El Chapo

I'd gladly shoot 150 pf out of my rifle and not feel a thing. Now raising the handgun to 175 or more, now we're talking.

I looked at the overall and the top cowboys and top cowboys. 8 classic shooters in the top 20 for men and 11 in the top 20 for the ladies. That doesn't appear to have made much difference, but it remains to be seen with more data.

I think that it's clear by now that's what people thought they wanted. I'm curious to see if the scores are different.

You guys are a bad influence. I want to shoot classic now. Someone needs to sell me another 73.

Dawson Precision makes sights for just about every 1911. Mine is a .090" plain black.

I like my 38 rifle just fine. Maybe I'll even load some 150 pf loads just for fun. The splits will be the same anyway. I'm never going to understand the obsession with that, I guess I'll see this year since there's going to be so many "classic" shooters.

So nothing different.

What were the terms of the open category?

You can buy a 1911 for $300 these days, not sure I have seen a $1000 1911 in anyone's holster at a WB match. My wild bunch gun definitely wasn't $1000, not now nor 22 years ago when I bought it. Pump shotguns are under $500. There are M12s on Gunbroker for $3-400 all the time. Rifle there's a lot of cheaper options, but yeah, a 73 costs more than a thousand bucks. Gen Z put Creed back on the charts 30 years later. Dozens of them were shooting at the match I was at last weekend, which has a similar cost of entry. They're showing up and doing very well. A friend of mine won the USPSA Production Nationals in 2016, I believe he was 18 years old at the time. He isn't quite Gen Z, but he was shooting at 12. Interesting how the goal post moved after I pointed out that your response is not credible. Nobody has marketed it to them, and it's not "cool," so they're not doing it. They aren't having kids, either, the birthrate among them is a fraction of what it was for our generations. I don't know how Creed is getting people who weren't even born when the records came out to come to their concerts, but their concerts are full of people who weren't born when I first heard the songs, which I didn't think were particularly remarkable even then. The youth are the future of everything. If we don't market to them, we're done. Make it "cool" and they'll show up. I shot my first match a few weeks after my 21st birthday when I became old enough to buy a handgun. There's no reason we can't reel them in. I shot more when I was in my 20s than I do now, and I actively try to find the time now compared to then when I just showed up. If PRS, USPSA, NRL22, IPSC, IDPA, ATA, NSSA, and so on can do it, we can, too.

I don't know why people keep saying "it's been tried." How? Gen Z people are on tiktok. They are not reading this (or any) forum. When they were born, the internet already existed. Before they became old enough to have an account on social media, social media exploded and they look at it for 16 hours a day. When's the last time you saw anything related to Wild Bunch on Tiktok? If we are serious about reaching Gen Z and Alpha new members, the marketing has to fit the target audience. I am far from an expert on how to do it, and they're half my age, so they're not in my social network. But until I see a critical mass of young adults who are not at a match with their parents, my response to "it's been tried" is that is nonsense. Whatever was tried didn't work because it didn't aim at the target, it just shot aimlessly out into the world. As for condition 1 and movement, it is absolutely essential. It is the change that will make this into a dynamic and exciting shooting sport instead of a game based on a hybrid between movie reenactment and target shooting. I'm sure the movement especially will come with considerable opposition, because the majority of the people shooting this game came from SASS's other game. That is how it started after all. But if we want our own identity, there is one way forward: make it athletic. It's already fast; people comment all the time about how rare it is to have a clean WB match (I'm proud to have two of them). So the next layer is get people's feet moving. Get the sights bouncing and put some long shots in there. Raise the round counts. We have a whole bay, so it's time to use it.

For there to be real growth, there needs to be people under age 38 entering the sport in significant numbers. 38 is the age of the median American in 2026. If we poached a few dozen more cowboy shooters to throw on their 1911 and shoot WB, that is not growth any more than a few more shooters at a side match is growth. Wild Bunch isn't a side match. Tracking how many people below the median age are coming to shoot with us is a big deal. I was actually signed up for EoT but my wife's schedule changed in January, which allowed us to travel for 3 other matches (two of which I got to shoot WB) that we would have otherwise missed but I had to withdraw from EoT. The intention was for her schedule to change after EoT, but somehow there was a miscommunication. I had signed up in August and to say I was bummed at the time would be an understatement. I don't really know anything about how the stages were constructed at EoT but there's no reason why WB should not be a dynamic run and gun. In the match I just came from on Sunday, the total number of shots was 305 over 14 stages. The winner did it in 227.34 seconds, which means he shot an average of 1.34 rounds per second he was on the clock. We have a gun that can be easily reloaded and shot more, so why not take advantage of that?

