SPORTING CLAYS
Sporting Clays, is a clay target game that arrived in the US from Britain in 1980. It has great appeal to shotgun shooters because of the many target variations that closely resemble ducks, grouse, pheasants and rabbits (the rabbits are a special target that are thrown to roll along the ground and bounce at every bump) as well. Targets are generally presented in pairs either as Simo (at the same time but not necessarily together), Report (one is thrown and when fired upon the second is thrown), Following (one is thrown and then the second, whether the first shot is fired or not) and an occasional single target that is usually quite difficult at which two shots are generally allowed.
Sporting Clays at the Fall River Rod and Gun Club was started by a group of interested members right around 1985. The group was led by long-time members Bob Bannister, Leon Russell, Gus Yankopoulis, Gary Severa, Larry Phelan, Dave Nuttall, Tony Russell, John Boardman and Harold Lehman. The club refused to buy equipment, so five members each purchased a trap to get things going, which certainly proved to the club that this was a good thing. We used some club members kids to operate the manually loaded traps as trappers.
To say it took off would be an understatement. It was extremely well received by members and their guests also. We ran our first competition in conjunction with the Quack Decoy League. We were rewarded with 146 entries. One long-time club member remarked “I don’t know where they’re coming from but they just keep coming down the road”. We were born a “Sporting Clays Club” after our first shoot, in addition to already being recognized as a trap and skeet club.
Today our equipment is top notch and we have an excellent following every weekend, year-round, weather permitting.
We also occasionally offer a variation known as “5-Stand” which is multiple traps set up to throw any variation of targets that might be desired.