Sporting Clays is still growing in popularity within the shotgun sports community. The lack of availability of clays course in many parts of the country prevents many shotgun enthusiast from enjoying the sport. The cost of setting up a 10 to 12 station course is beyond the financial ability of most rural clubs. Even investing into a 5 stand with ten stations means the purchase of 10 to 12 traps, which is also a major investment. Setting up a good quality skeet and trap field is much more reasonable.
While skeet and trap shooting are still popular they tend to become as one of my sons observed, “boring”. In many ways traditional as they are, trap and to a lesser degree skeet are an unnatural approach to shotgun shooting as it relates to the real world of bird hunting. How often do you follow your bird dog around with the gun mounted to your shoulder? In addition it does not take too long with practice to shoot a perfect round of trap and a while longer to do so on the skeet field. Shooting a clean round of sporting clays is no mean feat of accomplishment. Many will argue that I am comparing apples to oranges and some will even cry heresy. Sporting clays is much more challenging but many times finding a place to shoot clays can also be a challenge.
However, if the local skeet and trap club has an existing combination skeet and trap field, it is possible with little effort make your sport much more challenging and interesting. Utilizing both skeet house and the trap houses at the same time will provide shooters different and interesting target options. Our course of 50 targets is shot from the low gun position. It is begun using skeet stations 1,2,6,7 where the shooter under takes a normal course of fire for skeet including doubles. This followed by a report pair consisting of a single target is thrown from each skeet house and upon report a single from the trap house is thrown for a total of 7 target presentations. At skeet stations 3,4 and 5 using the normal skeet protocol of a single bird from each house would be followed by a report pair off the first target thrown from the trap house followed by target using both the high and low house. Each station would present 6 targets to each shooter. At station 8 the normal skeet protocol is used with a single bird from each house.
Through out the course, a total of 48 targets are thrown with two option targets to be used at the time of a target miss or without any loss at the shooters discretion. This provides for a 50 target presentations or about half the number of targets presented at standard sporting clays course. The most appealing aspect of the using the existing combination skeet and trap field is of course the monetary savings.
We initially tested our course of fire using experienced sporting clays shooters. This included one shooter with a low 90’s average. They reported that the course was much more challenging than they first anticipated. Granted it is not the same course of fire as a standard clays course but it still was challenging to the point that so far only one shooter has completed the course clean. Two additional people have broke 98 targets to date.
We also invited trap and skeet shooter to test out our course as well. It was surprising how well they did on the course. One trap shooter broke 89 targets on his first round using a 20 gauge and stated he would definitely be back to shoot with us again. The number one complaint given was about the required low gun position where the entire firearm had to be positioned below the waist of the shooter. This was later modified to require the butt of the firearm below the waist. It was surprising that this change did not result in higher scores. As expected some of the died in the wool skeet and trap shooters did not care for the course. However, the vast majority thought it was fun and that is what shotgun sports are all about. Sporting clays shooters commented about the lack of rabbit targets being a significant difference between Standard clays and our course.
As we developed our course of fire we tried to think of a name for our endeavor. Names such as “3 Stand”, “Short Clays”, and “Hunters Clays” were proposed with the majority of people calling 3 Stand. As far as we are concerned we call it just plain fun. One observation that caught my attention was that after using the low gun shooting position, shooters were amazed about how much time they really had to break targets. Other comments that were noted included that shooters were able to focus better on the bird from the low gun position.
So if you belong to a range, sportsman’s or conservation club with a combination skeet and trap field, you can easily convert it to a 3-stand course of fire. Of course some clubs could devise their own course of fire to meet their facilities and needs. The cost is zero and it may attract additional shooters to your club and its shoots. It may even make you a better shooter. One thing it is not and that is boring. Sporting clays is fun and challenging and now it can be more available to the average shooter.
An E-Course from scratch? How in the world can I create an Ecourse from scratch?
Ah young Grasshopper, you have still much to learn. (I love KungFu!)
Believe it or not, the complicated part of an E-Course is NOT the information within it, it's the format for which the info will be presented (which isn't hard either). But, for purposes of this read, we'll worry about formatting later.
Creating an E-Course from scratch is just as easy as writing a 7 item grocery list, maybe even easier.
I say that because you have knowledge on something, right? No one is saying you have to be an expert, but you should have knowledge on some kind of subject, some kind of hobby or even your current profession. Whatever it is you do or like to do, that could be the starting point of your E-Course. That could be the catalyst of you making money on the internet.
Here's what you do, write down 7 points of something you enjoy doing. It could be 7 words or 7 sentences, but you MUST write them down. Once you have that done, guess what? You have just created the foundation for your very own E-Course! See, I told you it was easy, didn't I?
Once you take this first step, the rest of creating the E-Course will be a natural progression and, if you build it right, you'll have a marketable AND sellable product that YOU HAVE CREATED! All by utilizing the knowledge and the expertise already inside of you.
I'll say this again, if you can write a 7 item grocery list, you can create your very own E-Course that will make you money. How cool is that?