Clay shooting, or clay pigeon shooting, is a generic term that covers all of the shooting disciplines that involve trying to shoot clay targets with a shotgun.
These disciplines can be broken down further into three main areas. Trap, Skeet and Sporting.
These three main areas can then be broken down further into the different individual disciplines that these terms cover. For example. Trap covers disciplines like Down The Line (DTL), Automatic Ball Trap (ABT), Double Rise, Universal Trench and Olympic Trap. What makes these disciplines alike is that they are all shot a specific distance from the trap houses with a rising, going away target.
Skeet is different in that there are 2 trap houses at each end of a semi circle, a High House and a Low House, and the shooters move around the arc shooting at targets from each 'house'. The main disciplines of Skeet shooting shot here are National or English Skeet, NSSA Skeet, Skeet Doubles and Olympic Skeet.
Sporting is designed to be more like simulated game shooting and targets are set to resemble game targets that you may encounter on a game shoot such as Rabbit clays along the ground, settling ducks, springing teals or driven pheasants. The most common disciplines shot here in Sporting are English Sporting, Compak Sporting and FITASC.
Just like the term "Salmon fishing", which covers all of the methods of trying to catch salmon with a rod and line including Fly Fishing, Spinning and worming, there are disciplines of clay shooting that many prefer over others. In many cases, some people will only shoot one individual shooting discipline and not try anything else. There are DTL shooters who you could not pay money to, to get them to shoot Sporting. Many Skeet shooters will not shoot DTL and there are many Sporting shooters who do not like any of the trap disciplines at all.
I have shot a few different disciplines of clay shooting over the years. I started off with DTL. I have also shot Automatic Ball Trap, Sporting, Compak Sporting, Skeet and Olympic Trap. I have enjoyed some more than others.
My heart will always lie with DTL. It is what I have shot the most of and what I have the best memories of. The memories are not of big scores and winning shoots but of helping out at my club, doing work to the grounds, the craic and the banter with some really good people, some of whom are no longer with us, and the contentment I have found while shooting the discipline.
I remember 'works evenings' at the club. Every Wednesday evening during the summer doing bits and pieces to the ground. George Gillan was in charge of the tea. You weren't that long started until you heard, "Tea's Up!" This happened about 5 times in the few hours you were at the ground. I had so much coffee on a Wednesday evening I couldn't sleep.
Derek Crockett was well into his 70's when I first met him but he lived for the club. On a Saturday, the shooting didn't start until 1pm but we were at the ground from 11am and he was scraping out the drains along the lane with a garden rake in case they blocked and the water washed the lane. Filling in pot holes on the lane. Doing bits and pieces that very few people ever noticed but you see them glaringly now as there is no one doing those wee jobs. It is these memories I hold dear and I almost feel I owe it to Derek and George and the others who are no longer with us, to help the club as much as I can.
DTL is as much a part of me as anything else in my life. I just don't have the same connection with any of the other disciplines. We shoot Sporting at our ground but this has only been a relatively recent thing. I really only ever seen Sporting as a break from DTL. 'Something else', just to break up the weeks and weeks and weeks of DTL shooting. I enjoy the sporting shoot and the craic and banter on the day of a shoot but I always looked forward to getting back to DTL again once it was over.
Unfortunately I just don't have the same drive and hunger for shooting DTL that I once had either.
Discipline is such an important word in DTL. To shoot DTL well, you must have discipline. You almost have to go into a robotic state of closing the gun, mounting the gun, calling at the same time, pulling the trigger at the same time, etc. Everything else switches off and you go into auto pilot not even thinking about what you are trying to do. You step onto the line, switch off, wait until the referee has called the line finished and you are not even sure what you've shot. I miss that. I just can't switch off anymore. I go onto a line now and start looking at the scenery or the wildlife or the farm animals and usually drop silly targets during the line. I'm not sure if I'll ever get the bug back unfortunately.
With DTL now, I like to try and help people coming through. I'm not a coach by any means but I like to try to pass on my knowledge to others and help them to improve as best as I can. Seeing someone, I've given some advice or assistance to, shooting a good score in a competition now gives me as much pleasure as shooting big scores myself.
Sporting would be my next favourite discipline. Seeing the different targets and needing to move the gun completely differently to DTL. I am not a good sporting shooter under the stretch of anyone's imagination. In our 40 bird club shoots, if I break 30 targets I am more than happy.
I like to feel that I am being tested when I shoot any discipline. If I shoot targets at any discipline and get the notion in my head that they are too easy, I will lose interest very quickly.
People seem to have different opinions on what makes a 'good' sporting shoot. There are people I know who want to shoot 40 out of 40 at every shoot. My own view is that if there are a lot of scores over 37 or 38, the targets are too easy. There are people more than capable of shooting these big scores every shoot, some have the ability to shoot scores like that at any shoot, but when it gets to the stage where there are more scores in the 30s than the 20s on the scoreboard, the targets are more than likely a bit soft.
I've always been a bit weird in that I have always enjoyed the fishing, rather than catching fish. I have enjoyed training and working gun dogs rather than shooting over them myself and it would appear to be the same with sporting clays. I enjoy setting up the shoot and setting different targets more than I enjoy shooting on the day of a shoot.
I try to get my ideas for targets from birds I have seen at different times. I could be salmon fishing and see a pair of crows or pigeons flying over my head and think, "Oh, I wonder how I could go about setting that pair of birds?" Or from pheasants I've seen during my game shooting days and things like that.
