Found: One Troll

As if yesterday didn’t contain enough shooty goodness, I made arrangements to spend this morning at the Ben Avery Clay Target Center with my friend Mike. Initially we were planning to spend our time on the trap range, but at the last minute we decided to do something we’ve been meaning to do for a long time: Sporting Clays. We each shot 100 clays on Ben Avery’s 15-station “Rattlesnake” course, and it was a blast. I was shooting my Remington Sportsman 12 Pump Magnum (the precurser to the 870 Express) and Mike was shooting his Browning BPS Hunter. Incidentally, if you’re looking for a new pump shotgun for clays or hunting, especially if you need it to be ambidextrous, I highly recommend the BPS. The action on that thing is smooth as glass.

If you’re not familiar with sporting clays, it’s a completely different animal from trap or skeet. In trap you know that the clays are always going to be flying away from you. In skeet they’re always flying along the same paths from the high and low houses (which makes it sound a lot easier than it is). In sporting clays you walk a path of 6 or 15 stations (at BASF), and you fire into basically an open field. The clays may be thrown in just about any direction to simulate birds in flight. They might fly away from you, straight up in the air, or toward you. The throwing machines are often hidden behind berms or trees, so you have no idea until you call for the clays which direction they’re going to be flying. At each station you shoot clays in pairs, either by report or in “true pairs.” When you shoot pairs by report, you call for the first clay normally (Pull!) and your buddy launches the second clay as soon as you take the first shot (or as soon as he hears the report, hence the name). “True pairs” occur simply when both clays are launched at the same time.

All-in-all it was a great weekend. I think we will be shooting sporting clays a lot more, and I hope Agrise will be joining us at the range more often.