Issue No. 7 | Sunday, October 18, 2026
Good morning.
Dave Berlet has attended 82 Grand Americans. In a new Clay Target Legends interview, he looks back at hand-set traps and hand-pulled releases, four-trap doubles, adjustable combs and ribs, and the arrival of organized instruction.
Those changes made modern trap more consistent from field to field.
Also this week: Hillsdale College puts its incoming class on the range, the NSCA answers the questions a first-time Nationals shooter may not know to ask, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) finds that major banks restricted firearms businesses; and Beretta re-engineers an SO10 around sideplate windows that reveal its internal mechanism.
OPENING SHOT
Dave Berlet has watched trapshooting remove variables
Dave Berlet shot his first registered targets a few days before his 15th birthday in 1957. He is 84 now, has registered roughly 675,000 targets and has attended 82 Grand Americans. At 83, he broke 200 straight in singles.
Asked for the biggest changes he has seen in trapshooting, Berlet begins with electricity in the trap house. Local clubs once used hand-set traps with hand-pulled releases. Electric releases moved control to a button operator outside the trap house, while another person still set each target by hand. Automatic traps eventually removed the setter. Voice release systems later removed the button operator.
The doubles format changed, too. A 100-target doubles event was once shot 30-20-30-20 across four traps. The now-standard 50/50 format uses two. Four traps meant four opportunities for the setup and target presentation to differ. The shooter had to recognize those differences and adjust. Using two traps reduces that field-to-field variation.
Berlet also names plastic wads and hulls, adjustable combs and ribs, and the availability of formal instruction. When he began, there were no clinics. His advice to a new shooter was simple: “Put lots of lead down the gun barrel.” Shooters still need the repetitions, but they now have more help developing sound habits.
My takeaway: As traps, releases and target presentation became more uniform, shooters had fewer variables to manage. Much of the modern test is repeating the same process for 100 or 200 targets without letting a miss, delay or distraction affect the next one.
Berlet also describes what happens after high school. His home club’s SCTP team draws about 30 to 40 shooters a year, and grants cover much of their cost. When that support ends, most of the young shooters leave. A few may return in their 30s or 40s. In the meantime, the programs bring parents and grandparents to the club and give entire families a connection to the sport.
Watch: Dave Berlet on Clay Target Legends
BUILDING THE SPORT
Hillsdale starts its shooting-sports pipeline at orientation
Hillsdale College replaced the usual campus tour with a visit to its John Anthony Halter Shooting Sports Education Center. Nearly 400 incoming freshmen went.
The orientation began with safety and handling, then rotated through air rifles, bolt-action .22-caliber rifles and AR-platform rifles. For some, the orientation produced their first shots.
Hillsdale has built a pipeline that starts at freshman orientation. Students encounter the shooting program as they arrive on campus. Those who want to continue can take a one-credit Introduction to Shooting Sports course covering firearm safety, history, law and basic marksmanship, then move into discipline-specific courses, the shooting club or a college team. Firearms, ammunition and safety gear are provided.
Early results suggest the approach is working. The shooting program added more names to its email list than ever before, and the first club practice drew its largest turnout yet.
Dave Berlet sees young shooters drift away when high school support ends. Hillsdale reaches students in their first days of college, giving those who already shoot a next step and newcomers a place to begin.
AT NATIONALS
NSCA answers questions for new Nationals shooters
The National Sporting Clays Championship opened Saturday in San Antonio and runs through October 25. The NSCA’s first-timer’s guide may be the most useful page it published ahead of the event.
I have never shot registered sporting clays. The guide still made sense to me, which is a good test of instructions written for a newcomer.
The guide immediately answers an important question: Who can shoot? Any NSCA member in good standing may enter, and a shooter may join on arrival.
From registration through a possible shoot-off, the guide follows the trip in the order a newcomer will experience it. It explains how to buy ammunition, move around the 700-acre complex and handle a scorecard, along with the questions about carts, gun storage, practice and spectators that regulars rarely think to answer.
Read it before leaving for San Antonio, then keep it open on your phone when you arrive.
POLICY WATCH
OCC says large banks restricted firearms businesses
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, is an independent bureau of the U.S. Treasury that charters, regulates and supervises national banks. It directly supervises the nine banks in this review, which gives the findings regulatory weight.
The OCC says the nine largest national banks under its supervision all maintained policies, at some point from 2020 through September 2025, that could deny or limit services because of political or religious beliefs or lawful business activity.
The review names firearms and ammunition manufacturing and distribution among the affected industries. In separate remarks, Comptroller Jonathan Gould said several banks restricted financing to firearms manufacturers and retailers. In one case, a bank declined to help a firearms business with an initial public offering because the company’s lawful-sales policies did not match the bank’s standards.
The OCC reviewed nearly 100,000 complaints and about 420,000 pages of bank documents. It found broad “reputation risk” policies that lacked clear, objective criteria and could allow public pressure or political considerations to influence decisions.
There are limits to what the release tells us. It does not quantify how often firearms businesses lost services, identify the bank involved in each example or announce penalties. The review is continuing, and the agency says it is considering further changes to its supervisory framework.
The next useful information will be which bank practices actually change and what the OCC requires.
CHIPS & CHUNKS
Beretta re-engineered a sidelock so you can watch it work
Built with Italian watchmaker La Vallée for Beretta’s 500th anniversary, the one-of-one SO10 Kronos places a sapphire window in each sideplate, exposing the lockwork beneath.
Before reading about the Kronos, I knew little about how a sidelock worked. In a true sidelock, the firing mechanism is mounted directly to the sideplates. Adding sapphire windows to those plates required Beretta to re-engineer each as a single piece machined from high-strength alloy steel and develop a new opening system.
Watch: Beretta’s SO10 Kronos film
YOUR SHOT
Which change do you believe has done the most to raise trapshooting scores: automatic traps, voice release systems, better gun fit or better instruction?
Reply and tell me what you would add to Dave Berlet’s list.
Know a sporting clays shooter headed to San Antonio? Forward this issue and make sure they have the NSCA guide.
See you next Sunday,
Dean