We have over 160 fantastic clay shooting sites across the UK and Ireland, which deliver first class thrills on a daily basis. There are a variety of clay shooting disciplines for you to take part in, so for a complete beginner, it can be difficult telling them apart. Here, we’ll give you the low down on Down the Line (DTL) shooting, so you can see why it is one of the finest disciplines around.
DTL is one of the most basic trap disciplines, but differs from standard Olympic shooting in plenty of simple ways that you may not instantly notice, if you notice them at all. For example, under Olympic rules you aren’t allowed to shoot with cartridges above 24g- here, anything below 28g is fair game. But, enough of the boring technical stuff.
The layout of a DTL shoot is 5 stands laid out in a crescent shape, 16 yards from a traphouse. The traphouse will throw a random target to both sides of a centre post, roughly 50 yards away- the target will usually leave the trap at around 42mph, so it is a test of every shooter’s skills to crack it open as fast as possible. This is one of the most basic, yet challenging disciplines to master, so you’ll really need to bring your gun slinging A-game when you shoot with us.
In clay shooting championships, DTL is scored out of 300, with 100 different tricky targets to take down. You get 3 points for a first barrel kill, 2 points for a second barrel kill and absolutely no points if you lose a target. Luckily, at our sites you’ll be developing your skills to a professional standard, not putting them to the test in one of the most difficult sports competitions out there!
Awesome read! Clay pigeon shooting is great fun.