THE Shacman Tank-Weld 200 Bird Sporting Clay shoot ended on Sunday after two days of gruelling, tension-filled, exciting competition in the middle of the lush Worthy Park Sugar Estate in Ewarton, St Catherine.

Craig Simpson battled the top six shooters to be crowned national sporting clay champion while Aliana McMaster got the better of her rivals to retain the ladies’ title for the third-consecutive year.

The gunners faced varying conditions such as rain, wind, high humidity and extreme heat at times, as well as some tricky target presentations which tested them, to deliver class-topping scores.

The shooters with the top six scores were then engaged in a shoot-off to determine the national sporting clay champion.

The shooters with the six highest scores after the regulation 200 bird shoot were Craig Simpson (162), Chad Zaidie (159), Christian Sasso (156), Andrew Hopwood (156), Roman Tavares-Finson (154), and JJ Ralston (154).

The Super Six shoot-off normally consists of a 25-bird target shot over three rounds. After the three rounds Simpson and Ziadie were tied at 178 each so they had to engage in another shoot-off to determine the highest overall winner. That led to another three rounds of eight targets each because after two rounds they were tied at 190. It took the third shoot-off to break the tie as Ziadie bagged six of the eight birds. Under extreme pressure, Simpson, however, took his time to pick off seven of the targets to clinch the championship by just one bird.

“[Saturday] was one of the most difficult sporting shoots I have shot in a long time and I had to dig deep. I had to really work for it. I wanted it this weekend. I know the [national] championship was out of my reach but I wanted the sporting clay title this year. This is my third win this year and I was really hungry for it. I wanted to close out the year with the 200-bird championship,” Simpson said.

Aliana McMaster topped the ladies’ section with a combined 142 after posting scores of 79 and 73 on the first and second day, respectively. Her mother, Wendy McMaster, was second with a total score of 132 while Toni Barnes (113) was third.

“It was very challenging. It was my first time being in the super squad [the top five shooters in the A Class were placed in the same squad] for A Class and, honestly, I can say it was definitely a new environment. It was kinda unsettling on the first day; I didn’t have any sort of familiar faces. I am normally used to shooting with my family so it was definitely a new experience,” she said.

“The course was definitely very tough on the first day. You had to be on your game and, honestly, I don’t think I handled that very well — but today I did much better.

“It feels amazing because I had to battle with so many things this year, especially with CSEC and school, so a lot of that really makes me happy that I could pull through and come back and defend my title,” Aliana said.