Our little shooting club is going to start knocking bowling pins off the table. I have both a 625 (45 ACP)and a 629 (44 Mag) that I will use as they match up pretty well, with 5 " underlug barrels.

This is all fun, low level competition with nothing much at stake, except a bruised ego.

So, just how much thump does it take to knock these pins off the table? I don't want more blast and recoil than necessary? I will probably use 44 Special cases in the 629 and the bullets will be about 240 grain Keith slugs in both calibers as that is what I have. I will also stick to Bullsye powder as that is what I have.

Any suggestion as to loads that will "get er done".

In the 45 I would also use LSWC or JHPs. I have watched lead round nose bullets glance off the hard skin of the pins. Once a .38 158 went up the neck and back hitting the shooter right on the tip of the nose...he didn't miss a beat and set his personal best time right then. it bloodied him some but he was ok.

--
Of the Troops & For the Troops

From a Colt .45 Combat Master, 185 hollowpoint. Smacked me in the face, got stitches at the local hospital.

Cops had to make an appearance because it was gunshot wound. They were convinced i was making up a story to protect a shooting buddy who had accidentally shot me.

There was a witness, but he had long taken off by the time they got to the range.

I met him a week later and didn't recognize him. He had seen the whole thing. Who trained me? he asked. He asked because he saw laod the gun, fire a couple of rounds then rear back suddenly. "You dropped the clip, racked the slide back, put the gun on the ground with the barrel facing the targets, grabbed your face with both hands and started screaming!" Then he added, "whoever trained you did a good job. You made the gun safe before took care of yourself."

force. As mentioned, the hard plastic skin + radius at just about every approach angle tends to deflect round nose bullets. They skitter left and right and wallow around on the table unless well hit on centerline. Your SWCs would be a good choice if they have well defined shoulders.

I wouldn't go under 950fps. 45acp @ 850fps is notorious for bouncing back from hard surfaces. Hard maple covered with hard plastic will shoot back, especially when the pins get chewed up some. Enforce eye protection rules - bullets bounce off those pins at odd angles...

...using full-house mag loads. His rate of fire wasn't as fast as some, but the pieces of bowling pins cleared the table EVERY time! He went to a 1911 when they asked him to stop destroying the pins.

I think both calibers, 44 Spl & 45 ACP will top out at around 5.0 grains of Bullseye at best with 250 gr bullets. 4.0 to 4.5 may be more practical for the ACP at that weight. Personally, I don't use 44 Spl cases in 44 magnums, my current favorite light load is a 250 Keith (RCBS or H&G 503) with 6.0 gr of Red Dot in 44 magnum cases. This is good for around 850 FPS. My goal is around 900 fps for light 44 mag loads. I use 5.0 gr of Bullseye in 45 ACP with a 230 gr LBT LFN that I cast myself. I don't know the velocity, but I do know there is a lot more room for power in my 1911s than using this combination, but I haven't felt the need for it yet. Honestly, I rarely use Bullseye, preferring slightly slower powders for the lighter loads.

My research online came up with mixed results, so I was dumb enough to test it myself.

One shot and an immediate face full of bird shot. Across the face, neck and chest, nothing got under the skin, but lots of bloody spots.

Don't do that.

We had them set up at a CAS shoot years ago. I was timing a buddy who was shooting a pair of 1858 Remington .44 cap and ball revolvers. On one of his shots, the pure lead round ball came zinging back and hit me about the wasteline. Luckily, it caught me right at my heavy cartridge belt and bounced off. Somewhere around here, I've got that flattened out lead ball.

I haven't shot in a pin match in a few years. But I had good luck with a modified .45 acp hardball mold. It basically looked like someone ran an end mill into a 230 gr mold. It had a big, flat meplat and added about 15-20 gr of weight. It knocked the pins straight off of the table!

The guy who often won (when he beat me) used an 8" 629 loaded with Keith level .44 Special loads. He was a good shot and often went five for five, but is hits would drive the pins straight back off of the table. Good center hits with a heavy bullet are the key to knocking pins off the table versus chasing them down as try roll around I've seen guys empty multiple 17 round mags bouncing pins all over the table!!

Do not shoot cap & Ball revolvers at telephone poles. Don't ask me how I know this...

JLF

My question is; what're the seven more important rules!!

When I shot pins, I used 45 ACP loads with 230 TC cast bullet and 5.5 gr 231 from my 7" AMT Hardballer which was good for 900 fps. Always took the pins straight off if I hit center, would skid off usually if I hit slightly off-center.

