Skeetfreak
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2012
- Messages
- 428
I have just returned to shooting after a break and as my username suggests have a passion for skeet. In the recent "Pull" magazine there have been a couple of letters about "low gun" and differing "target speeds / orders" for this discipline and i thought i would throw this out thee to see what people thought.
Now it infuriates me that skeet is thought of as the "Beginners game" or "Easy / Boring" as it is in its own right a speciality. I am generally not in favour of any changes to the game but the reply i did on the "Todd Bender thread" set me thinking. In that the USA seem to be grabbing hold of the Olympic Skeet (OSK) scene as they seem to have this knack of producing really good skeet shooters.
With Vincent Hancock, Kimberley Rhode, Hayley Dunn all running big numbers in OSK i wonder if this is due to the similarity in their "skeet games" in that making the transition to OSK from NSSA is much easier than ESK to OSK.
Lets look at the major differences between our two main skeet disciplines.
OSK - 25 targets travelling 68m (+/- 1m) and they shoot the centre station 8. Using a low Gun hold.
ESK - 25 targets travelling 50m-52m and no station 8. No low gun hold
Now i would be totally against a low gun hold being made mandatory so that rules that out from my point of view. But the target order and speeds are something i would consider as a dedicated skeet shooter if it also helped the transition to OSK for our up and coming shooters.
Having dabbled with OSK in the past making that leap from 50-52m targets to what at the time was 66m targets (increased this coming year to 68m) was massive and i couldn't get the gun in the right place on pairs for the life of me. The second target was nowhere near where i expected it to be making the discipline change a huge leap. Now ok i have shot NSSA so have experience of station 8 but if you have never shot NSSA and have a try at OSK then that station 8 at 68m speed is going to be a shock!!
The difference now is huge taking the longest ESK target (52m) and the shortest OSK target (67m) that is a 15m difference to bridge or put it another way - nearly a third faster!! How can we as a country and our shooting organizations hope to encourage and help our future Olympic stars with such huge bridges to cross between our disciplines.
I am inclined to think that also (as we see it in NSSA Skeet) an increase in target speed would improve target flight in adverse conditions as the target has a better flight stability and is under power for longer giving a truer / fairer test over a major shoot such as the English Open Skeet. This would in turn make the referee's job easier with less target variation / no bird issues. Save the grounds money for the same reasons with i would hope fewer targets thrown due to better quality of repeatable targets.
So what are my thoughts...... why not bridge the gap a little bit by say increasing the targets to 60m in ESK from the current 50-52m - this is about halfway between the two disciplines (ESK - OSK) and would achieve the above ideas on target presentation i feel. As for the target order and how to incorporate station 8..... i can only think of two options:-
i). Lose the pair on 4 as they do in NSSA and put one from each house on station 8
ii). Lose the incoming single target on stations 1 and 7 and put one from each house on station 8
Now given ESK's perceived position in the clay shooting disciplines then i would maybe argue the case that its option one (i) that is used - dropping the pair on 4 - why?
Well simply put the increase in target speed will no doubt make the game a little tougher. So to balance this off for the beginning / improving shooter replacing the two hardest targets on the layout with two singles (based upon OSK) on station 8. This gives them a chance to improve as shooters but also adds in the full set of targets for those who might wish to consider a switch to OSK.
Here in the UK we also have a specific Skeet Doubles (SKD) discipline aswell so skeet shooters looking to make the changes to OSK can use the combination of ESK and SKD to hone their skills for every target on the OSK layout but at a speed only 8m slower than OSK instead of the current minimum 15m difference.
Note:- As a matter of course i would advocate that SKD speeds are increased in line with the new ESK speeds as the same thoughts apply in terms of target consistency etc in SKD as they do for ESK and also gives the budding OSK shooter a fighting chance for learning to shoot the pairs they do not get in ESK.
Station 3
Station 4 (if it was removed from ESK)
Station 5
Have any other skeet shooters got any thoughts on this?
Now it infuriates me that skeet is thought of as the "Beginners game" or "Easy / Boring" as it is in its own right a speciality. I am generally not in favour of any changes to the game but the reply i did on the "Todd Bender thread" set me thinking. In that the USA seem to be grabbing hold of the Olympic Skeet (OSK) scene as they seem to have this knack of producing really good skeet shooters.
With Vincent Hancock, Kimberley Rhode, Hayley Dunn all running big numbers in OSK i wonder if this is due to the similarity in their "skeet games" in that making the transition to OSK from NSSA is much easier than ESK to OSK.
Lets look at the major differences between our two main skeet disciplines.
OSK - 25 targets travelling 68m (+/- 1m) and they shoot the centre station 8. Using a low Gun hold.
ESK - 25 targets travelling 50m-52m and no station 8. No low gun hold
Now i would be totally against a low gun hold being made mandatory so that rules that out from my point of view. But the target order and speeds are something i would consider as a dedicated skeet shooter if it also helped the transition to OSK for our up and coming shooters.
Having dabbled with OSK in the past making that leap from 50-52m targets to what at the time was 66m targets (increased this coming year to 68m) was massive and i couldn't get the gun in the right place on pairs for the life of me. The second target was nowhere near where i expected it to be making the discipline change a huge leap. Now ok i have shot NSSA so have experience of station 8 but if you have never shot NSSA and have a try at OSK then that station 8 at 68m speed is going to be a shock!!
The difference now is huge taking the longest ESK target (52m) and the shortest OSK target (67m) that is a 15m difference to bridge or put it another way - nearly a third faster!! How can we as a country and our shooting organizations hope to encourage and help our future Olympic stars with such huge bridges to cross between our disciplines.
I am inclined to think that also (as we see it in NSSA Skeet) an increase in target speed would improve target flight in adverse conditions as the target has a better flight stability and is under power for longer giving a truer / fairer test over a major shoot such as the English Open Skeet. This would in turn make the referee's job easier with less target variation / no bird issues. Save the grounds money for the same reasons with i would hope fewer targets thrown due to better quality of repeatable targets.
So what are my thoughts...... why not bridge the gap a little bit by say increasing the targets to 60m in ESK from the current 50-52m - this is about halfway between the two disciplines (ESK - OSK) and would achieve the above ideas on target presentation i feel. As for the target order and how to incorporate station 8..... i can only think of two options:-
i). Lose the pair on 4 as they do in NSSA and put one from each house on station 8
ii). Lose the incoming single target on stations 1 and 7 and put one from each house on station 8
Now given ESK's perceived position in the clay shooting disciplines then i would maybe argue the case that its option one (i) that is used - dropping the pair on 4 - why?
Well simply put the increase in target speed will no doubt make the game a little tougher. So to balance this off for the beginning / improving shooter replacing the two hardest targets on the layout with two singles (based upon OSK) on station 8. This gives them a chance to improve as shooters but also adds in the full set of targets for those who might wish to consider a switch to OSK.
Here in the UK we also have a specific Skeet Doubles (SKD) discipline aswell so skeet shooters looking to make the changes to OSK can use the combination of ESK and SKD to hone their skills for every target on the OSK layout but at a speed only 8m slower than OSK instead of the current minimum 15m difference.
Note:- As a matter of course i would advocate that SKD speeds are increased in line with the new ESK speeds as the same thoughts apply in terms of target consistency etc in SKD as they do for ESK and also gives the budding OSK shooter a fighting chance for learning to shoot the pairs they do not get in ESK.
Station 3
Station 4 (if it was removed from ESK)
Station 5
Have any other skeet shooters got any thoughts on this?
