As I leave work in the evenings, I sometimes hear some loud bangs. Turns out there’s a shooting club nearby. Looking it up on Google Maps, I see facilities for skeet or trap shooting (not exactly sure what the difference is between them). And they shoot in our direction.
Yesterday was nice, so I went for a walk around the area. I was expecting that when I got close to the club there would be some serious “no trespassing” signs. Instead, there was almost nothing; just a six-foot-high fence, and a lot closer to the shooting range than I would have expected. A few questions sprung to mind.
What kind of shot do they use for skeet and trap shooting?
How far do the pellets travel?
How much downrange land does a skeet club need to keep the neighbors safe?
Around here (Minnesota), they often don’t have a lot of downrange land, but build a high, wide berm – a hill of dirt as a backstop on the range that will absorb any stray shot pellets.
Skeet shooters commonly use #9 shot, which is a small (2mm), lightweight (0.75gr.) shot. These are potentially dangerous out to maybe 50 yards, have an extreme range of only a couple hundred yards, and come down from the upward-angled shots like hail. So, not much space is needed for safety.
Skeet is where the clay pigeons are launched by a machine from a building (the “high house” and the “low house”). Trap is where the clay pigeons are launched by hand, using a “trap.” It’s kind of like those long-arm things that you use so you can launch the ball farther, so your dog can chase it.
I have tried trap shooting. Rifle is my specialty, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to try trap shooting when it was offered. It is not easy, using a sight plane, leading the clay pigeon, and dealing with the bigger kick that a shotgun has over my rifle, but it is immensely satisfying when you blow one of those clay pigeons to bits.
The Grand American World Trapshooting Championships were held at the Dayton International Airport in Vandalia, Ohio from 1923 to 2006. They would shoot toward the runway, which was only about 500 feet away in some spots.
There’s a sporting clays course near me and some of the stations angle back towards earlier stations. I assume that the distance is enough to outrange the birdshot, but I’d guess they’re under 300 yards apart.
There are also skeet throwers that are a flat tripod that sits on the ground. Cock it, load it, and pull a string. It’s spring powered.
We had 5 acres that backed up to farmland.
I shot 12ga and 20ga. My mom said that she would try it. She hit the first one she ever shot at. “That’s it, I’m done, I’ve never missed, I’m 100%” I can’t beat that.
Typically it’s #8 or #9 for skeet and trap shooting. This is because it doesn’t take much to break a clay pigeon, and you’re (hopefully) not shooting at them very far away, so you want as many pellets as possible.
On top of that, target loads are typically not all that powerful. If you’re spending an afternoon shooting 100 or more, it can get hard on the shoulder otherwise.
Based on dove hunting and having other hunters’ shot fall on me, the small shot used in skeet and trap shooting only really carry 200 meters or so.
There’s probably state law that regulates that, but I’d guess 300 meters or so past where the shooters are.
Here’s a skeet range I’ve shot at that’s in the Dallas urban area- right between Dallas and Irving in fact. If you’ll notice, the sporting clays course (a sort of cross between skeet shooting and golf) actually fires back at the skeet range from about 400 meters in several areas.
FYI- those weird orange splotches are the remains of the clay pigeons, and the shooters typically fire from closer to the dirt path, or in the case of skeet and trap, from the concrete semicircular areas.
Both Skeet and Trap use the same machine. It uses a spring power arm to throw the clay “bird”. It’s recocked by an electric motor, usually batter powered.
In Skeet there are two “houses” that the birds are thrown from. The high house on the left and the low house on the right. The shooting stations, eight in number, are arranged in a semi circle with number 8 being on a line between the two houses. You shoot High, Low and a double from some stations and only High Low from others.
In Trap there are five shooting stations starting 16 yards to the rear of a single trap. You shoot 5 birds from each station, then step to the next station.
In Skeet the birds mostly appear to be crossing in front of you with varying angles. It Trap they are mostly moving away from you at varying angles.
If you ever get out to the Garland public range, the traps launch up in the direction of nearby power lines (which you do see sway as they get hit), which always struck me as unwise as a general rule, but apparently far enough way not to pose issues.
I’ve been out there once, but it was pistols and rifles. Not a bad place; I should hit my buddy up and go out there again actually, since it’s only about 20-30 minutes away.
It looks like their trap range shoots right at the Garland FFA barn 400 yards away or thereabouts.
I read somewhere about experiments being made with “ice” targets, rather than “clay” ones. More ecological friendly, since the remains simply melt, rather than spreading debris everywhere.
I’d have thought the shot pellets, plus whatever residue and debris comes from the shell, would be more of an ecological concern than the clay pigeons are.
A shotgun range I visit from time to time has flat ground beyond the traps. All the shot lands on this ground. As the shot builds up enough, they shut down and the entire area is scraped and the dirt run through a device that separates the shot from the dirt. The shot is then recycled into more shot.
A gun club I belong to does basically the same with the dirt berms behind the targets. The dirt is scraped up and the lead separated out. If there’s over a certain amount we get money. If there’s not enough we have to pay them.