Shotgun’s Best Compete at 2017 World Championships

The world’s best shotgun athletes have descended upon Moscow, Russia for the International Shooting Sport Federation (ISSF) Shotgun World Championship that got underway last Friday with Women’s and Men’s Trap.

Team USA, powered by Winchester Ammunition, is off to a great start having earned four medals and five top-10 finishes thus far. Ashley Carroll (Solvang, California) and Derek Haldeman (Sunbury, Ohio) have led the charge as Carroll finished sixth in Women’s Trap and Haldeman finished fifth in Men’s Trap. The two then went on to earn a bronze medal in the Mixed Team Trap event Monday. The Trap Mixed Team event will make its debut as an Olympic event in Tokyo in 2020.  

Carroll won her first World Championship medal this past weekend when she, Caitlin Weinheimer (Port Lavaca, Texas) and Corey Cogdell-Unrein (Eagle River, Alaska) won Women’s Trap Team gold. It was the first team medal for the U.S. in the event since the 1998 World Championship in Barcelona, Spain.

Haldeman, who gave up Double Trap and switched to Trap the moment he learned his specialty event was being eliminated from the Olympic program, hit 121/125 targets over three days of Qualification, forcing him into a seven-way shoot-off for four slots in the Final. Once in the Final, Haldeman finished in fifth place, hitting 21/30 targets. Haldeman’s fifth-place finish is the highest for the U.S. in this event at the World Championship since 2006 when Bret Erickson won bronze.

The Junior Men’s Trap Team of Ryne Barfield (Poulan, Georgia), Dale Royer (Jackson, Montana) and Logan Mountain (Palmdale, California) earned the bronze medal with their combined individual finishes. This bronze medal was a first for a U.S. Junior Men’s Trap Team since the 2010 World Championship. En route to the team bronze, Barfield earned a slot in the Junior Men’s Trap Final and finished in sixth place. This Final was Barfield’s first in international competition.

The Junior Women’s Trap Team of Emma Williams (Savannah, Tennessee), Joyce Hunsaker (Corpus Christi, Texas) and Emily Hampson (Saint Charles, Missouri) also earned a bronze medal as well.

Up next is competition in Women’s and Men’s Skeet that begins Thursday that will feature six-time Olympic medalist Kim Rhode (El Monte, California), 2015 World Championship silver medalist Caitlin Connor (Winnfield, Louisiana), three-time Junior World Champs medalist Dania Vizzi (Odessa, Florida) and two-time Olympian Frank Thompson (Alliance, Nebraska). Read the preview for the U.S. Women’s Skeet Team here.

As many as 640 athletes from 76 countries are competing at this World Championship at the Foxlodge Shooting Range in the Moscow Region through Sunday evening.

For more information, visit the World Championship website and follow along with results on the ISSF website.