This was my editorial to them during public comment.
“I’ve been muzzleloader hunting in Utah since 2003. Your muzzleloader proposal is completely off the mark regarding technology. Why did you limit the conversation only to scopes? Scopes only enable long distance muzzleloader shooting. The weapons and ignition types are the driver, and this was completely ignored. Why? There are 3 types of muzzleloaders, traditional, modern, and ultra modern. Define traditional as side locks of any type, modern as inlines with musket or 209 primers, and ultra modern as small caliber large magnum rifle primer ignition. If you want to keep the hunt more traditional, eliminate ultra modern LRMPs and anything under .45 caliber. Enforce 45 minimum for pronghorn, deer and 50 minimum for elk with modern inline bullet/sabot minimum weights. Then no one can shoot >200 yards due to weapon limit regardless of scope power. The survey results speak for themselves. It doesn’t matter what other states are doing; if everyone was to jump in a lake would you do it just because they were? Think for yourselves and stay unique. I would really like to see a) keeping a minimum of 1X scopes legal, and/or b) eliminate ultra modern muzzleloader ignition types and bore/bullet sizes instead. This is a much more common sense proposal than eliminating scopes altogether.”
They have to decide what they want ML hunting to be in the state and go from there. The survey data was pretty telling on what people wanted/were comfortable with.