The morning dove is without question North Carolina’s number one game bird and when the season opens at noon on the first Saturday of September, thousands of eager wing shooters will be in the fields with shotguns and dogs to open the season with a “bang.”
By sharpening their skills at challenging targets prior to the opening day of dove seasons, hunters hope to expend fewer shotgun shells in order to bag an opening day’s bag limit of 15 mourning dove per hunter.
While such shotgun shooting sports as skeet and trap became a bit tame for many sportsmen who were primarily field hunters who specialized in wingshooting, a relatively new shooting sports game called “sporting Clays” was developed several years ago to better serve the challenges that hunters would actually face while in the fields.
Skeet and trap are challenging sports but experienced shooters at these sports soon learn pretty much how the clay targets will be traveling (speed, flight patterns and distances, etc.).
Sporting clays targets and courses and set up to closely resemble shooting conditions that the hunters might experience in a dove field, duck blind or quail cover in the woods.
The first sporting clays range I actually experienced in North Carolina was perhaps 26 years ago near Tarboro.
It was, by today’s standards, a primitive set-up but we discovered an exciting and challenging way to sharpen one’s shooting skills.
Today North Carolina has some 55 shooting ranges across the state with 22 of these offering a sporting clays range as part of their business. Several of these ranges could be considered to be “world class sporting clays ranges” that host play host to some very large state, national and international championship shoots. Perhaps the best known is the Deep River range near Sanford and the Hunters’ Pointe range near Washington.
For the newcomer to the sporting clays shooting sport here are a few of the attractions you might find at a nearby range.
Sporting clays (clays) is often described as “golf with a shotgun” and this is a good comparison.
Like the various holes on a golf course, clays have a variable number of stations that could be compared to the holes of the golf game.
In clays, each station should have an information card posted at the station telling the shooter what to expect and how many shots should be fired at the clay targets.
As an example, station 4 might display a sign saying “4 on report” letting the player know that he will have shots at eight targets thrown for him to shoot at.
Each station at clays may be set up to simulate some different shooting condition that a hunter might find under actual hunting conditions.
For instance, on one of the stations the shooter might be firing his gun from an actual camouflaged boat floating on a pond at targets fired from across the pond to simulate a pair of mallards coming into the decoys.
On the following station the shooter might be shooting across the pond from a shore position and the clay targets might spring up from nearly under his feet as a pair of green wing teal might do while a hunter is jump shooting ducks (springing teal targets).
The next station’s information card might state that “one quail followed by (on report) a rabbit.
This means that the first target thrown will simulate a quail on the rise followed immediately after the shooter shoots at the quail by a target thrown so as to roll across the ground to simulate a running rabbit. Every sporting clays range is set up differently just as the various golf courses have different holes at varying degrees of challenge. The sporting clays courses can vary from day to day as the operators of the ranges change the traps to throw targets from different positions, speeds and angles.
A full “round” of clays consist of shooting 100 shells from the set number of stations (a short round is 50 shots to be fired).
If the round of sporting clays is carried out by several shooters competing to see who can break the most clay targets with the fewest number of shots fired, it is competitive shooting game.
In other instances the shooters are simply shooting against themselves to sharpen their shooting skills. “On report” means that when the shooter says “pull” one clay target is thrown the shooter fires the shotgun at it and immediately after the shot is fired another target is thrown from a second trap (often at a different direction and speed than the first target). The two targets thrown as “on report” sequences will be repeated four times at this station (giving you eight total targets at this station).
A “true pair” means that two targets will be launched at the same time often traveling in different directions, at different speeds and height.
If the station information card reads “four true pairs” there will be a total of eight targets thrown in four sequences on the command of “pull.”
On some of the better sporting clays ranges the courses are set up to allow an individual shooter to participate in the game just to sharpen his skills without the pressure of competing with others.
If he (or she) has trouble with a certain type of target, he can work on just one thrown target until he corrects his shooting.
Many clays courses offer professional instructors to aid the shooters.
Without exception, every shooting range stresses gun safety as part of their program. Many ranges offer the hunter’s safety course as part of this curriculum. *NOTE- With dove season opening in just a few weeks, don’t forget that every new hunter is required to have successfully completed the N.C. Hunter Safety Course.
Don’t wait until the last minute to get this course because classes will fill all seats soon.
A new group on the Log-A-Load shoot this year will be four teams of shooters composed of severely wounded American servicemen from all branches of the military.
They’re from the Wounded Warriors program and the new North Carolina Outdoor Adventures program that helps wounded American servicemen to participate in such outdoor activities as hunting, fishing, skiing, camping and shooting.
For more information about the Log-A-Load, Colony Tire Miracle Shoot at Hunters’ Pointe call 252-975-2529 or 252-637-5100.
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