Skeet and Trap Practice

Southdown Gun Club and Shooting School is predominantly a sporting shooting ground, however it is our aim to provide a complete facility for all shooters and disciplines. So in addition to our sporting shooting ranges, we also operate a single skeet range and a single down the line range (DTL), we do have an automatic ball trap range (ABT) however, we are currently refurbishing it with a view to incorporating a second DTL range, so watch this space for further information.

English Skeet

Our English Skeet range is located at the north end of the shooting ground behind the club house, we call it Southdown Sporting Skeet, because range measurements are not 100% correct, so if you’re a purist this may not be the layout for you- none the less the skeet layout is very popular and provides good practice for a lot of the sporting disciplines.

If you have not shot skeet before, it is a trap discipline, with targets fired from two fixed trap houses, the high house at position one and the low house at position seven. The shooter shoots a combination of single and simulated pair targets from each of the seven positions on the semi-circle path, which provides a variety of angles. A skeet round is 25 targets; target sequence sheets are available at reception in the clubhouse.

We ask that you shoot this layout in sequence especially at busy times as other shooters may wish to utilise this shooting range as well. As with the other shooting ranges we operate on the ground, you can use you target credits in the Promatic Claymate System.

Down the Line (DTL)

The Southdown DTL trap range was refurbished in 2016 and is located to the north west of the shooting ground to the left of the clubhouse. We have installed the latest Canterbury voice release system, which is the world’s most reliable voice activated clay target release system.

The Canterbury Voice Releases have taken the markets of New Zealand, Australia, USA & UK by storm with 7000 units in use world-wide and now @ SOUTHDOWN! We have integrated the voice release with the Promatic Claymate System so you can use you target credits like all the other ranges on the ground. To avoid loss of clay, if you’re with friends, we advise that you don’t chat too close to the speakers, otherwise you’ll find you may release clay.

If you have not shot DTL before, it is a very popular trap discipline, shot from five positions setup in a crescent shape, these positions are located 16 yards from the trap house, which throws random targets from an oscillating trap between 0 and 22.5 degrees to either side of a centre post set 50-55 yards from the trap house. The clays all come out at the same height, but the trajectory changes depending on the oscillation of the trap. A DTL round is 25 targets, there is full use of the gun allowed on each target.

The Skeet and DTL practice ranges are available Fridays and Saturdays (and Thursday evenings in summer) from 10am throughout the year, practice is also available on some Sundays if we are not holding a competition, please check our fixtures page for more information.