“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door” is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Necessity is the mother of invention” is a phrase that was to become a metaphor about the power of innovation.

During the week of the USA Shootings’ International Trap Championships in June 2011, the typical winds coming off the Rocky Mountains in Colorado Springs were stronger than normal and were greatly affecting the scores.  I said, “I broke a chip off of one target and I think it landed in Kansas!”  My son works for the National Weather Service; so he got a call from me asking “What is the forecast for winds later in the day?” Scott McGuire responded, “Getting stronger and steady with gusts of up to 45 to 50 miles per hour starting in the next half hour.”

Mike McGuire

After the day of shooting I was reviewing the scores sheets and just got fed up with the same old, dull and boring black-and-white score sheets, with a lack of information and details about the shooting atmosphere. I publish trade magazines for a living and work very closely with my graphic designer to develop unique and colorful page layouts for my publications. Why not take this capability and apply it to the old customary dull black-and-white score sheets usually printed off on a gun club copying machine and make them a more valuable tool to help shooters improve their scores? I thought. 

That year, I had previously finished writing a book titled Shotguns + Clay Target Sports Trivia Q & A which was used by both the National Sporting Clays Association and the National Skeet Association as gifts for all shooters during their National Championships. The book had several questions about how elevation, winds, temperatures, sunshine, cloudy conditions, humidity and the like affected the shot shell performance and also the shooter’s performance, but nothing like this type of information was ever available on the clay target sports’ score sheets.

Upon my return to Scottsdale, Arizona, I went to work by studying all the different types of shotgun shooting sports score sheets I could find. At best one of the shotgun manufacturers, a target manufacturer and a shot shell manufacturer, attached their company logo. But there was absolutely no information that might assist shooters in the possibility of improving their scores. I was appalled how some gun clubs just copied sporting-clay sheets and hopefully the course lay-out for the day matched up with the blank white spaces left for scoring. Often there weren’t enough score sheets to go around for all their customers (shooters). Bottom line: these score sheets were not very good at all for the shooters, but it did leave the door of opportunity open for me to use.

Mike McGuire

Mike McGuire is an NRA, USA Shooting Team and NSCA certified shotgun instructor. He is a Life Member in the ATA, NSCA and the Arizona Sporting Clays Association. Other current and past affiliations include the Ohio State Trapshooting Association, National Shooting Sports Foundation Member, the Ohio State University Trap Club and the Arizona State University Clay Target Program. He is a Contributing Writer to Trapshooting USA and Sporting Clays magazines. The web site for “Aim High, Shoot Straight©” Shotgun Clay Target Sports Score Sheets is under construction but you can contact Mike at 480-488-3500 or mmcguire@shootingshotgunsports.com.