What is the median age of a Wild Bunch competitor in 2026 vs. a few years ago? I think that's a more interesting data point than the stuff you're posting. There were 235 shooters at the 1911 match I just came back from in Mesa. Has any Wild Bunch match anywhere ever had 235 shooters?

231 is an excellent choice for 9mm (even better in 9mm than .45 Auto). 4.7-4.8 grains with a Hornady 115 rn at 1.100" puts it at the upper pressure range for 9mm, so I wouldn't push it more than that. The 5.1 grain load exceeds +P numbers. At 4.7 you will be making 136 pf, which is just about perfect. Colt does not use ramped barrels for 9mm 1911s so I would stick to round nose bullet designs. My non-ramped 9mm doesn't like flat bullets at all. I have had really good luck with the Mec Gar magazines recently. Before that I was using Tripp Research magazines for a long time.

Quickload puts the number at 3.2-3.4 grains, which generates about 3,000 PSI of chamber pressure. I doubt any powder is going to burn clean at that pressure.

I don't have one of those either. Although it's mostly because I'm too cheap to buy more holsters. And my holster box is full.

If I was asked, I'd say no, which is why I don't have any singles stacks with optics cuts.

Wish I could, but I'll be at the Western States Single Stack the weekend before, and I didn't think I could swing both. I will still be shooting a 1911 along with 300+ others!

I wouldn't be against loaded starts with the shotgun, too, but yes, primarily the pistol.

I've repeatedly said that I am not on board with all the obsession with the 150 pf but I'm not against it either. If they want me to shoot 200 power factor, I'll do it. It will change nothing. If they'd let me shoot 150 pf ammo out of my .357 rifle, I'd start casting heavier bullets and load the ammo tomorrow. It does not matter. The last time I was chronoed, I went 179. The required PF was 165. Any points I dropped were not from hotter ammo, they were on me. Couldn't agree more that we need to poach from other disciplines. In a way I selfishly hope we don't, because some of those guys are really good. But before that has any chance of success, we need loaded starts and loaded movement. Loading your gun on the clock isn't a sport. I think it can even be dangerous. It kept me away for my first 3 years in SASS. Now I realize how much fun WB is and so I make the best of it. But loading your gun on the clock has got to go. There are precisely zero other shooting sports that start with an empty gun (at least commonly, there are unloaded starts occasionally, and they're universally disliked there, too). I know long time shooters of WB may not like it or think I'm crazy because I keep bringing it up, but it isn't a trivial point. Loading a gun is not a competition and shouldn't be made part of the scored part of any form of competition.

If it doesn't happen, I predict SASS pulling the plug on WB completely someday. This either becomes a dynamic, athletic shooting sport of its own that can poach shooters from other disciplines and outside of the shadow of CAS, or it dies completely. I see no other realistic way forward. I predict also that stage times will be indistinguishable between Classic and whatever we're calling the "new" WB. I don't have a big rifle so I'll be staying put. Not against the Classic thing, just don't see the point of buying another rifle. If I come across a used one, I may be very tempted, however.

Dream big. Now that the guys who wanted 150 pf for rifles got their way, I'm dreaming big. Loaded starts, loaded movement. And after that, 8 round mags.

All of this seems like good news. Maybe the next round we'll get loaded starts and movement.

That is BS too, although I didn't realize either of those were impermissible. Although I don't agree, I will continue to play the game no matter how they make the rules, but the rationale for many of them is lost on me.

I find it very strange that people are so opposed to shotgun makeups. I just don't get it.

If it doesn't fit dry, it isn't going to fit greased. Send that garbage back and follow the instructions of the people above, who told you what tools you'll need to repair your existing magazine tube.