Last updated August 5th 2026
Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning at no additional cost to you, we may earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.
Before you load one of these
- Black powder or an approved substitute only. Smokeless powder will destroy a side-lock rifle and injure you. There is no exception to this and no clever workaround.
- Use the charge range printed in your rifle’s own manual. Traditions publishes figures for every model here. Follow those, not a number from a forum or a video.
- Seat the ball fully onto the powder every time. An air gap between powder and ball is what turns a barrel into shrapnel. Mark your ramrod so you can see at a glance that it went all the way home.
- Flintlocks fire when they feel like it. There is a real delay between the pan flashing and the main charge going off. Keep the muzzle on target through the whole thing.
Read our full firearm safety and legal disclaimer before handling any firearm.
| Rifle | Model Details | Key Specs | Check Price |
|---|---|---|---|
 |
BEST OVERALLTraditions Deluxe Kentucky Rifle Thirty-three inches of octagonal barrel and a brass patchbox. Offered in flint or percussion, which is the whole argument in one rifle. |
|
Check Price ↓ |
 |
BEST HAWKENTraditions Hawken Woodsman Half stock, adjustable sights, 28 inch barrel. The plains rifle pattern, and the one that actually handles like a hunting gun. |
|
Check Price ↓ |
 |
BEST VALUETraditions Deerhunter Under $300 with a fiber optic front sight and a 24 inch barrel. The cheapest honest side-lock on the market. |
|
Check Price ↓ |
 |
BEST LONGRIFLETraditions Pennsylvania Rifle Brass star inlays and a patchbox you could frame. The most handsome gun here, and it shoots as well as it looks. |
|
Check Price ↓ |
 |
BEST KIT BUILDTraditions St. Louis Hawken Kit A box of parts and an unfinished stock. Two weekends of work and you own a rifle nobody else has. |
|
Check Price ↓ |
Table of Contents
How we tested: Every pick here was run through our testing methodology. Minimum round counts, accuracy and reliability protocols, the failures that disqualify a gun. If we haven't shot it, we don't recommend it.
Why Anyone Still Shoots a Side-Lock in 2026
It is a different hobby, not an older version of the same one
Nobody buys a flintlock because it is the efficient choice. A modern inline muzzleloader is more accurate, faster to load, easier to clean and works in weather that will leave a flintlock clicking uselessly. If your only goal is a deer in the truck, buy the inline and skip this page.
People shoot these because the process is the point. You measure a charge, seat a patched ball, prime a pan and wait for the delay between the flash and the shot. It rewards patience and punishes rushing, and there is a particular satisfaction in a clean hit that you simply do not get from a scoped rifle. It is the closest thing shooting has to fly fishing.
A lot of states give traditional rifles their own season
There is a practical angle too. Several states run primitive-weapon seasons that specifically exclude inlines, scopes or #209 ignition, and a side-lock is the ticket into those hunts. Pennsylvania’s flintlock season is the famous one and it is genuinely flintlock only, no percussion allowed. Check your own regulations, because the rules vary more here than anywhere else in hunting.
Every rifle below is Traditions, and that is not laziness. They are effectively the only company still importing traditional side-locks at sane money in real volume. Lyman’s Great Plains is excellent and shows up around $900 when you can find one. Pedersoli builds beautiful guns at collector prices. For a rifle you will actually take into the woods, Traditions is where the market is.
1. Traditions Deluxe Kentucky Rifle: Best Overall
- Caliber: .50
- Barrel Length: 33.5″ octagonal
- Lock: Flintlock (R2030) or percussion (R2040)
- Stock: Full length select hardwood
- Furniture: Brass, with hinged patchbox
- Sights: Fixed blade and notch
- Street price: From around $475
| Category | Score |
|---|---|
| Price | 4.5 / 5 |
| Fit & Finish | 4 / 5 |
| Lock Quality | 4 / 5 |
| Historical Accuracy | 4.5 / 5 |
| Handling | 3.5 / 5 |
Pros
- Flint and percussion both offered
- Brass patchbox is a real hinged box
- Long sight radius helps a lot
Cons
- Muzzle heavy on offhand shots
- Fixed sights, no adjustment
- Long barrel snags in thick cover
The Kentucky is the rifle most people picture when they hear the word longrifle, and the Deluxe version is the one worth buying. It gets the figured hardwood, the brass nose cap and a proper hinged patchbox in the buttstock rather than a plate screwed on to look like one.
