For about 100 years, artificial aerial targets have been used to practise shotgun shooting. The gentlemen and lady Guns of the early 1900s honed their shooting skills using circular clay targets and, indeed, spherical glass balls to get into the swing of things for pheasants and pigeons.
The Americans invented a training and competition game with crossing targets, which came to be known as Skeet. The British and Europeans had a go at that and still do. Across Europe, the tradition of ‘walking-up’ gamebirds, with dogs in front of the Gun line, led to the development of Trap clay shooting, with the target going away in front of the shooter, to practise on the rapidly receding bird.
In the UK, game shooters were looking for more variation in the flight and presentation of the artificial target. So English Sporting was developed, with clay targets imitating the flight patterns of any bird that was shot for the cooking pot; so the clay disc became
