2-27 SS Sporting Clays

 In the early 1900s, a number of British shooting schools adopted the use of clay targets to practice for driven-game shoots. Clay target shooting quickly attracted a large following. Sporting clays is a form of clay pigeon shooting, often described as "golf with a shotgun" because a typical course includes from 10 to 15 different shooting stations laid out over natural terrain. Unlike trap and skeet, which are games of repeatable target presentations, sporting clays simulates the unpredictability of live-quarry shooting, offering a great variety of trajectories, angles, speeds, elevations, distances, and target sizes. Today sporting clays is one of the fastest growing sports in America, with more than three million people of all ages participating both competitively and recreationally.

My job as the host for Outfitters Showcase on the Outdoor Channel took me to Lake Okeechobee, Florida where I visited a Southern hunting plantation called Quail Creek. Here’s Quail Creek general manager Fred Fannizzi discussing his thoughts regarding sporting clays: “ It has been an up-and-coming sport in the US for the last 20 years and it is just a great time for people to enjoy and engage with family, friends, business associates and people of like mind.” It is also a great sport for fundraising. Just like golfing.