El Chapo

I load 18 grains of Alliant 2400 and a bullet, no filler. I've loaned the rifle to numerous people who won the matches shooting against me, so I can share that not only has it worked very well, it's worked very well at making me take 2nd place to my own friends with my own rifle.

Major power factor is 165 now in USPSA and IDPA but it wasn't always. The power factor was changed from 175 to 165 a while back (the internet says that occurred in 2000, hardly 40 years ago). IPSC doesn't have one power factor for everything and it isn't 165, it's 170 except for open, where it's 160 (except for divisions that are minor only, where there is no major). So if you thought the 165 was set in stone, it's far from that. So, I propose to all of you who want higher power factor for rifles: why not 195 for the 1911? Factory military ammunition has been 230 grains @ 850 for at least 100 years, aka, a pf of 195. 5 grains of bullseye and a 230 grain bullet was the standard even for our grandfathers. So why not? If we're obsessed with power factor, why not shoot what Browning and God intended?

The traditional 45 ACP is 195 power factor. Can we require that? FWIW: modern is not the "entry" to traditional. I will not be shooting traditional and I have no interest in it, primarily because I don't want to shoot with 1 hand, be banned from having a beavertail, and so on. But if I can shoot a 9mm 1911 in modern, I would be thrilled about that, just so I don't have to load another cartridge for WBAS vs. all my other handgun shooting sports.

We need chrono stages and a chrono procedure in the rulebook before any of that matters.

Well I can tell you this: I absolutely insist on never loading anything lighter than published starting loads and I've been doing this for ~20 years. I definitely wouldn't tell someone else to do something I would never do myself.

I think it's a really bad idea for a new shooter to be deviating from book loads. He needs a faster burning powder, especially for low pressure cartridges like these.

I don't really understand the obsession with the 150 power factor for rifles. It is not appreciably harder to shoot a 150 pf rifle than it is to shoot one with cowboy loads. If we're serious about power factor, it should be 170 or even 180 for the pistols and just leave the rifles alone. A 45 doesn't run well at 150 and everyone already knows there is no chrono and no chrono procedure as it is, so it would just invite rampant cheating. 150 pf for 9mm does not require 160 grain bullets either, there's factory 147 grain loads doing well beyond that already and I could easily boost my basic 147 lead loads that I'm shooting to achieve 1020 fps. They're already going ~950 as it is because even a 9mm doesn't run that great at 125 pf unless it has a pretty light slide. I would completely agree that IF we are going to do an open category, it should allow any caliber 1911. I would take it a step further and it should allow any wood stock pump shotgun as well. Another thing I'd really like to see, which sadly I doubt I will ever see, is being allowed to use modern magazines with plastic basepads. I am not sure what we are achieving by banning the magazines virtually everyone else is using in their 1911s, but I would really like to lose the leather basepads and just use my normal magazine, even if they won't let me use my magwell. Maybe they should make a "classic" or "heavy metal" division for the purists. I might even join them, I have nothing against what they're trying to achieve other than that I think they are focused on the wrong thing. If we want to make Wild Bunch competitive with other shooting disciplines, the most meaningful changes that need to happen are that we need to have loaded starts, loaded movement, and stop banning common modern equipment like magazines. Those changes alone would make WBAS into a dynamic shooting sport that would completely sever it from those who want it to be cowboy with a 1911. Both loaded starts and loaded movement were permitted at Bordertown this year and it was an absolute blast. They called it "Historic 3 gun" rules. I call it "every other handgun sport on earth." But either way, those are the big changes that need to happen for this to become a dynamic shooting sport: loaded starts and loaded movement. Loading your gun is not a sport. Timing people loading their gun is not a competition; it's dangerous.

A pound wouldn't be worth my time, but I'm sure someone will want it. If there was someone out there who had a crate of 8 pound jugs it'd be a different story. The small containers were 10 ounces as well, so if that's what you have, that's closer to a half pound than a pound, really not worth the time. The next time Ramshot Competition is available, I'm probably going to buy 32 pounds of it or more. I could almost certainly load all my wild bunch ammo with it and there's probably not anything better.

There were major issues with getting signed up for this forum for a long time that have supposedly been fixed. That may be why many people talk about WBAS over there. Others may not even realize we have our own forum.

