After years of work, Shooters Union Queensland has successfully obtained the necessary police approvals to run Single Action Shooting “Wild Bunch” matches.
The matches, inspired by the genre-defining 1969 Sam Peckinpah western film The Wild Bunch, involve the use of M1911 and M1911A1 pistols chambered in .45 ACP instead of the single-action revolvers used for other Single Action Shooting disciplines.
The Single Action Shooting Society-sanctioned match is popular in the US, where competitors typically use .45 M1911 and M1911A1 pistols as well as 12ga pump-action shotguns, but the rules had to be specially modified for Queensland legislation.
The Queensland match approval allows for the use of full-size, single-stack M1911 and M1911A1 pistols, and excludes highly modified IPSC race-guns.
Either double-barelled side-by-side shotguns or Model 1887 lever-action shotguns may be used, due to pump-action shotguns essentially being banned for 99% of sports shooters in Queensland.
The approval from Queensland Police Weapons Licensing Group comes with some conditions, though – including that only Shooters Union Queensland affiliated clubs and branches may shoot the match, and can only do so using the Queensland-modified rules, rather than the US rules.
Clubs wishing to participate in Wild Bunch matches must also request the addition of Wild Bunch QLD match rules to their range approval, and cannot run the match until that range approval is received from WLG.
Shooters Union Queensland Single Action Shooting Territorial Governor Brian “Jackaroo” Tosen said it had taken a long time to get everything in order for the approval, including gaining official sanction for the new rules from the Single Action Shooting Society headquarters in the US, and modifying the rules to preserve the spirit of the game while remaining within Queensland’s legislative framework.
“It’s been a lot of work to bring this together and taken a long time, but I’m immensely grateful to the SASS HQ, the people at WLG, and the Shooters Union QLD team for their support and assistance in getting this over the line,” he said.
“Wild Bunch is a proving a real popular match overseas, and it’s based on the iconic movie The Wild Bunch that redefined the Western genre. It requires a different shooting skill set to those of the single-action revolvers used in most SASS matches.
“It was initially slow to take off but has proven very popular as time went by; it started as a side match to single-action shooting and has now become a stand-alone match.
“This approval gives Shooters Union Queensland-affiliated club members with a .45 M1911 another approved Class C match, and will hopefully take some of the pressure off Metallic Silhouette matches in the process.”
Prior to the Wild Bunch QLD match approval, the only competitions in Queensland for which .45 semi-automatic pistols could be used in was Metallic Silhouette matches.
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