Review of Backwoods Quail Club

Last weekend, I went to the Backwoods Quail Club in Hemingway, South Carolina to shoot round of 100 sporting clays. I live in Columbia, so the drive to Hemingway is about an hour and a half – each way. When I arrived, the first thing you can’t help but see is the giant sign proclaiming the club to be the site of the 2013 US Open Sporting Clays Championships. So right there, you get the idea that it must be a pretty good place if they decided to have the host a major event.

On the way in, you drive past two skeet fields, a five stand, and another warm-up area. The skeet is lighted, so even after the sun goes down, you can still break some clays. (This is probably pretty handy now that it gets dark early.)

The sporting clays consisted of two courses - orange or green. We decided to go with green for no particular reason. The two courses are essentially together along a main road. Some stations are orange and some are green, but they’re all along the same path. This is a shot looking down the path. You can see shooting stations on either side. The lift in the distance has a trap on top of it that throws a bird upwards. I'm not sure what it's simulating, but it's a long shot.

The first station was supposed to be a fairly simple crossing report pair, but one trap didn’t work at all. It was not a good start for a place that was supposed to be hosting a national event. The next few stations were good and worked with no problems. On the 5th station we encountered this: 

Why yes, that is a trampoline. What is a trampoline doing at a sporting clays station? Well that’s exactly what I was wondering. After looking at the setup for a minute, it appeared to me that the trap was angled to throw the clay into the trampoline. Could that be it? Are these guys really bouncing clays off trampolines?

Yep. And it was pretty cool.

The course featured a variety of shots that went from fairly easy to very challenging. There were several stations with screaming fast crossers. I’m talking so fast you don’t have time to even really look at the bird – you just swing your gun and shoot instinctively. One station combined the fast crosser with a slow incomer that you had to wait on first, so it was more about tempo than anything else. You had to wait…wait…wait on the first, and then as soon as you hit it, the second bird crossed back the other way going fast. Really fun stuff.

Towards the end, the best station of the day presented itself. (Orange #13, I think.) It was a beautiful little pond with two outgoing birds: the first one went out away from you at a little bit of an angle, skimming a yard or two off the surface of the water. The second bird went high, heading for the tree-line. Shooting those as a true pair was fun. The best part about the low bird was watching all the pieces break and skip across the pond.

Overall, Backwoods Quail Club was a great place to break some sporting clays. The shots presented were interesting and moderately challenging. I ended up with a 71 out of 100.

I would recommend it to anyone interested in seeing some of what the low country offers for sporting clays. The clubhouse wasn’t fancy, but it was well stocked with gear, snacks, and drinks. The place is laid back and comfortable. Inside and outside of the clubhouse:

Front:

 I will definitely be going back. The only downside is that it’s 110 miles from Columbia.