Something Fine and Aesthetic Involving Shotguns

by Peter Boltz
Photos by David N. Seelig

Is it sporting clays are fun, or is it sporting clays is fun?

The correct answer, in all, is that sporting clays is fun.

Like skeet and trapshooting, sporting clays is a shotgun sport where men and women try to shoot clay pigeons out of the air with shotguns.

Unlike skeet and trapshooting, sporting clays includes clay rabbits along with the clay pigeons. Rabbits, however, are thrown at ground level rather than into the air. 

Sporting clays is also more expensive than skeet and trap, because a sporting clays course typically takes up more acreage and requires more machines.

Because a sporting clays course is large, the sport is often described as golfing with shotguns.

Sporting clays, an import from England in the early 1980s, is considered by some to be the fastest growing shooting sport in the United States. The National Sporting Clays Association, founded in 1989 in San Antonio, Texas, estimates that more than 3 million people a year shoot sporting clays in America. NSCA membership is 15,000.

The Wood River Valley boasts of two NSCA All-Americans, husband and wife Gary and Mari McStay.

Mari, an All-American for five years from 1998 to 2002, shoots in the second to highest class of NSCA shooters—AA.

Gary, an All-American in 1998, 1999 and 2002, shoots in the Master’s class, the top class in sporting clays. In fact, he is the only Master sporting clays competitor in Idaho.

While they can call themselves a shooting couple, sporting clays is not a team sport. Individuals compete with individuals, regardless of differences but one—skill. Skill is classed from M at the top, to E at the bottom.

One way the McStays keep their edge is by entering competitions. In the last 10 years, they have entered 20 to 30 tournaments a year. 

If you consider travel expenses and that a competitor shoots 200 to 300 clays per tournament, you might get a feel for the expense of the sport. (Tournament clays cost a dollar apiece, and shells are about $5 for a box of 25.)

Mari started in sporting clays in 1990 when Gary invited her to the course he laid out at the Blaine County Gun Club up Ohio Gulch.

“I had never picked up a gun before,” she said, “but I enjoyed it and just got hooked.” She added that she was really drawn by the competition of the sport.

Gary, on the other hand, had been a champion trap shooter, but had already given up the sport by the time sporting clays was introduced to the United States.

He converted easily to the sport from trap, finding it more challenging since the targets were tougher, harder to hit.

As one of the main builders of the Blaine County Gun Club, he made sure the club had a full 10-station sporting clays course included.

While the course at the Gun Club is a modest 20 acres—compared to the 800 acre National Shooting Complex at NSCA’s headquarters in San Antonio—it’s a challenge in its own right.

The reason for this, and one reason why sporting clays is more challenging than trap or skeet, is that while the physical sporting clays course remains the same, placement of shooting stations and the type and flight of clays coming out of the machines changes according to the whims of the course setter.

The placement of shooting stations and types of clays are meant to replicate real-life hunting situations.

Shooters may find they are stationed under a tree: the tree partially obscuring the flight of the target.

Or shooters may be stationed with their backs to the flight of the target, knowing only that the “bird” is going to fly overhead.

Adding to the difficulty of a particular station, targets can be set to simulate teal, dove, quail, pheasant and rabbit, and within these categories flight patterns and speeds vary.

So a target might be crossing, climbing, incoming, outgoing, quartering away, streaking high overhead or jumping straight into the air. And these are just the bird targets. Throw in a bouncing rabbit, and a competitor has to make some difficult shots.

A course setter also has a variety of clays to choose from, which increases his liberty to stymie competitors. 

There are three different sizes of concave-shaped clays from standard to middi to mini.

A standard clay can be difficult enough to shoot, but reduce its size to a mini, and a shooter is matched against a target that looks to be about the size of an Oreo cookie flying through the air.

The rabbit clay is as large as a teacup saucer and is uniquely flat, thick and heavy. A machine throws it out on a path along or skipping on the ground.

While a few errant pellets may break a bird clay, it takes a solid pattern of shot to take out the rabbit.
Then there is the battue, from the French “battre,” to beat.

This clay is used to simulate birds that are driven head-on toward the shooter—in short, beaten out of the bush. The flat shape of the battue allows the target to break to one side or the other of the shooter. 

It is what Gary McStay calls “squirrelly.”

In a warm March Sunday, he and Mari came out to the Blaine County Gun Club to show some of the basics of sporting clays. Both shoot Beretta 390 Diamond Sporting 12-gauge auto loaders customized to reduce recoil.

Mari and Gary first show the difference between a “report pair” and a “true pair.”

A clay flies out and she shoots it apart. Then another clay, from another direction, flies out, and she shoots it, too.

“That,” she said, “is a ‘report pair.’ Only after my shotgun goes off to shoot the first clay does the second clay get thrown.”

Then Gary is up to shoot.

A clay rabbit bounds out along the ground just as a clay pigeon is launched into the air from a tower.

Gary makes the instantaneous decision to shoot the rabbit first and then the pigeon.

Their shooting styles have a lot in common. Before the clays fly, they stand still with their shotguns barely mounted to their shoulders. They are an unlikely mix of alertness and relaxation.

Then, all of a sudden, motion.

They and their guns move fluidly and gracefully, a pleasure to watch. It’s all rather quick, but even the uneducated can sense something fine and aesthetic about the sport. Shooter, gun and target become one, and boom, the clay turns to powder. •