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I don't shoot WB any longer. Not because of any dispute with the rules, but because matches are not convenient to me. So I shoot Historic 3 Gun. But, shoot consistent with SASS rules, as nothing in H3G sez I can't. Although I do happen to like starting a stage in condition one. All of my magazines have welded flat baseplates, except one, a stainless Kim-Pro which has a flat removeable baseplate. But, then again, I learned to manipulate a 1911 during VN, using issue guns and GI magazines. Frankly, if you need to rely on a baseplate pad, whether it's leather, plastic, aluminum, steel, rubber or banana peels, you're relying on a crutch. Learn to seat a flat plate magazine. Tune your magazines to seat properly in your 1911 and your need for a extended pad goes away. Sloppy magazine control demands the use of a pad. By demanding pads, you're admitting to being a sloppy magazine handler. Much like the Frontiersman category in SASS cowboy matches... WB was never intended to be as "easy" as shooting a 1911 in other sports. Why should it be? What would be the draw for truly dedicated 1911 fans. If you enjoy shooting other gun games with a 1911 where the use of a basepad is allowed, mastering magazine control without one will not hurt your performance in those other games. Frankly, I don't recall any of you relatively new folks here when the fight was to end the "cowboy w/a 1911" era of 5 round maximums in magazines. Using what is legal in another shooting sport to justify your stance on what you think should be legal in SASS WB is disingenuous at best, at worst, whiney, cry-baby bull spit. Go ahead, take the high road, being disengenuos. Wild Bunch is based on a movie released in 1969, depicting events in 1913... Dig up a still of a 1911 with a base pad in that movie, then maybe your request has some merit... but be advised, it has the same chance as getting Broomhandle approved. But, maybe I overstep?

The requirement is "magazines must be standard length" and other references to a "baseplate." Magazines that use slide on basepads are longer than normal magazines. Magazines that use screw on basepads are welded baseplate magazines and would be WBAS without the pads. The magazines I'm talking about, which are commonplace in ALL other types of shooting that use 1911s, do not have any kind of baseplate. If there was any rational reading of portion of the rules that let me use my Tripps with Dawson basepads, this whole thread wouldn't need to exist.

Since i was there at the beginnings of SASS, if not cowboy action itself... I'll let you in on a little, well-known fact at the time. The founders of SASS, aka the "Wild Bunch", were tired of the equipment race that had inundated IPSC. One of their stated goals was not to let Cowboy Action become the equipment race IPSC had become. Short stroked rifles became the norm before they were recognized as such. Most of the rules in cowboy action are in place because someone over stepped the bounds of good sportsmanship. I.e., "if it ain't against the rule, I can do it." And while you say I am being dishonest by preferring something that is disliked by someone else, I would say, please look in the mirror. We just happen to be looking at the issue from opposite sides. I happen to like the game as it was originally governed. 45ACP, .40+ caliber for the rifles... and while I detest the 1897, I didn't moan and cry about having to buy one to play the game. And it wasn't because I dislike pump shotguns... I happen to absolutely love my Remington 870 Riot gun, skeet gun & Wingmaster. But, if I had whined and cried about not being able to use it, and went about claiming it should be allowed 'cause I could use it in 3-Gun... that would be disingenuous. Instead, I went out and bought a couple, 3. When the mdl 12 was approved, I thought, let me give this a whirl and bought one. Mine must not be the best example, as... shhh... I prefer the '97. Let us simply agree to disagree on the base pad issue. If you want to lobby the TG's about changing that , keep it out of the Traditional categories. And lest you think I'm simply anti-base pad, I had to remove several rubber base pads from magazines so they'd comply with the rule at the time... My EDC is a Combat Commander, with its own set of magazines which kept those same ~¼" rubber base pads I removed magazines destined for WB use. I fully recognize their utility and aid to recharging the pistol. But... WB ain't practice for a life n' death encounter. It's a game. As a former sworn peace officer, I carried several different firearms in that career, adapting to them and adapting them to my preferences. However, gun games are not that. Each gun game has its own set of distinctive rules and norms... as well they should, otherwise they become simply mundane... My 3-Gun 1911 has a beavertail, extended thumb safety, slide release and a compensator, along with a stash of 8 round magazines with base pads of various sizes and contours. Nothing in WB precludes an IPSC shooter from participation, simply gives they a reason to buy another gun and develop additional skills. Nothing about trigger time in any gun sport is wasted in another gun sport. God bless.

