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Joined: 08 Feb 2009 Posts: 1308 Location: Western WA

With the refurb of the 2 1/2" A5 completed, we turned our attention to using it for trap shooting, and promptly ran into some rather basic, and somewhat mysterious questions well beyond our skill level.

The A5 and its load performs extremely well, if not flawlessly, in the mechanistic aspects of trap shooting, i.e. obliterating targets when the gun is pointed in the right direction. But this is hardly the whole picture, as the targets usually don't cooperate.

It seems that a successful trap shot is much like a golf swing, involving a steady takeaway, a well timed sweep over the target, the instinctive trigger release, and a smooth follow through. And like a golf swing, any hint of manual steering, jabbing, or chasing the target delivers awful results; this much is clear.

But something else is clear: In golf, a seemingly good swing can now and then produce a huge banana slice, or the ugly snap hook. Entire libraries could be filled with books written on cures to these maladies, but they stubbornly refuse to go away, and reappear at the worst possible moment.

We find a similar phenomenon in trap shooting: the shooter assumes a textbook position and posture, the target appears, everything looks and feels great until...surprise!...we see to our horror that the gun is swinging over here, but the target is sailing away over there! Minor panic ensues and the chasing and aiming and jabbing take over with the same result: A clean miss.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? And how do we fix it?

TIA,
B.

Joined: 08 May 2018 Posts: 196

Yes,it happened to me a month ago.Fist time I shot a round of trap in over 15 years and it was embarrassing I was by myself and could not tell if I was behind ,over or under.

There are many textbooks and teachers....that can be a problem for us all.

For singles or handicap, I always held for a straight-away and 2' or so above the house.
You may simply need to find what works for you.

But, regardless, I would never dither.....and, Trap is not a game of tag.

Good Luck...it is a great, historical and inclusive sport.

Member Joined: 27 Jun 2012 Posts: 1113

I find that eye focus about 15-20 yards beyond the trap house is a great aid picking up and visually following the flight of the target with a hard focus. There is a strong tendency to mount the gun, establish the proper hold over the house for your position on the field, check your bead alignment and then fail to move the eye focus out from the house. If you can't follow the target, you can't break it.

Joined: 03 Sep 2014 Posts: 398 Location: Rochester, MN

As has already been stated, trap is all about focus.

Watch accomplished shooters. In particular, watch their gun barrel. At the target release, the gun moves smoothly and quickly through the shot and target break.

An inexperienced shooter often aims their gun. Their focus alters between the target and their bead/barrel. This is visible in their jerky, inconsistent gun barrel movement before and during the shot. Sometimes the target breaks and often it does not.

Focus on the target, not the gun.

Member Joined: 06 Oct 2007 Posts: 2346 Location: West MI

All good stuff, soft -> hard focus, focus on target not gun, love the golf parallel...equipment fit + consistent address + focus on the ball + consistent in sync rhythm

will add; make sure gun fit and mount are good and consistent, if the gun isn't shooting where you're looking you'll struggle, Also, understand how your reaction time relates to where you're pulling the trigger = distance from the gun and dial in the choke/pattern accordingly. Some process very quickly and find IC works best picking them off right on top of the house others process slower and find M or IM or F to work best.

7/8oz #8 in summer and 1oz #7.5 winter (similar pellet count) been working well for me.

Joined: 09 Mar 2016 Posts: 753 Location: Mn.

Some good advice here, but as a NSSA certified skeet instructor, when it comes to trap, I Just Say No! (Just kidding -- all shooting is good! . . . but some is better for you . . . Smile

) However, fundmentals learned on the skeet field transfer very well to trap and other shotgun sports. It is, unfortunately, so easy to avoid learning those same fundamentals on the trap field. Because of the limited swing movement in most trap shots, and the seemingly long time available to aim at (heaven forbid) or latch on to the target, many trap shooters, even those who can break a lot of targets, develop practices that are totally unsuited to other wingshooting games.

For development and reinforcement of fundamentals I recommend new shooters, or shooters having trouble at trap or sporties, go learn to shoot skeet. Start with the out-go-er at Station 7 (that would be Low-7), and then move to Low-6, and then progress to the easy in-come-ers, Hi-7, Low-1, Low-2, and then Hi-6. Once the shooter can comfortably hit those most of the time, he/she should then progress to the slightly more difficult in-come-ers (more deflection angle), Hi-5 and Low-3, From those it is easy to transition to 4-Hi and 4-Low, and then things like the out-go-ers at 1-Hi, 2-Hi, 3-Hi, 5-Low and 6-Low. Station 8 targets are no more than 1-Low and 7-Hi in-come-ers with less time to wait, and can be learned by starting at 1 or 7 and walking in to eventually reach station 8 as you develop the talent to acquire and track the targets sooner.

