Sporting clays, trap, skeet difficulty

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harrygun

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Hey everyone,

Newbie to shotguns, first time out to the range I shot a round of sporting clays. 24/50 with a friends semi auto 12g :(

How would you guys rank the difficulty between these shoots(sporting/skeet/trap)?

Also I just bought a ithaca 37 pump 30" fixed full choke and then I was told it's hard to learn on a pump... what type of action would you recommend for a beginner? I'm leaning towards O/U but they seem cumbersome to reload and you won't be able to shoot in anything more than 2 birds at a time.

Cheers,
Harrygun
 
All the clay target venues I know of won't let you load more than 2 at a time anyways. You may find your full choke best suited to trap shooting with skeet being tougher as the targets are usually shot at lesser distances. I have found that most people that get serious about clay shooting eventually want an over/under but you can learn on anything.
Lots of new shooters forget to pump and load the second shot on the doubles so there lots of wasted birds. I usually introduce people with a Remington 1100 that almost seems to shoot itself.
In terms of difficulty I would rate (hardest to easiest, for me anyways) Sporting, skeet then trap.
 
I find little difference in difficulty level between the three disciplines. It does not matter which you shoot if you do not follow good shooting basics of stance, gun mount, focusing your vision on the target, establishing good hold points etc. then you are not going to hit targets consistently in any of the three. As for a pump with a fixed full choke you will find it difficult to hit the closer presentations skeet and sporting clays provide due to the lack of pattern spread at closer distances and you will not be allowed to load more than two shells on any range I know for all the disciplines. Single target presentations mean a single round, doubles equals two rounds. The only exception I am aware of is I believe two shells are allowed in International Trap on singles targets but I am not positive of that?
 
Difficulty level of the 3 disiplines is similar, what makes Sporting Clays more appealing is the variety of target presentations. To second what Spank said, a full choke slide action is best suited for shooting trap, however take the time to pattern the gun at 30yrds with your preffered target load so you know what the gun is actually doing. Just because it is stamped full choke doesn't mean it throws a full choke pattern or that a previous owner didn't have the choke opened up. This will tell you how tight a pattern it throws and where(more important). The pattern should be even and centered to slightly high and about 30" in diameter. So far as learn to shoot doubles with a pump, it just takes practise to learn to do it.
 
harrygun said:
Newbie to shotguns, first time out to the range I shot a round of sporting clays. 24/50 with a friends semi auto 12g :(

How would you guys rank the difficulty between these shoots(sporting/skeet/trap)?
Click to expand...
Don't feel too bad. For a newbie 24/50 is a pretty good score.

It's been said that trap is easier to learn but harder to shoot. Skeet is easier to shoot but harder to learn. There is no consistency with sporting clays. Trap and skeet are basically the same everywhere you go but each sporting course is different with varying degrees of difficulty. Some sporting courses are a breeze while others are very demanding.

If what you are shooting is a full choke pump gun then singles trap is the place to start. Targets are further in trap and you are only shooting one at a time. A pump gun with tight chokes will make shooting closer targets and doubles harder and you don't want to unnecessarily handicap yourself from the start.

For a beginner I'd recommend a 28-30" semi-automatic with choke tubes such as the target versions of the Beretta A400, Browning Gold, Winchester SX3, Remington 1100 and other similar guns. They are good reliable guns, can shoot all the games and are easy enough to sell if you want to move on to another gun or decide to pursue another interest.

Worry less about the gun and more about learning how to shoot clay targets. Just about any gun can work if it shoots where you are looking. Pattern your gun to see where it shoots, learn about stance, lead, eye focus, foot position, gun and eye hold and then practice, practice, practice. Taking lessons from an instructor is also a good idea.
 
Most beginners find regular trap the easiest to start with, because you only shoot singles, and you have more time to shoot. Most beginners wait too long to shoot at skeet, and they tend to do poorly at doubles and station 8, as a result. Sporting clays is definitely more difficult than trap or skeet, because the presentations vary so much, as does the speed of the clays. You don't see clean rounds of sporting clays, as you do clean rounds of trap or skeet. Skeet and sporting clays also tend to be more sociable, if the squad is all friends. you can socialize as you wait for your turn to shoot. With trap, you can't talk while on the station, or it will trigger the targets. I enjoy sporting clays most of all, followed by skeet, and I only shoot trap, if it is all that is available.

If you shot all of the true pairs as per the course, and you shot 24/50 your first time out at sporting clays, you did very well.
 
Maritime Storm said:
Difficulty level of the 3 disiplines is similar, what makes Sporting Clays more appealing is the variety of target presentations. To second what Spank said, a full choke slide action is best suited for shooting trap, however take the time to pattern the gun at 30yrds with your preffered target load so you know what the gun is actually doing. Just because it is stamped full choke doesn't mean it throws a full choke pattern or that a previous owner didn't have the choke opened up. This will tell you how tight a pattern it throws and where(more important). The pattern should be even and centered to slightly high and about 30" in diameter. So far as learn to shoot doubles with a pump, it just takes practise to learn to do it.
Click to expand...

What do you mean pattern the gun? Do you mean select which brands of ammo spread better?
 
I went to my first Sporting Clays shoot last month. Got 30/50 with my 870 pump. loved it. I'm looking into a used o/u now.

Patterning the gun is simply shooting it at a dot in the middle of large paper target to determine where the spread of shot ends up. It'll show you if the gun shoots high or low based on where you're aiming as well as how tight or loose the shot is (depending on the choke).
 
