The day before yesterday at precisely 2 p.m., four men armed with 12-gauge single barreled shotguns marched up to varsity hammer thrower Howie Reed's Winthrop D-32 room and knocked on the door. Entry residents who saw the gunmen did nothing to stop them. They were used to the Wednesday afternoon appearance of the Harvard skeet team.

From Winthrop House the four visitors and Reed proceeded to the Mayflower Skeet Club in Holliston (25 miles west of Cambridge) for their weekly practice stint of knocking the clay out of clay pigeons. At the Club, they were joined by Coach Dick Shaughnessey, "Mr. Skeet", as he is known in American skeet circles.

United States Champ.

Shaughnessey won the national title at the age of 14, has shot on every U. S. Olympic skeet team, and currently holds the world's 20 gauge record of 446 birds in a row. A "bird" is a hard clay saucer approximately five inches in diameter which is spun into the air much like a discus.

These clay pigeons come from two "houses," a low one and a high one, which are situated at the ends of a semi-circle. They are lofted into the air by springs. The skeet shooter flires away from eight different stations which are spaced at intervals around the circumference of the semi-circle.

There are 25 birds to a round. This means the competitor shoots one bird from each house (singly) at each of the eight stations; and one bird from each house (simultaneously) from stations one, two, six, and seven. That makes 24. If he breaks all 24 birds, he can shoot his last one from any station and from either house. Otherwise, he want shoot the last bird from the place where he first missed.

Shaughnessey, who gets no pay for coaching because he wants to retain his amateur standing, generally breaks about 995 birds out of every 1000 he shoots if. His five-man Harvard team can't hit like that, but hopes to win the national collegiate championship this spring.