Skeet

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 Charles Davis and William Harnden Foster of Andover, Massachusetts invented skeet shooting. In 1920, Davis, an avid grouse hunter, and Foster, an avid hunter, painter, illustrator and author of "New England Grouse Hunting", developed a game which was informally called "Shooting around the clock". The original course took the form of a circle with a radius of 25 yards with its circumference marked off like the face of a clock and a trap set at the 12-o'clock position. The practice of shooting from all directions had to cease, however, when a chicken farm started next door. The game evolved to its current setup by 1923, when one of the shooters, William Harnden Foster, solved the problem by placing a second trap at the 6-o'clock position and cutting the course in half. Foster quickly noticed the appeal of that kind of competition shooting, and set out to make it a national sport.

The game was introduced in the February 1926 issues of National Sportsman and Hunting and Fishing magazines, and a prize of 100 dollars was offered to anyone who could come up with a name for the new sport. The winning entry was "skeet", chosen by Gertrude Hurlbutt. The word allegedly derived from the Norwegian word for "shoot" (skyte). The first National Skeet Championship took place in 1926. Shortly thereafter, the National Skeet Shooting Association formed. During World War II the American military used skeet shooting to teach gunners the principles of leading and timing on a flying target.

For his role in perfecting and developing the sport, William "Bill" Foster was named as one of the first members to the National Skeet Shooters Association Hall of Fame in 1970, and is now known as "The Father of Skeet".

 A round of skeet consists of 25 targets, with 17 shot as singles and 8 as doubles. The first miss is repeated immediately and is called an option. If no targets are missed during the round, the last or 25th target is shot at the last station, low house 8.

The shooting sequence is as follows:

• Stations 1 and 2: High house single; Low house single; High house/Low house pair
• Stations 3, 4, and 5: High house single; Low house single
• Stations 6 and 7: High house single; Low house single; Low house/High house pair
• Station 8: High house single; Low house single

Skeet is shot in squads of up to five shooters. They move from station to station around the half moon, ending up in the center, at the end of the round.

Any gauge shotgun may be used, of any type, as long as it can fire at least two shots. The preferred shot size is #9, but nothing larger than 7-1/2 should ever be used. Since strength is not a factor, women are able to compete equally with men. Left handed shooters do just as well as right.