One of the best deer-hunting memories I have is the morning Betty and I came downstairs to a homemade breakfast prepared by Mom wearing our possible bags and powder horns and toting flintlock rifles.

Twenty years ago, Michael Vaka’s grandfather-in-law Glen Barlow showed up at his door with a gift for his grandson-in-law — a box containing a flintlock rifle he’d bought decades before for $50 at a ...