It’s OK obsessing over staring really hard at the clay but if your gun isn’t following your eyes, we have a fundamental issue. So, with that established, the next piece of the puzzle is to make sure that your gun is pointing where your eyes are looking. You must obsess over locking your eyes onto the clay and only the clay from the moment you pick it up to the moment it breaks into tiny pieces. This results in the gun being stopped, the swing being ruined and the clay being missed. When you’re playing tennis of course, you keep your eye on the ball and hit it without looking down at the racket subconsciously and this should also be the case when you’re shooting a clay target with a shotgun – keep your eyes locked onto the clay throughout the whole movement and don’t look at your gun’s rib or bead, at all.Ī common beginner mistake is locking onto the target as it’s moving through the air but right at the last minute, just before pulling the trigger, looking at the bead in relation to the clay to make sure that the lead looks correct. If you shifted your focus onto your racket, the chance of you missing the ball increases exponentially. Why? Because as soon as you take your eye off the ball, your brain can no longer calculate its speed and line of travel which are key elements to sending the correct signals to your body to connect with the ball. Yes, you need to move your body, swing your arm with your racket and connect with the ball but your focus never shifts from the ball to the racket. Not for one second would you consider taking your eye off that ball. The ball is served by your opponent and it’s travelling towards you at speed. Tennis, squash, baseball, cricket and even football is relevant here. To emphasise the importance of locking your eyes onto the target, just think about any other sport which requires one ‘thing’ to hit another ‘thing’. Unlike rifle shooting which is aiming a static gun at a static target, shotgun shooting requires movement and therefore requires the gun to be pointing wherever it is you may be looking (ie the target, always). Aim ahead of your target to take into account the time it takes for your shot to reach the clay.The starting point to shooting consistently well is making sure that all the fundamentals are in place. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how fast the clays are moving. Wear what’s comfortable – everyday clothes are fine and you should be provided with all the equipment you’ll need. US shooter Tyler Leinbach holds the record for the fastest time to shoot 25 clays – a staggering 24.25 seconds.Forty-four people entered with the goal of shooting as many objects out of 10 and the winner, Mr Frank Izzard, hit nine out of the 10. The Inanimate Bird Shooting Association held their first championship in London in 1893.Cricket balls, stones and even potatoes were used as targets before the invention of clay targets.

It’s easy for everyone to enjoy clay shooting at any level, from taster sessions at local clubs to national or international competition. Anyone taking part will also learn and apply the necessary safety rules, control and discipline of the sport too. Practising in this way helps improve shooting technique too. Like other shooting activities, clay shooting helps everyone learn to persevere more and stay focused. To get a shot on target in clay pigeon shooting, you’ll need skill, timing and hand-eye coordination. There’s a lot of empty space around that clay, so you’ll need all your skill to get a hit. With so many pellets, you might think you can’t miss, but it’s not as easy as it sounds! The clay will probably appear from behind bushes or a mound, launched from a device called the ‘trap’.

Unlike a rifle that fires a single shot, shotguns fire cartridges holding around 300 small pellets that fly towards the target in a small cloud or ‘pattern’ when you pull the trigger. The targets are called ‘clays’, which are round (not pigeon-shaped) and break apart when hit. Clay pigeon shooting is the sport of shooting flying targets with shotguns.

Clay shooting blocks