Shooting-Trap and skeet.

Trap vs. Skeet

So what's the difference between Trap and Skeet? Its said the Trap is easier to learn but harder to master, while Skeet is harder learn but easier to master. Let's examine the difference of each sport.

In Skeet, targets cross left or right in front of the shooter, from a High House and Low House, and always follows an identical "flight path" in terms of height, speed, angle. As s shooter moves through the eight skeet positions, the flight of the target is always the precisely the same. With practice, a shooter "learns" where the target will be. After a while, most skeet shooters desire more of a challenge, usually turning to shooting with smaller gauge guns (20, 28, 410). Because of this, most skeet competitions are decided by shoot-offs and other sub-events, before the field of shooters can be narrowed down to determine a winner.

Trap differs in that the targets are always move away from the shooter, at greatly varying angles from extremes of left or right to dead-center straight-aways. The longer a shooter waits to shoot, the distance to the target increases. The trap machine continually cycles and changes angles at random. This, combined with the shooter's position on the trap field, makes for an infinite number of target angles. From Station 1 for example, a target moving to the extreme left will appear to move very fast. On the other hand, a target moving to the extreme right will almost appear to be a straight-away shot (where as on Station 5, these perceptions are reversed).

The shooter must also consider a target's flight path. Trap targets eventually reach an apex (their highest point of an arc) then begin to descend. The rate at which they fall varies, and is difficult to perceive. Add some wind or other environmental variables (rain, etc.) and the complexity increases exponentially. With a tail wind, targets are stay lower (as the wind pushes them down) and may fly faster. Against the wind, targets are driven up into the air, and their speed can also be varied.

http://www.carrollgun.com/thesport/thesport.htm

My "machine" is whoever is throwing the clay targets, and since most people have a hard time throwing them, I guess my game is trap.

What an excellent explanation. Australia has several Olympic and Commonwealth games medallists in these sports, yet the televising networks have never bothered explaining it.