i wouldn’t for sure swamp .
see even early on CVA was importing parts from jukar /Adesa
the CVA mountain rifles with the Made in USA stamp were suposed to be their flagship line , were very good shooters and originally sold for as much as a Remington or Ithaca .
thats why you see these still holding there value today .
but in reality even their locks were made by Adesa
myself i have even seen what IMO were kit rifles with the Made in USA stamping . But the parts are clearly Spanish and sometimes even stamped so .
We should also be frank here in our understanding of CVA .
a lot of what is known is frankly speculation or knowledge from those of us that have dealt with CVA through their existence .
Take the Douglas and Sharon barrels . are we 100% sure they made these barrels . Nope .
As I understand it , The owner of CVA Dave silk had?
I believe Don Krammerer build the proto type of the first CVA mountain rifle .
By this time CVA was already purchasing rifles from Spain .
But CVA was known for short product runs and when the MADE IN USA mountain rifles came out Douglas was near the end of their barrel making .
As I understand it Sharon took over and finished the production or CVA bought the reminder of the production . But even this is speculation because we just don’t have the records to say for 100% certainty as that was at the end of the MT rifles production run
Where we run into trouble is that CVA didn’t keep real good records of just who in the US was supplying them for a time .
What I can tell you though is that the early Mt rifles should have a barrel marked Made in the USA and the patch box should have 4 screws holding it in . later runs have only 2 screws on their box and some have no country of origin stamped on the barrels .
Even the RR thimbles are different in that early rifles carried a milled type of steel thimble . Later runs were cast
Myself , I believe these to have been made in spain , even though they don’t state it
The other thing that is not commonly understood is where the CVA rifles come from which are pre 1971 . The reality of it though is that Connecticut valley arms can trace its roots clear back to Eli Whitney not just to 1971 so its possible that earlier then 1971 someone else was using the name
Still though the basic dirt of it all is that CVA had so many different owners . Different production runs , limited production runs that all we can really do is try and piece together the information we do have . Thus every now and then what we know changes as some new piece pops up.
but for now i would say that if one doesnt know and the barrel isnt marked , its probably a safe bet that its spanish if its a CVA