New CVA Wolf, I feel dirty....

[alemonkey]

So, I've always much preferred traditional BP, but I'm having a lot of problems with very inconsistent accuracy out of my current rifle. One day it's shooting ok, not great but good enough to take a deer out to 100 yards, and the next it seems I can't even keep it on paper. I know I'm not THAT bad of a shot I had thought the Lee REAL was the ticket, and it seemed to be working, but yesterday I took it out and i couldn't have hit the broad side of the barn if I was inside of it. I have a new Lee Target Minie mould that I tried, and it was even worse. I just can't figure it out. I've spent several months trying to get it to shoot well, but with deer season a couple of weeks away I'm kind of in a bind. I don't want to take the chance of wounding a deer because of a rifle that shoots patterns instead of groups.

So I stopped by Walmart (God, I hate that place) and picked up a CVA Wolf. I was going to buy it at the local Scheel's store, but all they had were starter kits containing a bunch of stuff I already have, for $50 more. I feel a little dirty for making the leap to a modern inline, and I still plan to add a nice traditional rifle to the collection in the future, but it looks like I'm going the black plastic route this year. I'm going to be sighting it in today, does anyone have any load recommendations? I have 250-grain REAL and 340 grain Minie bullets to choose from. I'm hoping I can get those to work instead of having to resort to those ridiculously expensive Power Belts and sabots.

One thing that kind of bothered me was the condition of the barrel. I ran a patch through and it came out orange I didn't see any pitting, but I'm disappointed that the barrel wasn't better protected from the factory. The barrel is extremely rough also. You can see tooling marks all down the length of the barrel. The rifling is very sharp, though, so I'm hoping the little bit of surface rust and the rough machining won't hurt too much.

 

[dispatch55126]

I too feel somewhat "dirty" for buying my Buckhorn for deer hunting. I always swore I'd stick with sidelocks. Anyways, after shooting my Buckhorn yesterday, It is definitely my primary deer rifle. If I get a multi-season license and drop one with my rifle, I'll use the Hawkens for ML season. Since I'm only hunting ML this year, I'm using the in-line due to greater accuracy/reliability.

I broke my own rule by buying an in-line but the way I see it, meat first, tradition second.

Mine prefers the Hornady FPB. Sabots held the largest group, followed by power belts then the FPB's. I was getting 2"-3" groups from a clean barrel and open sights with 95gr. of AP loose powder.

 

[alemonkey]

Ok, I got the new rifle out to the range on Sunday and I'm pretty pleased. I didn't have much time to work up a load, so I'm sure I'm only scraping the surface of what it's capable of. It liked the 250 grain REAL bullet, I tried a few different powder levels (Pyrodex Select, I have to mail order the holy black so I hoard it for my Sharps) and it seems to like 80 grains the best. Interestingly enough, it liked a lubed felt wad (50/50 crisco & paraffin) underneath an unlubed bullet best. It was noticeably more accurate with the unlubed REAL and wad combo vs one with lube in the grooves. I did notice some leading, though, so I need to play with more load combinations to find one that works with a lubed bullet.

The Lee target minie was awful in this gun. Groups at 50 yards were about 6-8" compared to 2-3" with the REAL. I believe that's due to the fact that it's so far undersize (about .490"). I need to do some more testing with that bullet also and see if I can find a load that will bump it up to bore size.

I have no plans to shoot sabots or power belts in this gun. I'm not interested in paying that kind of money per shot, when I can mould my own bullets for pennies.

The limiting factor for accuracy was the sights. If this gun had a receiver mounted peep sight, or if I had mounted a scope, it would be much more accurate. It uses a conventional notch and post type sight, with the rear sight fairly far forward on the barrel. This gives you a pretty short sight radius since the barrel is only 24", so a little bit of misalignment gives you a lot of potential error. Plus, my eyes just don't do well with that type of sight any more. I'm only 33 but I'm heading towards bifocals pretty fast. The sights are fine for my intended purpose though, which is going to be hunting from a stand. The sights include fiber optic "dots" so they really show up well. In low light they'll work great for a typical shot where I hunt, which is going to be from 25 to 50 yards most of the time, maybe 100 at the outside. They're not made for long range precision shots, but for a quick shot in the woods they're perfect.

I mentioned earlier that my big concern was the roughness of the barrel. When I first got the gun it actually had some surface rust in the barrel and the patches were coming out orange the first time I cleaned it. The bore has probably the roughest machine work I've ever seen in a new gun. You can see tool marks the entire length of the barrel. It didn't seem to affect accuracy much, but the barrel did foul fairly quickly with both powder and lead fouling. I swabbed with a damp patch between each shot, but after about 10 shots it was getting pretty hard to load. To compare, I shoot my Pedersoli Sharps in a local BPCR match and it shoots up to 60-70 shots with virtually no leading, and the powder fouling is easily removed between 10-shot strings with just a couple of damp patches. Pedersoli makes good barrels, and the difference is pretty obvious. I'm thinking I'll get some JB bore paste and run a few patches through to smooth it out.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the gun. For the money it's hard to beat. I really think with some load development and a scope a good shooter could get it close to being a 1 MOA gun. I'll probably never stick a scope on it, but I do plan to play around with different loads and see what it likes. I've always been anti-inline, but now that I have one I have a whole new world of shooting to play with, and that's a good thing

 

[arcticap]

The important thing is that you're having fun.

Thanks to experimenting with a lubed wad, you found a combination that works reasonably well.
If you ever stumble across a box of any .40, .429, .451, or .458 bullets at a tag sale, then you can buy bulk MMP sabots to play around with at the range without paying a small fortune per shot.

http://www.mmpsabots.com/

I like the APP powder too. It has always seemed plenty powerful enough to me. And even using that powder makes it tricky enough to keep the muzzle rise under control when shooting offhand.
Usually a little bit of surface rust can be caused by when it was proofed or test fired at the factory and not cleaned afterward.
Sorry to hear about all of the chatter marks in the rifling.
I hope that it's not too difficult to smooth them out a bit.
Good luck with your hunt and about mounting a scope, never say "probably never". I bought a used 2.5 X 32 shotgun/BP scope the other day simply because I just might have a use for it and I've never even had a 2.5X before.

 

[alemonkey]

Well, I took the Wolf out hunting this week at my Dad's farm and missed a shot at a buck. It was almost dark when I saw two does and an average sized buck coming down the game trail toward my stand (it was dark enough that I couldn't make out how many points he had). About 50 yards away the front doe must have smelled me because she started getting nervous and thinking about bolting. So, I decided to try and take the buck then instead of waiting for them to get closer. I put the sights just behind his shoulder, pulled the trigger and heard a BOOM...and he trotted away like nothing happened. I spent the next hour searching for a blood trail by flashlight and finally concluded I had somehow missed him.

The next morning I noticed the stock was loose. If I hold the muzzle and stock, I can move the muzzle up & down and side to side about 1/2". With that kind of play I'm guessing I would have missed him at 25 yards. I'm a little peeved that CVA didn't tighten the stock bolt properly, but in the end it was my responsibility to make sure my equipment was all functional. It's at a really weird angle in the stock and it's a hex screw, so I'm going to have a lot of fun trying to tighten it up. I still think this is a good gun for the money, though. I'm going to try getting back to the farm for more hunting over Christmas, maybe I can redeem myself.