Eye relief is an important consideration since magnum loads can deliver stout recoil. Three inches is the bare minimum to prevent injury.

And what an interesting job muzzleloader editor has turned out to be since no other category with the exception of optics sees as much new stuff as the blackpowder world.

If Rip Van Winkle was a die-hard muzzleloader shooter and woke up from a 20-year nap--or a 10-year nap, for that matter--he would hardly recognize the sport. The changes since Tony Knight's introduction of the first commercially viable in-line muzzleloader in 1988 have been exponential. Rifles are more accurate, easier to load and clean, and more shooter friendly. In a chicken-and-egg relationship, states responded to this boom with special muzzleloader-only seasons. Many whitetail hunters in the Midwest--they number in the millions--are limited to shotguns and muzzleloaders, and as rifles caught up with and then surpassed slug guns, hunters responded in kind by buying lots of guns.

Many states started out with severe restrictions on action types, bullets, and optics. But like the guns, regulations have evolved to allow optics, and that's a move in the right direction since a set of the finest iron sights can cover an entire deer at 150 or 175 yards, a distance well within most any in-line's reach.

I'm sure someone somewhere will argue otherwise, but muzzleloader rifles do not pose any vexing problems for optics makers, so a new crop of muzzleloader scopes soon appeared after the in-line rifle. While the recoil of a maximum propellant charge and heavy bullet can be exciting, it is certainly no more violent than that of a magnum centerfire rifle. Scopes are designed to handle that sort of recoil from the start. There are certain attributes that make some models better than others.

In general, most of us tend to "over scope" our rifles with too-powerful an optic. Even with tremendous gains in propellants and bullets, the average hunter with the average rifle will not see shots beyond 200 yards, and a 150-yard maximum range is more realistic. While a riflescope will certainly aid in a more precise placement of the bullet, there is little reason to exceed 9X, and 7X is more practical. Variable scopes, like in-lines, have advanced to the state of almost absolute reliability, so it makes sense to expand one's options, but I would not feel handicapped in the vast majority of most muzzleloading hunting situations with a fixed 4X, perhaps the grandest of scopes.

Generous eye relief is a quality that will be much appreciated after that 150-grain charge detonates and the heavy bullet exits the barrel as the rifle violently reverses course and puts into effect those undeniable laws of physics. Three inches is a starting point, and 4 or 5 inches would be appreciated by the brow, as most of us tend to lean into a rifle harder the larger the antlers. One option that should be seriously considered is dispensing with conventional scopes altogether in favor of a reflex optic. I admit a bias towards these newfangled optics, but it is one borne purely out of function. Because they are essentially free of parallax, you could hang the sight on the barrel's end for all the eye relief you wanted. The toll to be paid is the lack of magnification. Still, intensity-adjustable dots or reticles are so fine that I have taken shots out to 160 yards and knew precisely where my point of aim was on the animal. If quick shots at driven game are the order of the day, reflex optics are unbeatable tools for making that one and only shot count.