Shotgun Clay Sports

A sporting clays training session that drew top instructors to South Carolina in mid-June could change how the sport is taught to the majority of shooters using the new “Coordinated Shooting Method.”

The idea of Touch-and-Go actually has its roots in aviation. New pilots use it to learn how to land and take off again. You come down for a landing, touch the runway with your wheels, and then push the throttle forward to take off again.

What does Touch-and-Go have to do with consistently breaking targets in sporting clays? It has to do with how you approach the target, touch it, and then pull ahead for the proper forward allowance — or lead as most people call it.

After months of anticipation the Nad Al Sheba Sporting Championship in Dubai set new high standards for a sporting clays tournament with an inaugural event that attracted more than 550 shooters from all four points of the compass. A total prize fund of $735,000 made it the richest clays shoot ever staged with cash paid out to 50th in the Men’s Division and 30th in Ladie’s, which provided plenty of motivation.

Sporting clays is often described as golf with shotguns and now the new Professional Sporting Clays Association intends to commercialize that depiction with five national broadcasts on NBC Sports beginning April.

You’d think that Jack Bart is merely standing on Post 1 of a trap field, high-rib shotgun mounted, ready to call pull. In some circles, though, the 30-year veteran, clays-shooting instructor is straddling a so-called “chasm” that separates early adopters of new technology from a more pragmatic community of “wait-and-see” skeptics.

How many times has this happened to you?

After a successful sporting-clays lesson, the very next time you shoot with friends, step into the station supremely confident, drop two shells into your shotgun, exercise your pre-shot routine and call pull, everything you’ve learned during that hard-earned, one-hour session has gone out the window as you watch the target continue its trajectory unmolested — a scenario that repeats itself over and over during a day of intensifying frustration.

“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.

Here in Colorado Springs, a bright and unseasonably warm February afternoon boasted clear skies and no wind — perfect for a clays-shooting session with USA Shooting team members, skeet whiz Amber English and her trap colleagues Dakotah Richardson and Collin Wietfeldt. We also caught up with team trap shooter Kelsey Zauhar.

On January 18, 2011 Randolph Engineering introduced a shooting-glasses lens advertised as five to six times more impact resistant than standard polycarbonate now widely used by their military and law enforcement clients. Armed with a 12-gauge semi-auto and a box of 1⅛-ounce target loads, we set out to personally verify Randolph Engineering’s boosted safety claim.