Editor’s Note: Carlos Vilorio of Vass, North Carolina, an assistant manager and salesman at Ed’s Gun Shop, sights-in CVA muzzle loader rifles for customers.

Question: Carlos, you’ve mentioned that you can shoot 1-inch groups at 200 yards with a CVA Accura. You’ve also mentioned that you can shoot groups tighter than 1 inch at 100 yards with the Accura. How do you load the CVA Accura to get groups that tight?

Vilorio: I use 110 grains of Blackhorn 209 powder with a Barnes Spit-Fire T-EZ bullet and a Fiocchi primer.

Question: Why do you like the Fiocchi primer?

Vilorio: I read an article by Russell Lynch where he reported that primers can develop a lot of pressure when they’re fired and push the load forward before the powder ignites, which can affect your accuracy. Since I like to try to shoot as accurately as I can, I decided to conduct my own primer test. I put the ramrod in the barrel without a bullet or a powder charge and placed some packing behind the rod in the barrel. I wanted to measure how far the primer would push that ramrod up, which would tell me how far the primer could push the powder before the powder ignited. The Fiocchi primer only pushed the rod out of the barrel about 3 inches. The Winchester primer pushed the rod out of the barrel 10 inches. The Remington primers pushed the rod out 13 inches out of the barrel. No other primer I tested pushed the rod any less than the Fiocchi primer. So, through my primer test, I learned that the Fiocchi primer had enough fire to light the powder without pushing the powder charge too far out of the barrel before the powder ignited. I also learned that I could shoot much-tighter patterns with the Fiocchi primer than I could with other primers and that by using the Fiocchi primer, I could shoot consistent patterns shot after shot. That’s the reason I now exclusively shoot the Fiocchi primer.

Question: Why do you shoot 110 grains of Blackhorn powder instead of 100 or 150 grains?

Vilorio: For me, 150 grains delivers a heavy recoil and kicks too much. I shot 120 grains of Blackhorn powder and still got a little kick. With 110 grains of Blackhorn powder, I could get between 2,000 and 2,100 feet per second, which allowed the Bushnell Dead On Accurate (DOA) 250 scope to be accurate at 100, 150, 200 and 250 yards. I formulate my powder so that the multiple crosshairs in my scope are dead-on at 100 and 200 yards.

Question: So, what’s your opinion of the CVA Accura and the Bergara barrels?

Vilorio: I can’t believe you can take a factory-made gun out of the box and consistently shoot tight groups, like the CVA Accura and the Bergara barrels will, especially when they’re loaded with 110 grains of the Blackhorn 209 powder, the Barnes Spit-Fire T-EZ bullets and the Fiocchi primer.

 Editor’s Note: Carlos Vilorio of Vass, North Carolina, works as an assistant manager and salesman at Ed’s Gun Shop. When Vilorio sells a CVA rifle, he often will take the rifle out, sight-in the rifle for the customer, bring the targets back to the shop, and show the customer the group the CVA rifle has shot. Then he lets the targets speak for themselves.

Carlos with CVA Accura

Question: Carlos, how did you get started hunting with blackpowder rifles?

Vilorio: I watched Jim Shockey on TV take a number of big-game animals shooting a Thompson/Center. So, I decided to try blackpowder hunting and purchased a T/C Encore Endeavor. The first deer I ever took with a blackpowder rifle was at 225 yards, and I’d never seen a blackpowder rifle that would shoot accurately at that range. I never was too excited about CVA because in the early days, the company only had low-end rifles that weren’t known for accuracy at long ranges. But a couple of years ago, the factory representative for Browning and CVA, Tillman Britt, approached me at Ed’s Gun Shop where I work after he’d heard me talk about blackpowder rifles. He started telling me about CVA rifles and the new Bergara barrels. I said, “Listen, Tillman, I’ve heard about CVA rifles, but I’ve never shot one. If you’ll let me shoot one and see what it will do, I’ll tell you what I think.” Three days later, I received a package from Blackpowder Products, Inc. (BPI), CVA’s parent company, with a CVA Accura muzzleloader and a Bergara barrel for my T/C rifle. I tested the Accura and the Bergara barrel on my T/C Encore Endeavor at the range. I couldn’t believe the accuracy of both products and how easily the Accura loaded. I also was very impressed with the trigger on the Accura. Most of the T/C triggers I had tested had 4- to 5-pound pulls, and most of the Accuras I have in the store have 2-1/2-pound pulls straight from the factory.

Question: Tell me what happened the first time you took the CVA Accura to the range to shoot it.

