Skeet shooting is a recreational and competitive activity whose participants use shotguns to attempt to break clay targets which two fixed stations mechanically fling into the air at high speed and at a variety of angles.

A shotgun is a long-barreled firearm designed to shoot a straight-walled cartridge known as a shotshell, which discharges numerous small spherical projectiles called shot, or a single solid projectile called a slug. Shotguns are most commonly used as smoothbore firearms, meaning that their gun barrels have no rifling on the inner wall, but rifled barrels for shooting sabot slugs are also available.