Shooting

Once upon a time we had two lovely games meant to be played with clay targets and a shotgun. One was called skeet, the other sporting clays. We still have the games, but they are no longer lovely. One might well ask why and also how this came to be. There are clear answers to both questions, and there are clues to be found in the origins of both games.

A New England grouse hunter invented skeet not long after World War I. His intention was to devise a way to keep his shooting skills honed during the off-season, and in aid of this he sought to identify the shots, both in angle and height, that a grouse hunter most commonly would see—crossing, going-away, incoming and quartering at various angles. In the original concept the layout was a full circle, so the shooter got as many targets flying left to right as right to left. The game had no name as yet, but the circle prompted many to call it Round the Clock.

By the 1920s the game had caught the fancy of a growing number of shooters. In order to accommodate clubs where space was limited or where it simply wasn’t feasible to fire in all directions, the clock-face layout was changed to a half-circle while still preserving the same number of shots from right and left. Doubles were part of the menu from the beginning; in the original format one shot all of the single targets first and then went back to shoot the pairs. In the new incarnation doubles became part of the main program rather than an added challenge at the end.

And finally the game got a name. In 1926 Hunting & Fishing Magazine sponsored a contest to find a name for the game. Mrs. Gertrude Hurlbutt of Dayton, Montana, won $100 for suggesting skeet, which is a phonetic rendering of a Scandinavian word for “shoot.”

It’s no exaggeration to say that skeet saved American shooting. The terrible droughts of the 1930s devastated game populations, and this wrought havoc with the entire industry surrounding hunting and shooting. Sales of guns and cartridges plummeted. The economic suffering of the Great Depression only added to the decline. Nearing desperation, arms and ammunition makers fastened upon skeet as a measure of salvation, strongly supported by the sporting press. The promotional campaign was a fine success; skeet fields sprang up and blossomed like dandelions around the country, revitalizing demands for guns and ammunition and all of the accoutrements that go along with shooting.

One thing the Dust Bowls and breadlines couldn’t kill was the desire to shoot. American hunters were as keen as ever; problem was, there wasn’t much left to shoot. Skeet fulfilled that desire in a big way. It was relatively inexpensive, accessible in a growing number of places, and besides, shooting it offered something that American sportsmen have always cherished: camaraderie.

Skeet flourished for 30 years or more and then set into a decline. It hasn’t proven fatal, but participation in registered shooting has dwindled noticeably over the past two or three decades. The National Skeet Shooting Association, the game’s governing body, could provide statistics on a national scale but, for our purpose here, suffice to say that interest in competitive skeet has been waning for quite some time. Even informal shooting doesn’t appear to be as popular as it once was.

Sporting clays is an English invention or, more specifically, an invention of the English gun trade. Sometime early in the 20th Century gunmakers saw that their customers needed a way of polishing their skills prior to the game-shooting season and set about devising ways of presenting clay targets in ways that simulated the flight and behavior of game—whether grouse, pheasants, partridge, woodcock, ducks, even hares. The wealthier companies set up their own shooting grounds; makers who couldn’t afford to do that used such facilities as the West London Shooting Grounds and others. These places also served as teaching venues where one could learn proper shooting techniques from experienced instructors.

By the 1970s sporting clays had become a sport in its own right, though always founded firmly in game shooting. Curiously, it took a relatively long time to reach the US. Bryan Bilinski, then manager of the Orvis operation in Houston, conducted the first national clays tournament in the US in 1983 at Pin Oak Acres Shooting Ground. It was a revitalizing jolt to a world grown weary of target-shooting games long gone stale.

To say that sporting clays took off like wildfire is to understate the facts. Courses ranging from modest to elaborate appeared all over the country; the gun and ammunition makers quickly caught the scent and began catering specifically to clay shooters. Indeed, the entire American shooting industry climbed onto the clays bandwagon with everything from vests and shoes and cartridge bags to gun cases, choke tubes, eyeglasses, hearing protectors and just about every gadget that possibly could be relevant to clay shooting. That a lot of gizmos actually had very little relevance didn’t seem to stop anyone from leaping into the marketing frenzy. It was a phenomenon unseen since the 1930s, this time cranked to a high order.

So once again a target game dealt a measure of salvation to shooting in the US.

And once again doldrums loom in the offing. Clays tournaments, certainly the smaller regional events, are attracting fewer shooters—in some areas as many as 40-percent fewer. Informal clay shooting appears in decline as well. The wild energy that not so long ago infused the industry’s attention to the sport is dimming like a guttering candle. Sporting clays clearly is in the same decline that afflicted skeet.

Why should this be? Whatever happened to skeet and sporting clays? Several things happened, few in number but mightily significant. And the same things have affected both games.

