Kit test: The Claycart

Emily Damment takes to the clay ground with a new bit of kit; The Claycart carries your gun, cartridges and accessories so you can stay fresh and ready to shoot!

Ideal for the clay shooter who has everything, the brand-new Claycart takes care of the heavy lifting so you can save all your energy for shooting. With a basket at the front to hold cartridges and other accessories, and a secure strap to hold your gun in place, you’ll never again find yourself weighed down by shooting paraphernalia as you make your way around the shooting ground. 

I was sent my own Claycart by the makers to review, and immediately thought of Hownhall Shooting School in Midhurst as the ideal testing location. Not only is Hownhall run by the lovely Benita and Simon – possibly the most accommodating couple in the industry – but it’s also a beautiful little woodland shoot with lots of slopes, tracks, gravel, grass and packed earth to really put this product through its paces.

I have to say, it passed its test with flying colours. The chunky off-road tyres and super-solid build quality made light work of all terrains, and the cart felt very stable whether being pulled uphill or rolled downhill. The handle is thick, rubber-coated and comfortable to use, and I don’t know whether it’s a happy coincidence or a calculated design feature, but the holes in the metal mesh used to make the basket are too small to allow loose cartridges to slip through – very handy! 

Another wonderfully thought-through design feature is the manner in which the Claycart breaks down and is reassembled; it is simplicity personified. You just remove the stainless-steel clip and pull the handle off for travel or storage, and it literally takes less than one minute to reassemble when you arrive at the shooting ground. I put my gun in stock down (as you can see from the picture), but after a chat with the manufacturers I discovered that putting it in barrels down makes getting it in and out of its slip much easier; you wouldn’t need to unstrap the gun each time, just slide it out when you reach the stand!

The huge benefit of using the Claycart is that you arrive at the stand fresh and ready to expend all your energy on your shooting, rather than arriving with aching shoulders from carrying your kit around all day. Let’s face it, if you’re shooting a round of 100 Sporting, you’re going to need around 150 cartridges... and 150 cartridges aren’t light! Some of the grounds hosting big competitions, like Atkin Grant & Lang or Doveridge, really are quite vast and hilly; using the Claycart in situations like this could give you the edge over the competition. I haven’t had a chance to take the Claycart out in this scenario, but a friend of mine made something similar, just for personal use, which we have taken out to the Beretta World, the Express Masters, and a few sim game days. I promise you that the difference in our energy levels at the end of the day was significant, especially on the sim game days! 

The other obvious market for these would be anyone with new or old injuries – particularly in the shoulders – and anyone who is a little older and finds carrying heavy kit over a long period of time to be tiring.  

We’re pretty much the only sport where people are expected to perform at their best after carrying an uneven, heavy load around for hours on end. In terms of weight, 150 28g cartridges are going to weigh an absolute minimum of 4.2kg, and a shotgun could be around the 3.5kg mark; that’s almost 8kg of additional weight, without even considering drink bottles, coats, ear defenders, chokes, and anything else you may need on your round. Why not take that weight off your shoulders and dump it on the Claycart instead? It also has the added benefit of keeping everything neatly organised, and you know what they say about tidy house, tidy mind, right? 

RRP: £250 plus postage 
Visit: claycart.co.uk