This week brings with it the next installment of me discussing what I believe are America’s least appreciated sports. You can read part 1 here. This week, I discuss the shotgun sports: Trap, Skeet, and Sporting Clays.
I’ll be upfront about this: If your idea of what qualifies as a “sport” requires a ball, lots of dynamic movement, or a high risk of injury, then you probably won’t really think of traditional shotgun competitions as sports. I would argue that you have a narrow view of the world and that there is more to sports than football, basketball, and baseball. Shotgun sports require an extreme degree of finesse, muscle memory, mental endurance, and finely tuned motor skills. While serious competitive shotgunners are an amazing sight to see, you don’t have to be Tom Knapp to enjoy shotgun sports.
I started shooting shotgun sports as a bit of a happy accident. I don’t exactly recall the reason, but I was out shooting with my dad, a friend, and his dad. I think I may have been trying out a new shotgun I had won. Anyway, this wasn’t the first time I had been to the Alexandria Shooting Park, and I had been hunting with a shotgun for a few years at that point. Anyway, if I remember correctly, I shot 18 out of 25 targets that day, and happened to catch the eye of one of the older guys on the range. He invited me to try the newly formed Youth Trap League, and I was hooked.
Shortly after I began shooting in the league, I gained a wonderful coach named Lyle Bohnen. He always squinted, smoked unfiltered cigarettes, and had a gruff, sometimes difficult to understand way of talking. His favorite phrase to help struggling shooters was “I’m gonna get mental with ya!” Usually followed by a good laugh and probably a hefty slap on the back. Lyle had stories to numerous to remember, and some to vulgar to repeat here. But he was a kind man, who legitimately cared about how well his students did more than he cared about his own scores. I had a lot of coaches for different sports throughout my life, by Lyle was definitely one of the better, and more memorable ones.
Like what I wrote for the Action Pistol sports in Part 1, shotgun sports do not necessarily require a bunch of nifty gear. Provided you are at a range with their own clays, you need a shotgun, and shells. That is it. I think this is the simplest shooting sport to get into, and very well can be one of the cheapest. This past weekend it cost me $33 for 90 clay pigeons, 100 Federal Field & Range 12 gauge shotgun shells, a Milky Way candy bar, and a gallon of water. Your mileage may vary, but if you’re just going to go out and hand-throw your own targets, that is a pretty good estimate. Of course, if you are looking to get into sanctioned ranges with sanctioned or official matches, you are going to end up with some additional fees.
Of all the Shotgun Sports, Trap shooting is the most simplistic, and easiest to enter into at any stage. The other shotgun sports, however, use Trap as their building block. There are two basic types of trap shooting: Singles and Doubles. As the name suggests, Singles trap involves a single target flying in front of the shooter, typically out of a “trap house” positioned roughly 16 yards in front of the line. The line consists of up to five shooters, who rotate through five different positions. Each shooter takes turns firing one shot, until all shooters on the line have fired five shots at a station before they rotate. A round of singles trap requires 1 standard box (25) shotgun shells, although having one or two extra on hand is recommended. Singles trap also has a “handicap” version where shooters will shoot from further back, depending upon skill level.
What makes Singles Trap challenging is that the clay pigeons can fly at a relatively wide variety of angles, requiring the shooter to have quick reflexes, and fine motor skills to make sure that they to not overcompensate. Doubles Trap is difficult due to the added target. While the targets fly out at a more or less consistent angle, unlike in Singles Trap, you have a limited amount of time to shoot both targets, and as you move through the stations, you perceive the angle the clay pigeons fly to change relative to your movement. Doubles trap has five target pairs per station, requiring 50 shells per shooter. Again, extra are recommended in case of a malfunction.
The primary difference between Trap shooting and its cousins Skeet and Sporting Clays is that Skeet and Sporting Clays have more than one position that the clay pigeons will fly from. In Skeet, there are two, a Low House and a High House, and the clays sometimes cross in front of the shooter. In Sporting Clays, there are endless possibilities of how the clays can come, as it is up to the individual range to set up their own Sporting Clay Courses, but more on that in a minute or two.
All three of the sports are very challenging, but in my mind, there are two that I truly believe make you a better shooter: Trap and Sporting Clays. Don’t get me wrong, Skeet Shooting is fun and challenging, but there is a lot of gamesmanship that can improve your scores. In Skeet, the clays come at basically the same angle, in the same order, from the same positions. Once you get that rhythm down, it becomes more or less second nature. With Trap and Sporting Clays, the angles change, and I feel that makes you more of an adaptive shooter. In fact, when it comes to practicing shotgunning for hunting, I would highly recommend Trap shooting to work on fundamentals, and then Sporting Clays to work on the surprise element.
Sporting Clays are slightly less common than both Trap and Skeet, but they are still a lot of fun all the same. Sporting Clays uses not only changing angles, but they make you walk to each station. Often, Sporting Clays are set up as “courses” instead of at trap houses. This allows the course to more closely mimic various hunting situations that a hunter might run into while out in the field. Clays can come from various angles, and even bounce on the ground. The challenge, combined with the often beautiful walk through the woods to each station, makes sporting clays a fun activity. A fair warning, the challenge can also make Sporting Clays very frustrating to participate in.