What sells it is that the same rifle comes in flint or percussion for roughly the same money. That matters more than it sounds. If your state runs a flintlock-only season, you buy the flint version and you are legal. If you just want something that goes bang reliably in the rain, take the percussion. Nobody else offers that choice this cleanly at this price.
The 33.5 inch barrel gives you a sight radius that flatters a shooter with fixed open sights, and ours will keep a patched ball inside three inches at 50 yards off a rest once you find the patch thickness it likes. That is the real work with these rifles. Ball diameter, patch thickness and lube make more difference than anything else, and every barrel has an opinion.
The honest complaint is weight distribution. All that barrel hangs out front and offhand shooting gets tiring quickly. Off a rest or a set of sticks it is lovely. Standing unsupported at the end of a long day, less so.
Best For: Anyone buying one traditional rifle to keep, and hunters who need a genuine flintlock for a primitive-weapon season.
2. Traditions Hawken Woodsman: Best Hawken Pattern
- Caliber: .50
- Barrel Length: 28″ octagonal
- Lock: Percussion (R24008) or flintlock (R2390801)
- Stock: Half stock, select hardwood
- Furniture: Brass, with patchbox
- Sights: Adjustable rear
- Street price: From around $461
| Category | Score |
|---|---|
| Price | 4.5 / 5 |
| Fit & Finish | 4 / 5 |
| Lock Quality | 4 / 5 |
| Historical Accuracy | 4 / 5 |
| Handling | 5 / 5 |
Pros
- Adjustable rear sight, rare here
- Balances between the hands
- Shorter barrel suits real hunting
Cons
- Half stock looks less traditional
- Brass wears through with handling
- Flintlock version harder to find
The Hawken pattern exists because men going west needed something shorter and handier than a Kentucky longrifle, in a bigger bore, that would survive being carried on a horse for a year. The Woodsman is Traditions’ take on it and it is the best handling rifle in this guide by a wide margin.
Twenty-eight inches of barrel instead of thirty-three changes everything about how it carries. It comes up faster, it swings, and you can still hold it steady offhand at the end of a long walk. If you plan to actually hunt with a side-lock rather than shoot it off a bench, start here.
It also has an adjustable rear sight, which almost nothing else in this category offers. On the Kentucky and the Pennsylvania you regulate the rifle by filing the front sight and hoping. Here you turn a screw. That sounds trivial until you have spent an afternoon with a file and a growing sense of regret.
The half stock costs it some points on looks if authenticity is what you are after, and the brass will wear bright where your hand sits. Some people spend years trying to build that patina deliberately, so file that under preference rather than fault.
Best For: The hunter who wants a traditional rifle they will carry for miles, and anyone who would rather adjust a sight than file one.
3. Traditions Deerhunter: Best Value
- Caliber: .50
- Barrel Length: 24″ octagonal
- Lock: Flintlock or percussion
- Stock: Half stock, hardwood or black synthetic
- Sights: Fiber optic front, adjustable rear
- Also sold as: Redi-Pak with accessories included
- Street price: From around $290
| Category | Score |
|---|---|
| Price | 5 / 5 |
| Fit & Finish | 3 / 5 |
| Lock Quality | 3.5 / 5 |
| Historical Accuracy | 3 / 5 |
| Handling | 4.5 / 5 |
Pros
- Cheapest real side-lock going
- Fiber optic sights actually help
- Redi-Pak gets you shooting fast
Cons
- Plainest wood and finish here
- Short barrel costs you velocity
- Synthetic version looks wrong
The Deerhunter is what you buy when you want to find out whether any of this is for you without spending real money. Under $300 gets you a working side-lock in .50, available in flint or percussion, and it is not a toy.
Traditions put fiber optic sights on it, which is completely wrong historically and completely right practically. In the low light at the start and end of legal shooting time, a green dot up front is worth more than any amount of authenticity. If that bothers you, the Kentucky is forty minutes of browsing away.
The 24 inch barrel is the shortest here and you pay for it in velocity and in sight radius. Ours grouped closer to four inches at 50 yards where the Kentucky held three, which for a deer at woods ranges is neither here nor there. The wood is plain, the finish is thin, and the lock does not feel as crisp as the more expensive guns. All fair at this price.
Look at the Redi-Pak versions before you buy the bare rifle. They bundle the powder measure, ball starter, capper and cleaning bits you would otherwise buy separately, and the maths usually works out in your favor.
Best For: First-timers testing the water, and anyone who wants a knockabout side-lock they will not baby.
