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