloader: The Magazine for Traditional Black Powder Shooters Since 1974

Muzzleloader, styled MUZZLELOADER, is a bimonthly magazine devoted exclusively to traditional black powder shooting, history and related activities. Published from Texarkana, Texas, it has appeared continuously since 1974, making it one of the longest-lived specialist titles in American shooting publishing. Its promise to readers is deliberately narrow and proudly stated: traditional muzzleloading only, with no in-line rifles, no scopes and no break-open breeches. Each issue is packed with articles on hunting, shooting, gunsmithing, do-it-yourself projects, living history, American history, and book and product reviews, serving the community of shooters, builders and reenactors who keep eighteenth- and nineteenth-century frontier skills alive.

The magazine sits at the centre of a wider world that includes rendezvous gatherings, buckskinning reenactment, longrifle building and historical trekking. Its publisher also produced the influential Book of Buckskinning series and many other books on colonial arms, clothing and gunsmithing. For readers who shoot flintlock and percussion rifles, Muzzleloader is less a hobby magazine than a trade journal of a living folk culture, one that records who is building what, which events are being held, and how traditional techniques are practised today.

Overview

Muzzleloader defines its territory by exclusion as much as inclusion. Modern muzzleloading, with its scoped in-line rifles designed for extended hunting seasons, is a large commercial market, but it is not this magazine's subject. Muzzleloader serves the traditional side of the sport: side-lock flintlock and percussion guns, round balls, open sights, and the clothing, accoutrements and camp craft that accompany them. That editorial line, maintained for five decades, gives the magazine a coherent identity and a readership that knows exactly what it will find in every issue.

Within that territory the range is wide. A single issue can move from a deer hunt with a flintlock to a gunsmithing project, a historical study of a colonial arms maker, a how-to article on making period clothing or gear, and reviews of books and products aimed at the traditional community. The magazine describes itself as the leading magazine devoted to traditional black powder hunting and shooting, and its longevity supports the claim: few competitors have matched its continuous run since the early 1970s.

History and Founding

The magazine was founded in Texarkana in 1974. The publishing company began as Rebel Publishing Company, founded that year by Oran H. Scurlock Jr. and B. R. Hughes, and the first issue of Muzzleloader appeared in March and April 1974. The idea came to Scurlock and Hughes at the local shooting range during the monthly shoot of the Piney Woods Muzzleloaders, where they recognised that there were few sources of information for black powder firearms in the early 1970s. A magazine born at a club shoot, to answer questions its founders heard on the firing line, has kept that practical, community-driven character ever since.

The timing mattered. The early 1970s saw growing American interest in muzzleloading, historical reenactment and the approaching Bicentennial, yet reliable instruction on building, loading and shooting traditional arms was scattered across club newsletters and word of mouth. Muzzleloader gathered that knowledge into a national publication. As the company grew it became Scurlock Publishing Company, a family-owned and operated firm in Texarkana publishing a magazine and books related to American frontier history and the material culture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Publisher and Ownership

For most of its history the magazine was published by the Scurlock family. William H. Scurlock, known as Bill Scurlock, served as publisher and edited the company's books, including the Buckskinning series. Forum discussion among longtime readers records that the magazine was later sold by the Scurlock family to Jason Gatliff, and by 2025 Gatliff was the public face of the publication, signing reader updates, announcing new products and reporting on each issue's progress through the printer. His October 2025 notes, for example, tracked the November and December 2025 issue from proofing to printing to mailing, a level of direct communication between publisher and subscribers that reflects the magazine's small, community-scale operation.

Under its current leadership the magazine continues from its Texarkana roots while adding modern channels. In July 2025 it began offering a digital subscription through a dedicated site, allowing print subscribers to switch to the digital edition by contacting the office. The blend is characteristic: a magazine about pre-industrial technology, run with personal notes from its publisher and, now, a digital edition for readers who want it on a screen.

Editorial Content and Sections

Hunting and shooting coverage forms the magazine's core. Stories of hunts taken with traditional arms show what flintlock and percussion guns can do in the field, while technical articles address loads, accuracy, maintenance and safety with black powder. Gunsmithing is a major strand: Muzzleloader has long served the longrifle-building community, whose members construct rifles that are working firearms and works of decorative art, with carving, engraving and inlay in period styles. Do-it-yourself projects extend the making ethos to knives, bags, horns and other accoutrements.

Living history and American history stand alongside the shooting content. Articles explore frontier life, colonial arms and clothing, and the rendezvous culture in which enthusiasts gather in period dress to camp, shoot and trade. Book and product reviews help readers navigate a small but active marketplace of builders, suppliers and publishers. The magazine's own store sells back issues, books and DVDs alongside subscriptions, reinforcing its role as a clearing house for the traditional community's knowledge.

