doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Sporting Clays for Grouse and Quail Hunters

Are there any clays facilities with courses set up to simulate grouse and quail hunting, where all of the shots are 25 yards or less?...sorta like skeet in the woods...

IIRC there used to be a clays setup called Quail Walk that was supposed to simulate Quail hunting....sans the pooches of course. Haven't heard of anything like it for years. Don't worry about long shots ed.....most range owners only set up feel good targets to avoid hurting feelings (and ensuring repeat business).

Our course down here has long and short targets. One could skip the long targets and just shoot the short ones.

Elk Creek has three courses. Two which are setup like hunting conditions with a lot of gimme targets. Those are for beginners or people more interested in high scores than increasing their shooting ability.

Their third course is setup with targets which can humble you at times. Small windows in the woods, high quartering targets with a cant to them, long distance targets or my favorite a rabbit target which is charging and is only in view for a very small time until it is so close you just have no chance to hit it.

Point is since Sporting Clays has no hard and fast target rules like Trap or Skeet the only limitations on targets are terrain and imagination. Clubs will change targets if you can make a suggestion that sounds interesting. That charging rabbit was a suggestion that people love to hate. New targets always add interest and clubs like keeping shooters interested.

Here in Amarillo we shoot crazy. It is like quail coming out of a plum thicket and grouse leaving a tree, and NOT easy.

Skeet/Trap overlay

Shoot doubles from the 16 yard line at stations 1,2,3,4,5 and from the skeet station 8 referees mark ( half way between trap post 3 and station 8 skeet, and then a single just below station 8, the trap station 3 side of station 8.

Double are thrown from the skeet houses.

First double is Trap 16 yard station one, high house taken first
Second double is same station low house taken first.

From the time you close the gun, you have a short grace period and then the 0 to 3 second delay for the pair to be released.

You do not say pull, never seen that said in hunting

The pullers job is to be STINKY.

Low gun.

When you first try it, you may want mounted gun and Pull just to orient yourself to the game

Mike

https://images.app.goo.gl/QQvJjWc35ENPcM8Y9

p.s. gotta give credit where credit is due,
JOE WOOD shot the last perfect score that I know of

There are hundreds nationwide.

They�re only shortcoming, is that they are easy.

They are great to build up your game when you�re a beginner or rusty, but they leave you under skilled for the more difficult presentations.

Which is fine if you�re just a casual shooter, but if you move into the competitive arena , you�ll understand what I said.

They become a bit of a bottleneck for clubs, because they�re not hard enough for the tournament shooters, and they get a bit boring for the non-tournament shooters that shoot regularly.

And clubs are in the business of selling clay targets, so when people quit buying, the revenue is not there.

A common solution to this conundrum, is a heavy investment in automated traps, 4 to 6 per station, at about $3000 per unit.

ed good

As to skeet/trap overlay fields in New Hampshire??

It appears that the Major Waldron Sportsman Association does,
are they still functional?

Club Type: Public/Member
Contact: Bob Sherwood or Dave Landry
Location: 339 Franklin Pierce Highway Barrington, NH 03825
Phone: (603) 742-6866
Website: http://www.majorwaldron.com
Club Hours:
Skeet - Sunday 9am -1PM / Tuesday 5PM (spring to fall) Trap - Saturday 9am -1pm / Wednesday 5P (spring to fall) Five stand Saturday 9am - 1pm Open to members and non-members


https://www.claytargetsonline.com/location/major-waldron-sportsmens-association/

https://www.claytargetsonline.com/new-hampshire/

Mike

skeet, thanks for info...re major waldron club...

type of course i am looking for may not exist...

clapper, it is been my observation that competitive shooters dont do well in the grouse woods, where shots are more instinctive... and unpredictable...and it works vice versa...low gun skeet seems to be the best practice for grouse shooting...

but alas, as grouse shooting in thick cover seems to be a sport of the past these days, i was hoping there were clays courses set up in areas where grouse used to be...where us old bird hunters could go and try to simulate the glory of times gone by...

the northeastern states own thousands of acres of wonderful grouse covets, aka state game lands...problem is, grouse are on the edge of extinction...it would be nice if the states converted some of those covets to clay shooting facilities, staffed by game wardens who have nothing much to do these days, except patrol for deer and turkey poachers...and harass fishermen....

Ed, I don�t know anything about the gun clubs in New Hampshire.

But I do know the safety parameters that sporting clays range operators have to operate under if they are going to allow the public to shoot on their ground.

Grouse walks, quail walks, require very careful attention to safety, as you have people walking with loaded guns down the tree lined path.

That works OK in the woods, but on the gun range it carries safety problems with it.

Additionally, the gun knows where the traps are. At least the second time he walks down the lane. So, 20 yard shots with an open choke shot gun that you know where the targets are coming from, they get pretty easy pretty fast.

And that doesn�t sell tickets.

Same with sitting in a boat, climbing up on a stand, or any of the other more in usual set ups clubs offer.

Oddly, shooting at incoming driven targets is almost as rare as a grouse walk, because, the clubs don�t want clay targets (or their fragments) sailing past the stations. Yet in the UK, a club couldn�t survive without them. Go figure.