"Ensuring Sporting's Solid Future," the title of Marty Fischer's "Target Tactics" column this month, follows a resounding theme echoing through many of this issue’s pages. As fuel and lead shot prices continue to escalate, some sporting clays enthusiasts will inevitably trim their time at the range as family budgets strain to pay mortgages and put ever-pricier food on the table.

As for making your trips to the range otherwise more affordable, Connie Miller sings the praises of how effective practice workouts on trap and skeet ranges can be in tuning your sporting clays skills. Just one of the benefits you’ll glean from her "Trapping Down Sporting Targets" is that you’ll probably find trap or skeet targets costing you about half what sporting birds set you back. For practice that really works, those prices are pretty hard to beat.