Sporting clays, trap, skeet difficulty

For skeet or clays, you need to fire a lot of rounds to allow your subconscious to build up a database of sight pictures. Even if you are a good shoot with natural talent.

For olympic skeet, this can be up to 50,000 shots before you can appreciate advice from the masters. For American skeet and sporting clays, figure at least 20,000 shots.

So, for beginners, don't get to worried about things until you have 20,000 rounds under your belt. It really takes a lot of practice.
 
I would suggest about equal "difficulty" level shooting either Trap or Skeet well. At the bigger competitions, after the prelims & main event, there are any number of "straight" shooters waiting for the Shoot-offs to determine a winner. 100 & 200 straights are not at all uncommon, although there are few 100 straights in Skeet with the 410. The International or ISSF versions
("Olympic") Trap & Skeet are certainly more difficult than the American ATA or NSSA versions of Trap & Skeet ... and relatively few perfect rounds in competition. Sporting Clays may be the toughest of all to shoot consistently well because of the wide variety of target types, presentations and varying distances and angles. Extremely few perfect rounds in competition. All the disciplines are difficult to become a "Top 10" regional competitor ... but IMHO, I thing Sporting Clays may be the more difficult to achieve, notwithstanding the scarcity of true International Trap & Skeet layouts to even allow one the practice required to become proficient, let alone competitive.
 
Wow, thanks for all the advice guys!

I've just bought a 26" improve cyl choke barrel for the ithaca 37. I haven't patterned it yet on either barrel so we'll have to see how it prints. I was actually looking to get the 870 wingmaster but it seems like the O/U is the way to go.


Thanks for all the advice,

Harry
 
stubblejumper said:
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.
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This can be a double edged sword, especially for a beginner. What is friendly socializing for some, can be an excess of unsolicited coaching and advice for others. Sometimes you just want to focus on shooting your targets without being told what you're doing wrong, or what the other shooters think you should be doing different after every pair.
 
B33rChiller said:
This can be a double edged sword, especially for a beginner. What is friendly socializing for some, can be an excess of unsolicited coaching and advice for others. Sometimes you just want to focus on shooting your targets without being told what you're doing wrong, or what the other shooters think you should be doing different after every pair.
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You can always tell the other squad members not to provide any advice unless you ask for it. I personally tend to only offer advice if it involves a safety concern, or if the shooter asks for help. As long as you shoot safely, it's none of my business if you are missing half of the targets and don't know why.
 
Honestly when my father and I started to shoot trap this fall, after a few decades off, we took the advice of using full choke.

It turned out to be a mistake. We switched to modified, learned a bit about how to get on the targets quicker, and are scoring better.

I figure that once I'm shooting within a few bird of a perfect round with consistency I'll switch back to full to refine technique and provide more challenge.

That being said, 5-Stand is by far my favourite. You can talk and joke with the other guys, stuff flies out from all corners - it's a hoot.

I find skeet difficult because it requires a pretty fast reaction. I've only shot 2 rounds, though.



It also helps to have someone at the club who knows his #### and who really loves to teach technique and be a mentor. I've had exposure to such men and they really straightened me out as I get back into this. Gone is the concept of sighting and leading a bird - new is the idea of watching and shooting the target.

when my head is in the moment, some of my shots have amazed me the moment after the break. Likewise I'm getting a clearer understanding of why I miss the ones that I miss.
 
I find skeet difficult because it requires a pretty fast reaction. I've only shot 2 rounds, though.
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There is more time than you think, both for the doubles, and for station 8. Most people try to swing with the targets for far too long before shooting.
 
stubblejumper said:
There is more time than you think, both for the doubles, and for station 8. Most people try to swing with the targets for far too long before shooting.
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I know it's a mental thing. Getting dialed in is going to take practice. They were giving me report doubles too, to make it a bit easier. What has been helping is to visualize everyone else's shot as though it were mine as well - just mentally sighting and thinking 'bang'

I'm not sure if it's my game or not, but I'll give it a fair chance
 
Mark-II said:
I know it's a mental thing. Getting dialed in is going to take practice. They were giving me report doubles too, to make it a bit easier. What has been helping is to visualize everyone else's shot as though it were mine as well - just mentally sighting and thinking 'bang'

I'm not sure if it's my game or not, but I'll give it a fair chance
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When you feel comfortable with skeet, try shooting doubles at stations 3,4,5. I generally shoot at least a couple of rounds of doubles during every shooting session.
 
Doubles fun. We try to get a round of doubles in at least once a week at our club, even more fun if you tackle it with a modified choked slide action. Our club has put away our Make-a-Break for the season but the stand is still sitting in position 10 yards behind #4, the latest challenge is to shoot doubles from the stand. It certainly provides a challenge.
 
