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Sports

Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2008

Sporting clays take aim at mimicking variety of nature

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HILMAR -- The German shorthairs -- an 8-year-old mama and her 5-year-old son -- locked up on a small covey of quail. Sophie's right front leg pulled up to her chest. Shotgun's head hung low. The nub of his tail waved.

Robert Fernandes moved in, kicked, and the birds exploded up and out, low line drives 8 feet off the ground, screaming toward the confluence of the Merced and San Joaquin rivers at Rooster Ranch Wings & Clays. The Turlock contractor landed two northern bobwhites with his 12-gauge Browning 325. The dogs bounded out and back, birds in mouth, the tail nubs still waving.

Two hours later, the shooting was just as hot, but there were no dogs; the birds were clay. The sporting clays moved just like the bobwhites and Tennessee reds, low and high line drives stretching across the shooter's field of vision.

Sporting clays evolved out of 19th-century England, where hunters practiced marksmanship by releasing pigeons, which eventually were replaced with clay disks. From live bird to clay bird, an entire spectrum of shooting sports was born, but whereas the same targets are released time and again in trap and skeet, sporting clays aims to mimic nature's variety.

There are quail, pheasant and grouse stations. Ducks at a distance, ducks landing, ducks taking off -- the duck stations are popular. Some shooting problems, as they are called, are entirely man-made, such as the chandelle, which can look more like the St. Louis arch than any game bird.

Fernandes spent a few hours with this reporter at Rooster Ranch on a recent afternoon hunt. Pheasants exploded from small clumps of grass, then broke 90 degrees -- straight up, then straight out. Chukars were taken that moved like the pheasants, but had paired up in the field -- they went up and then out in opposite directions. Again and again, the quail busted out in groups of twos and threes -- hard line drives, zipping away and fast.

On the sporting clays course, the closest one to Modesto, we burned more shells on clays that mirror, to some degree, those flight patterns. All told, between wings and clays, we burned about 150 shells in a few short hours.

"Fifteen, 20 years ago, (sporting clays) were designed strictly to simulate hunting," Rooster Ranch club manager Mike Tupper said. "It became so popular -- so many people got good -- they started making them more difficult. Most courses you'll find have targets that simulate ducks into a pond, or simulate quail flying away or a rabbit bouncing along the ground."

"Trapper, ready," Fernandes said.

"Yes."

"Bird!"

Two line drives, low and high, rocketed out of the first station. Fernandes whacked the low target to dust with his 12-gauge Krieghoff over/under -- at 50 years old, like a classic car, the gun today could fetch close to $20,000 -- and swung the barrel up and left, toward 11 o'clock, and dusted the high target. Two "quail" whacked and nothing to clean.

Depending on the level of the shooter, the clays can be thrown one at a time or together. There's also a delay feature, so a solo shooter doesn't need a partner to press the "pull" switch. Stations are spread out and shooters walk or ride between them in golf carts. Sporting clays often is called golf with a shotgun.

Serious shooters, like Fernandes, who made it to the National Sporting Clays Association AA class, regularly change choke tubes and types of shells between stations just as a golfer would change clubs. When Fernandes competed regularly, almost 10 years ago, AA was the highest class, but since then a Masters Class has been added. Serious competitors use serious guns, but for the normal shooter, a field pump, autoloader or low-end over/under works fine.