How many clays can you blast in just two seconds? if this is a personal best you’ve been working on, it’s time to recalibrate.
According to this story from outdoorhub.com, Raniero Testa, an Italian shotgunner who previously shot for Team Benelli, recently broke 13 clay targets in under 2 seconds,. The feat broke his own record set back in 2012 when he launched and hit 12 targets in 2.36 seconds. The record was previously held by Patrick Flanagan, who shot 11 targets.
As you can see in the video above, Raniero grabs hold of 13 clay targets and heaves them into the sky while mounting his shotgun with the other arm.
Raniero used a Winchester SX4 semi-auto shotgun for the attempt.
When Raniero began his career with Benelli, he used a Vinci to load, mount and shoot a clay he launched himself, all in 1.9 seconds, which was the first world record he ever set. Today, Raniero works as a brand ambassador for Winchester Arms International.
So, the bar for speed is set pretty high, but you can still go for a volume-shooting clay target record. All you have to do is beat the numbers put up by Dave Miller of CZ-USA back in May of 2015. At the Heartland Trap and Wobble Skeet in Harrisonville, Missouri, Miller broke 3,653 clay targets in one hour.
The feat made it into the Guinness Book of World Records and was performed at an event for Pheasants Forever’s “No Child Left Indoors” initiative, which raised $80,000.
The complex undertaking involved 30 different CZ 712 and 912 shotguns with the safeties removed and magazine tubes fitted with extensions, 16 traps, and a support crew of 24 people loading guns while Miller shot targets from the hip. Miller spent a month working on a switch to control all 16 traps so he could set them to throw clays with the right timing so he could break just over one target per second…for an entire hour, according to Field & Stream.
He also had to work out with weights so he could hold guns up for all that time. He also practiced shooting left-handed in case he had to switch, but he shot right-handed the whole time.
He devised leather straps you can see in the video to help him hang onto the guns. During each of four hour-long practice sessions he learned a little more. “It’s like being a boxer,” he said. “You learn where to tape up. The first time I tried it I just wore gloves and when I pulled them off the skin was gone. It was the worst rug burn you ever saw.”
He fired a total of 4,402 shots and broke 3,659 targets with six having been disallowed because he broke them inside the agreed-upon minimum distance of 10 meters.
The record echoes the astonishing feat achieved by Tom Frye in 1959 when he set a world record by shooting an astonishing 100,004 wooden blocks during 13 consecutive days of 8-hours of non-stop shooting. Frye used 100,010 rounds of .22 LR ammunition (yeah, he only missed 6 shots) fired from three Remington Nylon 66 rifles. In a way, it was a proof test for Remington’s new rifle, which had not only a polymer stock and forend, but receiver as well—quite a departure from the wooden stocks of the era.
If you want to check out a collection of speed records, look no further than Jerry Miculek’s Wikipedia page.
He has done it all and set records by firing:
• Six shots each from 10 different .38 caliber S&W Model 64 revolvers in 17.12 seconds
• Eight shots from a revolver on a single target in 1 second
• Eight shots from a revolver on four targets in 1.06 seconds
• Six shots from a .50 BMG rifle in 0.98 seconds
and many others.
One of Miculek’s most remarkable shotgun records is firing two shots at two separate targets, 20 yards away from each other, with a pump-action Mossberg 500 shotgun, starting with the chamber empty, at a range of 20 yards. He did that in just 0.78 seconds on September 23, 2014, including reaction time.