Maritime Storm said:
Doubles fun. We try to get a round of doubles in at least once a week at our club, even more fun if you tackle it with a modified choked slide action. Our club has put away our Make-a-Break for the season but the stand is still sitting in position 10 yards behind #4, the latest challenge is to shoot doubles from the stand. It certainly provides a challenge.
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Can't find many references to Make-a-Break, do you mean this? :

https://books.google.com/books?id=XilvUTnEwd4C&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=Make-a-Break+trap+shooting&source=bl&ots=sDXIlcsXaW&sig=cdQkMCBigfWuU_q8wHJr3mYmlYY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAmoVChMIrIvz59GcyQIVA0wmCh3n9Qri#v=onepage&q=Make-a-Break%20trap%20shooting&f=false
 
Hi

You did pretty good to shoot 24/50 being the first time and that also on sporting. For me when I shot the first time, I shot 8/25 on trap with a pump action with 12G.

I will not talk about the difficulty as I will say that try all three (sporting/skeet/trap) and choose the one one you like and it will be much better that way.

As for what gun to choose, I would say if you want to do skeet or double trap, I do prefer to have O/U but semi auto will just do fine. It will be lot of cleaning after the shoot though.

I just use O/U now as I enjoy the international skeet and you can't have more than two shells anyways as far as I know no range will allow you to have more shells than what you are going to shoot; for singles you will be having one shell at a time and for doubles you can have two and thats how far it goes.

Till than shoot good and be safe.

Cheers

Gill
 
Finally got to do some trap shooting myself today at Oshawa, my first time shooting trap, 22/25 and 23/25 from 16 yards, all stations, all but one misses came from the 5th station. Would definitely stay for more if not the drizzle and cold - next time will come more prepared.
 
Trap is definatly the easiest as a beginner but diffucult to compete at a high level. Skeet is alot of fun and more difficult then trap at first but evens out quickly. Sporting clays can be the easiest of all 3 or the hardest depending on the course. I find sporting clays the most fun.
 
Just shot a 28 on sporting clays with a improve cyl choke on the ithaca 37. Recently switched to a remington 870 with mod choke and shot a 21(I blame the bad weather, rain and wind). I can't seem to figure out lead, it boggles my mind! Also, have not patterned the gun yet either, do I need to pattern each choke with each shot/ammo load?

Also would you guys practise lead on trap and skeet? They are more consistent clays in my opinion compared to sporting or 5 stand where the clay seem to peak at different points each time or they or travelling towards or away from you quartering or angled oddly...

OR just continue on sporting clays and 5 stand and practising at whatever angle is the clays moving in.


Thanks for all the great advice guys,

Harry
 
sashali said:
Finally got to do some trap shooting myself today at Oshawa, my first time shooting trap, 22/25 and 23/25 from 16 yards, all stations, all but one misses came from the 5th station. Would definitely stay for more if not the drizzle and cold - next time will come more prepared.
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Congratulations, those are good scores for your first time at trap! It takes some people (myself included) quite a while to get scores like that. Keep at it!
 
MD853 said:
Congratulations, those are good scores for your first time at trap! It takes some people (myself included) quite a while to get scores like that. Keep at it!
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Thanks :) Will definitely do, I by no means new to firearms, but totally new to shotguns and trap/skeet shooting, and i have to say I'm impressed and liked it a lot.
 
harrygun said:
Just shot a 28 on sporting clays with a improve cyl choke on the ithaca 37. Recently switched to a remington 870 with mod choke and shot a 21(I blame the bad weather, rain and wind). I can't seem to figure out lead, it boggles my mind! Also, have not patterned the gun yet either, do I need to pattern each choke with each shot/ammo load?

Also would you guys practise lead on trap and skeet? They are more consistent clays in my opinion compared to sporting or 5 stand where the clay seem to peak at different points each time or they or travelling towards or away from you quartering or angled oddly...

OR just continue on sporting clays and 5 stand and practising at whatever angle is the clays moving in.


Thanks for all the great advice guys,

Harry
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This really depends on what you plan on shooting. I personally shoot everything but i only compete in sporting clays and Fitasc. Stay right out of fitasc for now as it will probably mess you up on everything else like it did to me the first time i did it. It will take lots of practice to shoot all disiplines reasonably well. I shoot about 5000+ rounds a year and just came of the worst year since i started shooting in which i droped 2 classes. So i certainly dont have the answers other then you need to practice what you want to excell at. And go into some sporting clay competitions ive never met a unfriendly person in sporting clays. And lots of good shooters willing to help out.
 
I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but my scores are gradually getting worse? First time I scored a 20, then started averaging high teens, now I'm down to mid-teens???
 
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