Cva wolf

[Rich M]

Nothings really changed, that's just the way CVA is, and always has been. Even WAY back in the day they were this way. One of the few sought after CVA's is their Mountain rifle. I had one briefly, and it too was quite poor as far as fit and finish. What makes them special, besides not looking too bad of a southern mountain rifle replica for a cheap production gun, is that they used made in USA Douglas barrels which shot surprisingly well. Nothing has changed today. You just as easily could have got an Optima that shot poorly. I've seen reports of bore sizes all over the map, and that only tells half the story. You can always fit your bullet to the barrel, but if that size varies throughout that barrel or has some other kind of anomaly, it's never going to shoot. I can't speak for the higher end CVA models, I know nothing about them, but the Wolf and Optima are all over the map on quality. You never know what you are going to get. The only reason CVA might have got better press today is because they literally out lived the competition. Thompson Center killed themselves, specifically S&W killed them, but it wasn't really from quality. Knight used to be top of the top until the great recession, and they still make top class quality, but apparently the new owners don't understand marketing at all. Their cheap Vision beats the Wolf and Optima hands down, but when was the last time you saw a commercial for a Knight Vision? Word of mouth only gets you so far, especially today and now that inline muzzleloaders are the defacto standard rather than the new toy people wanted. Traditions used to be right there with CVA, but for some reason seems to have fallen from favor in the inline market. Instead they seem to have taken hold more in the cheap traditional market like the TC Hawken/Renegades used to be. So now CVA is free to do whatever. They get good press because they are all the average joe knows anymore.

Makes sense.

The older in-lines that did not break and were not able to remove any kind of bolt shot pretty good. Buddies had em. Just couldn't clean em for nothing. I know Traditions had one or two models like this. Not sure how else to describe it.

It is kind of crazy that companies can't make a simple break action ML that shoots straight. The manufacturing is pretty basic as far as guns go, the receiver end shouldn't be the problem, it has to be the barrel fit or rifling.

I still have a couple H&R .58 break open inlines - 1 works, 2 no longer. The rifling was for balls and no-one makes sabots for these anymore. I have a NEAT mold and it hardly grips the rifling. 50-60 yd gun. My dad always had to buy the biggest and heaviest stuff. There were several .50 cals on the rack next to these things and might have shot/been fine. This was back in the 70s.

 

[Novashooter]

There were for sure some odd inline designs. One of my favorites is the TC scout, it's odd, but it works pretty good. I have a 54 cal TC scout pistol, couldn't imagine hunting without it. I'm guessing your H&Rs have the push in plugs, which you will never see today in our lawsuit heavy world, but they do work fine.

The most baffling thing to me about CVA is how they survived the late 2000s which hurt both TC and Knight bad. CVA even went so far as to market some models as "magnum" for 150gr of powder back when TC and Knight were the ones pushing that. The result was too many CVA blow ups until a lawsuit where CVA admitted they were importing barrels that had proof marks and were never tested. No American company proofs their barrels either, but they aren't trusting a cheap import with junk steel either.

I'm not saying CVA today is dangerous at all. I don't even think they use that barrel manufacturer anymore. I'm trying to point out that they have a long history of junk barrels with zero quality control. There's lots of ways to mess up rifling.