All The Trappings

Tony Bracci guides you through the fundamentals of the clay shooting discipline of trap

- Tony Bracci

This article is not meant to be a masterclass on trap shooting, more rather an explanation to encourage you to give it a go if you haven’t tried it.

Trapshooting is one of the formal clay shooting disciplines and at its highest level an Olympic sport. Most people start on DTL (Down the Line) before moving onto ABT (Automatic Ball Trap), Double rise and OT (Olympic Trap).

Clay target shooting started from live pigeon shooting. The machines that throw the clay pigeons are called traps after the traps that held the live birds prior to release. We call “Pull!” to release the clay as they used to pull the cord to open the trap holding the pigeons. The term ‘kill and lost’ comes from this era but it is now more common to hear ‘hit and loss’. The format and shooting positions are founded on live pigeon days.

A trap gun can look different to a Sporting one but this does not mean you can’t shoot trap with a Sporter. You can at least try it to see if it suits you. All the differences are there to help you shoot the discipline better.