Clay pigeon shooting
art of shooting a firearm at special flying targets, known as clay pigeons or clay targets
Clay pigeon shooting, also known as clay target shooting, is a shooting sport involving shooting at special flying targets known as "clay pigeons" or "clay targets" with a shotgun. Despite their name, the targets are usually inverted saucers made of pulverized limestone mixed with pitch and a brightly colored pigment.
History
Clay targets began to be used in place of live pigeons around 1875. Asphalt targets were later developed, but the name "clay targets" stuck. In 1893, the Inanimate Bird Shooting Association was formed in England. It was renamed to the Clay Bird Shooting Association in 1903. It held annual clay-pigeon-shooting contests and lasted until the outbreak of World War I. In 1921, the British parliament passed a bill without opposition making it illegal to shoot birds from traps. A decorative clay pigeon shooting stand at Plaue Castle in Germany, built around 1900 and decorated with animal figures, is one of the oldest of its kind.
Clay shooters may still use terminology that originated from the use of live pigeons. A target may be called a "bird", a hit may be referred to as a "kill", and a missed target as a "bird away"; the machine which projects the targets is still known as a "trap".
The public source identifies “Clay pigeon shooting” as art of shooting a firearm at special flying targets, known as clay pigeons or clay targets. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Clay, pigeon and shooting.
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This entry incorporates text from “Clay pigeon shooting” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.