GypsyJim- Your Papa soundslike he was an amazing hunter.
Trap and Skeet are often played on the same piece of earth, but they use distinctly different mechanical throwers of the clay pigeons.
On a Skeet field, shooters stand in pre-set stations and have "birds" thrown from those "houses"... far left & right edges of the field in a criss-crossing pattern. Many of the shots are presented as "pairs", two at a time. Thus, the popularity of double barrel shotguns, esp the over/under. Skeet becomes more challenging when the shooter uses a smaller shotgun, stepping down from the 12 gauge, to the 20 gge, 28gge and the true challenge, the .410 bore gun. Not much shot comes out of these guns, the smaller you get. You always know exactly where the birds will appear, but that doesn't seem to make it any easier. You can shoot this game with any standard "field" or hunting gun.
Skeet Clubs are recognized by paved parking lots, good landscaping, higher end import sedans with Ducks Unlimited stickers, and upper level executives opening leather and canvas gun cases (won at the local Ducks Unlimited Banquet) to reveal $20,000 Kolar over and unders with 4 different sub-caliber tubes. These guys are generally highly competitive, type AA, and really don't like themselves or anyone else. Gun handling is elegant and choreographed, adherence to safety rules is sometimes iffy.
A Trap shooting field? That would be from that house (aka bunker) that you refer to, sitting in the middle of the downrange area. It can throw a bird randomly in any one of 5 directions. Most trap is shot as a "singles" game, one bird thrown per "pull". Real-deal dedicated trap guns are as Rail Dragsters are to a Toyota Camry. They are heavy, long and don't have to swing or move very well. Of course, it can be shot with any gun, but the standard is a single barrel 12gge with a fairly tight choke. Difficulty in this game is blended-in by shooting from stations further back from the throwing house. Starting at 16 yards, one can progress to 27 yards in most installations. Olympic Trap is for experts and is just mind bending in terms of speed.
Trap Clubs are easily recognized by the high number of handicapped parking spots, older model land yachts, camper caps, and station wagons with NRA Life Member stickers on the back window. Most of them will offer good advice and friendly counsel on the game, some very few are wound very tightly and are great fun to mess with. You can either make comments about their shots from behind the line, or my favorite- stand to their left with my autoloading shotgun and pitch ejected shells near their feet just before it is their turn... get it? Younger Trap Shooters are generally teenaged Olympic hopefuls seeking escape from the high-plains States or newer shooters that were lured to the Trap Club by the sound of gunfire, similar to a "walker". Most of the serious old men are still banging away with Browning BT-99 32" (Trap Full) single shots, the pricier guns are under-barrel high rib contraptions, ie the Ljutic Space Gun. These are pricey, but way cheaper than a Sporting Clays gun can get, a discussed below. An ancient Model 12 exposed hammer gun has won many Club shoots.
Trap got it's name from the original version where, when the shooter called, "pull", the young boy standing downrange would "pull" upwards the gate on a cage and allow a live pigeon to escape. I don't know if we switched to clay pigeons because they were cheaper or there were fewer and fewer young people that would stand downrange while men with a flask in their pocket waved shotguns about. Times were tough back then, and a tuppence is a tuppence.
Both of these games are kind-of like bowling to me. It is a muscle memory game, it is a game of concentration and focus, not my strong suits. Like bowling, the point of all of this is to shoot a perfect game of 25 "dead birds",
and then do that another 975 times. If so, you might be good enough to
not get a place on the Olympic Team. Kinda' boring to me, but some folks like it. These games are on the wane, now being supplanted by "5 Stand".
You can play "5 Stand" on the same field as Trap or Skeet, but sometimes it is better to have more real estate. This game places shooters in one each of five rotating stands or shooting positions. You are presented with birds from varying angles and trajectories. There might be 4 or even 9 different clay pigeon machines. Some birds are thrown as singles, others as doubles on report (shoot one, then the other one flies) or true pairs (they are both thrown simultaneously). You can shoot this with any field gun. 5 Stand was created as a quick and compact version of "Sporting Clays" and is ideal for weekends when you would likely otherwise be on your wife's $#!† list for being gone all day, versus just the morning. Here you will see minivans with those stick-figure families on the back window.
Sporting Clays is described as "Golf with a Shotgun". (Although when on a golf course, I prefer the AR15)
Take a field or a wooded area, set up 10 throwers and mark some shooting stations, trying to simulate various types of game found in the field. (Common game that you won't piss your pants if confronted with the real thing and you're standing there with that $20,000 shotgun- no Bull Elephants or charging Rhinos, just little cuddly Disney character stuff) It consists of 100 clays and the target presentations are made with entirely different sized and style of clay discs than for trap/skeet. These can be designed to bounce and mimic a rabbit, possibly a teal that blasts straight up into the sky.
You can spot a Sporting Clays course by the high-end SUV's, Lexum, or BMW's in the crushed limestone parking lot. They generally dress out of the Eddie Bauer catalog and are fiercely competitive, ordering "call" spirits at the Club bar afterwards. There may be the associated, refitted and highly customized "golf cart" with shotgun racks and ammo trays, suitable to hold all of that weight.
Sporting Clays is a fairly recent import into the US, and for the last 25 years it exploded in popularity among the guys (and a few
milfy women) who realized that they were really too young to play golf. These over/under shotguns disassemble and fit into nice, compact, color-matching take-down cases, all fitting into the trunk of a BMW Z8. Much like the allure of the
bright shiny metal objects as we find in dive shops, the Sporting Clays shooter can really piss away huge, metric, cubic dollars and get a pretty fancy shootin' iron. Some folks change chokes (metal devices that screw into the end of the barrel) so often to adjust shot patterns- they actually use a power screw-driver tool adapted for this ritual. They will carry bottled water, yet still pee in the bushes. Both are because you are usually quite a ways away from anything else.
Trap is played with the gun in position on your shoulder and pointed downrange and ready. Skeet, you can do either "low gun" or most do it "mounted" (ready to swing and shoot). Sporting Clays was traditionally a "low gun" game, but similar to the dumbing down of snow skiing through modified equipment, it was made easier to entice more new participants. Even though you can shoot most events with a mounted gun, I learned the whole deal as a low-gun shooter, and changing it over now isn't going to happen for me. This disadvantage gives another justification for my mediocre scores.
Just like golf, there are varying degrees of self-flagellation, degradation, and masochism that you can sign-up for. I was a member of a Club that was rated as an "A" level, but they toughened up the birds (shots/targets) to what is referred to as "AA". I literally could not locate or spot some of the birds as they were being thrown. I took my $1100 Ruger Red Label 12 and went home, not renewing my $900 yearly membership. I was driving a 1989 Camry Wagon at the time, and it was brown on top of it, so there's that to consider. I stood out like a sore thumb, and I try to not go where i am not wanted.
Then they can go out, pay the $75 to play the 100 birds, shoot $40 worth of shells, tip the "puller" $10 and get in line to get their ass dusted-off by the likes of
GypsyJim's father, an old man with a battered Remington 870 pump.
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