Long Range and muzzleloader seem to be a bit of a contradictory term, but with everyone wanting bigger, better, and faster with everything they own, it’s not surprising that there is a demand for it. CVA was definitely up to this challenge in delivering a muzzleloader capable of accuracy out to 400 yards and beyond. We jumped at the opportunity to put one of these to the test and prepare it for the upcoming hunting seasons.
The stock is a fully adjustable synthetic stock with an internal aluminum chassis. Adjustment for the length of pull is done with removable spacers and full comb adjustment is fast and easy with loosening one large knob/bolt on the stock. The barrel is a .45 caliber 26” Bergara heavy barrel, which is 416 stainless steel and nitride treated. It is free floated and ready for long range accuracy with its 1:22 twist.
It is a bolt-action gun, which makes it very different than most other muzzleloaders and was designed to eliminate pressure loss with magnum loads. This bolt setup completely seals the breech making sure this newly designed VariFlame breech plug and magnum rifle primer gives you consistent shots time after time. The action is drilled and tapped to accommodate a Remington 700 short action base and it is recommended that you put on a 20 MOA rail for best long-range results.
This muzzleloader uses the VariFlame adapter and large rifle primers in lieu of a 209 shotgun primer for ignition. This requires you to install these rifle primers into the VariFlame adapter.
Your rifle comes with one package of 15 Powerbelt .45 caliber, 280 grain ELR (extended long range) series bullets. These bullets performed far beyond our expectations.
With 20-minute rail and scope mounted, and our preparation completed, we headed to the range to see exactly what this rifle was capable of. It is recommended that you sight the muzzleloader in at 200 yards. The 20-minute rail and this sight in distance, will provide you with enough travel in most riflescopes to shoot well past 400 yards. During our testing at 6,000 feet of elevation and 105 grains of Blackhorn 209 measured by weight, we were shooting a consistent 2,320 feet per second. The lows were measured right at 2,315 and a high of 2,332, which is very consistent with what we see shooting regular rifle loads.
At 400 yards and everything totally dialed in, we were able to put sub-MOA groups on paper and one measured 2.875 inches, which is extremely impressive for any rifle let alone a muzzleloader. Scan the QR code in this article to see the video of this muzzleloader performing out to 735 yards.
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