Shooting in sagebrush

In the Intermountain West, shooting sports are found anywhere you look. Sports like hunting, sheet shooting and others are incredibly common among those that live between the wildlife-filled mountains of the West. For Utah State, that means it has a student body that is well acquainted with shooting and possess a skillset that not many other university students would have.  

The Shooting Club at Utah State capitalizes on those skills and gives students an opportunity to develop their shooting abilities and compete with other students and schools. The club competes in three different categories at competitions: trap, skeet and sporting clays.  

“A lot of people have only shot trap or sporting clays previously, but we kind of encourage everybody to compete in all of them,” said Wade Hendrickson, the club’s vice president. “By practicing one, you’re improving your ability at the other ones as well, so we encourage everybody to compete in all of them. Sporting clays is typically the crowd favorite, however.” 

According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation website, trap shooting is the oldest shotgun shooting sport in America. Trap shooting is done in a squad of five shooters, each standing at a different station on the shooting course. Each shooter has five shots to hit five clay targets from left to right that are thrown onto the course in different locations.  

Skeet shooting is like trap shooting, with five shooters stationed at eight different positions that consist of two shots each. Clay targets are thrown onto the course from two locations: one 10 feet from the ground and one three feet off the ground. Shooters compete by taking out as many as of the 24 clay targets possible, with the first missed target getting repeated.  

Sporting clays also use clay targets but are typically a mix of different sizes, designed to re-create a variety of shooting conditions. This includes unpredictable rolling ground targets and airborne targets that simulate a range of game birds of different sizes and speeds. 

The Shooting Club at Utah State competes in all three disciplines and competes in additional events at bigger competitions. The Shooting Club at USU is a recent addition to campus recreation, with the team being formed just two years ago. The club consists of two teams: a competitive team and a casual team, making a team of about 23 members in total.  

“The competitive team the dues are a little bit higher, but we go to a regional competition in Las Vegas and compete in trap, skeet and sporting clays and then we go to a national competition in San Antonio and compete in the same three events,” said Hendrickson. “The casual team just goes to events that are local – the competitive team competes in everything.”  

Team dues are $150 for the competitive team and $50 for the casual team, and there are no tryouts for either team. All that is required is signing up and paying team dues. Club members cover the costs of ammunition and the targets they shoot at practice, with the team dues covering things such as gas and competition fees.  

Local competitions include events in Utah along the Wasatch front, from Utah County all the way up to Blackfoot, Idaho. Additionally, local events are held in Cache Valley with the local high school shooting team, the Cache Valley Crushers, and events are held at shooting clubs in Ogden and Brigham City.  

With the club trying to target local shooters with an attempt to aid future recruitment, there’s plenty of opportunity for club members to compete and for team growth. 

“We have a goal this year to go to more of the youth shoots to try and get the youth, like youth seniors, to join our team,” said Tayler Grant, Shooting Club president. “We’re just hoping to keep getting our team as big we can … we’re doing what we can, and we’re trying to fundraise and just spread the word about our team.” 

The Shooting Club has competed in four competitions already this semester and has several more planned before the end of the year. Most of their competitions take place in the fall due to the poor shooting conditions that come during the early months of the year, but the club does have various competitions in the spring as well.   

Despite being a non-tryout club that involves all that want to participate, the Shooting Club is accustomed to performing well at their competitions.  

“At the Browning shoot we had a couple individuals win. We were in Ogden, at an [Amateur Trapshooting Association] shoot … we actually had a couple different people win. We had a couple second places, and so it went really well,” Hendrickson said.  

Just two years ago, the USU shooting club won the 2022 Western Spring Regional Team championship at the regional event in Phoenix, Arizona. 

“That was our first big competition we went to as a team, and we weren’t really expecting to win, in all honesty, so it was kind of surprised to us,” said Grant.  

The shooting club is a competition-based club, but the goal is to be available to everyone that wants to be involved and invites those with all skillsets to come and have fun.  

“You don’t have to be super experienced. We have some kids that have never shot a shotgun until they joined the team, and we have some kids that have been shooting since they were eight years old,” Hendrickson said. “We’re practicing about once a week, and so it’s a good opportunity to meet new people that have similar interests as you and are typically pretty like-minded, and just make new friends.”  

Improved ability and awareness are certainly goals for club leadership but is not their ultimate biggest focus. 

“We also do our best to show up at practice and teach them everything we know to help them shoot better,” Grand said, “but really, we just want people to enjoy what they’re doing. If they are having fun and they enjoy what they’re doing … that’s what we care about most.”