I think you may have your facts out of order. The largest club in Ontario and May be Canada is Oshawa Clay & Target Club, It has over 1800 members. They also throw the most targets in just becuase of there membership size. Lawry's can confirm that if you call them.
The death of trap in BC
- Thread starter bdft
- Start date
Hamilton did have a sporting clays range several years ago which was a lot of fun to shoot (much more so than trap). I'm surprised that they no longer have it.
At one of my current clubs (Niagara Regional Sportsmen's GC) we regularly get 30-40 shooters a week out for the sporting clays matches.
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
HGC and TITS both had Sporting Clays when I lived in Ontario. Have they removed them?
I am doing my part. Im in my early 30's and Trap is my main focus. My home range is Calgary, where we have a huge facility, and I can happily say that it does get busy from time to time. I'm still one of the younger regulars, but I still see a number of juniors and younger adults show up from time to time or at the registered shoots. Being a range open to the public definitely helps.
One thing I like about Trap, especially after shooting (and giving up on) IPSC, is how welcoming an environment every trap range I have been to is. Last year when I went on vacation to Kelowna the guys at Kelowna Fish and Game invited me to come shoot with them no questions asked. Despite not being a public range they where a great bunch of guys who showed me great hospitality on my visit.
One thing I like about Trap, especially after shooting (and giving up on) IPSC, is how welcoming an environment every trap range I have been to is. Last year when I went on vacation to Kelowna the guys at Kelowna Fish and Game invited me to come shoot with them no questions asked. Despite not being a public range they where a great bunch of guys who showed me great hospitality on my visit.
I don't know. That's what gr8trapper posted but I haven't been to the HGC in several years so maybe it's true. Seems a shame, though as it was a good sporting clays course.
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
Well unless gr8trapper knows something HGC doesn't they still show they have sporting clays on their website!
https://hamiltongunclub.com/
I'm a member of Hamilton and it has installed new Sporting clays automatic throwers on a card system setup now. Its up and running. You can run the course alone if you feel so inclined, as opposed to putting your name on the waiting until a squad forms for a shoot. They also have a new skeet field up and running that took the place of the 5 stand course. I'd say that skeet is most popular with all fields waiting with a lot of new shooters coming out for skeet.
HGC is the traditional home of trap in Ontario. That they have installed a sporting clays course should tell you something.
Good to hear.
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
They have had one well over twenty years. I can remember shooting their course twice around 2000-2002.
And yet sporting clays is still growing in popularity, even though the cost is significantly higher.
Falconflyer
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
The arrival of Sporting clays started the demise of trap and skeet, folks still shoot those disciplines because they’re cheaper and easier to set up but sporting is a lot more fun and there’s a lot more young guys doing that than trap and skeet.
This is true. Trap fields and to a lesser extent skeet fields have been in use for generations, bought and paid for. Sporting clays was interesting and challenging to trap and skeet shooters but many smaller clubs couldn’t afford the setup or didn’t have the expansion room. Badically I still think the general decline of shotgun sports in most areas comes down to our ever shrinking disposable income. After you sweep away all the ‘official’ BS, the Canadian standard of living has been sinking for 15-20 years or more and is picking up speed going down hill, especially in the last 7-8 years. Think 20-30 years ago. What homeless people? What inner city tent encampments? What opioid fatality crisis? What public protests? Once Canada was advancing, leading the way for third world countries, now we’re heading back to join them. Trap shooting is just one casualty of our declining society.
Yes, I had heard of the former SPFGA volunteers (Keith, Percy, Richard) stopping.
Never managed to figure out why.
@stubblejumper, if you’d care to share why, please PM me. Thanks.
There is a new volunteer, Joe T, ‘running’ the Trap program at SPFGA.
As you’ve stated, most of the committee (I believe) is new.
I shot there at the end of April and turnout was good. For 2023, it’s gone from $5 a round to $6.50+GST.
Checking the club calendar, there’s still nothing else for Trap.
