What is Sporting Clays and 5-Stand?

Sporting Clays

Sporting Clays is known as Golf Course style Clay Target Shooting.  The official National Sporting Clays Association (NSCA) has only been around since 1989.  The idea is you have to move around (like on a golf course) to different stations that present more true to life wild game hunting scenarios. A typical course will consist of several stations, each station having a pair of clay-throwing machines, called traps. Varying numbers of clay pairs are shot at each station, with the total shots for an outing adding up to 50 or 100 (two or four boxes of shells, respectively).

 

Advanced shooters have the clays thrown as simultaneous pairs, while novice or intermediate shooters can opt for the clays to be thrown on report (the second clay launched on the report of the shooter's gun, hence the name report pair). Targets are thrown at different angles and speeds; sometimes across the shooter's view (crossers), towards the shooter (in-comers), away from the shooter (out-goers), or straight up in the air (often called "teals"). The shots are intended to simulate hunting for quail, grouse, pheasant, pigeon, or other game. Many courses have traps which throw targets from tall towers simulating high-flying ducks or geese. Some courses have targets that roll and bounce along the ground to simulate rabbits. There are also targets, called 'battues', that loop in the air — this does not simulate any particular animal, but it is usually a challenging target.

The speed at which a trap throws a clay can also be controlled by the course setter, and many of the traps are made to be relocate-able on the course. Therefore, the configuration of a sporting clays course (trap location, clay trajectory, and speed of the clay) can easily be changed, allowing various levels of difficulty and a multitude of layouts.

As in golf, the rules of sporting clays become more specific, and therefore more restrictive as the level of competition increases. There are a few basic rules, however, that define the sport:

1. The shooter may start with a low gun or a pre-mounted gun when calling for the target.

2. Only two shells may be loaded.

3. If doubles are tossed and both are broken with one shot, both are counted as kills.

4. A malfunction of the gun is counted as a lost bird under United States Sporting Clays Association (USSCA) rules; the National Sporting Clays Association (NSCA) allows two malfunctions per day without penalty.

5. Chokes or guns may be changed only between fields. A field is one or more shooting stations serviced from a common trap. The NSCA permits chokes to be changed between stations.
   
    

Sporting Clays by the Arizona Game and Fish Department via Youtube

5-Stand

Created in 1985 a Canadian company Clay-Sport International began creating 5-Stand Sporting as an alternative to regular Sporting Clays. It was designed to be easy and inexpensive to fit onto any of the thousands of existing trap and skeet fields, and it was also designed to follow the same format and rotation as ATA trap to make it easy to follow for the shooters of these popular shooting disciplines.

The original game was played with no menu cards, which meant the shooters didn’t know which throwers the clay targets were coming from, making the game more like hunting, but much more fun as well… All the targets were highly visible since they passed over a central area on the playing field, and the shooters relied on their instinctive shooting skills to break them. When the National Skeet Shooting Association (NSSA) and National Sporting Clays Association (NSCA) took over 5-Stand in America however, they adopted menu cards to make the game more regimented, like skeet. 5-Stand Sporting is a registered trademark of Clay-Sport International in Alberta, Canada. In the US, 5-Stand is licensed by the NSCA.

Five Stand is very similar to Sporting Clays in that a wide variety of targets are thrown. No two five-stands are exactly alike. There are five "stands" or stations to shoot from. There are usually somewhere between 6 and 8 traps that throw targets. Participants shoot in turn at each of the 5 stands and various combinations of targets are thrown from the traps. Usually there is a menu card that will advise the shooter of the sequence of targets. Five Stand is a great way to get a Sporting Clays like experience in a small amount of space, with very little walking.

Typical five stand targets are a rabbit, chandelle, overhead, standard skeet high house and low house shots, teal (launched straight up into the air), and an incoming bird.

Sources:  sportingclays.net, en.wikipedia.org, clay targets online, clay shooter magazine

5 Stand Shooting at Ben Avery by the Arizona Game and Fish Department via Youtube

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