a 
     
    

    
     The stabilizing factor that the growing sport of 
     
     trapshooting so desperately needed was to come in the 
     
     year 1880. In April of that year, a young man, who 
     
     had been shooting at live birds and glass balls for a 
     
     number of years, was at the shore watching a group of 
     
     children skipping stones across the water. George 
     
     Ligowski, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was inspired to go home 
     
     that day and try moulding clay into a variety of sizes 
     
     and shapes that just might make a good shooting 
     
     target. It was a trial and error situation, and 
     
     Ligowski's first efforts all had problems; too flat, 
     
     too hard, too concave, too big, or too small. He kept 
     
     at it, and finally after months of development came up 
     
     with a suitable target that was by design roughly the 
     
     size of a small upland game bird--strong enough to 
     
     withstand the torque of the spring loaded throwing 
     
     trap he had also developed, and looking like an 
     
     inverted dish, concave enough to fly flat and true. 
     
     George Ligowski had given the world of trapshooters a 
     
     new bird...an artificial bird that would revolutionize 
     
     the game and become affectionately known to 
     
     shotgunners everywhere as the CLAY PIGEON. 
     
    
   
   
    
     Ligowski's clay pigeons were accepted almost 
     
     overnight. They were first introduced to the public 
     
     at the New York State Trapshooting Championships at 
     
     Coney Island in September of that same year. To 
     
     promote his new targets and traps, Ligowski hired two 
     
     of the best trapshooters in North America to tour 
     
     across the nation from club to club giving shooting 
     
     exhibitions. They were W.F. "Doc" Carver, a frontier 
     
     plainsman whose sharp shooting abilities had long 
     
     before earned him the title "Evil Spirit," and Adam H. 
     
     "Captain" Bogardus, who, over the past decade, had won 
     
     a number of National live-bird and glass ball 
     
     championships. Their shooting confrontations were 
     
     legendary; everywhere they went hundreds turned out to 
     
     watch arid be amazed, both at their shooting skills and 
     
     the new, fast, true flying targets of George Ligowski. 
     
     Sales soared beyond all expectations, and for the next 
     
     decade all the foundations of trapshooting as we know 
     
     it today were established. The many variations of the 
     
    
   
   
    
     ~-5--