Do not expect to learn skeet very well by playing the game in its normal station 1-thru-8 sequence. You can't really learn baseball or football or golf, for instance, by just playing the game. You learn the plays or the shots and the reasons for them first, and then put the game together. Do not expect to experience all the shots of skeet in one day, unless you have several boxes of shells and lots of time. I'm convinced much of learning can and should take place off the field when the student's mind can consider what has happened on the field. This is the same with many things, and I especially remember it from my flight training. Learn the shots in skeet first -- work on them till you get them right -- then put the game together.

By the way, when I instruct a squad of youth students, I insist they all watch the other shooters and their targets -- either the shooter or the target at the situations I advise, but if not advised, to watch the target. Observing the other squad members is just like "free targets" -- students can see what others do and the success or lack of it associated with technique, and also see the variation in target flight, and train their eyes to acquire targets quickly and cement the idea of best break-points. It really helps to have an instructor who has a good plan. NSSA has a good plan used to drilled into the training and certification of instructors, and NRA shotgun instructors use that plan also.

Once you have learned the skeet shots, you will no doubt have acquired good basic wingshooting techniques - athletic stance, eye focus on the target and off the gun, good gun mount and first, but not least, break point -- the idea that you can and should decide before the shot, where to break the target. Having these basic skill, it is easy to go and shoot trap and sporting clays, as well as game/hunting shots. Skeet is a good starter because the fundamentals are so important to hitting the targets, and the field is a compact space that offers so much variety in target presentation. Trap definitely requires at least as much concentration as skeet to break 25. Trap is a seriously good game at the top levels, and can become a real bear at long handicaps. Sporties and all its variations offer the widest variety of target presentations, and the scores show that.

I coached highschool skeet in Minnesota. I don't any longer, but I still give individual instruction free to any junior high or high school kid in the Minnesota State High School Clay Target League (MSHSCTL - that's a lot of alphabet soup!). We have a lot of kids trying skeet now, especially in the Twin Cities area where there are more skeet fields. Minnesota Skeet Shooting Association has a youth skeet camp every June (this will be the 7th year for that). I instruct in that every year, also. About a third of the kids are girls, and they are the easiest to instruct -- at that age, they listen a lot better than the boys, and do not have much ego tied up in their games. Kids are drawn to skeet because it looks "cool" to them, and it's shooting sequence offers better socialization opportunities. Those are the major reasons I like skeet, too.

I wish there were more skeet fields available, but it is an unfortunate fact that skeet fields are more costly to build and maintain than trap fields, and traditional wisdom for Americans above the Mason-Dixon Line has been to buy guns choked full for waterfowl and prairie upland birds, and trap was and still is thought to be more appropriate practice for use of these guns. Fortunately, shot material variety of today (from hard non-toxics to soft lead) and the choke tubed barrels necessary to accommodate them, make most guns today easily adaptable to casual skeet. The full choke mentality is unnecessary for trap (I shoot IC from the 16 yard line), but it persists.

Anyway, here's a thread on trap and I've been on the skeet soapbox more than just a little, for which I do not apologize because I think it would benefit a lot of trap shooters -- especially those who came from rifle shooting and have gun-focused "aiming" habits unsuited to wingshooting. Hope it helps someone. It is possible to create good shooting techniques and break bad habits on the trap range or on pasture clays, but it is a lot harder than on the skeet field which has the advantages of presentation variety and repeatability of learning exercises.

Cheers!
Tony

When shooting trap, targets are still rising when one pulls the trigger. I think it helps to shoot an actual "trap" gun. The stock is a little straighter than field guns making the gun shoot 'high' (70/30 or 60/40 pattern) and making it easier to hit rising targets more consistently.

Joined: 18 Feb 2018 Posts: 621 Location: va, ct, mo

there are 15 basic angles to memorize.
3 on each station x 5.
left straight right.
the only way youll ever figure out the game is to go to a range(like mine) where the owner wont mind you fixing the machine in those positions and allow you to zero in and poof each bird and memorize the lead for it.
then, all it becomes is a game of recall, when you return to an oscillating machine.

Here's a thought that'll drive all you trap guys crazy ! I teach the kids to notice where the center stake is and lean toward looking out there . Not at the house , you don't shoot at the house and you can't focus on a target there . On 1,2,4,5 , get out a little farther on hold . Don't anticipate a bird , just go to what comes out . Minimizes gun flow on what is those hard angles and takes out the dreaded straight away .

Never knew any Trapshooter to look at the trap house.....or Skeet shooter to look at the skeet house.
Interesting opinion.