New to Sporting Clays?

Sporting Clays is a shotgun target shooting sport that is statistically one of the fastest growing sports in America today. Originally designed as a way for hunters to hone their skills, Sporting Clays today enables people to enjoy shooting shotguns for the challenge, the competition, the camaraderie, the artistry and craft of firearms, the tradition, and the sheer fun of target shooting regardless of whether you hunt or not.

Sportiong Clays is often compared to the game of golf, and there are many similarities. In golf, a player hits balls from a number of designated stations (tee boxes) and in Sporting Clays each shooter shoots from designated shooting stations. Each of these designated shooting stations provides different targets that present different challenges for the shooter, much like differing terrain and hazards present new challenges on each hole of a golf course.

The targets in Sporting Clays are small biodegradable clay discs that are a lot like tiny Frisbees that break upon impact, and are thrown from remote control machines. The discs-- commonly called "clays" or "birds" or "pigeons"-- are thrown at various speeds and angles that challenge the shooter's skills.

On our Sporting Clays course there ar 10 designated shooting stations. Each of the 10 stations presents a pair of targets. The rules of the game allow the shooter to load only two shells prior to each pair of targets thrown-- thus, you get two shots for two clays. This same pair of clays is thrown 5 times at each station, for a total of 10 shots at 10 clays per station. Over the whole course of 10 stations there are 100 total targets thrown allowing the shooter 100 total shots. A perfect score would be 100 clays broken, but that is extremely rare as the design of the course is made to challenge shooters of all abilities-- part of the fun is missing targets and improving your skill to the point of being able to break that same target on future attempts!

Again like golf, the details in the design of the course are changed periodically. As golf courses change the hole position, Sporting Clays course designers can change speed, angle, and even direction of targets so the course continues to be challenging even after shooting previously. Taos Sporting Clays will change it's course design often-- making use of our undulating terrain, trees, sage, towers and specialty traps-- to keep the course fun for frequent shooters and first timer's alike.