KANSAS SKEET SHOOTING ASSOCIATION
NSSA News
Arnie Weber, National Director
(He really is a blurr)
Ark Valley Gun Club
Wichita, KS
Brunner Field
Ft. Leavenworth, KS
Capital City Gun Club
Topeka, KS
Powder Creek Gun Club
Lenexa, KS
Shawnee Creek Preserve
Columbus, KS
What is Skeet Shooting?
April Shoots
IRS Memorial
Brunner Field [PROGRAM]
4-gun
April 13-14
Shawnee Creek
20/28
April 21
Ark Valley Gun Club
20/.410
April 28
Board of Directors
Kansas State Teams
Ft. Leavenworth
Weapon RegistrationPrior to the invention of clay shooting, shotgun enthusiasts sharpened their skills on hand-blown glass balls filled with bird feathers, and thus coined the expression, making the feathers fly. As you might imagine, shooting glass targets was very costly, the targets were hard to manufacture consistently and they were hard to launch safely and uniformly. The end result was a big mess of broken glass and feathers. In 1920, a small group of bird hunters in the town of Andover, Massachusetts took to shooting clay targets as a means of practicing their wing shooting.
As friendly rivalries started to develop between members of the group, they devised a uniform series of shots to keep the competition fair and even for all. Initially, this involved a layout consisting of an 80-yard circle with 12 evenly spaced stations where the shooter fired two shots. They dubbed this sport “shooting around the clock,” and it provided them a variety of inbound, outbound and passing shots so they could practice their wing shooting skills.
The obvious problem with this layout was that it required a massive amount of real estate to safely contain the shot fall in all directions. To further complicate things, a neighboring farmer built a huge chicken coup directly adjacent to the shooting arena. In order to remain in good graces with their neighbor, the group settled for shooting half the circle, and they reduced the circle diameter to 40 yards so their lead shot would not hit the coup’s tin roof and disturb the nesting hens.
During the Second World War, aerial gunners took skeet training to learn how to lead targets and after the war ended, these gunners came home and bought skeet guns. Skeet was originally shot from the low gun, but in the 1950s the National Skeet Shooting Association did away with the low gun start and the variable three-second delay, ushering in the era of perfect scores and endless shoot-offs.
Today, skeet is shot a a field with standardized dimensions. The targets emerge from a high house (10 feet above ground) on the left and a low house (3-1/2 feet above ground) on the right that face one another 40 yards apart. Legal skeet targets travel between 60 and 70 yards and pass 15 feet above a crossing stake set 21 yards from the shooting stations, which are arranged around an arc running from one house to the other.
A round of skeet consists of 25 shots, beginning with a high-house bird at station one, then a low house bird, then a double at one, two, six, and seven.
Kansas Skeet Shooting Association, Inc.
Comments, suggestions to
Rick Carver
