[spectrrr]

Originally Posted by Brian D.

Emopunker, I shot at bowling pins for several years. Not everything will penetrate that plastic hide, use caution. For that which does not get thru the skin, has an annoying tendency to bounce back at the firing line, if not the shooter himself.

Would take too much time to list off what's safe versus not, but I can lay out a few basic parameters:

With pistols, .38 special/9mm makarov and smaller are non-nos for the most part. 9mm parabellum has plenty of velocity, at least from a service length barrel.

Don't go smaller than #4 shot with the 12 or 20 gauge shotguns, buckshot and of course slugs are fine. (Believe it or not slugs will not completely penetrate the pins, but boy do the pins look like jet fighters leaving a carrier deck when hit by them!)

.22 L.R. is okay out of either handgun or rifle, but not .22 shorts or the Aguila primer-power-only fodder.

I've never seen a centerfire rifle round fail to bite into the wood core, but can't say that applies to every caliber you might try. The high velocity stuff goes right through as you might expect, but the bullets probably change direction a little bit afterwards. Use a wide/tall enough backstop.

And in all cases, wear eye protection! One time at a match I was the only one shooting and hit a pin dead solid with a .45acp reload. It spun the pin around and sent a .357 bullet that was already in the pin straight back at my shin! Left a welt that didn't go away for a couple weeks. Wouldn't have been a "Throw some dirt on it and man up!" moment if that bullet had headed for my face, and probably would have done some real damage to an unprotected eye. Fortunately I never shoot without appropriate glasses.

Hope this doesn't come off as me being a safety ninny, just trying to share several years of being around pin shoots.

From someone who has never shot pins before, thanks for the very useful info regarding their safe safe handling, it never hurts to be armed with more info!