Horse...
It is obvious you know the game...With regards clays, especially sporting clays, most often it is a different game. However, most refer to it as being similar to trap and skeet....Well the differences are considerable with regards variety, distances and report and true pairs.
That being said, here we are often told the importance of getting off the bench and to practice our rifle shooting from field positions. Yet many don't think the same applies to shooting shotguns for Birds....There are basics that apply to becoming proficient with rifles and hunting...and the same applies to shotguns and Birds...Unless one has access to large numbers of live Birds....clays are the place to develop the basics of Bird hunting.
No argument from me that practice is essential. I haven't been on an organized skeet/sporting clays team/league in about 3 yrs and my shooting shows it in the form of more cripples. I can band-aide it somewhat by swapping to a 12Ga rather than my preferred 20, but, it's still a band-aide, I'd benefit more from more off-season targets. Clays cannot however prepare you for what your reaction might be to flushing game birds, only flushing game birds can prepare you for flushing game birds.
I was exceptionally fortunate to have grown up in ND during the best of the CRP years. We had an "open campus" during high school and reasonable pheasant hunting was only 10Min away. String together 2 off-periods and one could get in 90min of bird hunting without ditching class. Doggone huns were EVERYWHERE when I was growing up, enough so that I learned to pick out 1-bird rather than "flock-shoot" before I exited Jr. High, a concept I've seen an awful lot of adults never ever catch on to. 10's of thousands of bird-flushes later, I don't have to rush, and I rarely down more than 1 bird at a time, as losing downed birds really irritates me.
