Shooting sports have evolved over the years, with more versatile games and more challenging scenarios. Some of the popular sports include trap, skeet, sporting clays, and 5-Stand shooting. The latter is, however, a fairly new type of competitive sport but there’s a lot of interest in it.
The 5-stand shooting is believed to have originated in the United Kingdom and has been gaining popularity in the United States in recent years. The game is a great way to practice your hunting skills and improve your shooting accuracy while having fun.
Nowadays, the majority of smaller shooting ranges and sportsmen’s clubs are using this relatively new shotgun game as an alternative to the typical sporting clays courses.
Five-Stand Shooting may not be as popular as some of the other shooting games, but it’s a lot of fun. In fact, it’s one of the few official shooting games where you can actually win prizes.
So here, we’ll talk about what 5-Stand Shooting is, what makes it so interesting, as well as how it fits in with other common clay shooting disciplines. Read on!
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5-Stand Shooting Explained
The five-Stand shooting- which is also referred to as 5-stand sporting clays- is a type of sporting clay that simulates the experience of hunting.
As the name suggests, it is the game is typically set up with five stations, each with a different clay target presentation. Shooters move from station to station, shooting at the targets as they are presented.
Similar to traditional sporting clays that allow shooters to approach targets from a variety of angles and distances, 5-Stand does so by arranging five shooting stations close to one another.
There’re 5 stations or stands and 6-8 clay targets (known as trap throwers) which are all strategically located, just as the case with sporting clays. Shooters then take turns shooting at various groups of clay targets.
There’s usually a menu card at every station that details the order of the clay birds for the shooter to hit (i.e which trap the clay targets will be coming from).
At each station, the shooter is given five targets: two pairs of birds, one bird/single target, and so on. These pairs could be either “true pairs,“ whereby two birds are launched at the same time, or “report pairs” whereby the second bird is released after the shooter fires at the first.
After taking shots at the five birds or targets on the menu at that particular stand or station, the shooter then moves on to the next station, where they are presented with another menu of five targets.
How The Game is Played
As mentioned, clays are launched from 6-8 traps. These traps may be positioned in front of the shooting stations, to the right, above, below, left, straight ahead, or even behind the shooter.
The traps are set up in a way that mimics overhead teal with a variety of crossing, falling, sliding, and presenting some of the most difficult stand and fall patterns via five shooting stations.
At each of the five stations, five shooters alternately shoot three combinations before moving on to the next stand. The combinations are shown on or in front of each stand as “menus.”
The combination may start with a single target launched from station 6 on the first shot, followed by 2 doubles (3–7 and 1-5) on the second and third shots, respectively. Every stand will have a distinct combination presented on the menu at their respective locations.
After firing the first menu line combination, the shooter waits for the next four shooters to go. Each shooter will only rotate to the next stand when the other shooters have finished line 1 of the menu. They then shoot line 2, wait for the other shooters, and line 3. The participants keep rotating from one station to the next until they’re back at their starting stand.
Meanwhile, there’s a scorekeeper who keeps tally as clays fly in all directions—to the left, to the right, straight up in the air and flying overhead. The shooter who breaks the most clays at the conclusion of the match is declared the winner. It’s that simple!
Five-Stand Basics
- Shooters are not permitted to leave their positions/stands until the last shooter has made their final shot or until the referee gives the order to do so.
- When changing stands, the gun must be open and empty.
- When changing stands, the gun must be open and empty.
- You should only load the gun while in the shooting station and in a ready position.
- Except when changing stands, the shooter’s feet should remain behind the shooting stand’s front opening.
- Once the round has started, no chokes should be modified or changed.
- Menu cards for the target sequence must be presented at every station.
What Makes Five-Stand Shooting So Interesting
Well, if you were to put skeet, trap, and sporting clays in a blender, what you’d get here is the 5-stand shooting. The sport itself is more of a hybrid of trap, skeet, and sporting clays.
This practice involves a row of shooter “stands” and several launchers positioned to the sides, in front, and even behind the shooters. Every shooter is presented with five targets at each shooting station for a total of 25 targets.
Five-stand shooting is generally considered more interesting in comparison to other popular formats such as trap, and it involves a wider variety of patterns than what you’d get in skeet shooting. Plus, it’s cheaper and quicker than conventional sporting clays.
In other words, five-stand shooting has the advantages of being faster than sporting clays, more action-packed than trap, and featuring more crossing and flying patterns than skeet. But the fact that there are 5 shooting positions, or stations, from which to shoot, unites them all.
Moreover, this game is fantastic even for game birds since it allows you to practice shots that mimic everything from ducks falling into a set of decoys to quail flushing and fleeing rabbits.
Advantages of 5-Stand Shooting
Well, from the range owner’s perspective, the benefits of five-stand include the fact that you’ll need substantially less space—maybe as small as 1/10 of the land required for sporting clay. Furthermore, only 6 or 8 target throwers are required to launch clays for all 5 shooting stations.
You’ll need only one box of 25 shells to finish a standard round of 5-stand, which requires shooting 5 targets at each of the five shooting stands. Normally, every shooting station will first throw one target (the first target), followed by 2 pairs of clays.
The pairs can be launched as a true pair, a following-pair, or an on-report. On-report refers to the throwing of a second target after firing at the previous one. A following-pair refers to the automated throwing of a second target a short while following the first. A true pair, meanwhile, involves throwing both targets simultaneously.
As for the shooters, five-stand has a number of advantages over sports clays. First, shooting is less expensive because a round only requires a single box of shells, as was previously noted.
And even with a complete squad of five shooters, you can complete a round of 5-stand easily—typically in less than 30 minutes. But of course, you don’t always need to have a whole squad to shoot; one can shoot a round of 5 stand by themselves or with only a friend or two.
Bottom Line
As you can see, 5-stand shooting offers many benefits. It is an excellent way to improve your shooting skills, have a good time with your friends and family, and even earn some money.
So, if you are looking for new ways to spruce up your shooting range, this is a great opportunity to step outside of the norm and try something new. We hope you found some useful information in this article and that you will go out shooting soon!