Shot my first round of sporting clays last weekend, only got 25/50 so that seems to be the normal for new comer to the sporting clays, but then again, all the courses are different with differing lvls of difficulty. In terms of which one is the easiest, I would say 16yd single trap is definitely easiest to get started on, but you can build on the difficulty by doing handicap and double trap.
 
Patterning means shooting the gun at a board or large piece of cardboard from a set distance, to see where most of the pellets are going. It gives you an idea of what kind of spread you are getting and what chokes you should be using, for example you will see if the pattern opens up to the point that the clays can "slip through" the holes.

Properly patterning the gun involves shooting it at a patterning board from a distance of 40 yards. The board will have an aiming point in the middle, and a 30 inch circle around it (or you will have to draw the circle yourself). You then count the number of pellets that hit inside the circle, and you quarter the circle to figure out of more pellets are hitting in the top/bottom/left/right halves.

target.jpg


An ideal pattern for a "full" choke would mean that 70% of the pellets that came out of the shell are inside this circle when shot from 40 yards, and obviously an equal number in each quarter. Other chokes are roughly supposed to pattern as follows:

Full: 70%+
Modified: 55-60%
IC: 45%
Cylinder: 35%

A 1oz load of #8 shot will have roughly 400 pellets, so be prepared to spend some time counting holes...

Quite often a choke will not actually throw a pattern as advertised, it depends on the kind of ammo you are using etc. Very large pellets, such as in Buckshot, will not react the same way to chokes, so this should really only be used with shells that have a fairly high pellet count.
 
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I'm brand new to trap shooting and am currently using modified choke on my bottom barrel of my o/u, should I be using full? My wife has full choke installed on her Weatherby Sa-08 but hasn't shot it yet. LGS salesman suggested full choke, but I thought maybe modified would give me a little more leeway?
 
jermyzy said:
I'm brand new to trap shooting and am currently using modified choke on my bottom barrel of my o/u, should I be using full? My wife has full choke installed on her Weatherby Sa-08 but hasn't shot it yet. LGS salesman suggested full choke, but I thought maybe modified would give me a little more leeway?
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Modified choke is what I use for 16 yard trap. It's more than sufficient.
 
Modified for brand a may be different from modified from brand b. Even within the same make, the different models can make the actual constriction different. IE when Beretta when from Mobil choke to Optima, to Optima HP, the constriction went from pretty tight to pretty loose, to tighter in 3 iterations.

In the current Optima HP bore, I can confidently shoot 16 yard trap with Improved Cylinder, and still get very clean breaks.
 
1. Welcome to the sport -- first step complete :)
2. 24/50 for the first-timer is a very good result! Lots of room for improvement as well.
3. Difficulty is very subjective. Some shooters are very gifted at skeet and suck at trap, could be good at sporting but not so with skeet. Sporting clays is made to mimic the real bird hunt. Skeet is great with 8 stations and 16 target presentations. In trap, you shoot outgoing targets. Google the rules, YouTube some vids to see what is what and how it's done. Try to find professional and NOT amateur videos. Easy to pick up mistakes -- learn the right way from the beginning.
4. Leave your Ithaca pump with fixed choke for bird hunting. It will not do you any good at clay sports for two reasons -- (1) you have to pump it, thus losing time in transition from one target to the other in doubles (when both targets are launched at the same time). Pump will slow you down, although many years back, pumps were quite popular on the skeet and other clay sport fields. (2) Full choke will serve you a great disadvantage as it will not allow for the proper spread of pellets at 20-25 yards, which is the usual distance where you engage your clay targets. Open or Skeet chokes are recommended. You can go up to Modified choke for clays that are far out there on the sporting clays.
5. The type of action recommended for beginner or non-beginner alike are (1) o/u break action; (2) semi-auto. Don't worry about reloading the o/u as there will be no more than 2 birds at a time. o/u allows you to have quick transition from target 1 to target 2. The vast majority of people shooting skeet and trap use o/u. Semi-auto will soften the recoil but will also add moving parts to the mix that you can feel moving when transitioning from target 1 to target 2. Also your eyes can be thrown off by the cocking lever on the bolt. Also you will have to run around the field picking up your shells :)

Have fun and stay safe!
 
ss1980; Some of us shoot a slide action quite well, I will agree a fixed full choke is better suited to the trap field, but until the OP patterns it to see what it is in fact throwing for a pattern, the stamp on the means little. The Ithaca 37 he has most likely is a featherweight model with a light contour barrel, it could be shortned but he won't be able to have screw-in chokes installed, however assuming it was made later the 855,000 serial #, he could order a new barrel from Ithaca with screw in chokes for it.
 
jermyzy said:
I'm brand new to trap shooting and am currently using modified choke on my bottom barrel of my o/u, should I be using full? My wife has full choke installed on her Weatherby Sa-08 but hasn't shot it yet. LGS salesman suggested full choke, but I thought maybe modified would give me a little more leeway?
Click to expand...

Modified is fine for 16 yard trap. I would start-out with a modified, and tighten up if needed from there.
IMO confidence is your friend when it comes to good scores.
 
My Ithaca 37 throws 30" pattern at 25yrds even though the barrel is stamped Full. Little light for shooting trap, little tight for skeet, didn't stop me from breaking 21 in skeet with it yesterday.
 
I started Sporting Clays with a pump with a cylinder choke, and still return to that Winchester because it makes me giggle. I am able to pump it faster than most, so to me it is not a hindrance. Shooting with a full choke hurts my feelings and my score, very unforgiving for close targets. The big advantage of an over and under is two different chokes, open choke for that close bird and modified for that second bird that is way out there. Biggest concern though is to find a shotgun that fits you, so you can shoot instinctively without having to adjust your eye or the gun it make it shoot where you want.
 
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