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There are now more than 800 skeet clubs with some 20,000 male & female skeeters in the U. S. and nine other countries. Twenty-six state associations in the U. S. are governed by a National Skeet Shooting Association, Inc. which publishes a monthly Skeet Shooting News (circulation, 1,500) patterned vaguely after TIME. Many U. S. sporting magazines carry a skeet department. Enthusiasts estimate 18,000,000 shotgun shells burned at skeet last year. Twenty-six state and some 20 intersectional shoots culminate yearly in the Great Eastern States and National Telegraphic Championships staged by the Remington Gun Club at Lordship, Conn. This year for the first time skeeters in the Great Eastern States shoot competed for a 28½-in. silver cup donated by Publisher Eltinge F. Warner of Field & Stream.
The old Ballard Vale full circle has now been cut in half, so that spectators need not move with shooters to keep out of gun range. The semi-circle's diameter measures 120 ft. Two traps, one ten feet high, the other at ground level, are stationed off either end of the semicircle. They are pulled by remote control. One shooting stand (No. 8) bisects the diameter line, seven others are at equidistant points around the semicircle. Shooters fire from each stand at two targets thrown alternately from the two traps, then from stands 1, 2, 6 and 7 at two thrown simultaneously. The 25th target may be shot at from any stand. The skeeter's ideal: to break all 25 targets, win membership in the "Twenty-Fivers' Club."
Skeet tries to duplicate the typical hunting situation of pointing dog, tense gunner, unpredictable game birds. Unlike trap-shooters, skeeters may not raise gun to shoulder until the target appears. That may be any time within three seconds after the shooter cries "Pull." Skeeter Henry Bourne Joy, onetime president of Packard Motor Car Co., has invented an electric variable timer which throws targets with unbiased irregularity.
Famed among skeet shooters are Louis D. Bolton of Detroit, who holds the world's long run record of 224 consecutive breaks (made with a 20-gauge gun) ; Ed Sransky of New Jersey, who broke the first straight 25 with a .410 bore (smallest) shotgun; the Waltham (Mass.) Gun Club, which holds the world's team record of 486 breaks out of 500 targets. Some famed skeet enthusiasts: President Alvan-Macauley of Packard Motor Car Co., Publisher Orson Desaix Munn of Scientific American, Major-General Hanson Edward Ely, Financier James Alexander Stillman, Brigadier-General William Mitchell, Bernt Balchen, James Joseph ("Gene") Tunney, John Barrymore.