LAST SHOTS

In 1975 a guy named Richard Davis invited some friends – including some cops whose lives had been saved by Davis’ Second Chance brand body armor – to a pistol match at his place in Central Lake, Michigan. The targets were bowling pins. His concept caught on and, by golly, he had created a new handgun sport. J. D. Jones wrote about it in a gun magazine and after reading the article, I decided to shoot in the next one. It was for cops only, but I was one, so I went in 1976 – and got hooked.

And I shot every damned one of them there after that, including the very last one, in June of 2026.

After a couple of years, Davis opened the match to armed citizens. Soon the event numbered 500 or so participants.  The prize pot got proportionally deeper as the depth of contestants grew.  

I went every time, sometimes alone, and sometimes with my late first wife and my kids, and sometimes with just one or more of the kids.  I won a bunch of guns. I gave some to Dorothy, some to the kids. My older daughter Cat won her own weapon shooting there in ’96, and my younger daughter Justine and I won her age division in Parent/Child Team competition in ’98 when John Matthews convinced Davis to hold the National Junior Championship there in conjunction with the Second Chance Shoot. June of ’98 saw two high points in my life, being voted Outstanding American Handgunner of the Year and winning that national championship title with my daughter and if allowed to keep only one of those two moments, it would be the one with my child.

What was known as the Second Chance Shoot ended in 1998, and thereafter wherever I was in the second week in June my subconscious said “What are we doing here? Aren’t we supposed to be in Central Lake, Michigan this week?!?”

In 2017, Richard’s son Matt Davis reconstituted this wonderful fun event as The Pin Shoot, and I went to all of those until the final one in June of this year. It was a bittersweet thing, the hundreds of us there knowing that this would be the last one.

Just before the 2026 awards ceremony, Matt Davis announced that the last shots of The Last Pin Shoot would be fired by the OGs, the Original Gunners from the Old Days. At the signal to fire I raised the Springfield Armory Range Officer 1911 .45 I was carrying and fired five careful shots.

This (BANG) was (BANG) my (BANG) favorite (BANG) match (BANG)!