NOT! Read this excerpt from Ed. 1 of the Wild Bunch Shooter's Handbook: (listed under both Traditional & Modern requirements. In Sept of 2013 this was amended to read: Are ya pickin' up on a trend here? That wording remained in place until 2022. 13 years after the initial rules were established. Emphasis added... Frankly, be glad that you're now allowed a 1/4" of a "natural" material as a base pad.

Results from this weekends NYS Championship. Congratulations to the NYS champs, The Outlaw Duelin’ Dawn and @Montague Kid Top overall Prickly Pear and James Samuel Pike 2026 Muster at Fort Misery .pdf

You sure whine a lot about everything! Why do you shoot Wild Bunch if you dislike it so much?

Just about every shooter in Wild Bunch uses a 1/4 inch, leather, baseplate cover on their mags. WBAS SHB PG 12 "A base pad may be added to the magazine if it meets the following requirements: it must be made from natural leather material only. It must be no larger than the contour of the base of the magazine. The total thickness of the pad may not extend more than ¼” beyond the original base plate." Mernickle sells them by the 10 unit lot 1911 Wild Bunch Mag Pads – Mernickle Custom Holsters You don't have to use the metal baseplates bare, but you can't use plastic. Darkmoor Armory motto "death before plastic"

I don't know how Ruger shop "repaired" the ejector retaining pin without just putting a new one in. Straightening one or filing off burrs on one at the repair shop would be more expensive than a new pin that costs Ruger almost nothing. Just about the same story with the ejector itself. They must have replaced barrel due to a manufacturing defect. If they found damage from reloads, I expect you would have been charged. Their shooter-unfriendly "No Reloads" policy has been around for several decades, and routinely ignored. good luck, GJ

I don't have anything to do with the WB rules, as I was Retired/fired from the job a few years ago, but I will add a little thing that hasn't brought up. SASS as an orginaztion does NOT allow any plastic parts on any firearms where you can see them. (exception handgun grips)So plastic base pads fall outside any SASS organized competetion rules.

44wcf is rifle As for the other stuff you rant about. When the game was created, the materials and supplies that were available at that time were used. Note, the WB Movie was filmed in 1969. If you don't like the rules and regulations of SASS WBAS, please, contact your TG and see if they can be changed.

Glad you got things to work, and I see you ended up with a fairly conventional powder and a proper crimp diameter. In the long run you might want another tenth of a grain of powder just to make sure in all weather you exceed power factor. Clean gun every match and practice session - it's the key to keeping a good load and a good gun running. The OAL that works for a bullet design is highly dependent upon the nose shape. For example, my 200 grain truncated cone nose loads feed perfectly at 1.180" OAL. Nothing beats testing - except practice and shooting matches. So, sounds like you are ready to do both!! good luck, GJ

Another great match!! A big thank you to all the Circle K folks who put in the hard work to make this event what it is.

Possibly the mags you are referring to is the Kimber Kim Pro magazines. They come with standard flat base pads that are legal in WB. I've been using them for years. Easy peasy to take apart and clean There are optional thin and thick base pads that can be attached with provided screws. Marshal Stone

Where did you get the idea that the mags had to have a welded baseplate? kR

He might be referring to the Western States Single Stack Championship at Rio Salado, February 18, 2026. There were 224 shooters finish the match, of which, 73 were in "Classic .45acp". The others were some other version of single stack pistol Western States Single Stack Championship 2026 | PractiScore

Y'all have really shown me why so many parents have gone to home schooling. I really hope you're not in any instructor position, because you suck at it.

