Same clays, different targets. How?

Let’s be honest, we’d all love to straight a shoot. It’s the gold medal standard. But if we were doing it week in / week out it’d get pretty boring.

We’d be better giving up and doing something else to get our heads scratching and pulses racing. It’s proper bragging rights when you hit a straight but to do it all the time? Pretty dull, surely?

Once in our lives to straight a layout, especially in English Sporting, would mean legendary status has been achieved.

But we’re shooters, we’d rather spend our days being humbled by a flying disc we can’t hit and thinking ‘WTF?‘ than strutting around like Gods.

A good starting point is the actual clays themselves. All clays aren’t equal after all.

• Standard
  It’s 108-110mm in size and comes in various colours – orange, pink, green or black are most common. Each one looks fair game when in flight. But don’t be fooled, course setters have a knack of throwing these in an array of ways so that even a slow floating crosser at 50 yards is going to need to attention.
• Midi
  Same shape as the standard but with a domed form and a smaller diameter, hence the name. It’s 90mm across and when course setters use these they are looking to trick us into thinking “that’s gonna need some lead“. But because it’s smaller it looks like a standard at 60 yards, even though it’s probably only 40 yards away.
• Mini
  Because you wouldn’t shoot like quarry of this size, some say the Mini ‘shouldn’t be on a shooting ground‘. But whatever – it gets thrown on layouts so we have to deal with it. 60mm in size, this little ‘Aspirin of the sky‘ catches many of us out because generally speaking, whenever it’s thrown you shoot straight at it. But it’s a mind trick because we’re used to seeing lead and this little git rarely needs it. Mind over muscle comes into play.
• Rabbit
  The nemesis target for all of us. Anyone who says ‘I love a rabbit target‘ is full of sh*t – nobody likes rabbits. Fact. 108mm in diameter, these pesky creatures don’t follow a line – they defy it with all their might. Hopping, quartering, side-on going away, jamming the brakes on at the kill point – you name it, these clays will do it. And mostly at random.
• Battue
  Now, these are proper Marmite targets. It’s 50/50 whether you grimace and groan when you read it on the board, but some of us get excited about having to throw our gun to get a boat load of lead in the sky to hit it. Either way, the Battue is similar to a standard clay but it’s thinner and flatter – the crepe to Standard’s pancake. They travel through the air like a 50 cal’ when they’re on full spring and come off the arm looking like a pencil in the sky before opening up, flicking the V’s and plummeting to the ground. Gone.

While these are the clays we’ll usually see when tackling a layout, it it doesn’t end there…

Depending on how they’re thrown and what kind of trap is doing the throwing, there’s a plethora of other names to get your head round too – and knowing what’s what really makes a difference.

So we’ve got the physical names and characteristics of the clays nailed, now comes the next mind-bending part. For example, it might be a standard target… But it can be presented in loads of ways that make a standard anything but ‘standard’.

Before we dive in it’s important to note that pretty much any of the physical targets described above can fit into one of the ‘presentations‘ below. It’s also important to know what type of clay is being thrown in what type of presentation. Just looking at the board or hearing the comp ref say ‘oh, it’s just a standard’ is only the start.

