Traps

A sharp wind blew over Travers Island, over the traps of the New York Athletic Club, over the shoulders of squad after squad of gunners competing, on two days of sunlight, gusts and shadow last week, for the amateur clay target championship of the U.S. Businessmen, farmers, clerks, lawyers, fine shots all, they came out for their turns in squads of five. All day for two days the wind bore the steady blam, blam, blam-blam of a little war as the shooters moved, a serious-minded army about 180 strong, from stand to stand at the club's eight traps, until each had shot 400 targets apiece. A bright sun at the gunners' backs made visibility good against a horizon of clear sky and the waters of Long Island Sound, but sometimes the wind made the targets duck like wary things alive* and sometimes whirled them sideways, fast and low, at crazy angles.

Many of the scores were low--150, 125, even as low as 117 out of 200--scores that any one of the competitors would have scorned at his own club on a still day. In the preliminary handicap J. H. R. Kretschman, a Canadian, won with 195 after shooting off a tie with a Philadelphian and a gunner from New Haven. Next day, however, Kretschman was not important. Lanky Stevenson M. Crothers from Chestnut Hill, Pa., hung his coat on a nail, put on an old sweater and a white eyeshade, raised his single-barrelled, closed-bore Daley gun and giving a gruff bark that meant "Pull!" each time he was ready, knocked the skimming little discs to pieces with dismaying regularity.

At home, Stevenson M. Crothers is a country squire, farms his land, keeps a pair of pointers for bird-shooting in the fall. He shoots clay birds on Saturdays, all the year round, at clubs in his district --Quaker City, North End Gun, Rocksburgh. He won the national championship in 1925, 1927, 1928, and he won it again last week with 193 hits out of 200--wonderful shooting in that kind of a wind, or no wind, for that matter. His father, Stevenson Crothers, shot too. So did his sister, Alice Crothers, who finished highest (161) of the three women entered for the title. Between rounds they stood near the Scoreboard watching Stevenson M. Crothers' score creep away from the other high guns; listening to other gun ners marvel at his easy style (not hunched up and strangling the gun like more ner vous men), his steadiness, his fourth triumph. Afterwards they helped him carry home his share of the $9,900 worth of prizes -- a diamond medal.

George Payne, the Philadelphian who had finished second in the preliminary match, was runner-up to Squire Crothers with 190 birds. Jimmy Bonner, a stocky young man from Manhattan, won the doubles championship (two shots at two birds in the air at once) with 186 out of 200.

* No Federal or state laws forbid the use of live pigeons at U. S. traps, but public opinion against the practice makes it rare.

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