CVA Accura muzzle loader

[Guy Miner]

Interesting rifle! Helped a friend sight his in at 100 yards yesterday with the factory sights. It's one of the modern lnline type muzzle loaders with 50 cal Begara barrel. Uses 209 shotshell primers and he was using some kind of "white lightning" pellets for propellant along with a plastic base, plastic tipped, copper jacketed bullet.

The sights had fiber optic inserts, two green dots for the rear sight and one red/orange dot for the front.

All rather amazing to me - I've only used "traditional" type muzzle-loaders in the past, with either black powder or pyrodex and either a patched ball or a big ol' lead conical bullet.

At any rate - I was impressed - someone at the factory is paying attention to how these things are set up. First shot at 50 yards was almost dead on! Then moved out to 100 yards and made a tiny adjustment to the sight for a bit more elevation. Wow! He shot it several times, I only put one round through the rifle, just to get the feel for it. Every shot we made yesterday at 50 or 100 yards would easily have put venison in the freezer.

I'm not all that enthused about the modern muzzle-loaders appearance, but my goodness, it is a good rifle! I have no doubt but that he'll be able to fill his deer & elk tags with it this season. He's thinking bear as well.

Just thoughts from someone who hasn't used a muzzle loader in a lot of years. The new ones are really very good rifles.

Regards, Guy

 

[ethmoid1999]

I've heard they are quite accurate and reliable. Might be something to have a go at someday, but I'll probably go the traditional way. I've been looking at a Hawkins kit I've had for forty years. I sure need to try to make it up. Anyway, I look at the modern muzzle loaders like I do corn bread mix. It's good but Grandma's recipe is the way it ought to be.

 

[bdbrown66]

Guy, I have a caplock Hawken rifle that I used for years. It's plenty accurate with the open sights, but ageing eyes makes it an iffy proposition to shoot beyond about 50 yards accurately for me. So, a few years ago I bought a Traditions Vortek Ultralight. Given it's light weight, I thought the recoil might be a bit much, but I've found that it actually shoots pretty soft with the 250gr. bullets. And it's very, very accurate. I tried the Blackhorn 209 powder that everyone is raving about, and while it worked great at the range, I had 2 occasions where it failed to ignite properly in a hunting situation, so I gave up on it and went back to Holy Black...Goex Ffg. I load 110gr of powder behind the 250gr. Traditions Smackdown bullet (or Hornady SST-ML, or T/C Shockwave...they're all pretty much the same bullet, made by Hornady), and it shoots lights-out. Last year I switched up and used the Harvester Muzzleloading Scorpion PT Gold 240gr. bullet, and it worked very well, too.

This was my 100yd sight-in target with the Harvester bullets last fall.



Here is the result of opening morning of the early ML season.



And this is the Harvester 240gr. bullet after passing thru the vitals and stopping under the hide on the far side.

 

[Guy Miner]

SWEET! It's been right about 20 years since I last hunted with my muzzle loader. A traditional caplock Thompson Center 50 cal.

Really enjoyed hunting with it, and it had no problem dropping mule deer! I used either black, or pyrodex, and the 385 gr Hornady "Great Plains" soft lead hollow point bullet. Worked really well.

I cleaned up the rifle and put it away in the safe. It's still there. I've got a "multi-season" deer tag this year, so I could use it here in Washington. We will see.

Guy

 

[bdbrown66]

Yep. I have the Cabela's Hawken .50 cal, very similar to the TC. I shoot the 370gr. MaxiBall in it, cast them myself.

If I fill my buck tag early this year and I'm just hunting does in the late ML season, I may get the Hawken out in the woods a bit. Been a few years since I killed a deer with it.

Good luck this fall!

Brian

 

[hogginlong]

I've been using a 50 cal CVA the past few years, Accura MR. With Shockwave bullets and Blackhorn 209 powder you can cover 3 shots at 100 yds with a quarter. Never fails to put at least 1 whitetail in the freezer every year. I had been using a 45 cal TC omega but just couldn't get it to be consistently accurate.