Perhaps most important, both have lost sight of their origins, of their reasons for existing in the first place. Skeet and clays were invented as bird-shooters’ games. Look around a skeet field or clays course these days and try to find what’s still bird-like. Skeet is shot on a pre-established layout in which targets must fly along specific paths at predetermined heights and speeds. All of the original angles are still there and still available to anyone who wants to sharpen his bird-shooting skills. But how many actually shoot skeet that way?

The original rules specified that the gun had to be off of the shooter’s shoulder when he called for the target, just as the gun would be if he were hunting birds. The only people you’ll see shooting with unmounted guns nowadays are either old-timers who started in the early years of the game or renegades who really want to practice their field shooting and don’t give a damn about scores.

I don’t know when pre-mounted guns were first permitted in skeet. I’m sure the NSSA could tell you, but when is of no importance; what’s important is why and what happened as a result.

And why is simple—a mania for high scores. Human nature has it that any game must have scores; someone must win and someone must lose. Heaven forbid that one should play a game just for the fun of it. Preoccupation with winning and losing can bring out the worst in players and spectators alike, but we just can’t seem to get away from it.

So skeet became a pre-mounted game, solely to improve scores, certainly not to improve field shooting. I’ve never found a single sentence in the rulebook that specifies pre-mounting; it isn’t required, only permitted, although it’s been around long enough by now that quite a few shooters seem to think it is required. If you want to shoot skeet with a low gun, go right ahead. You’ll have to ignore some nonsense from your fellow shooters, but what you’ll gain is what the game was meant to accomplish in the first place.

Shooting with a pre-mounted gun simply guts the game of nearly all athleticism. And make no mistake: The act of properly swinging and mounting is a decidedly athletic move. It’s a joy to perform and a joy to watch, and it’s the only way to apply the practice of shooting targets to shooting gamebirds. Merely swinging a pre-mounted gun does require precision, but the difference between that and a swing-and-mount sequence is much like the difference between drafting and impressionistic painting. In any event, by becoming mechanical and essentially dull, skeet shot itself in the foot.

Sporting clays has managed to shoot itself in both feet by abandoning wholesale its original purpose, which was . . . ah, let’s think . . . oh, yes: to offer bird-like targets to game shooters. Sporting clays has turned its back on bird hunters in favor of competition shooters. Tour just about any clays course and you’ll be able to count the truly bird-like target presentations on one hand; subtract from those the shots you just wouldn’t take at a gamebird and you’ll be lucky if you’re left with one finger.

I have a favorite word to describe the great majority of shots I see on clays courses these days: silly. Extreme droppers, ungodly long crossers, targets that do things gamebirds wouldn’t do even if they could. It’s nonsense masquerading as challenge. The competitive shooters can hit them because those are the targets they shoot for practice. A grouse or quail or pheasant hunter has no experience with these simply because they’re not part of hunting.

I’ve asked some course managers why they don’t offer targets for bird hunters. The reply typically is something like, “We’ve tried to have some hunters’ tournaments and all that, but they just don’t show up.” Could it be, I want to ask, that you and your colleagues at other courses have driven them away? And tournaments, for Pete’s sake? Most of the hunters I know wouldn’t walk across the road to shoot in a tournament. Competition is not why they like to shoot.

Silly, un-bird-like targets account for one of sporting clays’ injured feet. The other fell victim to pre-mounted guns.

The original rules were more stringent than those of skeet. Instead of simply having the gun off of the shoulder, sporting clays rules required that the gun butt be visible under the shooter’s armpit when he called for the target, allowed the trapper to delay the pull up to three seconds, and forbid the use of more than an ounce of shot. None of that is any real hardship, and it certainly promotes the athleticism inherent to proper shooting. Again, I don’t know when this started and don’t care; I do know that the National Sporting Clays Association amended the rules a few years ago to permit pre-mounted guns—permit, not require. But those for whom higher scores are the be-all and end-all aren’t about to pass up anything that appears to be an advantage.

So here we go again. In a culture that takes virtually all games much too seriously, I suppose this sort of thing is inevitable. In the case of sporting clays I’m actually surprised it didn’t happen sooner. But I’m also more than a bit saddened by it. Sporting clays in its original form was such a lovely game, as was skeet. I still enjoy shooting skeet, but I don’t pre-mount my gun or keep score. At the end of a round I know how many I hit, but the number is useless; I want to know why I missed the targets I did, and knowing that, I can remedy the situation.

Well, my God, if you don’t shoot for score, why do you shoot targets at all? Call me a dinosaur if you wish, but I shoot for fun. And fun, to my mind, is what shooting is all about.