El Chapo

Doing it like that seems tremendously unfair and to send the wrong message. If it can't be done with calibrated equipment and for everyone, it shouldn't be done at all.

I guess I never really considered that to be an actual chronograph procedure because 1) it is not required at any level of match and 2) it doesn't really include any safeguards to ensure the equipment is reliable or even the testing is reliable. Which is probably why I have never seen a chrono at any SASS competition. An effective test procedure requires that scales and chronos be calibrated and usually multiple units are used to ensure accuracy. Nobody wants to ruin a major match for someone based on faulty information. I did pucker a little bit when my ammo only went 127 at my most recent match though. Chronoed 134 at home, and 133 out of another 9mm on Friday, only to barely make it on Saturday. I bet I won't do that again. That was with calibrated scales, two radar based chronographs, and a longer barrel!

I sure wish we had a procedure in the rules.

My Ariats (which I bought because they have a spur ledge) are as sneaker based as they get. They are boot shaped objects, yet they look like traditionally constructed cowboy boots as much as anything. Packers are also legal in any category, and while conventionally constructed, they aren't "movie cowboy" boots by any stretch. And there are a ton of leather or faux leather sneakers that people wear all the time, just pick a color leather comes in. I had knee surgery a few years ago so I feel your pain.

There are no wild bunch footwear requirements other than that "athletic shoes" and "combat boots" are not allowed.. There is no rule that boots are required. And in most of CAS, there are no footwear requirements other than these two stipulations, either. Many people wear sneaker based shoes and nobody says anything.

I run a 19 pound hammer spring as I have had light strikes with CCI primers with a 17, only with large pistol though. 17 pops everything in small pistol.

My combinations are the choice of Single Stack and IPSC Classic division shooters in something like 60 countries. There were something like 230 shooters at the (all 1911) match I was at in Mesa the weekend before EoT, I would be willing to bet that not a single one of them had a 16 pound recoil spring in their gun. And the PF there is 165 for major (USPSA) and 170 in IPSC.

Both of those are much hotter than I will be loading. That's about where I am now with my current load, I run a 14 pound spring with that. Most everyone was running 12.5 and even 10 pound springs in .40 S&W limited guns 20+ years ago with 180s at 950+. My slide was lightened, many are not though. I have been running a 14 pound spring with 170+ PF ammo for 40,000 rounds through my .45 without breaking anything. Basically nobody in IPSC or USPSA is running a 16 pound spring, that is the spring for factory 195 pf ammo. Going down from a 14 to a 12.5 is a small jump for me. I run a 10 pound in a 9mm with 130 pf ammo, 12.5 is the next step up from there. A 16-17 pound spring is massive overkill for 150 PF ammo. Maybe not enough to cause the gun to short stroke (but maybe), but like most factory guns, massively oversprung. Literally the first thing I do when I get a 1911 is remove all the springs and replace them with lighter ones. A stiffer spring stores more energy in both directions, which goes right into your wrists in recoil and slams the front sight down when the slide closes.

The benefit to a lighter weight bullet is to get more slide speed at the same power factor. 150 pf is pretty low for 45 Auto. I am going to try some 200 grain bullets this year for that same reason. I have had much better luck with round nose bullets in my 1911s, so if my 200 grain SWCs don't have the reliability I'm hoping for, I will be shooting a true 230 grain round nose bullet, which is historically what I've shot in Wild Bunch. I am going to be backing them down a bit as the ammunition I was shooting last year was loaded to ~170 pf. I had backed it down some from my typical load but I'm going to lighter springs and a significantly lighter load this year and dropping down to a 12.5 pound recoil spring. If you're shooting a stock 1911 with a 23 pound main and 16 pound recoil spring, you're going to want to load to a higher power factor, as the 1911 is designed for 195 power factor ammunition. I recommend the fastest powder you have in inventory, in this case, Titegroup, although many people say not to use it with coated bullets. I have not ever loaded Titegroup in anything so take this advice for what you paid for it. I was using Clays powder last year, I may continue to do that if I have enough left or switch to Clean Shot or WST.

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.