Thompson/Center Arms Co. is often credited with the resurgence of blackpowder hunting in the early 1970s with its reproduction Hawken rifle, and later models such as the White Mountain and Big Boar.

The single-shot, break-action pistol was designed by Warren Center in 1965 and produced two years later by the K.W. Thompson Tool Company factory in Rochester, N.H.

That’s when Thompson Center in Rochester, N.H. introduced the Fire Storm — a slightly modernized, easy-to-clean flintlock rifle made possible by a removable breech plug.

You can make a persuasive argument that John Mauser perfected the bolt-action rifle more than 100 years ago and that everything gunmakers have done since then has been at best superfluous or, less ...