Taking the Twins out
 

Finally got some #11 caps today ' local store ran out'

Taking the CVA Mountain Rifle .54 out with .015 TC Patches, Hornady .530 round balls and 80gr Shockeys Gold 3f. I dont have much shooting time with the rifle but it seems to be a heck of a shooter with 360gr PR Sabots. I mainly want to keep the big bore 54 traditional " yeah i know thats hard with the plastic stock lol" but i really do love the performance of that .530 round ball.


Now her sister on the other hand is a little hussy and takes it all down the bore LOL. Im going out with 80gr 2F American Pioneer and some 385gr buffalo conicals Caygad sent me with during a trade. I went and used some JB Bore Paste wrapped around a cleaning brush and a patch, gave it a good 100 strokes and cleaned it up. Bore looks great now, previously had a ton of lead fouling but its back to better than new after that scrubbing.



My main goal is to get that .54 printing good and on sight, we'll have to see how that goes in the morning. Should also be a pleasure shooting it now that i installed the recoil pad. Feels a lot more comfortable now.

Wooowee! That .54 is a freakin awesome round ball shooter! I settled on 80gr 2f American Pioneer, .530 round ball and .015 tc patches. I shot a few rounds with 80gr 3f JSG before i switched to APP and it was a decent 1.5"group @ 50 but that APP turned things around!

Top 3 shots are with the CVA Hawken, .490 round ball, 80gr APP 2fand .015 patch " holes in recovered patches" The bottom 3 shots are with my .54 and the 80gr 2f charge. That load is going into the book so i dont forget it!



Going back out here soon with 100gr APP 2F in the .54 just to see how it reacts to it.

Made a big mistake by forgetting to put up an orange dot on the target, this was very hard for me to see but i went with it anyway. Shot in the bullseye was my second shot.
80gr 3f American Pioneer.


Loaded up 90gr American Pioneer and got 3 more with the orange dot bulls eye on the target. Huge difference. A nice little cluster at 50 yards.


All in all, i put 21 shots down range, 3 of them with 80gr Blackhorn209 and it really grouped with that! With the Bore Coat applied, never felt the bore get sticky on me once. Normally i get that dry gritty feeling after the first shot but no more.



Shes turned out to be a good rifle and with some primitive sights "buckhorn rear & blade front" i'll be on track to where i want to be with it.

Camo dip and rubberized grip panels are also on the list.

Both of them rifles are real shooters. WOW!! that is a tight group. The first year I got that .54 I shot three deer with that Mountain Stalker. The furthest was maybe 40 yards. Easy to find as they dropped right where they stood. I was shooting 80 grains of Triple Seven 2f and a patched ball, with a wad. And that rifle was so accurate it was not funny.

I remember when I took that to a shoot with friends. They hoo hawed me something terrible about the rifle until the shooting started. After that they all wanted to know where to buy one.

I can't understand how it got full of lead though. All I ever shot out of it was roundball and powerbelts.

Oh no cayugad, the other mountain stalker, my .50 was the one full of lead. Yours was perfect.

This rifle is accurate as heck though, no argument about that.

I did find a weak spot though that i will have to fix. When i was shooting blackhorn, i noticed the gap between the barrel and tang moving apart pretty good. I thought the breech plug was stretching or something but when i took it apart, i can pull the barrel forward until theres a dime thickness gap in that spot. A little bit of welding and filing should tighten that up easily.