Solid center hits are very important. We had a new guy show up one day with his duty 4" 38 Special S&W just to have some fun. He scored good center hits and did not fail to take a pin off the table using his duty 38 Special ammo. Accuracy first, thump second.

Fps. Of course the 40s are flat cone shape.

they hold up to normal caliber gunfire. I've seen them so loaded up with lead they wouldn't even stand upright any more.

However... heavy weapons like 44mag, etc. will work a hardship on their service life and 454C will shatter them like eggs.

I do a shotgun match in the summer at my club and this year I wanted to make the slug stage on close bowling pins, for some fun blasting. So I did a little experimenting. I found they'd stay together and useful as targets from anywhere form 10-18 shots. Of course by 18 they were mostly empty husks of plastic. Fun as it might be, I decided to go with buckshot instead, I'll go through fewer pins that way for sure.

.

Don't shoot buckshot into a porcelain lined cast iron tub you found in the local dump.

Kids heal fast, tho.

.

--
Of the Troops & For the Troops

Don't shoot a cap & ball .44 into a junkpile that might contain an old 10" sewer elbow. You'll ruin a good set of size 30 Levis and have to explain your limp for awhile.

Don't shoot a frozen tree with 246 grain RNL, from the first-ever .44 Special Bulldog in Morgan County, MO. A fella carried that slug on his keychain after it bounced off my noggin'. And I didn't even get a damned T-shirt.

Never, ever shoot any kind of snake load at plywood from less than 50 feet away.

Life's been good to me so far... probably because my Momma prayed a lot.

...someone else shoots chunks of concrete with a 303 Brit.

With stingers out of a 22 rifle or with 12 gauge tukey loads...

You were pretty spry there for a minute trying to pick that hot jacket out of your belly button...

That old WWII MK VII 174gr bullet was caught between cordite and concrete and the strain was more than it could bear, ah reckon.

it'll be a while before I'm allowed back into those lanes...

OR with .357 Mag 125 grain JHPs.

I can still remember the intense pain in my left ear just after I shot at a brick with my uncle's BB gun when I was a kid. That ear don't even stick out from my head very far, so it was only about an inch from my left eye. I didn't wear glasses at that time, either.

"You'll put your eye out with that thing, kid!"

Finally developed a 255 SWC load, using a slug with a large meplat, loaded in ACP cases over a load of Unique I won't post because it was a bit hot. Modified a 1911A1 to reliably feed them and handle the recoil impulse, but it undoubtedly shortened it's life some. The load was amazing, with any decent hit the pin was driven straight back off the table like it had been hit with a baseball bat wielded by Babe Ruth.

I have often wondered about a full wadcutter out of a 44 or 45 caliber revolver at 900 to 1000 fps. Might have to play with that idea some day. I can also attest to it being unwise to shoot at pins with low velocity loads, bounce-backs can be very painful.

--
Of the Troops & For the Troops

nt

...Put on your bowling shoes BEFORE you load the shotgun.

No BB gun fights in the haymow.... ended up digging out the BB embedded in my earlobe with a paring knife, but somehow the adults KNEW IT!!! I didn't ever have a BB gun fight again, either.

off of a solid chunk of the oak stump backstop. Mo matter how slow motion the tumbling chunk of lead appears to be, it just isn't something you want hitting any body part, at all.

Just goes to show ya what happens when a fella suddenly and inexplicably forgets what he's shooting and relaxes a bit too far. Didn't help that I was sitting, gun on the knees, with my back and head resting against a steel shooting bench.

After it happened... a quick glance showed blood on the front sight... uh-oh... "Chuck, look what I did!"... followed by Chuck stretched out in the grass gasping for air while laughing...

It was kinda funny, so we both started laughing. Disturbed Charlie enough that he was headed down the hill to the firing line because once he heard the laughter he "knew one of us was hurt bad". Then my wife with the camera... Chuck had that pic under glass on his desk at the S.O.

Odd how something like that becomes a favorite memory.

I miss Charlie something fierce.

I shot 255 gr in the 45 and it worked well.

--

My original pin load. Fed in any 1911 I could get my hands on. I just wished it had a little more meplat.

My father carried a bone chip next to his eye until the day he died as a legacy from some long ago BB gun war in what was then the wilds of northeast Philadelphia. Hit him right on the edge of the bone surrounding the eyeball and fortunately went away from instead of toward the eyeball.

As you might imagine, after that experience he was hellaciously careful about firearms safety in all its multitudinous forms and drummed it into all three of his sons, as well.