Roger Raglin Explains Why He Always Carries the CVA Accura on Hunts
Editor’s Note: Roger Raglin of “Roger Raglin Outdoors” on the Outdoor Channel has been in the outdoor industry for 24 years. Roger describes a bear hunt with his son Josh and explains why he always carries the CVA Accura muzzleloader on hunts.
I was hunting in northeastern Maine with my 21-year-old son Josh, and we’d put-out trail cameras on baits to see which bears were hitting what baits at what times. Most of the bears our trail cameras photographed came to the bait after dark. We hoped to take these bears with our bows, but we couldn’t seem to find a bait the bears would come-to during daylight hours. However, across the lake from where we stayed, about a 15-minute boat ride from camp, a bear was coming-in to a bait site at about 5:00 pm every day. But this bait site was set-up for a rifle hunter, not a bowhunter. So, on the last day of the hunt, Josh decided to take his CVA Accura to that bait site to try to take the bear. The bear came-in at about 5:00 pm, and when the bear was 50-yards away, Josh smoked him. This was Josh’s first bear with a gun, but he’s taken several with a bow. The bear only went about 40 yards and then piled-up. The bear was across a cove, so we used a boat to load-up the bear and take him back to camp.
Even if you’re a bowhunter, carry a CVA Accura with you on an extended hunt. It’s a shame to pay all the expenses for the hunt and know there’s an animal out there you may can take, but that won’t come to within bow range. If you’ve got a CVA Accura with you, then on the last day of the hunt, you still can fill your tag, have a successful hunt and go home with the trophy you went to take. When we’re taping a TV episode and have cameramen, travel time, expenses and an outfitter we’re working with, being successful is important. So, we’ve always got the CVA Accura with us, regardless if we’re bowhunting or not.
Dan Mortensen Hunts with His New CVA Optima Part 4 of 4
Opening day
Dawn was just breaking when the first deer appeared. A doe, slowly made her way along the ridge, and off to places unknown to lay down for the day. Not long after, from the opposite direction, came the unmistakable crunch of snow. Three inches of the crusty white stuff ensured that no deer could pass without prior notice, and this 8 point was no exception. He was a cautious fellow, stopping to check the swirling wind currents every few yards. With the camera rolling, and the Optima leveled, I awaited my opportunity. The woods was thick, and finding a shooting lane that offered a good view to the camera was challenging. I focused the camera on the best opening I could find in front of the deer, and prepared for the shot. Three feet before trigger time, the buck stopped. All was silent as the endless seconds crawled by. It dawned on me that when your hammer is back, the entire world comes to a halt and time inches along. Quite like it does for a 40 year old during a proctologist visit, or when you are trapped in the clothing section of some chain store at the mall while the Mrs. tries on dozens of outfits, each with the standard question of “Do you like this one?” Now that is what I call “hammer back slow.”
But I digress, back to the buck.
With 3 quick steps, the buck passed through the lane before I could get the shot I wanted. One shot with these things, gotta make it count. The buck continued on the trail, without stopping this time, offering no target, and poor filming conditions. I sunk back into my seat. It wasn’t the biggest buck, but with my freezer empty, and a new sweet shooting CVA with me, I wasn’t going to be too picky. The next 2 hours found me getting colder and colder. The hand, toe and neck warmers I had plastered about my attire was doing their best to keep my body warm in the 10 degree Wisconsin air, but little by little they were losing the battle.
The funny thing about being cold is, it’s mostly in your head. At least that’s what I had convinced myself of during military survival school. So when the crunching of snow began again, this time from around the lake, the self-induced misery I was experiencing was forgotten in a flash. After setting the camera to record, and leveling the CVA on the approaching deer, it was obvious this was a buck. In fact, it was a nice one. Public land in WI gets hit hard during the firearms deer season, and any deer with 8 points or more is a rarity—especially one like this. My next order of business was to correct my mistakes from the last buck, and make this one count. I could see the buck limping, and originally I thought it was from a rifle, however with no shots from the area this morning, I was at a loss. With more important things to think about, my attention went back to finding an opening. Marking a clear spot next to a large oak, I set the camera on the spot and started following the buck with the crosshairs. As it cleared the last stick, I launched the 270 gr Powerbelt through the football sized opening. White smoke obscured my view, just for a moment and to my horror, the buck took 3 steps and stopped to look around. He looked confused, probably as confused as I looked up in my tree. Had I missed? The shot felt so good!!! After what seemed like minutes (although upon later review , turned out to be a few seconds) the buck started to wobble, and in no time, went down for good.
