Editor’s Note: Roger Raglin of “Roger Raglin Outdoors” on the Outdoor Channel on Saturdays has hosted the TV show for 10 years. Raglin, who lives in Coweta, Oklahoma, has been in the outdoor industry for 24 years and is one of the most-recognized faces in the outdoor fraternity.

Question: Roger, tell us about your moose hunt.

Raglin: This past year, I drew a Maine moose tag. To me, getting that tag for a moose was like winning the lottery. I went all the way up to Maine to hunt this moose. The weather didn’t cooperate with us, and it was a really-tough hunt. We hunted for 4 days before we even saw a moose. But the guide I was hunting with knew how to call a moose. When he started calling on the fifth day, I’d never heard as much racket coming from an animal as I did when that moose started responding to that guide’s calling. He was coming through the brush and knocking-down everything in sight. The area was fairly thick, and we couldn’t really see him. He was beating-up trees and grunting and sounding like an army of men charging through the brush. My cameraman whispered, “Is that him right there in the brush?” I said, “I’m not sure.” I had no more than gotten those words out of my mouth than that moose stepped-out in front of me at 25 yards.

Now, a moose is a big critter, and at 25 yards with your adrenaline pumping, he looks even bigger. That’s when you’ve got to have the faith in your rifle to do the job that it was built to do. I was hunting with the CVA Accura with a PowerBelt bullet, and when the moose turned broadside, I aimed and fired quickly. When I fired, I didn’t know what was going to happen, because the moose was so close. But he took the PowerBelt bullet, and only went about 50 yards before he piled-up. I’d hit him right behind the front shoulder and double-lunged him. When you take a deer with a muzzleloader rifle and a PowerBelt bullet, that’s a great accomplishment. But when you test the rifle, powder and bullet on an animal as large as a moose, you really can see what a blackpowder rifle can do. For that moose to only go 50 yards was incredible. I thought this was one of the most-exciting hunts I’ve ever had. But the story gets better.

 Question: How hard was it like getting that moose out of the brush and back to camp?

Raglin: This is the neatest part of the story. There was a right of way (clearing) that ran down through the timber. I drive a Ford Excursion with a winch on the front. I told my outfitter, “I think if I’m really careful, I can go get my trunk and drive down that right of way.” I went back and got my trunk, but driving to the right of way took me awhile. I got the front-end of the truck pointed in the direction where the moose was laying. We started pulling the cable off my winch. When we got to the end of the cable, there was about a foot of cable left on the winch, once we wrapped the cable around the moose’s antlers. But once we got the cable around his antlers, I was able to winch the moose to the right of way where my truck was. I started backing-up, and I was able to drag that moose out of the bush all the way up to the road.

 Question: Life doesn’t get any better than that right – not having to butcher the moose in the field or carry the meat out.

Raglin: Yes, life does get better than this. When I got the moose to the road, one of the guides had a device on his truck that allowed him to run the cable from the winch on the front of the truck, over the truck to where he had a crane-like device. We unhooked the moose from my winch, took the guide’s winch from the front of his truck over the top of the truck and through the winch device, brought it down and put it around the antlers of my moose. The guide was able to winch the entire moose into the back of his pick-up truck. We took the moose back to camp, hung him up and skinned, dressed and quartered him with little or no hassle. That’s when life was as good as it could get for a hunter.

 Editor’s Note: Roger Raglin of “Roger Raglin Outdoors” on the Outdoor Channel on Saturdays has hosted the TV show for 10 years. Raglin, who lives in Coweta, Oklahoma, has been in the outdoor industry for 24 years and is one of the most-recognized faces in the outdoor fraternity.

 Question: Roger, why did you choose the CVA Optima as your open-sight muzzleloader  rifle?

Raglin: I was getting emails at my TV show from muzzleloader hunters who were traditional hunters, and they were complaining that nobody ever hunted with muzzleloaders with open sights. They’d say, “Everyone seems to hunt with those high-powered telescopic riflescopes and that’s not traditional muzzleloader hunting.” So, I decided to leave the sights off my Optima and use it as my open-sighted blackpowder rifle. I still use my “open sight” gun – the Optima – from time to time when I’m filming. I never did put a scope on it. I wanted to show my viewers that yes, you can take deer with a muzzleloader rifle with open sights.

