Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/454

 Your Out-door Shooting

Throwing clay birds as a boy "scales" flat stones adds new zest to trap shooting

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���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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