Jwints Sporting Clays - NSCA Level 1 Certified Instructor
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The different Clays Games

The three main Clays games are Skeet, Trap and Sporting Clays.

SKEET

Skeet is shot from eight stations set on a semicircle with two trap houses throwing crossing targets.  A high house to the shooter's left and a low house to the shooter's right.  A standard round is 25 shots.  The shooters starts at the High house and shoots a single from each house and then a true pair.  He then moves on to station two and repeats the process.  At stations 3, 4 and 5 only singles are shot.  At stations 6 and 7 the process is the same as at stations 1 and 2. The shooter then moves to station 8 which is halfway beteen the high and low houses in teh middle of teh field and shoots singles from each of these houses.  If the shooter is successful and hits all the targets to this point he has an extra shell which is then shot at station 8 at the low house target again.  If a target is missed at any station previous to this the extra shell is shot at that target again.  It is called the option shell.

Shoot-offs are common in Skeet with many perfect scores being posted at which point the shooters shoot doubles at stations 3,4 and 5.

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My son Tim shooting in a High School Trap Tournament

TRAP

Trap is shot from five stations arrayed 16 yards in front of the traphouse which is centered on the field and trows quartering away rising targets.  The trap machine oscillates at random from left to right and right to left making the shooters observe and make decisions on the angle of the target prior to shooting. A full squad would be five shooters who each start at one of the trap stations and take turns shooting one target each until they have shot at five targets at which point they all move to the next station.  The shooter on station five goes to station one at this point.  This is done until they have all shot at each stations and have shot at 25  targets.

Team Bass Pro at the CSF shoot - Trap
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JWints, Allan Treadwell and Haley Dunn

Handicap Trap is also shot where shooters earn yardage from the 20 yard line back to the 27 yard line by scoreing well in tournaments.

First Perfect Score Custom:
When a shooter hits his or her first perfect score of 25 in either Trap or Skeet those shooters on his squad shoot his or her hat.  My hat was shot at the Las Vegas Gun Club in May, 2005 for a 25 straight in Trap.  My first 25 straight in Skeet came at Ozark Shooters in June, 2005.

Other games include 5 Stand which is shot on a skeet or trap field with extra traps set to throw sporting clays type targets.  Wobble Trap, which is somewhat like trap but the trap also osillates up and down as well as side to side. Compac which I hear is a souped up version of 5 Stand, and Fitasc which is a version of Sporting Clays but requires a down gun start and the targets can be delayed up to 3 seconds after the pull is called.