For at least a week before a sporting shoot my head is in overdrive. I overthink at the best of times but on the week of a shoot, my head is buzzing with ideas on where I could set a trap to get a target that I can picture in my head. Where would I set the stand for it? Would that target interfere with a different stand? What way is the wind going to be blowing on the day of the shoot so that the shards of broken clay get carried away from the shooters rather than at them? What other target could I put on with that one...? A million ideas bouncing off each other at any one time. I absolutely love it.
When I set a stand and a pair of traps for a sporting shoot, I try to think of the lower class shooters. I really don't mind if I don't hit a single target on a stand as long as I feel I am being tested. There are not many who think this way however so I try to set targets where even the complete novice should hit at least half of them. If I put on a target that I think is a bit more tricky, I will put on a relatively simple target along with it that, really, most people will hit every time. Even the simple target will be missed though. Sometimes it doesn't quite work out that way but even if a stand does turn out quite difficult, I think most people enjoy the test of a harder stand rather than just pointing the gun in a general direction and pulling the trigger in a more than a simple one. It is impossible to please everyone though.
I get as much enjoyment now if someone should come up to me after a shoot and mention that they enjoyed the targets. I really don't mind at all if they tell me the targets were rubbish as I'll know not to set that target again but a simple, "...those were good targets today...", means much more to me than shooting a big score myself.
Our ground is on the side of a hill so I try to think of the shooters that will be attending the shoot rather than what I want to shoot myself. I try to keep it that the older shooters, and indeed the younger ones too, don't have to haul up hill again after the round has finished. I try to work with the huts and covered stands we have so that shooters can remain as dry as possible if the heavens should open.
I have shot a few 100 Bird registered sporting shoots and I can't say that I particularly enjoyed them. It wasn't that I was missing targets or found the targets overly difficult, but they just lacked the atmosphere of the club shoot. The 'No coaching at the Stand' rule really takes the interest out of the shoot for me. If I see someone struggling at a club shoot, I will try to tell them how to shoot the target. Where to hold the gun to pick up the target, where to move to and roughly where the point of the gun should be compared to the clay. Not being allowed to do this at a registered shoot really took the interest out of it for me.
I prefer 'English Sporting', much more than Compak Sporting. I find it hard to keep my concentration at this form of sporting. I have really only shot Compak at my own club though and I am usually the one buttoning to set off the targets. You need fingers like a Piano player and a lot of concentration and watching to make sure you set off the correct targets at the correct time. Buttoning fries my brain before I get a chance to shoot. Perhaps this is the reason I don't like it as much as other disciplines? I'm not sure.
I believe out of all the disciplines I've shot, Skeet is my least favourite.
I had shot DTL for years and had started sporting shooting before I shot skeet. The first time I shot skeet, I did quite like it. It was at a 100 bird all rounder and there was 25 skeet as part of the competition. I think I hit 18 or 19 that day and managed to finish third overall in the competition. The DTL and Sporting pulled me out that day. I shot a few practice lines of Skeet following that but hadn't shot it that much.
It was Easter Monday 2017 and we were meant to go to a 50 Bird Sporting shoot but it was called off at the last minute due to a bereavement in the area around the shoot. We then got invited to a skeet ground to shoot 100 skeet. There were only five of us there.
I went out on my first round and shot 22. That was fine. It was my next round that I completely lost interest in Skeet.
As I have already said, I have to feel that I am being tested when shooting. If I don't feel that, I just lose interest. This is exactly what happened on that round of skeet. I started off and had shot right round to the middle stand, which is apparently the most difficult stand on skeet with the pair being the most difficult to shoot. I shot the pair with no trouble at all and shot the rest. I was then told to choose a target to repeat on the last stand for my straight, which I missed. I came out of that round of skeet and all I could think was, "...I could have had a straight there and this is only my fourth round of skeet." I almost completely lost all respect I had for skeet as a discipline. I should not be able to come so close to a straight after only shooting it 4 times. I just lost interest in skeet there and then.
The next round I dropped 7 full targets and didn't care a jot. I was bored. I was just wasting shells. I had no interest in being there or shooting these 'soft' targets. I gave myself a talking to after that round though and told myself to get myself together and shoot the last round well, which I did and finished with a 24. In only my fourth time shooting skeet, I had shot 88 targets out of 100 including missing 7 in one line when I just gave up.
I am not belittling anyone who enjoys skeet or skeet as a discipline. I know people prefer different things and I know, and have great admiration and respect, for those people I know personally who have represented their associations at International level at the discipline, but it just isn't for me. I can't lose myself in a line the way I do at DTL. The stopping and starting and only shooting 4 targets per stand, I don't particularly enjoy. I personally cannot give skeet the respect it deserves to shoot it well.
My favourite discipline of all, that I have tried, is Olympic Trap. Now that is a test. I have only shot Olympic Trap twice in my life. The first time was at a charity event to raise funds for a local shooter, and good friend to my own club, who was having surgery in England. Logue's Hill CPC hosted the event and we went for the day. I only hit 16 targets in my first line of 25 but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think I shot 19 on my last line but it is a long time since I felt such a buzz shooting. That is a test.
Olympic Trap is a discipline that I would love to shoot much more often. Unfortunately, the closest grounds to me are roughly 50 miles away. There is nowhere local to shoot it so I just don't get to shoot it as often as I'd like.
So there you have it. That is how I feel personally about the various clay shooting disciplines that I have tried and been involved with. As I said at the beginning, I have enjoyed some more than others.
Anyone reading this will have their own thoughts and opinions and very few of them will match mine. But that's great as it would be boring if everyone thought the same way.
As long as you are enjoying your shooting, that is the most important aspect of all.
Shoot well everyone!