4. Traditions Pennsylvania Rifle: Best Longrifle
- Caliber: .50
- Barrel Length: 33.5″ octagonal
- Lock: Flintlock (R2090C) or percussion (R2100C)
- Stock: Full length, figured hardwood
- Furniture: Brass patchbox plus star inlays
- Sights: Fixed blade and notch
- Street price: From around $756
| Category | Score |
|---|---|
| Price | 3 / 5 |
| Fit & Finish | 5 / 5 |
| Lock Quality | 4.5 / 5 |
| Historical Accuracy | 5 / 5 |
| Handling | 3.5 / 5 |
Pros
- Best wood and inletting here
- Star inlays are properly done
- Lock is noticeably crisper
Cons
- Costs more than double the Deerhunter
- Too pretty to drag through brush
- Still fixed sights at this money
This is the one you buy because you want it, not because you need it. The Pennsylvania sits at the top of the Traditions traditional line and the money goes into things you can see. The wood is properly figured, the inletting around the lock is tight, and there are brass star inlays let into the forend that serve no purpose beyond looking right.
The lock is the real upgrade though. It is crisper than the Kentucky’s and the flint version throws a better shower of sparks, which translates directly into fewer flashes in the pan and shorter lock time. On a flintlock, lock time is accuracy. Every millisecond between your sear breaking and the ball leaving is a millisecond for you to move.
Historically this pattern is the American longrifle proper, the Pennsylvania and Kentucky school that came out of German gunsmiths working in Lancaster County. Long, slim, small bore relative to the European guns they descended from, and built for a man who had to make his lead go a long way.
What stops it being the outright winner is that it costs more than double the Deerhunter and still ships with fixed sights, and it is a long, slim, handsome thing you will hesitate to lean against a wet tree. That hesitation is worth thinking about before you spend the money.
Best For: The shooter who already owns a working side-lock and wants one that is a pleasure to hold.
5. Traditions St. Louis Hawken Kit: Best Kit Build
- Caliber: .50
- Barrel Length: 28″ octagonal
- Lock: Percussion side-lock
- Stock: Unfinished hardwood, roughly inletted
- Sights: Adjustable rear
- SKU: KRC52408
- Street price: From around $383
| Category | Score |
|---|---|
| Price | 4.5 / 5 |
| Fit & Finish | Yours to decide |
| Lock Quality | 4 / 5 |
| Historical Accuracy | 4 / 5 |
| Satisfaction | 5 / 5 |
Pros
- You end up with something personal
- Teaches you the whole mechanism
- Cheaper than the finished rifle
Cons
- Needs patience and hand tools
- A bad stain job is permanent
- Not a first-weekend project
Open the box and you get a bag of screws, a barrel, a lock, brass furniture and a lump of hardwood with the major inletting already cut. What you do not get is a rifle. That is the point, and it is why building one of these is the single best way to understand how a muzzleloader actually works.
The work is mostly patient rather than skilled. Final-fitting the barrel and lock into the wood, shaping the stock where it meets the metal, then a long sequence of sanding, staining and finishing. You need rasps, files, sandpaper and time. You do not need a milling machine or a gunsmithing course.
Be honest about the failure mode. The metalwork is hard to ruin because it arrives essentially finished. The wood is not. Sand through a sharp edge or blotch the stain and it stays that way forever. Take the finishing slowly, test your stain on the offcut, and stop for the night when you get impatient.
What you get at the end is a rifle with your fingerprints on it that cost less than the factory version. Every kit build looks slightly different, which after a page of catalog rifles is rather the appeal.
Best For: Anyone who enjoys the workshop as much as the range, and shooters who want to genuinely understand the lock they are firing.
Flintlock or Percussion
This is the decision that actually matters, and most people overthink it.
Percussion is easier. A cap on a nipple, hammer falls, done. It works damp, it works in wind, and the delay between trigger and shot is short enough that you stop noticing. If you want a traditional rifle that behaves predictably, buy percussion and enjoy yourself.
Flint is the real thing. Sparks off the frizzen, priming powder flashes in the pan, and a beat later the main charge goes. That beat is the whole experience and the whole difficulty. You will flinch at first. You will get flashes in the pan that never reach the charge. You will learn to knap a flint and to keep your touch hole clear. Then one day it all clicks and nothing else is as satisfying.
The tiebreaker is your regulations. If your state’s primitive season is flintlock only, as Pennsylvania’s is, the choice is made for you. Otherwise buy percussion first, and buy a flintlock second once you already know you love this.
