Mastering Sporting Clays

INTRODUCTION

Mastering Sporting Clays was written for the benefit of clay shooters, and more specifically sporting clays, FITASC, and five-stand shooters. Much of the theory and science and many of the techniques in Mastering Sporting Clays, however, are completely transferable to other clay target disciplines, such as skeet and trap, as well as to the upland and waterfowl hunter. Subjects like eye dominance, gun fit, gun mount, movement, and others will be of great benefit to anyone involved in engaging a moving target with a shotgun.

From this book you will learn a specific, systematic, memorable, and repeatable method for putting your shotgun in the right place to break targets, over and over again. Telling you how to break targets falls short of actually arming you with a proven system. So, in addition to the fundamentals of shotgunning, this book will arm you with a palette of target engagement methods, a process for evaluating each target presentation, and a methodology for selecting and employing the appropriate stroke for a specific target presentation. If you are a serious competitor, you will find these techniques, and the OPTIMAL Process introduced later in the book, particularly useful. OPTIMAL is the first published system in existence that arms the shotgun sports competitor with a routine for shot planning and execution. Just like a computer program, OPTIMAL is a proven program that you can load each time you step up to a station: one set of files for pre-shot planning and another set for your pre-shot routine.

Mastering Sporting Clays is presented and organized in such a way that, after reading it through once, you can refer back to applicable chapters for reference and as a refresher. It is also organized in a logical progression, starting with the fundamentals, then progressing to target analysis and shot planning, followed by engagement techniques for specific presentations, practice drills, and mental game topics for competitors. Part I (The Fundamentals) introduces the critical prerequisites of eye dominance and gun fit followed by the fundamentals of shotgunning: Focus, Movement, and Faith. Part II (The Path to Mastery) consists of understanding how the fundamentals relate to each other and how you can evolve into an independent and self-sufficient shooter by employing a systematic shot-planning process and utilizing a diagnostic process for self-diagnosis of a miss. Part II will also equip you with target engagement techniques specific to certain target presentations, the OPTIMAL Process, as well as a number of practice regimens to boost your confidence and performance in competition.

Mastering Sporting Clays is applicable across the entire spectrum of shooting abilities: from the recreational clay shooter to the serious competitor—with value for both the novice and the seasoned shotgunner. Whether you are an aspiring Master Class competitor, weekend shooter, or improving bird hunter, this book will propel your shotgunning to the next level and beyond. If you are a novice or beginning sporting clays shooter, you may want to read and perhaps reread Part I using my DVD Focus-Movement-Faith as a visual companion while accessing Part II on a selective and gradual basis. If you are brand new to shotgunning, some of Part II will be a bit daunting until you gain some experience. Absorbing information gradually is much preferred to drinking through a fire hose. As we always counsel instructor candidates during our instructor training courses, less is more when you are starting out. For the more experienced shooter (NSCA C Class competitor, for example) on up through the advanced competitor (A, AA, and Master), I encourage you to read through the book in its entirety and then start aggressively incorporating the palette of target engagement techniques (or strokes) presented in Part II into your game. These tools are battle-proven! With them you can break anything on the sporting clays course with confidence. It’s like a golfer with a full set of clubs. Once you incorporate then into your game, you will wonder how you ever survived with one or two clubs in your bag.

Learning how to shoot comes from shooting, not simply from reading a book or watching a DVD. Get out there and break lots of targets! It is my intent and great hope that you will visit and revisit this book, as well as my DVDs, throughout your shooting life. By investing in this book, you are now armed with the fundamentals and techniques you need to break any target on the sporting clays course! Good shooting!

PART I

THE FUNDAMENTALS

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO THE FUNDAMENTALS

Before delving into the fundamentals of Focus-Movement-Faith, it is essential to define and understand the difference between principles and techniques. Principles are absolutes. Principles are black and white. They are inviolable rules or guideposts one need follow whether applied to science, life, or shotgunning. Ignoring or violating a principle is ill advised and will most likely result in an unsatisfactory or undesirable outcome. This may seem elemental, but in today’s society there seems to be constant pressure to discount, rethink, or even eliminate many of the principles and absolute truths that have guided man’s earthly existence for thousands of years. We shouldn’t expect that the trends in shotgun theory and instruction are any different.

A technique or method is a means to accomplish a task or goal. For a given task there may be any number of methods that will effectively accomplish the goal and bring about the desired outcome. Any technique, as long as it is effective, can be a viable means by which to accomplish a certain goal. Some techniques may be ill advised and others more generally accepted, but as long as a shooting technique results in consistent success for the shooter employing it, it cannot be called invalid.

Many years ago—I think I was in C Class—a number of my shooting buddies from the local club and I took a lesson from Bill McGuire. I found him to be one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. I also found him to be a good instructor who clearly understood that different shooters see targets differently. Today, Bill is arguably one of this county’s most successful champions, having won both national and world titles in our sport. I have since had the privilege of seeing Bill shoot in competition. Bill shoots most targets using a form of diminishing lead, where muzzle movement is minimized and the target is allowed to approach the gun until the correct lead is achieved and the shot is executed. Few other shooters use this method as their default method, yet this is a technique that he has clearly mastered. Is it a valid method of achieving lead? Of course. His style of teaching, however, embraces the unique way in which each student sees targets. Throughout his lessons with each of my buddies that day, Bill effectively communicated the principles of good shotgunning yet adapted the target tactics he taught to the natural style of the individual student.