I’d consider the Edmonton Gun Club as my home club.
Never managed to figure out why.
@stubblejumper, if you’d care to share why, please PM me. Thanks.
There is a new volunteer, Joe T, ‘running’ the Trap program at SPFGA.
As you’ve stated, most of the committee (I believe) is new.
I shot there at the end of April and turnout was good. For 2023, it’s gone from $5 a round to $6.50+GST.
Checking the club calendar, there’s still nothing else for Trap.
I’d consider the Edmonton Gun Club as my home club.
- Location
- Planet Earth Wearing My Tinfoil Hat
Again I'd beg to differ on the "more fun" statement. Personally I don't find Sporting Clays more fun. It kind of reminds me of golfing with a gun and I sure don't like golfing. That is not to say I do not enjoy an occasional round of Sporting and next days off I'm headed out with a friend who is a very accomplished SC shooter for a day of Sporting. Shooting Sporting Clays is a very casual experience for me, I am not as driven when shooting it as I am skeet or trap, especially trap. We each get something different from each shooting discipline so to say one is more boring than the other as a blanket statement is not so. That is a matter of each person's opinion.
Falconflyer
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
Your perfectly correct Frank and perhaps I used a bad choice of words however, trap is a lot more boring for me and not necessarily anyone else and I didn’t mean to offend. Maybe “more variety” would be more accurate instead of boring. One of the things I can’t stand at a trap shoot is waiting around for your turn to shoot, I find that tedious at best.
I kinda go in spurts at trap, I’ll shoot it for a few years then take a break as I see my scores decline due to my mind wandering and in turn my focus deteriorating. After a break for a couple of years I again start shooting trap and I can do well for a while until I get bored again. Skeet for me is an occasional thing and at one time I shot a lot of it but again I get bored. I shot a few rounds of skeet last year when we installed new machines at our range and I’ll shoot a few more rounds this year but I’ll never go hard at it. I see it more of an exercise in the fundamentals of shooting better sporting clays. Sporting clays however is totally different than trap and skeet in that I never get bored and never really need a break from it.
I kinda go in spurts at trap, I’ll shoot it for a few years then take a break as I see my scores decline due to my mind wandering and in turn my focus deteriorating. After a break for a couple of years I again start shooting trap and I can do well for a while until I get bored again. Skeet for me is an occasional thing and at one time I shot a lot of it but again I get bored. I shot a few rounds of skeet last year when we installed new machines at our range and I’ll shoot a few more rounds this year but I’ll never go hard at it. I see it more of an exercise in the fundamentals of shooting better sporting clays. Sporting clays however is totally different than trap and skeet in that I never get bored and never really need a break from it.
Mumbles Marble Mouth
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- Lower Mainland
That's no surprise with the surge in popularity with sporting clays. All the shotgun clubs are pushing out the room for trap and getting 5 stand or sporting clays instead. I don't think trap will completely die as it looks like it's still very popular at Vancouver Gun Club. Just personally for me the only trap that's interesting is Olympic trap (bunker). I can shoot 85/100 in sporting clays but then I can shoot 7/25 in Olympic trap.
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I started as a hunter, and took up skeet to improve my wing shooting. I chose skeet over trap , because it more closely represented shot presentations on birds with targets coming and going, and broadside targets, as opposed to all targets going away. Then I started to like shooting skeet as a sport in itself. But once I tried sporting clays, I found that I enjoyed it more than skeet, and I only shoot skeet , because it is much more affordable than sporting clays, and is much closer to home. If the cost was similar, I would only shoot sporting clays. I also like not having to wait between squads, our regular group shoots the sporting clays league every week , and it is rare that we have to wait for anyone, we just go from station to station and shoot. So I shoot sporting clays once per week, and skeet in between.
I guess if you shoot regular trap you could find it boring but shooting 24 abreast playing trap games meat shooting ,bushwacker ,Annie's etc. that was /is fun .No doubt some would find it borderline but to me nothing compares
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