• Crosser
  Yep, you’ve guessed it, this presentation is when the target crosses you / the stand. It can be thrown left to right (LR) or right to left (RL). It can be thrown low, middle or high and it can also be slightly incoming and going away at the same time. For example, it’s not uncommon to hear a ref say ‘here you’ve got a standard target that’s a going away crosser‘. Sounds confusing but when you break it down it’s a 110mm target going across in front of you. But watch out, because it’s also got a curl or an angle on it meaning it’s actually getting slightly further away from you as you see it fly.
• Crow
  Mimicking the take off of a real-life Crow, this presentation is usually when the target is thrown directly up into the sky with a good amount of spring on the trap. Normally it’ll head skywards, stall for a nanosecond and then gravity grabs it and it rockets back to the ground. They can be near, which usually means they’re not so hard to hit, or they look like they are a mile away meaning you have to give the target lead underneath or over depending on when you shoot it.
• Chondel
  Easy to spot one of these if you look at the actual trap itself. If it’s got a metal plate attached to the side of it so it looks like it’s armoured, that’s a chondel trap. Similar presentation to a battue (we’ll come on to that next), it’s a looper of sorts but unlike a battue it has much more uniform flight line. A standard target is thrown on it’s side and pings out of the trap at around a 45deg angle, peaks and then plummets back down to Earth at a great rate of knots.
• Battue
  This isn’t actually a presentation of a target, it’s a clay type. But it’s still worth calling it a presentation as you need to know the points. It’s slim, usually fast through the air, and whilst it travels like a looper and a chondel, it can be sometimes erratic if there’s wind around. So whatever lead you think you need to give it, double it because this presentation is the fastest clay there is.
• Rabbit
  Again, not really a presentation, more an actual clay type but like a battue, it needs to be studied. They can travel at all sorts of speeds, angles and distances. As Bugs Bunny & Roger Rabbit showed us, not all rabbits are equal! They can also be thrown down banks, up banks, ramped up into the air part way through their journey and all manner of other creative trajectories. Probably one of the most diverse presentation targets meaning course setters can have a good deal of fun at our expense.
• Teal
  Similar to a crow in a way, but this cheeky chap normally heads to the sky going away from you or coming towards you – at pace. It peaks in the sky and then falls back down, accelerating while it does it. There’s a few ways to tackle this target so we’ll pick up how to shoot one of these, and the rest, in another article.
• Rolling rat
  Much like the sibling of a rabbit, a rolling rat is much slower. But don’t be fooled. This bad boy can dribble it’s way down a bank at a snails pace, appear at 20 yards crawling along the floor and you’ll still miss. Whichever way it’s presented, it’s not a card filler until you’ve figured how to shoot it. It might be slow and near, but missable targets are not always fast and 90 yards away.
• Moorhen
  The joker in the pack. Thrown slightly downwards and onto a pond or lake, it bounces like a stone that’s been skipped in the sea. We call it the joker because it always gets good laughs when we try to shoot it thanks to its unpredictability. You’ve just got commit and instinctively shoot it.
• Incomer
  Exactly what it says – it comes in. Sounds simple but when it’s 40 yards in the air floating towards or on full spring 2 feet off the ground, it’s still an incomer but it needs shooting in a variety of ways.
• Going away
  The sibling of the above, but in reverse. However, instead of getting larger the longer you leave it, this one gets smaller and smaller the more you think about shooting it.
• Looper
  From the chondel and battue clan but the more gentle (usually!) relative. Varying flight lines but always up, across and down. Always to be shot at it’s peak if possible.
• Blaze
  The naughty going away target. Full spring, low down and chopping the grass as it goes, this is a feisty target that needs dusting the second the bead hits the general locale. Hang on to it and it’s gone into next week…
• Driven
  The classic, taken from our sport’s illustrious history. It absolutely mimics the flight of a bird that’s been ‘driven‘ towards you in the air. See it, swing through it bending your knee as you go, cover the target with your barrels, pull the trigger and hope for the best. The higher it is, the more daylight is needed in front of it – good luck!
• Overhead
  Coming from behind you, it’s a just like a driven but in the opposite direction. Just like the going away target, hang on to it for too long and it’s a dot in the sky. History. Again, this one might need daylight underneath it if it’s on full spring heading to the next county.
• Quartering
  Thrown from either side of the stand, and it can be incoming or going away. Either way, a quartering target will always raise the comments of ‘that doesn’t need lead‘. This can be a standard, midi or (if the course setter is being mean!) a mini. It gets the name from the way it quarters across your view. It’s not straight, it’s not crossing but somewhere in between. And just to play with our heads a little more, you can also get quartering loopers and battues. Oh goodness…

Phew, that’s one hell of a rundown of the main clays and presentations. There’s more weird and wonderful names that crop up (jumping rabbit, squirrel to name two) but we hope this list gives you the inside track to hit a PAIR DEAD every time.

But not always, what would be fun about that?