Vilorio: I didn’t know what to expect from the Accura. I’d never shot a CVA rifle, so I didn’t have very-high expectations. The first time I shot a group of three shots, it measured 0.485. I hoped these target results weren’t an accidental fluke – the first three shots out of this Accura were at 100 yards. So, I fired that gun 40 times that day, and every time I fired three shots, I consistently got 0.485 groups. What’s even more amazing is that I didn’t clean the CVA Accura, until I took it home after firing it those 40 times.

CVA Accura at the range

Question: What scope did you use?

Vilorio: I used a Bushnell Dead On Accurate (DOA) 250.

Question: What powder did you use?

Vilorio: I shot Blackhorn 209 powder, which was one of the reasons I think the Accura kept delivering those types of patterns without having to be cleaned. When I saw the unbelievable accuracy from the CVA Accura, I called Tillman Britt and said, “Hey, we’ve got to start doing business. We need to get these CVA Accuras in our store.” I was truly amazed at the accuracy of this rifle right out of the box.

Editor’s Note: As a customer-service representative for CVA, Dave Meredith of Norcross, Georgia, talks to blackpowder hunters and enthusiasts from all over the country daily. He hears so many funny stories and answers so many questions for CVA that I know you’ll learn from them if I pass them on to you. If you recognize yourself as the person mentioned in any of his stories, don’t tell anybody, and we won’t either.

According to Dave Meredith, sometimes a caller to CVA’s customer-service department may say, "I think I’ve got something down the barrel of my muzzleloader, but I don’t know what it is. How do I get it out?" This problem is more common than you may think. When I ask, "Did you leave your gun loaded?" the customer may answer, "No," or "I don’t know." Now we’ve got a serious problem. Children like to put stuff in holes – all kinds of holes. And, a muzzleloading rifle has a hole in it. If you have children, there’s no telling what may be down the barrel. Before loading your gun, especially if the gun hasn’t been stored in a locked gun cabinet, put your ramrod down the barrel to make sure there’s nothing in the barrel. If several inches of that ramrod stick above the barrel, you know something’s in there. I have to know what’s in the barrel before I tell the customer how to get it out.

Once someone sent in a sidelock blackpowder rifle that someone had shoved a .30-30 cartridge down the barrel, trying to ignite that cartridge and get it to shoot out the end of the barrel. Guns aren’t funny, but you’ll be surprised at what we’ve found down the ends of some barrels when taking guns apart. Now with a sidelock rifle, you can’t push whatever’s in the barrel out the other end of the barrel, especially a live round of ammunition. We gave this problem with sidelock rifle that had a .30-30 cartridge down its barrel to our gunsmith. He used a bullet puller and was lucky enough to get the bullet puller to bite into the bullet, allowing him to finally wiggle it out. But never do this at home. After we got that bullet out of the rifle, all the rifling was destroyed, and the gun was no good. If you know there’s something in your barrel but don’t know for sure what it is, I strongly suggest you use a light to try to see what’s in the barrel. If you can’t figure it out from there, take it to a gunsmith.

Question: Dave, what’s the third most-frequently-asked question on your customer service hotline at CVA?
Meredith: Lots of folks want to know how much and which type of powder they can use in their CVA rifles.

Question: How do you answer that question?
Meredith: Various guns prefer different types of powder. For instance, a .45 or smaller gun can use either 3F blackpowder or Pyrodex P. These powders are very fine and produce more gas in a hurry. Therefore, you use less of these finer-grain powders. I recommend using somewhere between 50 and 90 grains, which is a good charge for a .45 blackpowder rifle that will allow you to reach-out and make shots at 200 yards. One important factor that many hunters overlook when considering powders and bullets is that accurately placing the shot where it’s supposed to go to make an effective kill is far-more important than the amount of knock-down power you have when the bullet arrives at the target. If you put the bullet in the right place, you won’t have to worry about the knockdown power.

When you move up to a .50 rifle, if you’re shooting a sidelock gun, you have to use loose powder like 2F black powder, Pyrodex RS or any of the other acceptable substitutes that are equivalent to a 2F powder. If you’re shooting an inline blackpowder rifle that is magnum capable, you can shoot as few as 50 grains up to 150 grains in the pelleted forms of powder. There are some 30-grain pellets available. Although the inline rifles will shoot 150 grains of powder, I’ve never seen a need to shoot more than 100 grains, because with 100 grains of powder, you can shoot accurately out to 200 yards. Unless you’re an exceptionally-good hunter and have spent a lot of time on the range learning your bullet drop at different distances, I don’t recommend shooting at more than 200 yards with a muzzleloader. Of course, some hunters just like to use 130 grains. You still can get pretty-good accuracy with 130 grains as well as a little-more velocity and energy downrange. But most people don’t realize that that the .45 blackpowder rifle has more kinetic energy and higher velocity downrange than a .50 does. If you anticipate shooting longer shots than 100 yards, you may want to consider using a .45 rather than a .5