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Mallard Trap Club

Other Trap Games

Registered trap shooting is only part of what happens on a trap field. Below are some other games and formats that can be enjoyed at a trap range.

Most of these are informal games so the rules can vary from club to club, and most of these games have as many versions as there are clubhouses. These are meant to be fun so feel free to try them and change the rules as you and other shooters want!

Lucky Bird

Green targets are randomly mixed in with the standard orange ones in the traphouse, so nobody knows a green bird is coming until it is already in the air. Lucky bird is shot like a regular round of trap; the difference is that if you break the green bird, you win the prize.

How Mallard does it

Mallard uses Lucky Bird for its pie shoots, and the way we run it, every round has a green bird and every round has a winner. Two ways to win one:

  • Call for a target as normal. If a green bird comes out and you break it, the pie is yours.
  • If you pull the green bird and miss it, the pie is still live — it goes to the next shooter to break a bird, whatever color that target turns out to be.

That second rule is why the pie never goes unclaimed. A missed green bird is not a wasted one — it passes down the line, which is why the shooter standing next to you takes a sudden interest in how your target is going.

At some clubs, breaking the green bird gets you a chance in a drawing to win a pie. At Mallard, every green bird wins a pie.

The Thanksgiving Pie and Easter Pie Shoots both run this way, and both are open to the public. You do not need to be a member, and you do not need to be good, a green bird counts the same whoever breaks it.

Annie Oakley

Named for the legend, three to five shooters stand at the line together with their guns mounted. The first shooter calls for the bird and must shoot it on the rise. If they break it nobody else may shoot: everyone is safe.

If the first shooter misses, the second tries. If they break it the first shooter is out. If they miss too, it falls to the third gun, who puts out both shooters ahead of them by breaking it. If everybody misses, everybody is safe. The next round starts with the second shooter leading and the rest backing, and the rotation carries on until one shooter is left standing.

Two ways someone puts themselves out rather than being shot out: firing out of turn, and firing at a target somebody has already broken. With five guns up, the last shooter is taking a target that is very nearly on the ground, which is where most of the noise comes from.

Pieces

A scoring version rather than an elimination one, and it turns the game around: the lead shooter’s job becomes breaking the clay so hard there is nothing left worth shooting at. The shooter behind may take any falling target without waiting their turn; one point for a whole clay the lead shooter missed, two points for catching the pieces of one they hit. Shooting out of turn costs a point. First to ten wins.

Skrap

Sometimes referred to as scrap, scat or Chinese Trap, it’s skeet-style shooting on a trap range. Seven stations spaced around a semicircle 21 yards (63 feet) from the traphouse. Skrap uses that same arc, but instead of a high house and a low house at either end of it, there is a single house at the center throwing regular trap targets.

The skeet stations give shooters a different angle than a regular round of trap. Not every one of them is unfamiliar — station 4 is really just 21-yard handicap shot from trap station 3, and stations 3 and 5 are not far off normal trap positions — but the further around the arc you go, the less any of it looks like the game you came out to shoot.

Shooters take turns from the first station. Break a bird and you move up to the next one; miss and you stay where you are and try again on your next turn. Three misses and you are out. The winner is the first shooter to break a bird at the final station — or, if nobody gets that far, whoever made it farthest around the arc.

Skrap field layout A traphouse with the five standard 16-yard trap stations in a short arc close behind it, and the seven Skrap stations on a wider 21-yard arc that starts level with the front of the house on one side, sweeps behind the house, and ends level with the front on the other side. targets traphouse 16-yard line 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
The seven Skrap stations on a 21-yard arc — a skeet field’s spacing, with the trap house at the center instead of a house at either end. Stations 1 and 7 sit level with the front of the house. The five regular 16-yard trap stations are the small cluster close behind it.

Lewis Class

A way of paying out rather than a way of shooting, and one you opt into: entering the Lewis class is normally an option you take at signup, and only shooters who entered are eligible for it.

At the end of the day the scores of everyone entered are written down in order, highest to lowest, and that list is cut into equal groups — the Lewis classes. The top score in each group wins. Because the groups are drawn after the shooting rather than before, a middling shooter can win their class outright on a day the good shooters happen to bunch up. It is how club shoots spread the prizes past the same three names.

When we shoot them

Usually after regular shooting is done for the day, and only when the members and shooters present all agree to it. There is no schedule — if everyone on the line is up for a game, someone calls one.

Non-members are welcome, and the usual equipment and ammunition rules apply — see Safety & Rules. New to trap altogether? Start with About Trap Shooting.