Trap shooting
discipline of competitive clay pigeon shooting
Trap shooting is one of the three major disciplines of competitive clay pigeon shooting. The other disciplines are skeet shooting and sporting clays.
Trap shooting is distinguished by the targets being launched from a single "house" or machine, generally away from the shooter, compared with skeet shooting where targets are launched from two "houses" crossing in front of the shooter. Sporting clays involve a more complex course, with many launch points.
Participation
Trap shooting is practiced all over the world but is most popular in the United States (particularly the Midwest), Canada and Europe. Trap shooting variants include, but are not limited to, international varieties Olympic trap, also known as "International Trap", "Bunker", "ISSF Trap", "Trench". Non-Olympic shooting variants include Down-The-Line, also known as "DTL", Nordic Trap, and double trap. American Trap is the predominant version in the United States and Canada.
American Trap has two independent governing bodies. The Amateur Trapshooting Association (ATA) sanctions events throughout the United States and Canada, as well as the Pacific International Trapshooting Association (PITA) which sanctions events on the West Coast of North America.
The public source identifies “Trap shooting” as discipline of competitive clay pigeon shooting. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Trap, shooting and discipline.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3489425. The Library of Congress control number is sh85137126. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Trap 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.