Seneca Creek

Adventure Anywhere

Understand The Fundamentals Of Trap Shooting

By

Trap shooting, skeet shooting, sporting clays. These are all used interchangeably for shooting orange clays discs with a shotgun, but they’re all very different.

Trap Shooting Fundamentals
Photo by: Mike Adams

Skeet, Trap, and Sporting Clays

Skeet has one person to the firing line at a time, and two clays are thrown from two different locations. Sporting clays is much like golf, in which it’s designed as a multi-station course, usually in a field or forest setting. Each station is designed to simulate a different scenario of upland wingshooting. This article isn’t about either of those. This is about the most common form of clay shooting, which is trap.
Trap is the most common of the major disciplines of clay shooting and the easiest to get involved in. I originally got into it as a way to have more of an interactive experience for shooting targets, but I eventually grew interested in upland bird hunting and without a season of trap I might not have been able to shoot that first pheasant, or the next several after.

Clay Target History

The use of shooting aerial inanimate objects to hone bird hunting skills started around the time of the American Civil War in which glass balls (Bogardus) were thrown by hand straight into the air. This really didn’t pose a challenge for the shooter, so mechanical contraptions were used to launch the glass balls much higher and further. Eventually clay discs became the standard, thankfully, because I can’t imagine fields of endless glass shards.

Trap Shooting Rulebook

A typical game of trap consists of 25 total shots, taken one at a time in turn of 5 shooters at 5 spots next to each other. Each shooter gets 5 shots per spot. All the clays are thrown from a trap house directly in front of the shooters and about 16-25yds away. No scores are generally kept during leisurely games, so I always bring a simple clicker counter to keep track of the clays I hit. Trap doubles is when two are simultaneously thrown for each shooter. Trap doubles are one of the shooting Olympic events.

 

I personally started with the plastic hand thrower, then moved to a mechanical thrower in a field behind my house, even though there’s a gun and conservation club on my road. I knew they had public trap nights every Tuesday and I’d hear the shots going off in the distance and I was pining at the chance to shoot some clays in a real trap shooting environment, but for some reason I was so nervous about going. I eventually mustered up the courage and headed over one Tuesday, and I’m so glad I did. Everyone there was real nice and helpful, and one guy even has 2 world championships in trap shooting from the 1980’s. I’ve hardly missed a Tuesday since then.

Join the Club

 The best way to find clubs that shoot trap is using Google, and if some clubs are private it doesn’t hurt to call and see if they do a public night or if they’re sponsoring new members.

In conclusion, nothing is as rewarding as seeing that orange clay turn to dust, and nothing sharpens your upland bird hunting skills better than shooting moving, flying targets.

Reader Interactions

Get The Daily Stream Newsletter. Learn More