You should also show up to a match and I'll show you how to shoot wild bunch, without my modern magazines.

You are nothing but a whiny cry baby!!! You think the world should change to please you, that is childish and plain rude!!!!!

You know guys, I'm not a moderator on this forum anymore but I think this thread has run it's course. 3 pages to answer a simple question is enough. It has turned into an opinion piece. How about tucking your opinions aside and go shoot??

I don't really care for stainless but the mags I'm using now are stainless because that's what was available. It's really just a vanity thing, I don't think either material is superior or works better; stainless is perhaps easier to keep clean because you can see when it's dirty. I don't think you'll see a difference in the feed lips holding up on stainless vs. regular steel, the heat treat probably matters more with regard to that. I have never really had a problem with my 1911 mags holding up, I did wear out a set of 9mm mags over a 10+ year period but I shot many thousands of rounds through them in that time. 45 mags have generally been good for me although after about 2012, I stopped shooting 45 completely except for wild bunch now. I have a set of Wilson Combat mags for WB and a set of Tripps. Both work in my gun, but I like that the Tripps have feed lips that hold the round for longer as the slide cycles, which is why I switched to them. I know some prefer other mags and I hope to try some others eventually. In USPSA, I used Chip McCormick mags from about 2004-2008, then I switched to Tripp Research mags and I have been using those since. When I started WB I bought a set of Wilsons because they were on sale and this year, after comparing them to my USPSA 45 mags that I have had forever, I got a set of GI style Tripps for WB and shot two matches with them over the last two months. My gun feeds with both but I think my gun feeds better with the Tripps because they release further forward. I loaned my gun and mags to another shooter last month and he shot the Wilsons and I shot the Tripps just so we didn't have to trade mags back and forth; neither of us had any gun related issues. I have not had a whole lot of problems with feed lip tuning in 1911s nor having them go out of spec, contrast that with 2011 mags that have a lot of problems feeding and mag tuning is required. Because of that, I don't know the feed lip dimensions that are ideal for 45 Auto, I haven't moved mine. In your case I'd measure all your mags at the front and back of the feed lips and set the dimensions, to start, at the smallest numbers you see among your mags as long as that one fed reliably. I bet you find that a few of your mags are a little wider at the front and release earlier, which in my experience, all my Wilson mags release earlier than I'd like, not because they are bent but because it's part of their design to have shorter feed lips than my other mags. If your tightest mag feeds reliably, just set them all to that number. You'll know right away if they are too tight because the round will hit the feed ramp too low and it may cause feeding issues. That's why I don't recommend going any tighter than that, just set them to exactly 1x your tightest mag and test fire. Tripp calls the situation you're experiencing "mag squirt" and some very minor adjustment to your mags will likely restore normal functioning for a long time. Write down the numbers that work and check them once a year and you'll be good.

Why should it be? Because that's the only way we're going to save Wild Bunch from dying. Considering SASS was born out of IPSC and founded by IPSC shooters, I think "disingenuous" is a bit of a stretch. That's a pretty despicable way to refer to someone who simply has a different preference than you. There is nothing fundamentally dishonest about preferring something other than what you prefer. There were no beavertails, bomar sights, ambidextrous thumb safeties, dovetail sights, frontstrap checkering, and a laundry list of other permitted modern 1911 features in 1913 nor in the Wild Bunch film. To suggest that is the standard, is, in a word, disingenuous. We have a modern category that is obviously not limited to what is in the film or what existed in 1913. This one small rule difference isn't going to be made different by that. Until you dig up an example of a 1911 with any of these features in the movie, I'll regard your opinion as simply uninformed about what we're doing at Wild Bunch matches, because plenty goes on there that is not in the film. I really hope someday we can apply some common sense for the rules for this game. We are doing ourselves a massive disservice by not trying to compete with other shooting sports, especially because the number of people who want to compete with any iron sight pistol drops more and more every day. The Single Stack division is, at present, about 5% of USPSA. If we can't all get along, we might find ourselves with a world that has neither one. A lot of CAS shooters don't care for wild bunch and a lot of match directors won't give us equal recognition. If we can't ally with other SASS shooters nor other shooters from other 1911 shooting sports, what do we have left? I think I know the answer to that.