What You Need Besides the Rifle
- Powder. Real black powder in FFg for a .50 rifle, and FFFg for priming a flintlock pan and for small bores. Substitutes work in percussion guns but many shooters find them unreliable for flintlock priming.
- Round balls and patches. A .490 or .495 ball for a .50 bore, with patches in a few thicknesses. This combination is what you will spend your first few range trips sorting out.
- Caps or flints. #11 percussion caps for the cap guns, or English black flints in the right size for your lock. Buy flints in quantity, they wear out.
- A short starter. Getting a patched ball past the muzzle takes more force than you can apply with a ramrod alone. This is not optional.
- A powder measure and horn. Never pour from a horn or flask straight down a barrel that might hold an ember.
- Cleaning kit. Hot soapy water the same day. Black powder fouling is corrosive and it starts working immediately.
Charge weights vary by rifle, by bore and by which powder you picked, so I am not going to print a number here for you to copy. Traditions publishes a recommended range for every model in this guide. Use theirs, start at the low end, and work up while you watch how the rifle groups.
What About Small Bores
Everything above is .50 because that is the deer standard and where the components are. There is a whole other side to this though, and it is the most fun shooting in muzzleloading.
The Traditions Crockett is a .32 caliber squirrel rifle with a 32 inch barrel, and it is a delight. Recoil is nothing, the powder charge is tiny so a pound lasts most of a season, and hitting a squirrel-sized target at 40 yards with open sights and a patched ball is genuinely difficult in the way that keeps you coming back. It is not a deer rifle and it is not pretending to be.
Which One Should You Buy
One rifle to keep: the Deluxe Kentucky. It gives you the longrifle look, the choice of flint or percussion, and a hinged brass patchbox, for around $475. Nothing else on this list covers that much ground.
Actually hunting with it: the Hawken Woodsman, every time. The shorter barrel and the adjustable rear sight are worth more in the woods than any amount of period correctness.
Finding out if you like this at all: the Deerhunter at under $300. Buy the Redi-Pak, shoot it for a season, and upgrade with your eyes open.
And if you already own a working side-lock, the Pennsylvania is the one to want, or the St. Louis Hawken kit if you would rather spend the winter building than buying. Prices on all of these move around, so it pays to check a few sellers first. Our gun price check tool pulls live numbers across retailers, and the best black powder revolvers guide covers the cap-and-ball handgun side if you want a matching pistol.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need an FFL to buy a traditional muzzleloader?
Not under federal law. Flintlock and percussion side-lock rifles are classed as antique-pattern firearms rather than firearms, so there is no 4473 and no background check, and most retailers ship them to your door. New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Hawaii and Illinois treat them more strictly, so check your own state first.
Is a flintlock or a percussion rifle better for a beginner?
Percussion, unless your state runs a flintlock-only season. A percussion cap fires reliably in damp and wind with almost no delay between trigger and shot. A flintlock has a real pause between the pan flashing and the charge going off, and it takes practice not to flinch through it.
What powder do traditional muzzleloaders use?
Real black powder, in FFg for a .50 caliber rifle and FFFg for priming a flintlock pan or for small bores like the .32 Crockett. Substitutes work in percussion guns but many shooters find them unreliable as flintlock priming powder. Never smokeless, in any form.
How accurate is a traditional side-lock rifle?
Better than most people expect once you find the load it likes. A .50 with a well matched ball and patch will hold three inches or so at 50 yards off a rest, and the longer barrels do better because the sight radius is so generous. Ball diameter and patch thickness matter more than anything else.
Can you hunt deer with a flintlock?
Yes, and several states run primitive-weapon seasons specifically for them. Pennsylvania's flintlock season is genuinely flintlock only, no percussion allowed. A .50 with a patched round ball is entirely adequate for deer inside 75 to 100 yards, which is where most people shoot them.
What is a flash in the pan?
It is when the priming powder in a flintlock's pan ignites but the flame never reaches the main charge, so the rifle does not fire. The usual cause is a blocked touch hole or priming powder packed too tightly. Keep the touch hole picked clear and prime lightly, toward the outside of the pan.
Are muzzleloader kits worth building?
If you enjoy workshop time, yes. A kit like the St. Louis Hawken costs less than the finished rifle and teaches you exactly how the lock and breech work. The metal parts arrive essentially finished, so the real skill is in the wood, and a bad sanding or staining job cannot be undone.
10,857+ Gun & Ammo Deals
Updated daily from 200+ top retailers. Filter by category, caliber, action type, and price.