SKEET SHOOTING

Imagine sitting around a tank or water hole shooting birds as they fly in to get a drink from all different directions. This is what skeet shooting reminds me of. The shooter moves around the skeet field shooting targets thrown from a high and low trap house. The targets are the same height and angle but as the shooter moves it causes the angles to change thus making them increase or decrease the lead of their shot. The shooter can use any gauge shotgun that can shoot two shots without reloading, however shooting a 28 or 410 makes the game more difficult. No. 9’s is the preferred shot when shooting skeet but any shot size up to 7-1/2 can be used.

The game is played on a shooting field that is shaped in a semicircle with 7 shooting positions, called stations, spaced out around the outer perimeter (station #1 at 9 o’clock, station #2 at 8 o’clock, station #3 at 7 o’clock, station #4 at 6 o’clock, station #5 at 5 o’clock, station #6 at 4 o’clock, and station #7 at 3 o’clock) and one shooting position (station #8) is halfway between the 3 and 9 o’clock points of the semicircle. Targets are launched from trap houses on opposite ends of the semicircle. The trap house at the 9 o’clock position is called the “High House” and the trap house at the 3 o’clock position is called the “Low House”.

To shoot a round of skeet (25 targets) the shooter starts on station 1 and shoots a single high house target and a single low house target thrown separately. They reload and then shoot a high house and a low house target thrown simultaneously, shooting at the high house target first. They then move to station 2 and repeat the sequence shot on station 1. They then move to station 3 and just shoot a separate high and low house target, the same is done on stations 4 and 5. At station 6 and 7 the sequence is the same as stations 1 and 2 except when shooting the doubles they shoot the low house first. At station #8 the shooter shoots a high house and then a low house. The very first target a shooter misses they shoot that target over, this then will bring the total number of targets shot to 25. If the shooter hasn’t missed any targets after they shoot the low house on station 8 they will shoot the low house target again which brings the total of targets shot to 25.

I personally believe that the best place to teach a new shooter about shooting a shotgun is from the #7 station on a skeet field. It is probably the easiest target that can be thrown because of the distance and angle from the shooter.

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