Pin Shoot 2024 ! – Harris Combative Strategies

June 19, 2024 Randy Harris 0 Comments

On Monday June 3rd I made the pilgrimage to Central Lake Michigan to shoot The Pin Shoot. This event was previously known as the Second Chance Pin Shoot in years past and I had wanted to attend this since I first read about it in Shooting Times Handgun Quarterly magazine back in 1988. By the time I was old enough, and in a position to be able to go do it, the event was no longer held , but when they started holding the event again in 2016 my friend Mike Swisher and I decided we were going to go and we finally made it this year.

Randy at The Pin Shoot June 2024

A little explanation of the event is in order for those not familiar with it. The match runs from Saturday to Thursday. There are 2 classes of shooter. Ordinary Standard Shooter and Master Blaster. OSS is what you are classified as until you win an event or finish 2nd in two events and then you move up to Master Blaster. This way the people who have been pin shooting and winning since the 1980s are not directly competing with the folks who have never shot this before. Then there are six “5 Pin Main Events” where you shoot 6 tables of 5 pins with some “hostage” pins interspersed among the pins. The main events are Stock Gun (standard iron sight pistols) , Stock Minor (iron sight pistols in “minor calibers”) , Pin Gun (can have a compensator) , Space Gun can have an optic and a compensator) , CCW (barrel 4″ or less and allows optics) and PCC (Pistol Caliber Carbines allows optics, comps or suppressors) and an assortment of side matches and shoot offs and team events. In fact there are SO MANY events that it was a little overwhelming for us two Pin Shoot newbies. We have shot plenty of competitions in different disciplines (we have both won IDPA State titles in our respective divisions) but nothing quite like this. The ladies who handle the scheduling and getting the shooters ready must be saints for being able to herd cats and deal with all the moving parts.

We arrived at the range on Tuesday afternoon and went to the registration desk to get our shooting times for the events. To our great surprise ( and panic ?

) they would schedule us for about 15 minutes after we got there… even though we did not know exactly where to go or exactly what to do and there was not time for us to get the new shooter orientation. Oh well … if you are going to get wet you might as well jump in the deep end of the pool first…

I shot Minor Stock for my first event using a full size iron sighted Sig 320 and Speer Lawman 147gr 9mm. Mike shot CCW using his carry gun Sig 365X Macro and Fiocchi 115 9mm . Unfortunately while last year you just had to knock the pins down , this year – even in the minor caliber events- you had to knock the pins completely off the table. Uh oh …. We did not get that memo…

So neither of our times ,while not terrible , were not exactly spectacular since we were completely under armed for moving bowling pins off the tables. Knock them down? No problem. Knock them off? That involved more shooting than one round per pin which in this game is what you are trying to accomplish. Oh well at least it was fun…

On the line waiting for the command to put the “Guns on the rail”

Tuesday night they held a pizza party for the shooters at The Side Door Saloon which is a local bar. Mike and I snagged a table and awaited the pizza to be brought out. Soon after we got our table , an older woman came to our table and essentially deposited an older gentleman wearing a Pin Shoot t-shirt at our table and then went on her way. As he talked and told stories I realized that was Richard Davis who is the guy who founded Second Chance Body Armor and who founded the Pin Shoot and acts as the Master of Ceremonies for the match, asking the trivia questions between shooting runs, and calling the match…..“Load your toad , timers ready, guns on the rail, shooters ready” and giving the start signal . So we sat with him for the evening and were regaled with far ranging stories from adventures in Las Vegas to the history of the Pin Shoot event , how he had gotten prizes for the prize table in years past , and how he helped Massad Ayoob write “Hit the White Part” .

Randy with Richard Davis , founder of the Pin Shoot

The next day we rolled to the range and I shot the .22 Pin Head side event ( 7 pin heads 5 yards away with 10 rounds in your pistol) . I shot my suppressed Ruger MK II which of course picked the absolute most inopportune time to malfunction. After that we prepared to shoot the Stock Gun main event. For this one I shot a Springfield Armory Trophy Match pistol loaded with Federal TSJ 230gr .45 ACP . In this event you have 5 pins per table plus 2 hostage pins that you do not want to shoot or knock down. You start with 8 rounds loaded in the gun but reload capacity is unlimited.

For the Stock Gun event the .45 took the pins off the tables easily enough that I did not have to reload on any of the strings of fire- unlike in the Minor Stock and CCW events. If I remember correctly Mike shot a Ruger 1911 in the Stock event. Afterwards I shot the CCW event and unfortunately the 9mm did not do any better on Wednesday than it had on Tuesday and I had a lackluster finish in the event . For dinner we hit Outback and then I got to watch the Boston Celtics win game 3 of the NBA finals.

Shooting the Stock Gun Main Event with Springfield Trophy Match

Thursday rolled around and it was time for my Shotgun and 9×12 side events . Shotgun was 3 tables of 8 pins each and 9×12 was 3 tables of 12 pins with 3 hostage pins spread out between them per table. Shotgun capacity was 8 max in the gun and FULL POWER buckshot is the medicine of choice . For the shotgun I used a borrowed Benelli M2 that I did not get to fire until my first string of fire on the shooting line. It was about that time that I also realized that due to the way they are crimped , only 6 Rio Buckshot shells would fit in the magazine tube! Fortunately the gun’s owner had also given me some Winchester 00 Buck and I ended up having to load 5 Rio and 2 Winchester in the tube and a Rio in the chamber to get 8 in the gun. It is always something….

Knowing I had to beat 3.60 seconds for the 8 pins I went as fast as I could but caught a few unlucky breaks with some fast runs being undone by a rebellious pin here and there refusing to leave the table . This game does involve a degree of luck as pins falling off the top shelf can fall onto a lower shelf and your time does not stop until the last pin hits the ground. A 4.90 was the best clean score I was able to manage which was nowhere near the 3.60 I needed to hit to be competitive. After shooting 72 rounds of full power buck it was time for the 9×12 side match.

Waiting for the command to “Load your toad” at Pin Shoot 2024

My 9×12 runs were still not terrible but were non competitive due to the inability of 9mm to convey enough momentum to quickly clear the tables. If I had known about the rule change before I left home, I would’ve been running my Glock 35 with 180 grain ammo and a 22 round mag for the 9×12 event.

After a BBQ food truck dinner at the range the awards ceremony took place. I had ended up 3rd in the OSS class in the Stock Gun event and ended up winning a gift certificate for Magna Porting a pistol or revolver. I also got my old copy of Hit the White Part (the book about pin shooting co authored by Massad Ayoob and Richard Davis ) autographed and got a pic with Mas and Rich. I also got Richard to autograph my copy of Pin Shooting- A Complete Guide by Mitchell Ota that Davis had also written the forward for that book too.

Massad Ayoob, Randy and Richard Davis at the awards ceremony Pin Shoot 2024

So how did I feel it went? Great. Mike and I had a great time and we marked this off our bucket list. This is arguably the most fun shooting event (other than maybe cowboy action) that I have shot. While I did not finish as well as I had hoped, there is only so much that you can do if you are shooting 9mm and the game requires you to blow bowling pin all the way off the table. I was happy to have a 3rd place finish in the Stock Gun event but I missed my goal of making the Master Blaster classification. Maybe next year ….

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