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: Allen Treadwell from southwest Missouri is a professional hunter and videographer. He films TV shows for Bass Pro Shops, Hunter’s Specialties and “Winchester Whitetail Revolution.” 

 Treadwell: I was filming a show for “Bass Pro Shops 100% Real Hunting TV,” which airs on the Versus Network. I was hunting the early-season muzzleloader and shotgun seasons in Iowa, and I took my CVA Accura with me. The weather was perfect for deer hunting – miserable, cold, snowy with below-zero temperatures at night and never above 20 degrees during the day. There were 6-7 inches of snow on the ground, which is the best time for me to hunt, because the deer at that time of year have to go to the food sources and primarily to agriculture to survive. I was hunting with Nick Boley of Windy Ridge Outfitters in Van Buren County in southeast Iowa. 

Question: Why did you decide to hunt with this outfitter?
Treadwell: I’ve hunted with him in the past. I filmed a bowhunting show for Hunter’s Specialties’ “Primetime Bucks” video series there. This was an early December hunt. Nick had been scouting this area before my hunt. With the fresh snow we’d had the night before my hunt, Nick and I went out and did a little scouting around a soybean field that had been left unharvested for the deer, and there were tracks coming into that bean field from all directions. Nick had put a shooting house out in the middle of this field. That morning, we spotted a couple of nice bucks, but they were staying back in the timber. However, several does came out into the field. We were about a week past the full moon, so the moon was still bright at night. I try to plan my hunts around a moon calendar, because I really believe that the moon plays an important role in when deer feed. By 7 or 8 am, the deer activity was dying down on this day. I’d learned from hunting Iowa in the past that when these really-cold days occurred, deer wouldn’t move much in the middle of the day. I generally would hunt for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple of hours in the evening, because those times were when deer seemed to move the most. That afternoon, we got in the shooting house early and saw 30 or 40 does and several small bucks. An hour before dark, a big main-framed 10 pointer white-tail buck with split brow tines and a 22-inch-wide rack that would score in the 150s came out and presented the shot.

Question: Why did you take the Accura on the hunt?
Treadwell:  The CVA Accura is absolutely the best-shooting blackpowder rifle I’ve ever hunted with in my life. I’ve been shooting muzzleloaders and taking deer with them since I was 10-years old. I’ve shot every muzzleloader on the market. CVA has always produced the most-accurate, well-balanced muzzleloaders that I’ve ever shot. With the CVA Accura, I know that I can take any deer that I see from 200 yards out to right in front of me.

 
Treadwell: I shoot 150 grains of Pyrodex Pellets and a 245-grain PowerBelt bullet.

Question: How far away was this buck when you took the shot?
Treadwell: I ranged him at 145 yards. I used the Leupold Ultimate Slam riflescope with my first crosshair dead-on at 150 yards, my second crosshair dead-on at 200 and my third crosshair dead-on at 300.

Question: Where did you hit the deer?
Treadwell: The PowerBelt bullet hit him right behind the shoulders. The buck ran to the edge of the field and tipped over. There were so many deer in the field when I shot that they all took off running. I was 99% sure that I’d hit the buck. He fell down behind a tree. I could see his rack, and I saw him kick snow when he tipped over. But in my mind’s eye I didn’t know for a fact that he was down. So, I stayed in my shooting house and let things calm down in the field. Then I slipped out of the shooting house as quietly as possible, went back to the lodge, ate supper and waited a few hours before returning to find the buck.

I think one of the reasons many hunters lose the bucks they take is they go running after them after the shot. Sure, I had just shot a big deer, and I wanted to get my hands on him. But, I’ve learned over the years unless I’m 100% positive that the deer’s down, I’d much rather back-out, let the deer lie-down and go back in a few hours. I’ve learned that you can recover more deer using this tactic than if you get excited, go chasing after the deer and spook him so bad he runs out of the county.

After supper, we returned and recovered my buck, and he was lying exactly where I thought he would be. The buck scored 145 points on the Boone & Crockett scale, and he weighed over 300 pounds. The real secret to hunting with black powder is to know when you squeeze the trigger that the bullet will go where you intend it to go. When I’m shooting the CVA Accura, I know for a fact that out to 300 yards, when I put the crosshairs on the deer where I want the bullet to land, the Accura will deliver the PowerBelt bullet to that place.

To hunt with Windy Ridge Outfitters, visit www.huntiowawhitetails.com or call (641) 919-2801.