Personally, when I go to Alaska I’m mostly on shooting ranges in or around Anchorage, and a. If one can’t carry a powerful rifle or a fast-firing slug-loaded shotgun in such places - and that includes most hikers and anglers - the deep-driving bullets of a properly loaded 10mm are promising. Out of the box, I think the XD-M is fine for the woods-walker who might encounter large, hostile creatures. Thinking about a 10mm for pin-shooting, I bought the test gun and sent it to Springfield Custom, under the administration of Custom Pistol Tech Jeremy Sides. We won the parent-child team championship for the sub-junior age group. One year I shot with a 10mm, a Mark Morris Custom Delta Elite, and since that was concurrent with the National Junior Handgun Championships, used it alongside my thirteen-year-old daughter Justine, who was shooting a Springfield Armory. You need power to get those heavy tenpins blown the requisite three feet back off the table. bullet downrange at nearly 1,300 feet per second. The author found the XD-M 10mm recoil quite controllable when sending a 180-gr. When this iconic event returned as The Pin Shoot, I was there and have been there ever since.

In an adult lifetime of shooting pistol matches, my all-time favorite for pure fun was the original Second Chance Bowling Pin Shoot, which I shot from the first event in 1977 to the swan song match in 1998. I liked it very much and bought it with a view toward maybe using it in bowling pin competition.

The time came when I tested the 5.25” barrel XD-M when it came out in 10mm. It became my favorite match gun for IDPA competition. When I went to the range in Geneseo years ago with Springfield Armory’s Dave Williams to shoot the first extended length 5.25 model, I fell for its wand-like handling qualities and had to have one. I bought one in standard length, strictly for shooting matches.

Then I tried one with Springfield Custom’s Competition Trigger Job, and was hooked. Note how the spent brass shows controllability, even from an awkward shooting position. The author won the High Senior at the Citrus Challenge with his Springfield XD-M a few years ago. Trigger reach was just right for me, and I thought its smooth-rolling trigger pull was excellent for “stressful street needs.” The ambidextrous mag release button was a plus for someone with an arthritic thumb like mine. It had 20 rounds of 9mm on board, even before you put an Arredondo floorplate on the magazine to increase capacity. I liked Springfield’s XD-M service pistol from the beginning.

Springfield xds trigger upgrade