I really don't know why there is so much focus on power factor and further away targets to try to distinguish this from cowboy. Let us move with loaded 1911s and target placement can be made so much more interesting and complex. This is literally the only handgun shooting sport that I know of where loaded movement isn't allowed. Once that rule is relaxed, the sky is the limit. Nobody should care about rifle caliber nor target distance when there is movement. And for the record, I'm totally fine with higher power factor and I see no problem with raising the .45 power factor to 165 or even 175 as 150 is a joke, too, if that is to be our focus.

I need to try to make this match next year. It's a shame it's so close to Bordertown.

What is ROBS?

I take great pleasure in throwing it in the trash. The existence of small primer .45 really irritates me.

Would you mind sending me instructions? I won one in a raffle at Geronimo Trail and have yet to get to it.

Bullseye with a 230 is an excellent combination for 45 Auto. I don't load it but if I had Bullseye, that's what I'd be loading it in. I would not mess with heavier bullets, as the case is too small and pressures can get scary quickly if you do that.

I have an 8 pound jug of Aliant extra lite right now I'm going through as well, but there's a few cautions here. There are no published metallic loads for it that I'm aware of. Also, all Alliant powders are suspended production indefinitely, so once my jug is gone, I may not see any more. Given how scary the pressure spikes could be with it, I would not load it in any metallic cartridge. If I could pick one powder to rule them all, it'd probably be my personal favorite: Accurate Solo 1000. Unfortunately it has been discontinued for about 11 years, so I'm hoarding the last little bit I have. Runner up would be Hodgdon Clays for CAS/WBAS. After that, Alliant Red Dot and Ramshot Competition are two others I've tried that I would load in metallic cartridges and shotgun. Winchester WST works, too.

No real surprises here other than the shotgun misses. I am surprised to see the margin of victory on some of the questions though. Glad to see many people wrote similar comments to the ones I recognize as mine.

If my reading of the text is correct, I don't have to consult anything. It'd be the person claiming I was doing something against a non-existent rule who would bear the burden of explaining what was violated. Since I have enough ammunition for quite a while, I came here to see what others were doing because black powder is fun. I never said you had no grounds to express whatever you want. I asked what your textual support was. What's the call? And on what do you base the call?

Which I would do anyway, 3 dot sights are a terrible distraction. Not sure how those ever became popular.

You haven't answered my inquiry at all. You made a claim: that a cowboy rule that has no bearing on a rule decision as to WBAS governs. What's your authority for that? Because you say so? Because if there's any textual support for that, I can't find it anywhere. You made the claim, so the burden is on you to establish why you think that claim is defensible. My review of the WBAS rules suggests that by oversight or otherwise, the text that appears in the CAS handbook related to that issue and the banning of a certain powder by name is not present in the WBAS rules. WBAS was once a side match, and so all that history no longer matters. It is now its own sport with its own rules and equal recognition, so what was going on when it was a side match within CAS is irrelevant now or it wouldn't have its own rule book.

Do you have any authority for that proposition? It seems like a quite dramatic oversight, but CAS rules do not apply to WBAS and they are co-equals; WB is not inferior or subject to the rules from the other game.

Is there anything banning that in Wild Bunch?

I don't think your read is correct. I also think the fact that we can't agree on how to read this language suggests that this needs clarification. A SxS can certainly be "cycled" and "cocked." Neither of those concepts are unique to pump or lever action guns. Even a bolt action gun can be cycled and cocked. A definition that is limited to what "cycled" means for a pump or lever action gun doesn't tell you anything about what "cycled" means for a SxS nor does it exclude a SxS from the concept of what it means to be "cycled." In this case, it's likely the authors never considered it, but even that would not have any bearing as language often has to address facts not considered and the intent of the authors has nothing to do with what words mean even if some would find it persuasive. I think looking for ways to penalize someone for something that isn't clearly a penalty is an automatic no-no. If there's no clear rule that makes a certain infraction a penalty, then it should be no-call, just like "I thought I saw a miss" is a hit. That said, I have never used a SxS in WBAS and I don't intend to start, absent my M12 going down mid-match.

The question presented was an empty, not a "live round"

I'd be in favor of eliminating that definition in the interest of competitive equity. What is "attempting"? That requires us to get into a shooter's head. Obviously there's a good argument if the hammer falls and the round doesn't fire, but the fact that we even have to debate it is too unclear. I'm also in favor of round count stages, especially for wild bunch. It'd be a whole lot easier to have high round counts and more shooting if it wasn't for sweeps.