If you’re a hunter, it’s largely coming into the off-season, no matter what you hunt. A lot of us… simply hang up our gear until late summer/ early fall before we break it back out for pre-season prep when the weather begins to change. For the past few years, I’ve been guilty of solely focusing on handgun skills, tactical drills, and building exciting ARs and subguns through the summer months to get my shooting fix. While all those things are fun, exciting, and very important to me, I couldn’t help but think about what I could do differently, this year, in order to keep my skills sharp in the off season. In order to facilitate that, I grabbed my hunting guns, sought out a few places to shoot at longer range, started experimenting more frequently with the reloading press, and purely as an afterthought, found myself working my most under-practiced skill… wingshooting.

Sporting clays, is a skeet shooting sport that takes you off the five stand, removing the predictability patterns from the challenge. It’s closer to golf in the way it’s structured, with shooters riding from station to station and shooting a pair of random clay targets that are thrown from unknown locations, at varying angles. Games are typically played in totals of 50 or 100 total shots, and the highest hit count is the winner, with ANY piece of the clay breaking off counting as a hit. It’s one of the most simple, casual, and fun shotgun sports out there. It’s also something that I used to do quite frequently when I was younger. Forever and an age ago, I lived next to a sporting clays facility, became friendly with the owner, and shot a round or two almost daily.

I didn’t have much in the way of money or gear at the time (I was a gunsmithing student spending my hard-earned dollars to replace tools I’d broken), but that didn’t seem to matter. Unlike your typical trap and skeet challenges, sporting clays seemed to welcome my classic 870 with the finish missing and my ammo can full of loose shotgun shells (I eventually upgraded to a cheap shell belt that cost a whopping 10$). I would see plenty of guys with tricked out clay shooting gear heading out onto the course in a day, but our experience, and our scores, would largely be the same, regardless.

When I revisited sporting clays recently, years since I’d last shot a round, the low cost was the first thing that I was reminded of. After years of working in the gun industry (and subsequently becoming a bit of a gear snob), I have to choose my shooting endeavors carefully, as I have a tendency to go a bit over the top with my spending. It was a pleasant surprise to learn, that for once, I had everything I needed! Chances are, you do too! In fact, as long as you have a shotgun that’s capable of firing two shots, and at least 50 cheap target loads, you’re set! To be honest, since the structure of the game only allows for one shooter at a time, it’s not all uncommon to see a single shotgun shared among members of the same group, so bringing a friend is easy, even if they don’t have a scattergun of their own!

Pick your own level, that’s the most beautiful thing about the sport. You can head out for a casual afternoon with the hunting kit, and if you decide you fell in love with shooting clays, you can build a whole new set of gear around the experience. The sky is truly the limit, as some of the most expensive guns on the market are shotguns geared toward shooting clays. Whether you have an old pump gun, a nice super black eagle that spends fall and winter with you in a duck blind, or a $10,000 plus over/under with an Italian name on the side, you can get the same benefits from heading out and shooting a round or two.

Obviously the sport was meant to simulate wing shooting, but by it’s nature is one of the only accessible sports that focuses on identifying and shooting rapidly moving targets. The window to plan and execute a shot is often times only a split-second. Whether you’re a hunter or not, the general principles of approaching a stand, making a plan, executing, compensating, replanning if needed, and executing again, all while maintaining good form, are transferable across any shooting discipline. The process teaches you how to engage your brain while actively shooting, that is to say, oftentimes in order to score higher, you need to think quicker. Not to mention, since each of these stages only require 2-4 cheap target loads apiece, your dollar to training ratio is about as low as it can be, so even if you never plan on hunting small, flying game, you’ll certainly come away having exercised some finer points of your muscle memory you would otherwise need to pay for a shooting class and a days worth of centerfire ammo to work effectively.

So sporting clays is an accessible, low-cost, brilliantly fun, training aid that will fill an afternoon with smiles whether you’re solo or with a group that you can do any time of the year. It really is one of those often overlooked and “too good to be true” gems in the shooting world. Sporting clays venues can be found across the country, as shotgun sports are generally accepted, even in states with restrictive gun laws. If you’re reading this locally to Fuquay Varina, NC (where we’re based), we actually have good news! Our friends at Drake’s Landing would be happy for you to come out and shoot a round with them. Their facility is safe, fun, and professionally run, and we’re happy to recommend them should you decide to try it our for yourself. Always remember to listen, learn, and be humble when you’re trying out a new shooting sport, follow all the safety rules at all times, and as always, have fun. There are certainly worse ways to spend a summer afternoon!