Traps From Yesteryear

[Feltwad]

Cleaning out the back of my garage  and came across these clay pigeon traps , maybe some of the older clay pigeon shooters will remember them  one is a  Whirlybird trap and the other is I believe a Phoenix trap and is powdered by compressed air, maybe they are worth a price to a collector .

Feltwad

Whirleybird

Clay trap 

Feltwad

[enfieldspares]

I think I remember the whirlybird? Was in an attempt at introducing "ZZ" shooting to the UK?

[Westley]

I recall seeing the compressed air type traps being used in a bank of 15 for Olympic Trench shooting. (3 traps in front of each peg). They were all single target and relied upon trappers running up and down in the 'Trench'  loading a clay onto each empty arm. I think they were of Italian make. As to their worth, well they are solely collectors pieces really. The current ZZ targets are around £2 a go and without a suitable compressor the other trap would not work.

[TRINITY]

I remember those old manual dtl traps where the ref used to cock the trap and then release the bird with a long handled mechanism.(think they were white flyers) you also needed a separate scorer plus a bloke sat in the trap house loading the Clay's. Far more labour intensive , still as far as I recollect, 25 Clay's were cheaper than 25 cartridges.

[Westley]

2 hours ago, TRINITY said:

I remember those old manual dtl traps where the ref used to cock the trap and then release the bird with a long handled mechanism.(think they were white flyers) you also needed a separate scorer plus a bloke sat in the trap house loading the Clay's. Far more labour intensive , still as far as I recollect, 25 Clay's were cheaper than 25 cartridges.

The lever cocking traps were the old Eley Plus Trap. The 'White Flyers' were made by Winchester Western and were electric in operation and release. You still needed a trapper to load the arm on both varieties. The problem with the White Flyer was the button release, it  had 240 volts going through it, NOT what you really wanted to hold in a downpour.

[TRINITY]

3 hours ago, Westley said:

You still needed a trapper to load the arm on both varieties. 

If you had sat in the trap house loading, it was always a moment of intrepidation when the time came to venture out, because you had to wait long enough to be sure the line was over and someone didn't have a loaded gun point in your direction 🤔

[Westley]

On 30/09/2020 at 22:29, TRINITY said:

If you had sat in the trap house loading, it was always a moment of intrepidation when the time came to venture out, because you had to wait long enough to be sure the line was over and someone didn't have a loaded gun point in your direction 🤔

THAT is why we gave our Trappers a red flag which had to be put into a holder on the front edge of the traphouse, BEFORE they even made a move to come out. We also fitted an isolation 'button' in the release cable on the 'White Flyer' so the Trapper could load the arm without fear of being 'launched' by an over enthusiastic buttoner.