Shooting your hat in skeet.

Great question!!!! I made a phone call to a member of our gun club who has been inducted into the Canadian Hall of Fame for skeet. Guess what? He didn’t even know the origins but says it was firmly established by the 70’s. Seems they also shoot hats for 50 & 100 straights and if you win a major competition you hat gets shredded also.

I’ll be asking questions tomorrow at the oldest continually operated gun club in Canada (Hamilton Gun Club). Hopefully we can dig up an answer. I think one of my hats got shot up long ago or maybe it was the mice that chewed it up for warm nesting material in the basement.

If nobody posts an answer by tomorrow evening I’ll get back to you. Stay tuned for the truth or another made up story. lol
LoL thats awesome, and I hope your hat was shot not eaten by those damn mice! 😆
 
So you've just ran 24 straight and your about to take your 25 shot..... do you remove your new Stetson and put it in your car in exchange for a sweaty old ballcap or shoot the 25th target knowing you could be in for a new $300 dollar hat... or do you just intentionally miss? Hmmmm..... :)
Funny enough the fellow that got his hat shot didn't want the one he was wearing shot so he got a baseball hat and they shot it. I guess he got grief because it wasn't what he was wearing 😏 some people stick hard to tradition.
 
Got my first 25 in trap last summer, and my first 25 in skeet this spring. Had my good hat on too ! Apparently, I'm a late bloomer..just turned 65 in April LOL
I had 23's and 24's in trap over the yrs, but never a 25. Lotsa 23's in skeet...couple of straight runs of 23, but couldn't seal the deal ! Once, a couple yrs ago I shot 24 in skeet, but missed my low 8 option shot. That was all going thru my skull full bore before I pulled the trigger on shot # 25 this spring lol
Thinking...dayyuuummm, here I was, in the same predicament. This time the clay lost and I won !!
Good for you that's awesome-, Im the same got into trap and skeet shooting later and 23's and 24's here frequent but then finely a 25 in trap, and then I want to get a 25 in the sub gauges and sure sh!t i ran 23 with my 20 gauge and the oh ya I got this and "lost" on 24 and hit on 25th.
 
Most of my shooting has been hunting related but I did shoot my first 25 straight in skeet earlier this summer.

I'd shot a couple rounds of skeet years ago, in fact there's a funny video of me shooting Station 8 for the first time ever on YouTube, you can totally tell I have NO idea what I'm doing lol!

I'm in the 20's routinely, with a bunch of 24's but that 25 had eluded me for some time & I set it as a goal this year to shoot a "straight 25"...

When I did, the guys did shoot my hat & my wife and daughter made me this shadow box to commemorate the occasion.

Cheers
Jay

Straight25Skeet.JPG
 
My skeet field does not shoot hats but just a couple weeks ago a young lady shooter came back from an intercounty trap shoot with a shot up hat. Her first 25 in trap. She was pretty proud.
I've heard several origins of why it was done not sure there's much if any truth in any of the stories.
I have shot a buddies hat while hunting. He was new and after opening up on the 3rd flock of geese over 100 yards away I took his hat and toss it in the water and shot it. He learned to wait till they decoy after that
 
My skeet field does not shoot hats but just a couple weeks ago a young lady shooter came back from an intercounty trap shoot with a shot up hat. Her first 25 in trap. She was pretty proud.
I've heard several origins of why it was done not sure there's much if any truth in any of the stories.
I have shot a buddies hat while hunting. He was new and after opening up on the 3rd flock of geese over 100 yards away I took his hat and toss it in the water and shot it. He learned to wait till they decoy after that
I've seen youngsters at our club wear them like a trophy after they've been shot. And they should be proud, some folks go a long time before shooting 25 straight!
 
Funny enough the fellow that got his hat shot didn't want the one he was wearing shot so he got a baseball hat and they shot it. I guess he got grief because it wasn't what he was wearing 😏 some people stick hard to tradition.
I wasn't wearing a hat when I shot 100 straight, but the boys wanted to shoot a hat so I scrounged up one of our RSO caps for them.
 
I’ve done some RESEARCH on the origins of shooting hats and have come up with two possibilities. The first opinion put forward by another Hall of Fame shooter is that the tradition of shooting hats started at Mohawk Gun Club (southern Ontario) in the early 60s. I see a few posts from other parts of Canada also mentioning the 60s and someone mentioned even earlier up in northern Ontario in the 50s. So that shoots a few holes in that theory. Pun intended.

Actual history dating back to the late 1700 and early 1800s documents that the sport of pigeon shooting with flintlock shotguns involved placing 3 pigeons in small holes covered with the old ‘stove pipe hats’ connected to cords. On the command pull one cord would be yanked and a pigeon would be released to be shot. Gambling was involved for money and some shots were so quick that there was collateral damage, birds and hats would be peppered at the same time. The competitors would as a prank pull off someone’s hat and fling it out for the rest of the gentlemen to have a little fun…it seems a bit of moonshine may have been involved also…. Cheers
 
Most of my shooting has been hunting related but I did shoot my first 25 straight in skeet earlier this summer.

I'd shot a couple rounds of skeet years ago, in fact there's a funny video of me shooting Station 8 for the first time ever on YouTube, you can totally tell I have NO idea what I'm doing lol!

I'm in the 20's routinely, with a bunch of 24's but that 25 had eluded me for some time & I set it as a goal this year to shoot a "straight 25"...

When I did, the guys did shoot my hat & my wife and daughter made me this shadow box to commemorate the occasion.

Cheers
Jay

View attachment 991749
That's awesome 👌
 
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