The Book of Buckskinning and the Book Programme

The magazine's influence extends well beyond its pages through Scurlock Publishing's books. The Book of Buckskinning, edited by William H. Scurlock and published in 1981, gathered ten chapters by ten authors on different aspects of frontier living, the hobby known as buckskinning: its philosophy, getting started, rendezvous and shoots, the lodge, the guns, the clothing, accoutrements and equipment, skills, women in buckskinning, and crafts, complete with patterns and illustrations. The book became a standard reference for reenactors, described as the benchmark against which other frontier living-history books are judged.

By 2006 Scurlock Publishing had produced eight books in the Buckskinning series, as well as many other titles on colonial arms, colonial and frontier clothing, gunsmithing and living history. The book programme matters to the magazine's profile because it shows the same editorial mission in durable form: document the material culture of the frontier accurately enough that modern readers can reproduce it. Patterns for trousers, shirts and moccasins, instructions for camp equipage, and studies of original guns all serve readers who learn by making.

Audience and Community

Muzzleloader's audience is the traditional muzzleloading community of North America: hunters who choose a flintlock in a world of cartridges, builders of longrifles, participants in rendezvous and living-history events, and students of frontier history. It is a self-consciously traditional readership. The magazine's declaration of no in-lines, no scopes and no break-open breeches is a statement of values its readers share, distinguishing their pursuit, with its slower rhythms and historical discipline, from the modern muzzleloading industry.

The community meets in person at shoots and rendezvous across the country, and the magazine both reports on and helps organise that social world. The publisher's own attendance illustrates the point: in October 2025 the magazine set up at the Log Cabin Shop's Early American Trades Fair in Lodi, Ohio, meeting readers among the blacksmiths, weavers, knife makers and gunsmiths such fairs attract. For homesteaders and traditional-skills enthusiasts as well as shooters, Muzzleloader has long been a recognised doorway into that gathering culture.

Print and Digital Editions

The magazine is published bimonthly, six issues a year, and has been published continuously since 1974. Print subscriptions remain its foundation, sold for one- and two-year terms alongside an extensive back-issue and book catalogue. The publisher's 2025 updates show the rhythm of a small bimonthly operation: an issue out for proofing, then to the printer on a stated date, mailed around the middle of the month, with the digital edition following a few days later.

The digital subscription launched in July 2025 marked a significant step. Announced on the magazine's website, it gave new readers a screen-based option and existing hard-copy subscribers a route to switch. Practical constraints also show in the publisher's notices: because of high foreign shipping costs, orders for back issues, books and DVDs are no longer shipped outside the United States, while foreign subscriptions can still be ordered. The digital edition therefore also serves international traditional shooters who want the magazine without transatlantic postage on print.

Notable People and Contributors

The Scurlock family anchors the magazine's history: Oran H. Scurlock Jr. as co-founder, and William H. Scurlock as longtime publisher and editor of the Buckskinning books, whose name appears on magazine issues from the 1990s onward. Jason Gatliff represents the current generation, communicating directly with subscribers and collaborating with craftspeople on products such as the ML x LTWK Patch Knife produced with LT Wright Knives and offered for preorder in late 2025, with delivery expected around mid-November that year.

Art and craft contributors give the magazine its visual character. Its 2025 stickers carried a Mountain Man drawing by David Wright and a Memento Mori design by Ethan Yazel, and cover art remains a point of pride announced in the publisher's updates. Around the magazine orbits a wider circle of builders and writers known to readers through its advertising and coverage, craftsmen whose first advertisements with the magazine mark milestones in their own careers as full-time gun builders.

Recent Developments

The clearest recent developments are the change of ownership from the founding family to Jason Gatliff, the launch of the digital edition in 2025, and an expanding line of magazine-branded and collaborative products, from knives to stickers, sold through its website alongside subscriptions, back issues, books, DVDs and even coffee. The November and December 2025 issue moved through proofing in late September, printing on October 1 and mailing around October 15, with the digital edition live around October 20, evidence of a regular bimonthly operation in good order.

Half a century after two shooters at a Piney Woods club shoot decided black powder enthusiasts needed a magazine of their own, Muzzleloader remains what it set out to be: the traditional shooter's own publication, indifferent to the modern arms market and devoted to the guns, skills and gatherings of the frontier tradition. In a directory of American magazines, it represents the enduring strength of a title that serves one devoted community completely rather than a general audience partially.