About Trap & Skeet Shooting
“We grew up and live in rural America and have owned guns, hunted, and fished all of our lives. This is our community, and we hope to preserve it for future generations.”
— Mr. Larry Potterfield of MidwayUSA
Trap Shooting.
The oldest shotgun sport in the U.S., trap shooting originates from live pigeon shooting which was popular in England and America. As a result, many terms in trap come from bird hunting phrases; for example, the clay targets are called “birds.”
The clay targets thrown by a trap machine always come from the same location out in front of the shooter, but travel 48 to 52 yards with a maximum angle of 22.5 degrees on either side of a center peg. One round of trap consists of 25 targets—five targets from each station in the rotation. A competition is usually four rounds or 100 targets in total.
There are variations on the game of trap, such as “handicap shooting” (which means that the shooter is further back from the trap house up to 27 yards) or “doubles” (shooting two targets in one turn), which also have variations in the rules and guidelines from regular trap. Our team allows shooters to participate in ATA trap, handicap, and doubles.
Skeet Shooting.
Skeet shooting originated in the 1920s as a supplemental shotgun sports game with clay targets. It consists of a competition field in the shape of a semicircle, with 7 of the 8 shooter stations on the arc of the field, and the final station located at the center of the baseline.
In this game, there are two machines throwing targets: one is throwing from a higher location (the “high house”) and one from a lower location (the “low house”). Clays are thrown either as single targets or in tandem as double targets. The shooter may be shooting at a target which is moving away from him, towards him, or across his line of vision; these targets may be moving up or down while in the air. One round of skeet consists of 25 targets.
Our team has a subset of shooters who also shoot skeet as well as trap.