Station to station

David Turner runs an eye over the most surefire method to improve your shooting skills

In my last article, I recommended Skeet as a great discipline to help hone our shooting skills. It offers a wide variation of angles with predictable target speeds and trajectories, which are so important to help us learn and practice. After all, there is little point in using targets that vary and while we need to develop the natural ability to shoot whatever is presented, we need consistency to learn.

The derivation of Skeet is said to come from the Norwegian word “skyte”, meaning shoot. During World War II the British and American militaries used it to teach gunners the principles of lead and forward allowance of a flying target.

A skeet range can also be established in a smallish space. For those new to shooting, this drawing (see top of page 49) shows a Skeet range: a “high” house, a “low” house and seven stands from where the shots are taken. The targets are standard size and thrown to a distance of approximately 60 yards, crossing at a central point 22 yards from the shooter on the middle stand 4.

The history of Skeet

Two American shooters, Charles Davis and William Harnden Foster of Massachusetts, are credited with inventing Skeet shooting in 1920. Both avid grouse hunters, they developed a game that was informally called “Shooting around the clock”. The original course took the form of a circle with a radius of 25 yards with its circumference marked off like the face of a clock and a trap set at 12 o’clock. The practice of shooting from all directions had to cease, however, when a chicken farm opened next door.

The discipline evolved to its current set-up by 1923 when one of the shooters, Foster, solved the problem by placing a second trap at 6 o’clock and cutting the course in half. Foster quickly noticed the appeal of this kind of competition shooting and set out to make it a national sport.

The game was introduced in the February 1926 issues of the American magazines

“Skeet offers a wide variation of angles with predictable target speeds and trajectories”