Bowling Pins

I got to the range and realized I'd forgotten to grab some of the Lucky Gunner-supplied PMC ammo on the way out the door. Fortunately, there was a .50-cal ammo can half full of miscellaneous .45 ball ammo in the trunk.

I was a little worried, because while there's a fair amount of factory Sellier & Bellot, Magtech, and Winchester White Box ammo in there, there's also a bunch of factory reloads from Precision Cartridge and the Brass Kings, back from the lean times of '09.

I won my first heat, and my second one saw me shooting against the guy who'd just won the state International Pistol championship a couple weekends earlier. No pressure.

"Shooter ready?"
*nod*
"Stand by... *TWEET!*"
*click*
Click? What the hell? I ran the slide. Click again. Oh, wait, it's "Tap Rack Bang" and not just "Rack Bang". This time I actually seated the frickin' magazine, visions of Pat Rogers and a certain patch on my backpack dancing in my head, and ran the slide again.

As I laid the sight on the first pin, I risked a side glance at my opponent's table. He already had two down, although one of them was still on the table. I went to work and, thanks to a stoppage he experienced, I almost caught up, but still had one lying stubbornly on the back edge when he knocked his last one off into the grass.

The second bracket I had a good run, making into the semifinals. I may have been bitten by my ammo situation, though, since with two "wounded" pins left on the table, the gun didn't go fully into battery. I slapped the back of the slide and fired, just in time to see my opponent's last pin roll of the table. Since it was the middle of competition, I can't diagnose whether that was the ammo or the gun or what.

In "pin heads", where you shoot the sawn-off heads of bowling pins with rimfires, I got knocked out in my first heat, but the losers of the first heat get put in a Second Chance bracket, and went all the way to the end on that one, winning the position of First Loser.

Had a blast. Will definitely be there for the next one.

S&W Model 610 Classic with hot 200gr handloads in moon clips. This revolver, like .44s and .45s, shoots "Major", as opposed to a .38 revolver or a 9mm pistol, which would shoot "Minor" and have its pins placed halfway back on the table.

On one heat I was helping to set pins while the RO called out the positioning "Table one, Major. Tables two and three, um, Major. And table four is Major, too. All four tables Major."

"'MURRICA!" I yelled.

What looks to be a Springfield Armory 1911, likely worked on by Ray Saltzman at Saltzman Gun Works, knowing the shooter.

Anyhow, I fired a total of 56 rounds of assorted .45ACP through the gun that day, with one failure to go completely into battery. That makes 356 rounds since the pistol was last cleaned or lubricated, with one failure to go into battery on round #356. 1,644 rounds to go.
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