There are degrees of seriousness to clay shooting. To set up and run a sim game operation that turns a profit is no easy task. At the outset, you have to ask yourself one simple question: how many weekends are you and your family prepared to sacrifice? And you must be honest with the answer because many of your clients will only want to come at weekends. Even at the other end of the scale — looking to have fun shooting driven clays with friends — there are some things you need to get right for everyone to have a safe and enjoyable time.
Testing clays
In my late teens I set up and ran my first clay shoots with my best friend. The chosen charity was MacMillan Nurses, who had looked after his father when he was fighting a losing battle with cancer. We wanted to give back to those who had helped him. With all the arrogance of youth, we had little idea of the detail and focused mainly on the end result —