I used the Optima on several wild hog hunts the first year I had it. Hog hunts are different than deer hunts. When you’re shooting feral hogs, usually you’re going to be relatively close, often less than 30-yards away, so there’s very-little chance you’re going to miss. But when you’ve got a whitetail that would score 170 on Boone & Crockett at 100 yards or more, and you’re shooting open sights, you may start sweating a little more than you will when shooting a hog at 30 yards. But I really don’t. The big talk in the blackpowder industry is muzzleloader rifles that will shoot accurately at 200 yards, as though the 200-yard mark is some big accomplishment. However, I’ve got a video called “Roger Raglin Black Powder Magic” that I filmed in 1989. In that video, we showed taking mule deer and antelope at 200-plus yards way back then, and we were shooting with open sights.

I’m kind of a historian, and I love to read and research guns and shooting and how they performed centuries ago. I know that back during the Civil War days there was a recorded shot made and kill inflicted at 1 mile with a muzzleloader. I know that if you find out what kind of powder a particular muzzleloader likes, and what type of bullet performs best in the muzzleloader you’re shooting, you can make some phenomenal long-distance shots. History records many phenomenal shots at long distances with muzzleloaders in the hands of men who knew how to shoot them. And, don’t forget. Those old timers were shooting with open sights.

The first year I had the Optima, most of my shots were within 100 yards. But a year or two later, I went to Ohio on a deer hunt. The weather wasn’t that great, and the hunt was tough. We were hunting coal pits (strip-mine areas). As I came-over the top of one of those coal pits, I saw this buck bedded-up in some brush below me. I had a 75-yard shot, so I leaned-up against the tree. When the buck stood-up, I fired the Optima, and that buck grossed 195 B&C. That buck still remains my best buck ever with a muzzleloader. So, I’ve proven to myself that I don’t have to have a scope to shoot accurately with a CVA muzzleloader. The open sights that many of the guns come with can be just as effective at long range as a muzzleloader with a scope on it, if you take a good rest and spend enough time on the range to know how your gun will perform at different ranges with various powders and bullets.

I think we all know that the CVA rifles are as accurate as a muzzleloader rifle can be. But we usually base that knowledge on how the rifle performs with a scope on it. Even though I was a little irritated at the viewers complaining, because we didn’t show any TV shows with CVA rifles shooting with open sights, I relearned a very-important lesson when I started shooting my open-sight gun. That is, if you learn to shoot with open sights, and you spend time learning how that rifle shoots and what bullet and powder it shoots best with, you can be accurate with open sights out to 100 yards or more, if you learn to shoot with open sights. I think sometimes we forget that you don’t have to have a riflescope to be an accurate muzzleloader shooter.

Every year we spot different deer that have unusual appearances. We tend to give them a nickname.  This year while guiding outdoor writer Luke Hartle of North America Hunter for a mule deer in Montana we spotted a buck that we named Mr. Freak.  Luke wanted to take him but he gave us the slip in the fog on 2 different occasions. After Luke’s hunt ending in success but Mr. Freak still roaming with 2 days left in the season it was my turn to hunt. OF course I didn’t have good conditions with temperatures reading -35F with the wind-chill and thigh deep snow. My wife Marsha was hunting with me and actually spotted him, Mr. Freak that is. The reason this buck earned this name is because his antlers grew back to within an inch and a half on top.  Having my cameraman, Lanell with me we decided to make a stalk.  Marsha agreed to watch him from a distance covering his escape route in case he tried to give us a slip again.  Lanell and I made a long stalk through the deep snow to get to him.  The closest we could get to him we found after using my Bushnell rangefinder was 350 yards. (www.Bushnell.com) The wind blowing 20 m.p.h. in our faces but across the valley it was blowing left to right.  I miscalculated the wind and shot right behind him. I knew it was my miscalculation because my CVA Apex in .300 Winmag was dead on.(www.CVA.com)   I corrected my windage looking through my Konus Pro 3X9 scope (www.Konus.com)after the buck had moved out an additional 38 yards I took my shot.  This time the bullet blew the top of his heart off 388 yards the CVA Apex in .300 does it again.  

Chad Schearer

 Host of Shoot Straight T.V.