Five. That was the number of people in the Trapshooting Club that made it to the National Competition in 2018. The trapshooting club is based around shotguns and targets called clay pigeons. The clay saucers are shot from multiple angles at different times and the objective is to shoot all of the clay saucers with efficiency and speed from around 40feet. 

The trapshooting club meets on Thursday and Sunday evenings in Dundee, to go shooting every week. 

“It’s really fun and I think it’d be really good to see more people try it,” says Nole Lawson, a sophomore and member from the club.

Trapshooting has been around for centuries starting in 1750-1810 In England, and since then it has moved to America and all over the world as a national sport. 

As it’s a national sport there is a National Championship in which the club does participate. In this recent championship, the members did attend however they did not do very well. This has not kept the spirits of the club down and they still seek to recruit more members to experience the culture and enjoyment of trap shooting. 

This club has been in Yamhill Carlton High for around 3 years and even longer in other schools, and is very important to many people who enjoy hunting or shooting guns for sport.

Trapshooting is one of three other types of shotgun shooting, involving clay pigeon shooting and skeet shooting. The difference is between shooting — trap shooting uses clay pigeons in a launcher called a “trap” that sends them flying, whereas the others aren’t shot from machines.

Trapshooting and Skeet shooting are around the same; however, each one has different stations in which you may shoot things, skeet shooting has 8 stations while trap shooting only has 5.

The changes are pretty obvious between the two, with trap you shoot five times at the clay pigeons then move to the next station, whereas with skeet shooting you shoot once, moving counter-clockwise between stations. 

In trapshooting there is a requirement to have a squad of five, and last year freshman Jesse Luttrell and Lawson were in the championship with several others.

“I just grew up with guns and I thought trapshooting would be fun, it was very fun and I believe anyone who shoots guns will enjoy it,” said Jesse Luttrell.

Overall, trapshooting is a very old but enjoyable club and sport, including many different types of people united by guns and clay discs.