blackfoot-valley

be moving, it is a better test of one’s reflexes and quickness of aim than are either trap or skeet shooting. It is a better simulation of a real hunting situ- ation in which one never knows where or when the next bird will fly out of a bush or tree, or suddenly and briefly appear against a blue sky between trees. Nor does one shoot from just one station; one walks around the course going from one station to the next - this likewise being closer to a real hunt- ing situation. On this course, there are fourteen stations. Account is kept for a shooter’s number of hits among targets thrown, according to a scale for degree of difficulty. Besides a variety of remote-controlled devices that hurl the clay birds, two at each outlying station and several in the starting area, To design and direct its construction, Meyer engaged the services of Dick Mandeville, who has stayed on to manage and maintain the facility. For- merly from the Lake Tahoe area of California, Dick had come to Montana where he designed and built two commercial courses open to the public, Big Sky Sporting Clays and Bitterroot Sporting Clays, as well as private courses. Sporting Clay courses are a recent off- shoot of a class that includes trap and skeet shooting ranges. The crucial difference is that, whereas both trap and skeet shooters fire from fixed pit positions at clay pigeon targets launched into fairly predictable tra- jectories, sporting clays are hurled every which way (except to the rear for safety reasons) from diverse stations, not only up and forward, but from either side, high up to almost vertical, even “rabbits” bouncing along the ground, and every- where between. Since a shooter knows neither from what point the next target will be fired or in which direction it will “Sporting Clay Range” 164