Popular Science Monthly 



531 



feet as we crossed the line between him 

 and the little house there came a queer 

 rattling of hidden machiner>\ This was 

 the "puller," and with the lever he set 

 and sprung a throwing-machine out in 

 the little house, like the old time 

 instruments of war with which the 

 ancients used to throw rocks, fireballs 

 and other pleasantries into the cities of 

 the other fellows. 



In the little house when the squad had 

 finished shooting, we found the machine, 

 the trap as it is called, merely an in- 

 clined steel plate with a throwing-arm 

 faced with rubber and impelled by a 

 powerful, coiled spring. Inside the 

 house sat another boy, the trapper. He 

 set a little clay saucer, bottom-side up 

 on the steel plate; the puller gave the 

 lever a little twitch, releasing the trigger 

 holding the arm, and it swept swiftly 

 across the plate, hurling the saucer out 

 ahead of it and giving it a rapid whirling 

 motion as it flew. Then with the lever 

 and a long rod reaching to the traphouse, 

 the puller hauled the steel arm back to 

 the set position, and the trapper placed 

 another "bird" in position to be thrown. 



Another form of trap holds the bird 

 in a pair of steel fingers at the end of 

 the throwing-arm, and this is almost 

 human in its resemblance to the pair of 

 fingers and the arm of the small boy, 

 with which he takes the flat bit of slate 

 and "sails" it edgewise through the air. 



The saucer, or "clay bird," is made of 

 river silt and tar — just plain mud, as a 

 matter of fact, baked after being formed 

 into moulds. It is four and one-quarter 



inches across, and about an inch from 

 bottom to rim. The rim is very heavy, 

 to stand the strain of trapping; the top 

 very thin and light. The whole "bird" 

 is quite brittle, and usually departs this 

 life when hit by even a single tiny pellet 

 of No. 8 or 73-^ shot. 



The Rules tlmt Govern Trapshooting 



The rules of the game are that the 

 shooters, five of them to the squad, shall 

 stand normally sixteen yards back of 

 the throwing arm of the trap, and three 

 yards from one another, as marked by 

 the row of little pegs set at the sixteen- 

 yard mark from the house. The birds 

 thrown from the trap shall fly at un- 

 known angles; that is, the shooter does 

 not know in which direction the bird 

 will fly from the trap, which is changed 

 in direction by the trapper in the house. 

 But the limits of the flight are also fixed 

 by the rules, which are that the trap 

 shall not throw its birds higher than 

 twelve feet nor lower than sijf feet at a 

 point thirty- feet in front of the little 

 house, nor at angles greater than forty- 

 five degrees to the right or left of the 

 straight line from the puller down 

 through the house and out along the 

 grounds. 



Save in a wind, the birds from a certain 

 trap fly at the same height from shot to 

 shot, the elevation not being changed; 

 but they change their direction each 

 shot. Because the shooters stand nine 

 feet apart, and the first and last man in 

 the line are therefore eighteen feet to the 

 right and left of the center of the trap, 



The scorer. A black "I" mark means broken or killed birds. To score the bird 

 "dead," the shooter must break off a perceptible piece. A puif of dust will not do 