There are a number of authorities in shotgunning attempting to advance a technique as principle. In fact, on a monthly basis students approach me for a lesson who are desperate for a cure to their confusion about how to break targets with a shotgun. They have taken a lesson from one or more professional shooters who dogmatically maintain that there is only one way to achieve lead on a target. The most common situation I see is a shooter who attempts to engage targets using the one and only method advocated by the most recent professional shooter from whom he or she has taken a lesson. What they inevitably find in the weeks following their lesson with the unnamed pro is that one method of achieving lead does not work on all target presentations. In my view this is a travesty. If each person’s visuomotor system (eyes, brain, and nervous system) sees and reacts to targets differently, how in the world could anyone argue that there is only one technique to kill a target? In fact, these same dogmatic one-method instructors and shooters can be observed engaging a target using a technique different than the one they claim to exclusively employ! I am not questioning the integrity or intentions of these folks. They honestly think they are engaging all targets using their default method. They are unaware of the fact that they subconsciously adapt their technique on certain presentations. We see this phenomenon played out again and again by Master Class competitors who enroll in the NSCA instructor courses I regularly teach.

In case I’ve been too theoretical to this point, allow me be specific. Focus on the target, efficient Movement to the target, and Faith or trust in our natural God-given ability to break the target without visually verifying alignment of the shotgun are principles. Sustained lead, swing-through, pull-away, intercept, diminishing lead, and the target tactics introduced in Part II of this book are techniques. If you violate a principle, such as applying visual focus to the target as you execute the shot, breaking the target will be a questionable proposition. On the other hand, it is quite possible to break a particular sporting clays target using one of a variety of techniques so long as you adhere to three basic principles: visual connection with the target, efficient and appropriate movement, and a trust that the target will break without visual verification of barrel-target alignment. As mentioned in the introduction, the goals of this book are to provide you with both principles and techniques to guide your shooting as well as to clearly differentiate between the two along the way.

Focus, Movement, and Faith are principles, plain and simple. Focus-Movement-Faith serves not only as a road map for successful shotgunning but also as a diagnostic tree: a checklist for the shooter, and instructor, to determine the root cause of a miss or inconsistency. Virtually all of the possible reasons for a hit or a miss lie within these three principles. These three nuggets of truth are interdependent and must all tie together for successful execution of a target, pair, station, or covey rise. Is Focus-Movement-Faith the only way to describe the three basic principles of shotgunning? Absolutely not. Eyes-Movement-Trust or Fix-Point-Trust would work equally well as a three-word mnemonic. However you label them, there are three principles that define successful shotgunning and are at the root of all broken targets and misses.

In this part of the book, Part I, we will delve into background and prerequisites of success in sporting clays and then turn to the all-important fundamentals of Focus-Movement-Faith.

CHAPTER 2

A BRIEF HISTORY AND OTHER DISCIPLINES

Like the shotgun itself, most things related to shotguns have their origins in England. The clay target sports owe much of their popularity to the live pigeon shooting mania in Britain in the late 1800s. Pigeon shooting actually started in England in the late 1700s and reached its pinnacle of popularity between 1850 and 1890, which brought with it the rise of a number of prestigious gun clubs. In live pigeon shooting, birds are released from box-like cages or traps arrayed at a distance in front of the shooter. There is little question that modern clay target sports, as well as modern shotgun technology, evolved from this heyday of pigeon shooting.

In fact, the popularity of pigeon shooting, and demand for the best equipment possible from the sport’s participating gentry, fueled a revolution in the growth of shotgun technology during this period. Consequently, most of the technology found in modern shotgun actions today evolved during this period and was a response to the demand for quality and functionality from the wealthy participants who could afford to pay for it. For this reason, clay target sports continue to be referred to as the sport of kings.

At the tail end of the nineteenth century, live pigeon shooting began to wane in popularity in England and the United States, and it would eventually be outlawed in England in 1921. There was a clamor for a more humane and presumably more replenishable source of targets. Glass balls, thrown by small catapults and sometimes filled with feathers, were the first inanimate targets used in shotgun target sports and are believed to have originated in England.

While England clearly dominated the pages of our sport’s early history, the clay pigeon was actually born in America. The first patent for terracotta targets was awarded to George Ligowsky of Cincinnati in 1880.

Two years later he was awarded another patent for his thrower, dubbed the Ligowsky trap.¹ The terra-cotta material used to make the original domed clay targets eventually gave way to a new mixture of pitch and limestone that resulted in a target that was easier to break and similar in composition to today’s modern clay target.

