So yesterday I was scrolling through some shooting forums cause my buddy Mike just got into trap shooting. He keeps babbling about “points” and “rankings” like it matters. Got me wondering – how do they even rank these clay busters?
Started simple. Googled “clay target leaderboard”. Hit enter. Boom. Mountain of results. Most looked dusty, honestly. Like sites made back when dial-up was cool. Clicked the top few. First surprise? There ain’t just one big leaderboard. Nah.
- One site seemed official-ish, plastered with fancy shooting organization logos.
- Another was all club-level stuff, like local competitions.
- Third one was international, flashing scores from places I couldn’t pronounce.
Clicked around the first “official” site. Felt like walking through mud. Took forever to find anything called a “leaderboard”. When I finally did? Just lists. Columns of names, numbers, maybe a team name. Zero pizzazz. Total snoozefest. No explanations. Just… data.
Thought maybe I missed something. Checked the international site next. Same song, different verse. Found something labeled “World Rankings”. Clicked. Names. Scores. Country flags. More names. Still had no clue how they actually figured out who the “top shooters” are. Points? Wins? Average score? Total clays smashed this year? Who knows!? Didn’t say.
Dug into one shooter profile. Mostly just listed competitions they entered and the scores. Like reading receipts. Didn’t tell me why that guy was ranked above this other guy. Felt pointless.
Tried that club site last. More lists, smaller scale. John Doe shot 95/100 at Piggly Wiggly Shootout March 3rd. Jane Smith scored 97 at the Cornfield Classic April 15th. But who cares? Unless you know these folks personally, it meant nothing. No national comparison. No real-time updates promised. Just historical score cards.
Found five different “Top Shooter” lists across these sites. All showed different shooters. Sometimes the same name popped up, ranked differently. Made me chuckle. So much for a single truth!
Real headache was comparing rankings across organizations. Some big name shooter ranked high on the international board? Might be nowhere on the U.S. association list. Or vice-versa. Each site acted like its list was the only one that mattered. Pure chaos.
Honest truth? After an hour clicking through digital dust? Still felt confused. You wanna know the top shooters ranked “right now”? Good luck. You gotta pick one club, one association, one website. Then dive deep into their particular flavor of math magic and hope it actually updates when they say it does. And remember, “right now” usually means “after the last competition we tracked, which might be weeks ago”.