What does "floating around in the breach" mean? It is not uncommon for 1911s to lock back with one round in the magazine, and for that, you may have to adjust the fit of your slide stop to the magazines you're using if that's happening. If your feed lips are out of spec, it's also not uncommon for a round to "squirt" out of the top of the magazine sometimes, although that is more common with 9mm magazines than 45. What exactly is it doing? If I understand your symptom correctly, it sounds like a feed lip problem to me. The easiest way to diagnose is to identify the problem magazines and compare feed lip dimensions.

Now on second look at the packing slip that came back with my SR1911 and a call to Ruger’s CS, they actually replaced the barrel as well as repairing the ejector and ejector retaining pin. They could not tell me why the bbl was replaced so maybe it had nothing to do with my reloads?

Well, I got my SR1911 back from Ruger Today after stripping two of the grip panel screws because they were too tight from the factory. They also replaced the ejector and ejector pin, presumably bent from my early jamming issues. I took it to the range today and put all 58 of my most recent reloads through it without a hitch. What changed? 1) met a guy at our club shooting a Taurus PT1911 like mine and when we compared loads I noticed that he had way less crimp than mine. When I backed off the crimp, my next set of reloads shot thru my Taurus w/out a hitch. 2) I switched to a 200 grain LNRFP from Slippery bullets with a longer ogive. 3) today as I was case checking my rounds, in my 100 round checker. They all fit just fine but when I flipped the checker over I noticed that about 1/2 didn’t fall out. Same thing when I plunk tested then in the bbl. They dropped in but not out without shaking them out. Soooo…I reduced the amount of crimp a bit further to get the diameter to 0.470” and shortened the OAL to 1.210”. The rounds then gave me that metallic plunk noise when dropped in the bbl and fell right out when the bbl was turned over. The load that appears to be working? S&B brass W/ S&B LPP’s, 4.4 grains of WST powder under a Slippery 200gr LRNFP set at 1.210” OAL. Avg FPS 773 with a 159.9 power factor and a std dev of 34.0 now I’ll go load up several hundred and see if my luck holds! 🤪

Thanks Pard, Think these are the ones I've seen.

Thanks all. And Dave that Tripp P/N has a welded on base pad. The Tripps welded base pads are pre drilled with two holes for installation of after market base pads. Like Dawsons, Ed Brown, Wilson. The Tripp poly/alloy base pads will not fit onto a Tripp welded mag. They are secured with a spring plate, which you can see in the second picture I posted above. I was really hoping that there may have been some "unicorn" Tripp mags. With removable base plates that were standard length. That would make the Tripp's the best. My biggest problem with the welded pad's, are I have several that have been stepped on and the body gets slightly deformed. No proper way to fix then. Now if I could get that pad off, easy repair. Thanks for checking. CC

I did not know Tripp ever made a standard length, flush fit magazine, with a removable basepad. Can you show a picture of it? Or provide the model number off the side of the magazine. Thanks. CC

There is NO REQUIREMENT that magazines have welded base plates. Don't know where you got that from but AFAIK it has never been a requirement.

