Brandon Laing and Aliana McMaster topped a very exciting PWD Winter Open Sporting Clays Tournament on February 2 at the lush, expansive driving course on the Tru-Juice Estates in St. Catherine.

The course was set by Ben Husthwaite, the 19-time world shotgun champion out of the United Kingdom.

Over 130 gunners travelled to the venue with great anticipation to compete on the international course as set by Husthwaite. Husthwaite is well known for setting courses with seemingly easily looking targets mixed with very difficult ones.

Laing was winning a sporting clay tournament for the first time in over 10 years while McMaster successfully defended her title from 2024. Their wins only came after the Super-Six showdown which took place among the top shooters from the main event 100 bird shoot

Laing had a good start getting five of the six targets on his first station and went on to clean up ten of the other sixteen stations but was pegged back on station five, getting only one of the four targets for that station. During the Super-Six shoot-off he held his nerve to be joint leaders with Geoffrey Ziadie after three rounds which forced an additional round between them, which Laing won comfortably.

“It feels absolutely amazing. It’s something I didn’t expect but I can just say I feel great. It feels like a great accomplishment, something I’ve been back shooting for about ten years now, so this is the first time I’ve won HOA and I’m very excited about it” said Laing.

The shooters in the Super-Six entered with scores of: Laing 89, Ziadie 89, Craig Hendrickson 89, Robert Yap 88, Nicholas Chen 88 and wild card Aliana McMaster 87.

McMaster bagged all six targets on nine of the 17 stations while getting two out of four on the tricky station five that few persons mastered.

“I just came out today to just come and enjoy myself and just enjoy the sport for what it is and all of the benefits I gain from it. The outcome was honestly just a result of the hard work that I put in behind the scenes and I don’t really ever think about going into a tournament as defending something because, to be honest, that’s kind of saying that, the prize is already mine, but it isn’t. I still have to work as hard each time to regain what I earned before” said McMaster.

“It was an international course so the scores are always gonna be different but what we try to do is pickpocket from people not thief, so when they miss one they thought they could have hit it instead of, ‘I’ve just got no idea how to hit that’ so, you know, I think it was fair. The wind blew, the wind always blows in Jamaica, we know that, but do I think the course was exactly what I wanted”, said Husthwaite who will set the courses in Canada and Cyprus later this year.

Justin Samuda who was the driving force for the PWD Hunting & Sporting Club praised the high turnout of shooters and the support of the many sponsors who helped to make the event the success that it was for the club which has been around since 1934.

“This is tremendous. It’s a tremendous turnout. It’s been a huge step forward, the sponsorship came out as a result. Scotia Investments, CRISS Marine, Desmond Mair and Associates, Toyota with their ARB accessory line, station sponsors (such as) Tile City, Fontana – I can’t name them all but it’s a huge turnout, the clubbers turned up and I’m so grateful for the effort from them all.”

Samuda said that the club’s charity will benefit from the shoot. “This one forms probably the critical part of it, and one of the station sponsors today, Fontana Pharmacy which I mentioned, took up what’s called a PPI station, which is a perfect pair initiative. So for every pair that is shot on that station later today we will tally all the scorecards and figure out how many pairs were shot and Fontana will be donating a pair of baskets for the basic school that we support in Portland Cottage”