I have fired a lot of firearms and I have to say that my newly purchased CVA Silver Trophy Hunter III is the most fun yet! I spent hours at the range Thursday firing this rifle. It is dead on balls acurate @ 250 yards.
The only problem at first was the actual firing of the rifle. You see it's a flintlock. I have a brown bess and you have to close one eye when firing that rifle because of the pan flash. With this CVA it directs the flash away from you. The rifle has a one second delay in actual firing time.
This rifle presents quite a challenge when hunting deer for the reaction time from pan flash to bullet exiting barrel makes for difficult shooting when the deer moves. I like a challenge though, Unlike some of these folks shooting deer with high powered rifles from 40 yards away, and they are 25 yards away from the 4X4 quad runner that brought them there.
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Flintlocks are a blast! They're the only ignition-type black powder firearms I've owned for the past 25 years!
It sounds like you have something wrong with your lock, though. Your Brown Bess (I have one too) shouldn't have anywhere near a one-second delay, and your new rifle should have a much faster ignition than your Bess... You may have some issues with the bevel of your flint, or how it's mounted, or (quite commonly) with how you prime the pan. If you're using any of the modern synthetic powders, those will cause ignition delays and problems with a flintlock as well. If you haven't already done so, switch to real black powder.
Your accuracy at 250 is how good? What type of groups are you getting? With what type of projectile and powder? Doing that good with a poor-performing lock??? And what type of sights? I can't see the front blade, but if it has a bead along the top it should completely cover a garbage can at 250 yards, which isn't conducive to pin-point accuracy.
It's not a widely-known fact, but a well-tuned flintlock can actually have faster ignition than a percussion lock. The hype over slow-ignition is due in large part to poorly-loaded firearms in historically-themed movies (I loved The Last of the Mohican's, but it had some very inaccurate portrayal of the firearms of that period. Over-primed pans and silk patches, for example). As far as challenge... As someone who shoots flintlocks competitively, the difficulty of accuracy with these weapons is radically over-stated as well. It mainly comes down to how it's loaded, the components used, and just plain good shooting form and technique.
As an example, here's a real-time clip of one of my flintlock's showing a more-realistic ignition sequence. I have it in slow-motion too if anyone's interested (1/2 and 1/4 speed).
