Why Are Firearms Shooting Targets Known As Clay Pigeons?

The visceral thrill of clay shooting comes from the pull of the target, the arc as it soars through the air and the satisfying explosion of brightly coloured shards as the shotgun blasts it to smithereens.

It has been so historically popular that some form of target shooting has been a part of almost every Olympic Games, most recently in 2024 in Paris, where the pink mist can be seen with every successful shot.

Shooting events often inspire people to have a go themselves to try and take down a series of clay pigeons, but given that they are typically not made of clay and do not look even remotely bird-shaped, a common question is why experienced shooters call them clay pigeons in the first place.

What Is A Clay Pigeon?

A “clay” pigeon is an inverted plate typically made from a mixture of limestone and tar pitch designed to survive being launched from a target trap launcher but is also weak enough to burst apart when hit by a shotgun pellet.

They can be launched from a target launcher known as a trap, a sling or by being manually thrown.

It is a consistent, versatile and easy-to-use target that is just as effectively thrown as fired by a machine, and provides the opportunity for both beginner and expert shooters to get the same thrill.

The concept and indeed the name have existed for well over a century, having become established even before the widespread restrictions on competition game shooting.

Where Did The Name Come From?

Target and sport shooting typically involved the use of live birds, with pigeons being particularly popular due to their speed and unique flight paths. Pigeon shooting was so popular at one point that specialised guns were made for use in shooting contests and was even held once as an Olympic event.

Whilst live pigeon shooting has been banned since 1921 in the UK, the use of clay pigeons predates this by nearly half a century, with the first clay target shoots beginning in 1875.

Initially, the reason for using clay targets (later asphalt and now the limestone-pitch mixture) was that it allowed people to practice game shooting outside of the traditional and later legally mandated hunting seasons.

This helped to increase the popularity of sport shooting by making it more accessible; pigeon shooting at the time was so infamously expensive that it was more closely associated with Monte Carlo and high-stakes gambling than traditional hunting.

This was helped by the Clay Bird Shooting Association, which launched in 1893 as the Inanimate Bird Shooting Association and was one of the first organisations to hold annual contests.

Whilst it closed in 1914 due to the advent of the First World War, the ban on live trap shooting meant that clay shooting became even more popular, with the terminology being a vestige of the early era of target shooting.

The first British Open took place in 1925 and since then the number of competitions and sports shooting clubs has only increased, bringing the concept to a growing number of people.