In 1969, an armed citizen named Richard Davis shot it out with a trio of armed robbers and survived — but was hit a couple of times during the melee. Deciding that there had to be something better to stop bullets with than one’s own flesh, he conceived soft, concealable body armor and became “the man who bullet-proofed America’s police.”
By 1975, his company — Second Chance Body Armor — had saved numerous officers. That year he hosted a party for some friends and some of the body armor “saves” on his spacious property in Central Lake, Michigan. The event included an impromptu shooting match in which the targets were bowling pins.
A new gun sport was born — bowling pin shooting. The following year he opened the Second Chance Shoot to all cops, and not long after that, also to law-abiding citizens. The event became a regular stop on the “pro tour” of handgun shooting, with one of the deepest prize tables in handgunning. By the time the shoot was ended in 1998, it had become something of an institution.
In 2017, Richard Davis’ son Matt brought the event back to life as The Pin Shoot, with Richard still involved as the rangemaster; calling commands from a tower, sharing jokes and playing Trivia Quiz for prizes with the audience while pin-setters refilled the tables with their wooden targets.
The event had grown from simply seeing who could knock five bowling pins off a table 25 feet away with handgun bullets the fastest to 20 or so different games encompassing pistol and revolver, pin gun (iron sight with recoil compensator), space gun (optical sighted handguns) to high-powered rifles, pistol-caliber carbines, shotguns with buck and slug, minor caliber pistols, and assorted team events.
The storied half-century event ended in June of 2026. Richard, now well into his 80’s, was wheelchair bound after serious spine surgery. It was the end of an era, and a bittersweet six days of fun, reunion and memories.
Family Element
Pin shooting is extremely addictive. We mentioned the audience: this match had bleachers for the observers, because pin shooting makes for dynamic watching. You can instantly see who’s winning. Great runs were met with applause. The one-on-one shoot-offs were particularly exciting.
Participants were encouraged to bring their families. These events were held in a chain-o-lakes vacationland and spouse and kids could go boating and swimming all day while the competitor of the family was gunning. Often, it was the whole family that was shooting.
In ’26, Felipe Campos — an “OG” from the Second Chance days — showed he was still a steady hand with a gun, but was prouder of the fact that his daughter Sara had been coming to the Pin Shoot since 2017 and was winning guns. Another OG, Dave Blough, brought his son Greg and they both kicked butt. OG Bill Michell, a retired cop from New York, came with three generations of his family, all competing. For many, The Pin Shoot was a family affair.
Zach Hoyt’s father had always wanted to come to this match but had never been able to work it into his schedule, and he sadly passed away without having done so. As a tribute to his dad, Zach came to the Pin Shoot in his honor.
On A Serious Note
The opening day began with a tribute to Pin Shoot regulars who had passed in the last year. OG Donn Hausermann was no longer with us, but many of his family were there to carry on his straight-shooting legacy.
Big Al Kulovitz, a retired Cook County, Illinois lawman used to come. His widow Lydia, also a retired cop, was there this year in remembrance along with their beautiful daughter Michelle, who continued her father’s tradition by shooting his guns there and winning a gun in her own right.
Jack Schatzel was another OG and Pin Shoot regular, and a Second Chance “save” whose vest had stopped a .38 slug that was on course to kill him. Richard Davis’ invention had bought him decades more life, which had ended earlier this year from natural causes.
Al Burnett of the Michigan State Police lived in the host town of Central Lake. He had several times been National Champion Police shooter at Camp Perry and finished his law enforcement career as a senior instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia. He had shot the old Second Chance matches, and by the time it morphed into The Pin Shoot had been a member of the Central Lake Lions Club that provided daily lunches at the match. He left us at 89 a couple of months before this final match.
Marty Hayes had used a pair of 10mm revolvers to win a shoot-off here in the Second Chance days, earning Master Blaster status. MB was designed to keep the “sharks” from devouring the “minnows” at the prize table. Richard Davis had created the OSS class, Ordinary Standard Shooters, to level the playing field and keep the professional shooters from winning all the prizes. Marty had passed much too early the previous October.
In 1977, Johnny Robbins came to the Second Chance Shoot with his father Jack, who was on the Joint Services Small Arms Project that adopted the M9 service pistol. Johnny was the overall winner that year, with about a 3.1 second fastest time with a .45 … at the age of 13! He was in his early 60’s a few weeks before this last event when cancer took him from us after a long career in public service as a paramedic. His lovely wife Becky came up from Florida to sprinkle his ashes on the Davis Range.
She was not the only one. Herman Davison was an OG who returned to hit all the Pin Shoots, including 2025 while knowing he was dying of cancer. A Conservation Officer and for many years an instructor at the NH State Peace Officer Training Academy, Herm had often been the state champion police shooter. I had the privilege of joining Dennis Crawford, David Hodges and the rest of the New Hampshire contingent as they spread Herm’s ashes on the range.
When people designate a spot as the final resting place for their mortal remains, it tells you how important that location had become to them.
It is testimony to Something Very Special.
The Last Hurrah
This last Pin Match went very smoothly. Matt Davis had adopted PractiScore a few years earlier, and this year had his local team contact registered shooters to determine their preferred shooting times. Having shot every one of these matches since 1976, I can say with some authority that the 2026 match ran even smoother and more “on time” than any other.
The match had begun on a Saturday and ended on Thursday night. The awards ceremony was the only thing that ran late, but anyone who ever competed in this iconic shooting tournament can tell you that was a Pin Shoot tradition. It gave us time for Richard Davis to give us one last dose of his own brand of Trivia Quiz before a very moving goodbye speech.
As the dozens of winners took their turns at the prize tables, we saw OG’s making a familiar winners’ walk, and young bloods like Dakota Hauserman taking winners’ prizes. One of the overall winners was a Baltimore street cop there for his first time at The Pin Shoot.
Old and new, young and old, male and female competing in a life sport against a couple of hundred other serious contestants. Never forget that in a time before Abner Doubleday invented baseball, shooting competition was the quintessential American sport.
I always thought Richard Davis should have won an Outstanding American Handgunner award. After all, he created a new shooting sport. Countless gun clubs around the nation shoot pin matches today. In 1985, I shot one at the Galleria Magnum range in Caracas, Venezuela. Before they banned handguns in the UK, the shooters over there ran “skittles matches.”
Richard Davis saved over a thousand lives with his Second Chance-brand body armor alone. His son Matt continued the tradition, saving more and now producing and selling body armor through his own company, warbirdpro.com. In reconstituting The Pin Shoot, Matt continued his father’s tradition of enriching lives as well as his tradition of saving them.
I hope The Pin Shoot’s website, www.pinshoot.com, will stay up. It hosts lots of articles by great pin shooters like Patrick Sweeney, which will guide others into this particular sport.
My thanks to Springfield Armory, which for the last several years has been the primary sponsor of The Pin Shoot. It will always hold a well-deserved place in the history of American competitive and recreational shooting.
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