SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Caile Bradham, of Belden, captured both the High Over All and High All Around titles at the 2025 National Skeet Shooting Association championships in October, reaffirming his accomplishment of one lifelong dream and claiming another. He had three championships to his credit when this fall rolled around: one in the 12 gauge division in 2015, one in the 20 gauge division in 2017, and one High Over All in 2019.
Formal skeet shoots are competed target-to-target and station-to-station over the course of hundreds of opportunities spread across 100 targets each of 12 gauge, 20 gauge, 28 gauge and .410 bore.
The High Over All combines the scores from each shooter’s 12, 20, 28 gauge and .410 bore rounds. High All Around combines the four gauged shoots plus a 100-round doubles shoot. Bradham turned in scores of 498/500 and 598/600 respectively to claim both last month. The two misses occurred in the .410 round and were spaced far apart.
Bradham was introduced to clay target shooting at the age of 9 and spent his formative years learning the skeet game, honing his skills and building wisdom that could not have come any other way.
“Shotgun shooting helped me mature beyond my years,” Bradham, 32, said. “It helped me build a high degree of discipline and work ethic that I carry in every aspect of my life. This has been my goal since dedicating myself seriously to skeet 16 years ago.”
He credits the influence of mentor Dick Holloway, founder of Whitetail Ridge Outdoors and winner of multiple skeet championships, and hands-on coach Brian Rishel, many times a champion himself, with the solidification of his character and the construction of his shooting game respectively.
“I really enjoy both the shooting and the competing aspects of the game,” he said.
There are a number of widely-recognized shotgun games, including sporting clays, trap and helice, but the game of skeet may be the most broadly known and played. A championship-grade tournament spreads hundreds of targets over a week of competition. The pressure begins with great intensity and only grows stronger. Getting through it involves patience, concentration and determination.
The World Skeet Championships, which date to 1935, draw competitors from around the globe, each working constantly to improve upon near perfection. That’s a quest that continues to drive Bradham every day.
World class skeet events are typically decided by a very small handful of misses sprinkled into a full week of shooting. In any given event, five or fewer missed targets typically make the difference between earning an outright win and being nowhere to be found on the leaderboard. Improving incrementally in a game that, when first learned, sees improvement arrive in leaps and bounds, is very much an introspective task, but it’s one that suits Bradham very well.
“It’s taken a lot of mental work, putting things into perspective when the wins aren’t coming along as rapidly as I feel they should,” Bradham said. “I try to apply a lot of what high-tier athletes do to my game, and that helps. It makes sense to me to do that because, no matter how big the stage, it’s still high stakes to me. I’m competing against other people, but I can’t make anyone else miss.”
In the years following his 2019 championship, Bradham took a hiatus from skeet and shot sporting clays — a game in which each station reveals something different, and in which each course is unique.
“That hiatus helped me a lot,” he said, “but the main thing it did was reconfirm my love for the skeet game.”
While diving into sporting clays Bradham didn’t miss many targets, but what he did miss was the pure, bone crushing grind necessary to be on top.
“With skeet, you have to really want it,” he said. “You have to love the grind, you have to love staying with it when it’s going good, and staying with it when it’s not going good. I’m naturally a competitive person, and I enjoy working to get the best out of myself week in and week out.”
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