So why should you care? Or better yet, why should you even try a shotgun sport? Well, for any of you who are bird hunters, it is an excellent, cost effective way of keeping your skills sharper for you to make quick, humane kills on flying game. For those of you who don’t hunt, but enjoy shooting sports, or use a shotgun for home defense, not only do the shotgun sports hone your marksmanship skills, but they are fun, and it is extremely gratifying to watch an orange, clay disk turn to a fine mist of powder. We’ve already established that you don’t need anything outside of what you already own to participate, but you sure can go pretty wild with your equipment.
I will admit, most of my firearms have dual, or even multiple purposes. For example, I have pistols that I carry for defense that I also use in competitions. I do have one firearm that only ever comes out to do two things: Impress people by its looks, and impress people when I shoot clays. I’ve used it in several Minnesota State matches, and one National Match. I love the thing, and as far as my guns go, it is one of my most valuable. When it comes to competition specific shotguns, however, its cheap. I have shot with and against guys who have custom built German or Italian shotguns that cost the same as my truck. One guy even let me try out his Krieghoff shotgun that probably was worth more than my life was at that point.
Not only do shotgun sports give you another reason to buy some more gear, or to simply get more accustomed to your existing gear, it gives you a sport for life. Every large Trap shooting match you go to, there is undoubtedly going to be a lot of older shooters, men and women in the 70’s and 80’s who are still dusting clay pigeons. You will most likely see someone in a wheel chair, or with a prosthetic leg or arm. The shotgun sports, and especially Trap, gives you something you can literally do and practice your whole life.
I have a special place in my heart for the shotgun sports, and especially trap. It taught me a lot when I was growing up, not just about how to pull a trigger effectively, but how to lead, act under pressure, and hold a 12 lbs gun for hours a day. Shooting sports are rapidly growing, especially within two groups of Americans: The Nation’s Youth, and Women. In my opinion, this is a wonderful thing. The more people who get involved in the shooting sports, the less taboo they become. Trap shooting is even becoming a rapidly accepted high school sport in my home state of Minnesota. As one of the first members of Alexandria Area Youth Trap League (AAYTL), this is something I am very proud of as I was, in a way, at the forefront of this movement. Admittedly, all I did was shoot because I really didn’t give a damn what anyone else thought of my hobby (I still don’t). The Alexandria Shooting Park, where I first got my taste in this flavor of competition, is where the Minnesota Youth Trap Shoot is often held, and the Minnesota branch of the Amateur Trap Association has been held there many times in the past as well.
I’m actually going to take a few more words of your time to tell a brief (hopefully humorous) anecdote from this past weekend’s range session. After I got to the shotgun range, all but one of the shotgun bays was full. This range isn’t very fancy, as it lacks anything other than hand wound,spring loaded throwers for your clays. Undeterred, I set up my shotgun and got busy just shooting clays. During a quick break to drink some water, I observed the range patrons in the stalls next to me. One was a dad, teaching his young daughter how to use her shotgun, which was actually really cute because you can tell she picked it out for herself. The girl was probably around 13 or 14, and was using a Weatherby semiautomatic that was decked out in Pink Camouflage. She was really excited about shooting, and that just made me happy.
In the other stall was, what I ascertained to be, a guy and his girlfriend, both roughly my age. The guy had a Mossberg 930 Blackwater Edition, which looks really cool, but isn’t all that effective for clay pigeon shooting. After drinking down some water, I got back to my own shooting, and I started to notice out of the corner of my eye that the Mossberg guy missing a lot of clays, and was getting pretty frustrated. Eventually, I ran out of clays myself, but had roughly 3/4 of a box of shells left. Having mild compulsions about partial boxes of shotgun shells, I was trying to figure out what to do, when Mr. Mossberg missed for what seemed like the fifteenth time in a row. This gave me an idea. So I loaded my trusty Remington 1100, and waited for his next shot.
I had to be really careful to time the shot as close to his as possible, otherwise they would figure it out that I was shooting at his targets. On the next target, I fired as closely to Mr. Mossberg’s shot as I could, while still allowing that split second to determine if his clay had broken. The clays kept going up, he kept missing, and I kept right on hitting them (missing occasionally, I will admit). Pretty soon his girlfriend was all “Great shot, baby!” and “Wow you smoked that one!” As Mr. Mossberg and his girlfriend cleaned up their shells and prepared to depart, I was chuckling to myself while I too cleaned up the spent shotgun hulls. When I turned around, the young girl and her dad hopped off the tailgate of the pickup they had been sitting on and approached me.
“That was pretty slick there,” the dad stuck out his hand. Shaking his hand I replied “I was hoping nobody noticed.” We began talking a bit, he told me about his daughter, how she really enjoyed shooting, and how she was just learning how to use a shotgun. She was really bright eyed and excited when she told me they had run out of targets about a half hour before I did and just sat watching me while I assisted Mr. Mossberg in the next stall. As we parted ways, she asked me “What does it take to get that good?”
“A lot of practice, and you have to get mental with it.”
So grab your shotgun, a few shells, a case of clays, and a range buddy. I’ll see you out there.
