First National Skeet Championship

The Solon Skeet Club, near Cleveland, Ohio hosted the first National Skeet Championship, August 26-31, 1935. Here's the report from Sportsmen's Review.

Enjoy Our History!

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Thanks HB !

As an old Skeet shooter converted to trap shooting, I found this article very interesting.

Keep up the good work, we all appreciate it !

 

I wonder why the first skeet nationals were in Ohio? Could it be location, location, location?

 

No perfect scores.

 

In 1914 William Harnden Foster and brothers H.W. and C.D. Davies set up a course in the “chicken yard” on the grounds of the Glen Rock Kennels as practice for grouse hunting. One trap was secured to a crotched elm post and raised about four feet off the ground. It was placed at 12:00, throwing targets toward 6:00, with the shooters standing at 12 stations around a full circle with a 25 yard radius.



About 1923 Foster conceived "Shooting Around The Clock," and used his position as editor and chief illustrator of both National Sportsman and Hunting and Fishing magazines to promote the new shooting game. Two traps (one elevated at 10 feet) were positioned at 12:00 and 6:00, and the shooters walked around a semi-circle with a 20 yard radius shooting from 8 stations, the last position in the center of the 'clock.' In 1936, the NSSA altered the lay-out to throw targets at a fifteen degree angle to allow multiple fields to be positioned in a straight line.



A two-page spread appeared in the Feb. 1926 issues of National Sportsman and Hunting and Fishing, announcing “A New Sport for Shotgun Shooters” and a $100 prize for the best name for the new shooting game. The May 1926 issues announced the winner, Mrs. Gertrude Hurbutt of Dayton, Montana, and the new name "Skeet" from an old Scandinavian word for shoot.



Early scores averaged 15 or so, but by July the first 25 was recorded by H.M. Jackson of North Carolina.

The cover of the August 1926 National Sportsman by Foster was “the first painting ever published of a scene in the new sport of Skeet” and possibly depicted his son using Foster Sr’s 27" barrel 20 gauge Parker DHE



Foster also designed a flying quail with superimposed clay target and shot pattern logo.



The National Skeet Shooting Association was formed March 20, 1928 and announced in the May issue of both National Sportsman and Hunting and Fishing magazines. William Harnden Foster was selected as the first President, and the name of the association and presumably the logo were proprietary to National Sportsman, Inc. of Boston, Mass. Foster introduced Skeet Shooting News in January of 1931 and related the story of the development of the sport in Volume 1, No. 1. That history was reviewed again in the August 1936 issue of Hunting and Fishing. Unfortunately, an article reporting the just completed Great Eastern Championship in Time magazine Sept. 25, 1933 had several inaccuracies, errors which continue to be repeated.

The first Great Eastern Championship was conducted at the Remington Gun Club in Lordship, Connecticut in 1929. All American teams for 1932 were posted in the first NSSA Rule and Average Book published in 1933, and by then there were more than 800 skeet clubs and twenty-six State Associations.

The First National Skeet Championship was held in Cleveland, Ohio in August, 1935. The High Over All winner was L.S. Pratt of Indiana who shot a 244. William Harnden Foster awarded the prizes to the champions, 20 years after setting up a trap in a pasture in New England and shooting what would one day be called “Skeet.”

 

I do shoot a lot of skeet a man that I used to shoot with the name red Hill from Michigan and in his later years move to Naples Florida what’s the first man to break 100 straight with the 410 One story that I heard Wayne Mays used to tell him he was the only guy he knew that could stand in the shade of his own gun because he was so skinny

 

So, that must be why my wife wanted her Chamberlain traps up in the air ~~~

 

Third to the last paragraph tells of Mr. Joy loosing his right eye do to a lead pellet.

I can tell you from experience that #9 shot can indeed ricochet off from a clay target.

Many years ago I had a piece of shot hit me just below the eye while shooting station 8 low house.

I felt a sting and told the guys I got hit by a piece of the target. Walked off the station, rubbed the area and found I had something imbedded in my cheek.

Pinched and prodded and out the piece came. It was a piece of shot.

Then, many years later while shooting at a station 7 high house, my wife said "ow" , and asked for a moment to remove a piece of target from her cheek. None of the guys on the squad could believe it, but she pinched out a piece of shot also.

So, that being said, we know this can happen.

Thank God for Glasses !

Has anyone else ever had this happen to them ?

 

all the time.
waiting to shoot, a shooters pellet on a 2 low break, hit me in the leg just last weekend.

 

When I shot skeet a lot, years ago, we would have the odd ricochet come back to bounce off a pant leg while we were just off the field watching, and I do remember being hit below the eye a couple of times, again from ricochets while shooting. Never had it happen while shooting sporting though. Yes, glasses should always be worn. But way back when I started shooting in early '80's, not everyone wore them.

 

a lot of skeet/trap shooters were ww2 and Korean war vets that were deaf from small arms fire and cannons. they never wore hearing protection and called us wusses if we did.

 

what was the location/address of Solon Skeet Club site?
I have heard somewhere in the southeast border of the city, on the south side of Bainbridge rd. But can’t find any records for that.

 

From what I've read, the Solon Skeet Club, was actually known as the Cleveland Skeet Club and was located about a half mile south of Solon on Rt. 91 (also known as SOM Center Road).

I have a small file on the first National Skeet Championship and newspaper articles confirm the location. PM me with your email address if you would like a copy of my pdf.

HB