Shooting superstar heads for Emirates

One failure was all the motivation Michael Taylor needed to become one of the United States’ premier sporting clays shooters.

Taylor, who lives in Rollins, recalls the first time he shot on a sporting clays course, Van Voast’s Big Sky Sporting Clays outside of Polson.

“I had always thought I was a pretty good shot, and I was running for the state Senate in 1996, and you get pretty frustrated and I needed to take a break,” Taylor remembered.

He shot just 44 out of 100 targets.

“It kind of woke me up, and I’ve been trying to get better ever since,” he said. “I enjoyed it and I wanted to get better at it.”

Get better he did. Taylor began shooting competitively around 1999. By 2006 he had begun competing internationally.

He won the sporting clays world championship in Italy in 2010.

Taylor’s newest adventure brings him to Dubai, UAE for the Nad Al Sheba World Sporting Clays championship beginning on Friday, Feb. 28.

Taylor—a former barber, hair and beauty product manufacturer, rancher and hard cider manufacturer (Seven Sisters Cider in Sandpoint, Idaho)—said he still works on certain clays that give him trouble.

“I still have difficulty, sometimes, shooting in front of birds,” he said, noting that stance and mount have a lot to do with success as well. “I have to work on really trusting myself that the lead is right.”

Though he competes all over the globe, Taylor says his travel his nearly all business.

“When we compete, we’re not over there to sightsee,” he said. “…I’m really focused on what I’m doing.”

Dubai will be no different, Taylor said, as it boasts the largest purse he’s ever seen on the sporting clays circuit, nearly $850,000.

The purse money isn’t his only motivation, though. Taylor will serve again this year as Team USA’s captain in the super veteran age group at the world championship grand prix later this year by virtue of having the highest score on the American circuit in 2013.