After a quick reload, I climbed down the tree, and approached the fallen buck. The Powerbelt had flown perfectly, and passed behind both shoulders while breaking several ribs. A half an inch worth of hair lay on the snow on each side of the spot of the shot, along with a generous spattering of blood. After examining the skinned buck, it was obvious that the bullet had expanded nicely, and continued through the deer, leaving a nice wound channel for blood trailing (should I had needed it). Perfect performance in my book. CVA Optima Pro .50 and 270 gr Powerbelts one smooth shooting combination!
Dan Mortensen
Campfire Stories Field Staff/Editor
Dan Mortensen Hunts with His New CVA Optima Part 3 of 4
Day 3
At the crack of 10 am the next day my rear was planted on the bench with my new silver beauty on the bags. Starting with 80 gr, I worked my way up to 120 grains, making small scope adjustments along the way. After about the 3rd 120 gr charge, I could see my groups hovering about 1.5” above the bull at 50 yards. The half inch holes seemed to cover the 6” target, nicely clustered together in a pattern that left one to only guess as to how many bullets passed through that crater just above the red dot.
After firing 3 shots (with no barrel cleaning I might add) I snickered to myself, “The Campfire guys will be impressed at this 5 shot group,” as I stared down at the cloverleaf in the target. “Those guys were never good at math, I should just tell them this was ten shots!”
Ok, time to clean the gun. I took the forend screw off, and pulled the stock off, then opened the breech, which releases the barrel from the butt stock end of the gun. Using the brush and the cleaning jag with a few patches, the gun was clean in about 5 minutes. The tool-less breech plug was a joy to work with, and was also easy to clean after a good soaking in the solvent.
Any whitetail in this state, (or any state for that matter) would be no match for 270 grains of backstrap slaying platinum fury. Those half inch holes looked very impressive, and as equally as impressive was the pattern in which they were huddled together. The next test would come in the whitetail woods, the following weekend.
Dan Mortensen
Chetek, WI
Campfire Stories Field Staff/Editor
Dan Mortensen Hunts with His New CVA Optima Part 2 of 4
Day 2
Flash forward 24 hours. I anxiously tear open the package like I was a 3 yr old at Christmas. The gun seemed to mount well to the cheek, and balanced well. I took it all apart to give it a thorough inspection (which strangely enough I have been doing with all my toys since the age of 3) and gave it a good cleaning. Although the black synthetic stock was flawless in appearance, I decided to give it my own personal mark, and with the airbrush I applied a Grey-green coat of Duracoat Firearms finish, as well as some black and silver webbing, to the stock, mounts, and scope.
Perfection!
The integral mounts are sturdy and foolproof, probably the easiest set of mounts I have ever worked with. Once the scope was on the gun, I could really see how well the gun balanced, especially when brought to the shoulder. The first thing in the crosshairs was an old picture of Marilyn Monroe, pasted on my garage wall. Even when faced with such an exciting image at 7x, the old crosshairs seemed to settle nicely on whatever my eye seemed to fancy most.
“This thing is a real shooter,” I thought, referring to the gun. Since it was dark, the firing test would have to come tomorrow, but in the meantime, I got out my old trusty bottle of Hodgdon 777, primers, and the 2 new packs of 270 gr Powerbelt Platinums, and prepared my target.
Dan Mortensen Hunts with His New CVA Optima Part 1 of 4
Day 1
The North Dakota wind was spitting an icy mixture onto my cheek as I climbed down from the tree. My toes, being quite numb (and wet) from the day of hiking cattail sloughs in search of my 
antlered quarry, ached as the blood started to rush back to the tips. As I was nearing the truck, and just about the time I realized the circulation was back to my feet, my cell phone rang in my pocket. It was a call from home…..
” Did you have any luck? Did you see any deer this time?” the Mrs. voice said.
I thought I could detect a bit of sarcasm in her voice, but I often confuse that with affection, so I couldn’t be sure. “No, not unless you are talking about avoiding frostbite.” I replied.
“Your gun came today. What do you want me to do with it?”
I thought I could sense a bit of excitement in her voice, I know I was excited. “The Gun” she referred to was a .50 caliber CVA Optima, provided to myself and the rest of the Campfire Stories staff to test, hunt with, and then blog about on the CVA site. As the image of the sleek stainless synthetic profile danced in my head, I quickly compiled a list of items to answer her previous question.