CLAY TARGET DISCIPLINES

It is not my intention to provide a comprehensive description, analysis, or instruction on the clay target disciplines outside of sporting clays. After all, this is a book about sporting clays. However, it is important to understand the differences and similarities between sporting clays and other clay target disciplines because in sporting clays you will encounter target presentations that approximate some of those typically found in one of the other disciplines. Shooting and practicing other clay target disciplines, especially skeet and trap, is an excellent way to hone your sporting clays skill. Alongside sporting clays, the most common clay target disciplines are trap, skeet, FITASC, and five-stand.

Trap

Trap is the oldest clay shooting discipline, with origins dating back to the early 1800s in England. The sport was first introduced in the United States in 1831 using glass balls but was first shot using clay targets in the United States in 1880, thanks to the innovation of George Ligowsky. In trap, all targets are thrown at the same elevation angle and speed but are thrown at various horizontal angles in front of the shooter.

Modern trap is shot in singles, doubles, or handicap. Singles is considered to be the easiest of the three trap disciplines. In singles the shooter stands 16 yards away from and behind the center of the trap house and shoots at random targets that move away from the shooter within a 44-degree horizontal arc at a speed of about 47 miles per hour to a distance of 50 yards. Shooters are grouped into squads, usually made up of five people. There are five different stations that each shooter shoots from, five shots per station, totaling twenty-five shots for one round. Each station gives participants a different view of the targets flying through the air. Each position is a constant 16 yards from the trap house; they are spaced 3 feet apart, forming a small arc. Squads rotate between four trap fields called a bank. When shooters finish shooting at targets from those four trap houses, they have completed a round of one hundred targets, twenty-five at each field. There are two different variants of American trap: doubles and handicap. In doubles, shooters must break two targets fired out of the trap house simultaneously. In handicap, competitors stand farther away from the trap house, up to 27 yards. The Amateur Trapshooting Association is the sanctioning body for trap in the United States.²

Skeet

Today’s skeet field varies little from its 1920 beginnings. The second-oldest clay target discipline, skeet is shot from eight stations arrayed around two trap houses from which targets are thrown: a high house and a low house. Seven of the stations are arranged in a half moon between the two trap houses, and one station (#8) is directly between them.

The high house on the left side of the field throws its targets from a trap 10 feet above the ground. The target rises to a maximum height of 15 feet by the time it reaches the center of the field. The low house target, thrown from the right side of the field, leaves the trap house just 3½ feet from the ground. It also rises to a height of 15 feet by the time it reaches the center of the field. A round of American skeet consists of twenty-five targets, with seventeen shot as singles and eight as doubles. The first miss in a round is repeated immediately and is called an option. If no targets are missed during the round, the last or twenty-fifth target is shot at the last station, low house 8.

AMERICAN SKEET SHOOTING MENU

A top score of 25 is possible.

Station 1

Single: High house

Single: Low house

Double: High house/low house true pair

Station 2

Single: High house

Single: Low house

Double: High house/low house true pair

Station 3

Single: High house

Single: Low house

Station 4

Single: High house

Single: Low house

Station 5

Single: High house

Single: Low house

Station 6

Single: High house

Single: Low house

Double: Low house/high house true pair

Station 7

Single: High house

Single: Low house

Double: Low house/high house true pair

Station 8

Single: High house

Single: Low house

The first missed target may be repeated at the station/target of the first miss, or if the shooter is straight (24/24) through low house 8, the shooter will repeat low house 8.

Skeet is shot in squads of up to five shooters who move from station to station in numerical order around the half moon, starting at station 1 and finishing in the center (station 8) at the end of the round.

Any gauge shotgun of any type may be used, as long as it can fire at least two shots. The preferred shot size is #9, but nothing larger than #7½ should ever be used. Left-handed shooters do just as well as right. Shooters typically shoot with guns choked with skeet or cylinder chokes.

Sporting clays

A more recent entrant to the clay target world, sporting clays is believed to have originated in England in the 1970s and first appeared in the United States in the mid-1980s.

You may have heard sporting clays referred to as golf with a shotgun, because the shooter navigates around a course consisting of ten to fifteen individual shooting stations. Each station requires the shooter to engage two targets thrown from different traps.

Like the eighteen holes at a golf course, no two sporting clays stations are alike. The locations of traps are intentionally randomized from station to station to enhance the variety of target angles, distances, speeds, and trajectories. Terrain and background further enhance the variety and shooter experience. As the shooter steps into the shooting stand at each station and calls Pull, one or both targets are launched and engaged. While rules permit the throwing of singles, a station menu normally consists of three to five true (simultaneous) pairs, report pairs, or following pairs.

SPORTING CLAYS MENU

Single: A single target is released when the shooter calls Pull.

True pair (also called a simo pair): Both targets at a station are released simultaneously. Trapper releases both targets at a station when the shooter calls Pull. The station menu usually reads True pair–A/B.

Report pair: Targets are released one at a time. Trapper releases the first target when the shooter calls Pull. Trapper releases the second target at the instant the shooter executes the shot on the first target. The station menu usually reads "Report pair–A then