For all you big bore guys, there is a really nice 38-40 on gunbroker right now....Would make a nice main match Classic Wild Bunch Rifle. https://www.gunbroker.com/item/1180623542 I'd me in if I didn't have one. WK

Thank you to the following sponsors for supporting SASS Presents the Saginaw Showdown 2026 Michigan State Wild Bunch State Championship June 13th and 14th. Winchester Bourbon Mernickle Holsters Steady Eddy Leather Michigan Rattler Leather Flat Water Johnny Boggus Deal Hunters Gold Paparazzi Pahl photography LG Butters Sterling and Engraving Drifters Steel Eagle Grips 1848 Custom boards Red Beard Bullets Frank Stallone Lock Stock and Barrel Auctions Bond Arms 1866 Distillery Saginaw Field and Stream Conservation Club Ajax Bullets

Just out of curiosity where was the "1911" match??? Was it a Wild Bunch Match or some other discipline that used 1911's. Marshal Stone

I am not mad because you don't agree with me, I simply keep pointing out the FDACTS of the situation!!! You keep demanding that SASS change THEIR game to accommodate YOU!!!! You constantly say you don't understand what the rules are about. Time and time again two RO Instructor tell you to take the classes and even point out the PROPER way to get rules modified. You, however, continue with you adolescent whining and tirades against the established rules. It is not just this post, it is every post you are involved with, both here and on the SASS Wire. You are a chronic malcontent!!!!!!

Well, you could alway go over to Historic 3 Gun, they allow any material for base pads, and leave the Wild Bunch shooters alone.

Read the rules, take the SASS RO classes. Then follow the rules, and don't be like El Chapo and expect the rules to be changed to suit you and your wishes. It really is very simple, play the game by the written rules.

It's a totally legitimate question and suggestion, don't be discouraged. But yeah, anytime you tell people that certain ancient standards should be modernized, it's like you kicked the hornet's nest. with many of these people. This isn't the first time or context where you will see this sort of response. Just search "power factor" or "classic" or "open category" around here and read what resulted when there were minor changes to the rules that changed nothing for the people who were already shooting WB.

Because somehow my opinion would be better than yours if I met your preconceived standard? You're the one hurling insults at someone who dares have a different opinion than you.

Despite my best efforts to ask a simple question without causing a battle, I failed. I must say that bickering like this is far worse for the game than any rules or changes. I think anyone reading this who was considering WB has run off like their hair was on fire. And Seth, I’m getting a little slower every day:) see you at the Muster!

Just trying to ascertain your credentials in wild bunch. If you want to be this way, ok, bye.

I stand by my comment!!! Your attitude is counterproductive to the advancement of this game. The game has rules, play by those rules. They evolved after years of people with your attitude, and worse, drove hundreds of shooters away. Misty, and the Board has worked hard to enact changes that MANY shooters were begging for. Shooters are coming back to WB, I became an instructor for WB because I believe in what is being done. Quit acting like a spoiled crybaby, play the game and encourage people to have fun, instead of your constant stream of vitrol you spew because we are not a cookie cutter of every other action handgun game you claim to excel at!!!!!!!!!

I expect that you will also be using paper shotgun shells, because there were no plastic ones in 1913. I assume also that your rifle isn't a .38 Special, .357 Magnum, or .45 Colt because there was no such thing as a lever action rifle in any of those cartridges then, either. Common sense should have prevailed a long time ago on the magazines, just like it did for these things.

Because "elsewhere" is not based on the movie The Wild Bunch. More like Rambo meets Lethal Weapon meets HALO. Different genres. and, as for thickness, stack them, as long as they don't exceed 1/4 inch.

Right, they do that in wild bunch because we have no other options. Virtually everyone shooting 1911s anywhere else is using a mag with an actual basepad. The Mernicle leather pads are unfortunately not 1/4" thick. I made some of my own, and they aren't either. I wish I had a source for leather that thick, even the full 1/4" feels like it'd be an advantage.

Who is everyone else? Nobody but the most dedicated purists and Wild Bunch shooters are using welded baseplate magazines.

I dunno. The 1/4" leather pad seems to work for everyone else.

You have to be on the firing line to determine "breaking the 170." Looking at a video is NOT the way to judge it. I'll trust the eye witnesses who were right there. good luck, GJ

Tripp Research Inc links to Cobra Mag for Tripp Magazines. The 8R-45-RG and the 8R-45-RG-TAC have removable, poly, base pads and offer, removable, alloy base pads. 8 Round .45 Government 1911 Magazine