“First, give it a good cleaning. Inside and out. Get the Durasight mounted up, and put on that 2x7 Nikon that I have laying down on the bench. Maybe tomorrow morning when the baby is sleeping you can fire a few of the 270 gr Powerbelts with about 100 gr of Triple 7 and get me on paper?
Silence on the other end.
“No, dummy, where do you want me to put it?” She replied with a little sigh that this time could not be mistaken for anything but disgust.
“Uh, oh, just put it in the basement. I’ll be home tomorrow to get it all ready.”
Even with her disappointing sigh could not take away from my excitement. Any day that a shiny new gun shows up on your doorstep is a great day!
Dan Mortensen
Chetek, WI
Campfire Stories Field Staff/Editor
A Tale of a Monster Buck With a CVA Accura Rifle by Brady Hartgrave of Manchester, Iowa
Editor’s Note: Most of the time when you tell the same story from two-different perspectives, the reason is there’s a difference of opinion as to what actually happened. However, in this tale told twice in our CVA blogs, you’ll read the story of a grandfather and a grandson who have created the memory of a lifetime that neither one was expecting on a day afield with the CVA Accura at the end of September, 2010.
This deer hunt in September, 2010, was my first deer hunt. My name is Brady Hartgrave, and I’m 10-years old. I was hunting with my grandpa, Tim Williams, at his farm during the youth season in our state. My grandpa told me the time had come for me to take a deer. We were hunting in my grandpa’s hunting shack, 20-feet up in the air. My grandpa just had bought his .50 caliber CVA Accura and thought it would be cool if I took my first deer ever with it. We were up in the shack for at least half an hour when my grandpa saw a doe and a fawn. He told me to get the gun ready to shoot the doe. I put the Accura up on the edge of the hunting shack, but when I looked where the doe was, behind her I could see a big buck. Since my grandpa couldn’t see the buck, he got the binoculars. When he saw the buck, he didn’t say anything. However, he told my mom later after the hunt that when he spotted the buck in the binoculars, he said, “Holy crap, that’s a big one,” to himself. But when he started talking to me, he said it wasn’t a very-big buck and told me not to look at the antlers but instead to look at the buck’s shoulder.
“Brady, this buck is just a little one, but you can take him,” my grandpa said. So, I took three deep
breaths, made sure I wasn’t shaking and aimed right for the buck’s shoulder like Grandpa had told me to do. When I shot him, the buck dropped right where he was standing. Grandpa told me later that the buck was 100-yards away. I was using a riflescope. When I saw the buck go-down and watched him kicking the grass, I was about to pee my pants. Grandpa didn’t know that I’d dropped the deer. Although he said he thought the deer had run away, I knew I’d dropped the buck. I could see the grass moving on the ground when the deer kicked it. We climbed out of the hunting shack, and Grandpa said he wanted to reload the gun. Then if the buck started moving or got-up, I could shoot him again. When we moved over to where the deer was laying, I saw he wasn’t moving. I laid the CVA Accura rifle down, and then my grandpa could see the deer too. I was wearing a backpack, and my grandpa pulled that backpack off. He started hugging and kissing me and all that, and I hugged my grandpa’s neck. I was really amazed, at my grandpa and at the buck deer. Grandpa announced, “Brady, you’ve got a BBD – a big buck down.” A lot of people at my school asked if I was the person who shot that big buck, and I’d answer, “Yeah, that was me.” When a friend of mine who’s been hunting deer much longer than me saw the picture of me with my buck, he said, “Holy crap, that’s a big buck. That’s a buck of a lifetime.”
I’m going to get my buck mounted. Now I want to start hunting with my grandpa some more, but he’s started joking with me and saying, “Brady, I’m not taking you hunting anymore, because I’ve never shot a buck that big.” However, Grandpa doesn’t mean what he’s saying. He’s never even seen that buck on his trail cameras before, and he’s got trail cameras out everywhere on his farm. I keep telling my grandpa, “I got a bigger buck than you, ha, ha, ha!”
My grandpa took his cell phone and started calling a lot of people to tell them about my big deer. My grandma came out to see my buck, and she also couldn’t believe how big it was. The buck weighed about 300 pounds and had 21 points. I think they said he scored 196 points or something on Boone & Crockett.