Skeet Shooting

Skeet is the standardised crossing-target discipline of clay shooting. Two trap houses throw targets along a fixed, repeatable flight path, and shooters move around a semicircular layout of stations to meet those same targets from a series of different angles.

Because the layout and the target trajectories are defined by rule, a Skeet field in one country presents the same problem as a Skeet field in another. The discipline therefore rewards refined technique and repeatability rather than improvisation.

Sporting Clays changes the problem at every station; Skeet keeps the problem identical and changes only where the shooter stands. Trap sends the target away from the shooter; Skeet is built around targets that cross the shooter's position.

There are also two distinct branches. American Skeet, governed in the United States by the National Skeet Shooting Association (NSSA), allows the gun to be pre-mounted and calls the target on the shooter's command. Olympic Skeet, governed by the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF), is shot from a defined gun-down ready position and the target may be released after a variable delay following the call, which removes any anticipation of the exact release moment.

A Skeet field has a high house on one side and a low house on the other, throwing targets that cross in front of the shooter. Eight shooting stations are used: seven arranged around the semicircle between the two houses and one placed between them at the centre of the field.

A round is shot in a set sequence of stations. At each station the shooter takes single targets from the houses and, at the prescribed stations, doubles in which both houses release at the same time. Each target is scored simply as hit or lost, and squads shoot in rotation so every member covers the same programme.

Skeet is a discipline of references. Because the flight paths never change, shooters learn a specific hold point, visual pick-up point and break point for every target on every station, then repeat them exactly. Progress usually comes from tightening those references rather than discovering new ones.

Gun movement is smooth and continuous. The muzzle is matched to the target's speed and the shot is taken with the gun still moving along its line. Lead is comparatively predictable and can be learned target by target, which is why Skeet is widely used as a foundation for crossing-target technique.

Doubles demand efficient transition: the first target is broken decisively, the eyes go to the second target before the gun does, and the body turns rather than the arms swinging alone. In Olympic Skeet the gun-down start and delayed release add a further requirement — a repeatable mount and disciplined patience on the call.

A Skeet competition is built from a number of rounds announced for the event, each round following the station sequence set by the governing body. Every hit counts as one point and the aggregate of all rounds decides the placing.

Because the targets are standardised, scores at the top of the sport are typically very high, so ties are common and are resolved by shoot-off under the rules of the organising federation. In ISSF competition a qualification phase is followed by a final for the leading shooters, in which the medals are decided.

Skeet was developed in the 1920s in Massachusetts by Charles E. Davies and William Harnden Foster as a way to practise bird shooting outside the hunting season. Their layout with two houses and a fixed crossing flight path became a competitive sport in its own right, and in 1926 the discipline adopted the name Skeet, taken from a Scandinavian word for shoot.

American Skeet is administered by the NSSA. Olympic Skeet is governed by the ISSF, which was founded in 1921 as the Union Internationale de Tir, and is contested at the Olympic Games. FITASC also governs its own hunting-style clay disciplines, which sit alongside Skeet in the wider clay family.