How many clay shooters?

I shoot in a trap league, once a week. It helps keep shotgunning skills up when hunting season starts. Last Fall, my shooting went into the toilet, and I am not sure why. No health or vision changes, but for some reason I lost the groove. So this year I went back to basics, and my scores are slowly improving. I should probably get a coach to review my technique, because why my scores took a dive is not obvious to me. I do have a kind of an ad hoc clays range behind the shop, with a remote controlled target launcher, so I should probably get a couple of cases of targets, and just practice, practice, and practice some more.

As for hand loading, I can save maybe a $1 over cheap factory loads, but my handloads pattern much more uniformly that said factory ammo. This is regarding 12 ga. loads, for 20, and 28, gauge loads, the savings of hand loads, over factory loads, is substantially more. As for cost of components, my gun club has a well stocked store, at very competitive prices. Their prices on cases of factory loads, is at, or just slightly below, prices charged by local sporting goods outlets, so there is little motive to buy factory ammo from the club. It is nice to have it available when the seasonal supplies get depleted at the local sporting goods stores, though, if one needs factory ammo for a match of for fresh hulls.

As for which clays game I prefer, trap is the most convenient to shoot, since skeet is only available at certain times at my club, and sporting clays require travel to the closest SC club, about an hour away. When we had a closer SC range, I use to shoot SC much more often, especially leading up to hunting season. SC is probably my favorite game. Too bad it isn't supported well in my area.

Squeeze
 
We had a colored bird shoot at the club on the 4th. But we changes it up a little. There were 5 hoops about two foot from the regular shooting stations.Then there were two trap machines on the field, one to the left and one two the right. There were 5 shooters, one on each hoop. First each shooter shot a high house bird in rotation. Then the first shooter got a high house then a right trap bird. The second bird was released on report. Then you got a low house and a left trap bird. After 5 shots, you move to the next hoop. Each bird was worth points, so the more you broke the more points. The hard part was the two trap machines were throwing birds away from you so if you weren't really quick, the last bird might be 50 yards out there. Needless to say it was very challenging and there weren't to many really high scores but it was alot of fun......and extremely humbling.
 
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