CVA Cascade .223 Rem review: a Bergara-built stalking rifle for £795

We all love a bargain, and not all of us want to spend thousands of pounds on a rifle, plus scope and so on, when all you need is a reliable, accurate gun that is designed to perform at its best out in the field.

Most manufacturers offer an entry-level gun, but the CVA Cascade range, brought to the UK by Edgar Brothers, despite its US CVA heritage actually emanates from Spain. It is designed and made in Spain by Bergara, which is not a bad thing. To prove its credentials the barrel is stamped “Made in Spain”, unlike its rimfire version, which is designed in Spain but made in Turkey.

What you get is all Bergara’s pedigree for great barrel making distilled into a no-frills yet still very relevant hunting rifle with a synthetic stock, adjustable trigger, detachable mag, Cerakote finish and Picatinny rail. With available calibres from .223 to .30-06 listed by Edgar Brothers, this Cascade model is equally at home shooting vermin as it is hunting deer on the hill, field or woodland.

This Black version with synthetic stock is priced at £795, although it is also available in two other finishes to suit your needs – hunting olive drab green (ODG) and Wideland camo. All coming with an MOA accuracy guarantee, these new CVA Cascade rifles are certainly worth a look if you are on a budget.

CVA Cascade specification

Prices are RRP at the time of publication and may have changed since.

The Bergara action and bolt

The action is the obvious place to start. Built by Bergara, it is rounded in profile with thick wall diameters for strength, and beds to the stock not via bedding material but via aluminium pillars for the stock screws, to avoid stock compression. Up top is a long one-piece Picatinny rail of 6½in and, as with the barrel, it wears a super-tough black Cerakote finish, both practical and smart.

Controls are simple and better for it as, if you are like me, you sometimes need to get a shot off super quick when woodland stalking, and I can’t be bothered with fancy safeties and paraphernalia, to be honest. The straight bolt handle is long enough to operate without hitting the scope, due to its 70-degree lift height, yet secure and big enough to manoeuvre with its integral teardrop knob.

It’s a chunky old bolt with a solid, non-fluted form except for the cutaway guide rail and the three locking lugs having a recessed rear profile yet possessing the same diameter as the bolt body for extra-smooth progress through the action raceways.

A Remmy-style small inset extractor claw is ample, ejection is via a powerful sprung plunger inset into the bolt face, and a red cocking indicator protrudes from the metal shroud when the bolt is cocked. I prefer the two-position side safety for simplicity, and at the rear it disengages the sear but allows the bolt to traverse.

How good is the CVA Cascade trigger?

Trigger-wise, it’s a pretty good unit – being Bergara-made – and although adjustable from 2lb to 4lb, its single-stage factory setting of 1lb 11oz was super crisp and really surprised and delighted me in equal measure. Although it was on the light side of the adjustment range, I left it alone as it felt right on this rifle and certainly helped with the small group sizes.

Feeding the Cascade was again made easy by the all-polymer detachable magazine that complements the plastic trigger-guard and mag well, so there are no problems with rusting, and it fed its five-round payload of .223 rounds flawlessly too. The magazine release is an inset sprung catch, which was easy to locate and no issue even with gloves.

Barrel and Cerakote finish

Barrel material is 4140 carbon steel, offering a slender sporter profile finalising at 0.700in diameter and a well-cut 5/8 UNEF thread with a recessed muzzle crown. There are no fancy flutes, although there is provision for open-sight fitment, which is unusual these days.

Cerakote finishes are really the way to go on modern sporting arms, as their microscopic bonding to the steel achieves a super-strong, scratch-resistant finish as well as an almost impenetrable coating against moisture – just what one wants on a rifle like this, which will probably have a hard life out in the field. Black-coated, this barrel is Bergara class, so it’s going to shoot well, isn’t it? And this 20in was a good length ballistically for the .223 Rem calibre tested.

The polymer stock

Stock-wise, again it is no frills but more than practical – handy and lightweight best describes the black, colour-impregnated moulded polymer stock. It’s a tad hollow-sounding in the rear section – filler would dampen this – but I like the non-biased aspect of its construction, benefiting both left- and right-handed shooters alike. The length of pull was 13¾in, but the removable rear spacers and soft rubber black butt pad can be altered to your own liking.

Extra grip is afforded by slightly raised moulded-in panels on the pistol grip and fore-end, but in truth the chequering per se is pretty small, low and superficial. However, the barrel free-floats by a good margin, so when a bipod is fitted via either one of the Q/D sling swivel studs provided, you will not suffer from bipod bounce ruining your groups.

How accurate is the CVA Cascade in .223 Rem?

It’s nice to use a different calibre from the normal 6.5 Creedmoor and .308 Win of late, and as I was roe stalking in Scotland, the small-calibre .223 was not only legal but also super versatile for vermin.

So, the Hornady lead-free 35gr NTX Superformance loads, although not deer-legal, were fast from the 20in barrel, at an average for three shots of 3,841fps/1,147ft/lb energy. Accuracy was right around the MOA mark, with two close and one off.

The next three were lead-cored deer loads – that is, above the 50gr minimum weight for roe in Scotland – with the Norma Tipstrike 54gr bullet achieving sub-MOA groups of 0.95in at a velocity of 3,044fps/1,111ft/lb energy.

Best accuracy went to the RWS Soft Point 55-grainers that clustered three shots into 0.65in at a good velocity of 3,181fps/1,236ft/lb – more than the Norma, and with a heavier bullet.

Finally, a really good all-rounder and well-priced factory load was the Geco Express 56gr, zipping along at an average of 3,270fps/1,330ft/lb, again with MOA accuracy. So, all in all, pick up any of the above factory loads and this Cascade is MOA accurate. I did shoot the CVA at 200 yards with the RWS rounds and again achieved groups of 2in to 2½in, which is great for a rifle at this price point really.

A Scottish roebuck with the Cascade

For the roebuck stalk I plumped for the RWS 55gr loads and, with the HQS Hunter XS sound moderator fitted reflex-style – only increasing the overall length by 5in – and a 2–12x50mm Opti H scope, I headed to Scotland.

With all this ridiculously hot weather, the rut had been early and largely under cover, so the big bucks were done and resting in the thistles unseen. However, I had been trialling a new PARD Osprey 4K binocular set and spotted at dawn a lone small cull buck bedded down on a hillock by the lochside.

I eased the Cascade to be cradled between the arms as I needed to weave slowly through the tall grasses and hemlock. As a clearing appeared at only 32 yards and the first legal rays of sunlight hovered over the still waters of the loch, I rested the CVA silently, released the safety and sent the RWS projectile straight through the buck’s neck.

The Cascade was wet and covered in pollen and muck from the stalk, but a quick wipe-over and, hey presto, good as new – that’s why a cost-effective, accurate gun can be very practical too. Optically, the Opti H scope was a nice change from all the 4K digital units and pleased me with its old-school, tight-budget approach, and I have to say I was very impressed with the HQS Hunter’s noise reduction, as it allowed me to see the shot hit the roe, with its recoil-damping effect too.

Our verdict

The CVA Cascade proves you don’t need to spend a lot of money to achieve a decent, reliable, accurate, weather-resistant stalking rifle, and it’s a practical solution if one is on a budget – it certainly helps with Bergara’s ‘influence’. You can knock it about, not worry too much with regard to stalking with it out in a rainstorm, and focus on the stalk and not on damaging your rifle, as the CVA Cascade is reliable and accurate when you need it most.