Your Out-door Shooting 



Throwing clay birds as a boy "scales" 

 flat stones adds new zest to trap shooting 



C 



The Darton hand 

 trap is simple to use. 



ONSIDER the small boy who finds 

 a nice, smooth, flat rock. If the 

 chances are not more than even 

 for breaking a window — and getting 

 caught — he 

 curves index 

 finger 

 around one 

 side of its 

 periphery 

 and lays 

 thumb 

 against the 

 other. Then 

 with a long 

 swing of his 

 arm, keeping 

 the rock hor- 

 izontal, he 

 sends it scal- 

 ing flatways 

 through the 

 air. In its 

 long, spin- 

 ning, steady flight it travels more 

 smoothly and farther than any round 

 rock. 



Since the saucer-like clay bird dis- 

 placed the round and costly glass 

 ball as an artificial target for the 

 shotgun, the throwing machinery or 

 trap has closely followed the lines of 

 the small boy's hand and arm. The 

 sole exception is the sort in which 

 the bird is laid on a flat, steel plate, 

 to be swept off' by the swing across it 

 of a rubber-faced steel arm. 



The Darton hand-trap, shown in 

 the photographs, is the simplest of all 

 the devices yet put out for the purpose 

 of sending the flat, clay saucer sail- 

 ing on its spinning course through the 

 air. It approximates uncannily 

 the two fingers and the arm of the 

 original flat, disk-throwing ma- 

 chine operated by the small boy. 



The bird is held between a 

 thumb and forefinger made of heavy wire, 

 set at the end of a slightly flexible, wooden 

 handle, with grip shaped for the hand. 

 One finger is longer than the other. In 



It is speedy; shoot- 

 ers must be alert 



The clay bird 

 is grasped 

 by the e x - 

 tended metal 

 fingers 



one form, the two parallel wires forming 

 each finger, continue parallel, and the 

 saucer which is a 43^-inch hollow, clay 

 disk, is pushed in between the fingers from 



the front — 

 a "muzzle- 

 loader," as 

 the inventor 

 terms it. In 

 the other 

 form, the top 

 wire of each 

 pair is bent 

 outward so 

 that the sau- 

 cer can be 

 dropped into 

 the grasp of 

 the fingers 

 from the 

 rear. This 

 obviates the 

 necessity of 

 pressing the 

 bird home against the resistance of 

 the fingers. 



The two, wire sidebars to each 

 finger are so spaced as to grip the 

 edge of the target firmly, and the two 

 fingers terminate at the rear end in a 

 metal socket screwed to the wooden 

 handle. When the bird is placed 

 horizontally in the fingers, and the 

 handle is given a powerful full-arm 

 swing, with a snap at the finish 

 of the swing, the bird is thrown 

 out of the grip of the fingers by the 

 centrifugal motion. The longer fin- 

 ger yields to the pressure, letting the 

 bird slip out of the grip and roll along 

 this finger, giving it the spinning 

 motion essential to steady and long 

 flight of a flat object. 



The fingers are considerably 

 longer than the portion necessary 

 to grip the target, aff'ording a 

 track along which the bird rolls 

 when driven out by the centrifugal motion, 

 and when a spin is imparted. 



For the lover of a solitary game in 

 shooting, the inventor adds a stout elastic 



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