It's been a long time since I shot pins, except for just plinking in the back yard. There were not nearly as many jacketed bullets around back then (late 70's) and I adopted the Speer 225 JHP, which has some lead exposed but it fed OK (most of the time if the gun was clean) and it seemed to "bite" into the pin OK. I used 10.4 gr. of Blue-dot for a little over 1,000 fps.
I managed 2nd place at the Second Chance shoot in 1977 but Ad Clark, who was 1st, realy took the pins off with an 8 3/8" .44 and 17 gr. of Blue Dot with a Keith bullet. Ad was a top hand and could really make that .44 smoke!
It was an interesting match in that you shot 10 tables!! and you did not drop any bad ones like in later years. Ad beat me by a total of .63 seconds for all 10 tables (.06 seconds per table) but that included my disastourous run in which I split a pin and had to scoot it off the table, took 11 rounds in the end
In later years the winners seemed to start loading down - guess it worked, their times were faster but then the match was different. Though my shooting partner Bill Byrd won two years in a row with H&G 68s and 7.7 of Unique (talk about smoke!!!).
Were I to do it again I would likely use the Winchester or Rem. 230 JHP and enough fast powder (Clays or VV 320) to get 950 to 1000 fps. Something that might grab the pin if it did not hit a full caliber inside the outline and creates less smoke but has plenty of momentum. Still plain old ball would probably work just fine.
Pin shooting can be pretty instructional if the game is limited to duty guns. Less so with the stuff they use now but it is still fun!
Onward!
Jim Higginbotham
