Rule3
Gary
Mikld
rwsmith

You guys are pretty much spot on with your understanding of the issue and how to correct it. A phone call from Jason at Berry's that I missed but he was kind enough to leave a message agrees that the COL for this bullet was too long and yes the bullet was impeding into the lands/grooves which was the hang up.
I ended up seating a dummy round to 1.114 to get it to plunk and sit properly in my barrel. A lot of this was my fault as my Hodgdon reload info for a Speer JHP was 1.155 that I overlooked 'duh'

Ahhhhhhh the learning curve is fun! Thanks to all of you for chiming in, great info. This Shield is my first 'small gun' and apparently things are different as mentioned by rwsmith in compact guns as far as where the lands/grooves are in relation to the indexing of the cartridge mouth.

And by the way, these were my first rounds load up with IMR Target powder and so far I really like the stuff, clean burning, lower felt recoil and a nice fill in volume in the cartridge and meters pretty well in my cheapie Lee powder drop.
Once again, thank you all for the help
Karl