This Page About Sporting Clay Course Simulates Hunting Experience

Sporting Clay Course Simulates Hunting Experience

It's a breezy Sunday afternoon, and Dick Gothard and Greg Bryant are on their third visit to the new sporting clays course at Silver Wing Hunting Ranch. It's located on Highway 85 just south of Hawk Springs. Halfway through the 10 stations, it's not going so well. Between the wind and the glaring midday sun, it's hard to see the bright orange birds as they spring into the air.

"You're going to have to move the sun, Justin," Bryant says to owner Justin Lovercheck after staring directly into the blazing white ball at station five and missing a bird.

Lovercheck and the men laugh because they all know the course is difficult. So far, the best score since it opened in September is 88 out of 100, but most shooters end up in the 60s. The sporting clays course is situated on a 20-acre swath of the ranch that has been in Lovercheck's family for more than a century. To get there, customers drive past a cluster of three ranch houses and up a hill to the first shooting station. The stations are rustic, built of pine poles and decorated with small pieces of antique farm equipment or deer antlers. Each is numbered and then labeled with a catchy title.

Shooters work in pairs, taking turns firing and controlling the throwers that send clay pigeons into the air from two different directions, mimicking different types of quarry. There are rabbits, ducks, pheasants, grouse and teal. At one station, a bird flies up like a busted flush. At another, the targets come toward the shooters like incoming waterfowl. Gothard says his favorite station is the Wobbler Warmup.

"I probably like it because it doesn't count," he adds with a smile.

Both Gothard and Bryant regularly shoot trap and say this is quite different.

"There's a lot more variety, and it's a lot harder," Bryant says.

Although there are sporting clays courses south of the border in Carr, Colo., and Evans, Colo., Bryant says they are "boring" and not all that different from the flat, wide-open areas used for trap shooting. The course at Silver Wing starts on top of a hill and then goes down into a gulley, where shooters aim at birds coming from behind their heads and from behind the crests of hills. At another station, they aim at birds whizzing through a small canyon.

But it's the challenging mix of targets that what makes the course stand out from the others.

"This is kind of cool: You're down in a canyon, and they're all different," Bryant says. "It gets better and better every time we come."

According to the National Sporting Clays Association, of all shotgun sports, sporting clays is the closest to actual field shooting. It dates back to England in the early 1900s when trap shooting still involved live pigeons. Once clay targets were developed, the sport took on its modern form simulating the hunting of rabbits, pheasants and ducks.

Lovercheck grew up on the ranch and then rodeoed for about 10 years before returning home. He says the sporting clays course is a way to make a better living off his family's land without running cattle. He also raises 2,400 pheasants a year for hunting on the property and guides goose hunts in Goshen County. The sporting clays course is "something we've wanted to do for a while," he says. "It's pretty expensive to get into."

Lovercheck worked with a dealer from Kansas, who helped design the course and obtain the throwers that are imported from Germany. With two target throwers at 10 stations, it took an investment of more than $50,000 to get going, Lovercheck said. But the professional help ensured the course meets regulation standards.

Shooting at the course costs $250 for a 10-punch card or $35 per round. It takes a group of four shooters about two hours to complete the course.

Although he thought it would be primarily a summer business, this year's mild autumn has kept Lovercheck busy with at least 10 shooters coming through each week. Some 100 shooters have tried their luck there in the first two months.

Most come from Cheyenne, he said, but some have come from as far as Scottsbluff, Neb., and beyond as the word spreads about the quality of the course.

"The challenge is that it changes even with the slightest wind," he says.

Set up like a golf course, the shooting course could accommodate about 40 shooters at a time.

"It's golf cart accessible," Lovercheck adds.

Next summer, he said, he plans to set up shooting leagues. Gothard and Bryant say they plan to keep coming on Sundays when they can.

"Your score is supposed to go up the more you shoot," Bryant says, lamenting his poor effort for the day. "But it's a blast of fun as you can tell."

The course makes a day of hunting real game look easy, he adds.

"Anyone can hit those things; they're big and slow and fat. These are much tougher. Plus, you don't get to shoot five boxes of shells when you're hunting." Continue to learn more about hunting, please visit Starherald.

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