Clay pigeon shooting, also known as clay target shooting, and formally known as Inanimate Bird Shooting, is the art of shooting at special flying targets, known as clay pigeons or clay targets, with a shotgun or any type of firearm.
The terminology commonly used by clay shooters often relates to times past, when live-pigeon competitions were held. Although such competitions were made illegal in the UK in 1921, a target is still called a "target" or "bird", a hit is referred to as a "hit" or "kill", a missed target might be described as a "bird away" and the machine which projects the targets is known as a "trap".
Read more about Clay Pigeon Shooting: Disciplines, Targets, Throws, Traps, Guns, Cartridges, Lasers
Famous quotes containing the words clay, pigeon and/or shooting:
“And here the precious dust is layd;
Whose purely temper’d Clay was made
So fine, that it the guest betray’d.
Else the soule grew so fast within,
It broke the outward shell of sinne,
And so was hatch’d a Cherubin.”
—Thomas Carew (1589–1639)
“They wait, each like a wooden decoy
or soft like a pigeon or
a sweet snug duck:
until one moves, moves that dart-beak
breaking over.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)