A month later, the first McDonald's Cup shooting competition was held at the Royal Rose of New York.

Bob sat in his chair, waiting to go into the ring, and not far from him, the stands were filled with spectators who had come to watch the competition.

"Bob, what's with all the people?" His teammate Iverson asked.

Bob also found it very strange, in shooting competition, most of the events are not suitable for a large number of spectators to watch because the target is far away, the player, in the end, hit a few rings, and the audience unless they bring their telescope, otherwise absolutely can not see clearly. They at most are to see a burst of white smoke up and hear a burst of gunfire. Compared to horse racing, this kind of competition is much worse than the ornamental, so the theory should not have so many spectas ah.

"Because these spectators are all with free tickets to enter." A person next to me said. Bob turned his head to look and recognized that this was their leader, Captain Robson.

He was working as a riding instructor, but after the crisis, the business of the riding club immediately fell off. This time, Scrooge approached him, hoping that he could become the leader of this shooting team, this kind of pie in the sky, of course, he would not refuse, but also, this matter is very suitable for him, this is not similar to leading a group of recruits?

"Free tickets?" Bob asked.

"Yes, you should know that the boss is not organizing this competition for the ticket money, he is just advertising." Captain Robson said, "But this is a good gun, better than any I've ever used."

Speaking of his rifle, Bob couldn't help but exclaim, "That's right, it's better than the Springfield 1816 I used when I was fighting the Mexicans.

"1816 is a smooth-bore gun, not to mention that it is not of the same era, not at all comparable. I served in the National Guard, and when fighting the Indians, I used the Springfield 1855 - the best gun in the army now, but in terms of performance, it is also far inferior to the one I have in my hand now. I think it's like cheating to compete with this gun, and those guys would be dumbfounded." It was Bob's teammate, Mason, who spoke. He was a shooting nut and after seeing the MacDonald Model 1857 on the team, he fell in love with the rifle so much that he would carry it in his arms while he slept.

"Don't be too busy bragging, it's not a windy day, bullets tend to drift around, and you don't want to shoot off target and make people laugh." Captain Robson laughed.

"Captain, Mason won't be off target, he'll just accidentally hit someone else's target." Another member of the team, Michael, interjected, and there was laughter.

"Not this time, absolutely not, a good shooter doesn't make the mistake he wants to hear twice!" Mason argued with a red face, obviously, during the training, Mason must have made such mistakes.

By this time, the spectators were seated and the judges, most of whom were volunteers, began to draw numbers to determine the order of play. The first round was a precision rifle shooting competition with several targets at one end of the track, and the shooting position was 100 meters away from the targets. In the first round of the competition, there were five groups of competitors, each shooting ten rounds of ammunition, and then eliminating a large portion of the competitors based on their scores, leaving only the best mission competitors for the final round.

Bob was drawn to compete in the first group, and the Macdonald Shooting Team had a total of five competitors in the event, who were assigned to each group.

Captain Robson tapped Bob on the shoulder and said, "Do a good job, it's up to you!" Bob didn't say anything, he just looked at Captain Robson and nodded, then he lifted his MacDonald 1857 rifle and walked out.

Bob took up his position in the firing position, and beside him was a target reporter with a telescope. These men were hired by Scrooge temporarily, and although they had been training for some time, their professionalism might not be reliable. So if a competitor disagreed with the results they reported, he could stop the competition and go to check the targets.

Seeing that all the competitors had entered the competitive position and were ready, the referee announced the start of the competition.

"Bang!" As soon as the referee's order was given, someone couldn't hold his breath and fired a shot. Several other players, under his influence, also fired one after another, and the sound of gunfire immediately became a blur, and white smoke covered the shooting point.

Bob did not fire the shot immediately, he was still aiming his gun, while carefully adjusting the rhythm of his breathing. After a while, in a competition like this, where there is no need to compete for speed, he could let the man and the gun coordinate better before firing.

"Bang!" After the smoke from the others' shots slowly cleared, Bob fired his bullet. He sat down to adjust his condition without waiting for the target reporter to report the number of rings.

"10 rings!" The target reporter reported Bob's score.

This score was within Bob's expectations. At a distance of 100 meters, without any restriction on shooting speed, it would be unexpected for him not to shoot 10 rings on such a big target. However, the other shooters beside him did not see it that way, although they were using wire-bore guns with Minnie bullets, at a distance of 100 meters, it was not easy to guarantee that every shot was on target. Now, someone shot ten rings in one shot, and everyone couldn't help but sigh at his good fortune.

However, immediately afterward, everyone was dumbfounded as Bob shot five more ten-rings in a row.

"This can't be! You must be cheating!" A nearby competitor was furious, "How can you shoot 10 rings at such a distance? I want to check the target!"

"That's right! That's right!" The spectators in the stands also shouted.

"Okay." The head referee did not object. So we all ran to Bob's target to check it out.

There was a clear bullet hole in the center of the bullseye, and Bob's shot was a ten-ring.

"What about the shots in front of him, we need to see them too!" The shooter who first questioned it shouted reluctantly.

Before that, every time a shot was fired, an attendant would change a piece of target paper to facilitate the target reporter to report the target. So the staff member was scrambling to bring out Bob's target paper for the first few shots - and indeed, every shot was the tenth ring.

"This ...... this ...... must be fake! You switched the real target paper, you switched the pack!"

"If you're not convinced, you can come and be the target reporter for the next few shots I take." Bob saw the guy's hysterical farce, not only not angry annoyed, but some sympathy for this guy, well, if she had not touched the MacDonald 1857 rifle before, it is estimated to kill him, he would not believe that someone could shoot such results.

"Good! I'm not going to fight today, but I'm going to see what's going on!"

"No, I'll shoot after you, you'll have time to get the binoculars," Bob said with a smile of disbelief.

...... The change disrupted the guy's rhythm, and he was even off-target for the next few shots. And Bob every time he finished shooting, end up with the telescope, the talent to have leisurely opened fire, and then one by one hit the bullseye.

Ten rounds were shot, except one because of the sudden wind, deviated to nine rings, and the rest of all the bullets were hit in the ten rings!

"There must be something wrong with your gun!" Now, there is no way to say that the opponent cheated, but the first guy who made a scene was still not convinced, "Your gun must be too much better than mine."

"The guns used in the competition were all owned, and it was legal." Bob did not deny that his gun was "defective" the boss paid for such a thing to come up with is not to give this gun advertising.

Yes, it's just perfectly legal. Thinking about this, the guy more and more frustrated. However, he still asked a question: "Can you tell me the name of this gun? I want to buy one too!"

"Macdonald Model 1857," Bob replied.

The five rounds of preliminaries were soon over, and ten competitors went on to the finals, five of them with MacDonald Model 1857 rifles.

The final round began, and the man standing next to Bob was now a fat man. He was holding a very odd rifle that had a hexagonal muzzle.

Bob did not know that this rifle is called the Whitworth rifle, is the famous British engineer and entrepreneur Joseph. At that time, the Minnie cartridge had a significant flaw, that is, because of the need for rapid expansion of the bullet tail to seal the chamber, and must use of rapid-fire powder, the result is that the bullet in the chamber for a relatively short period, can not obtain uniform acceleration, which affects the penetrating power and accuracy of the rifle. Based on this problem, Sir Whitworth conducted some research and designed a new type of rifled barrel, which was not the traditional round rifling, but a hexagonal shape with a diagonal arrangement, and used a special hexagonal bullet, which rotated evenly against the plane when the bullet was fired to ensure flight stability, which greatly improved the accuracy and range of the bullet.

The special rifling makes this rifle has amazing accuracy, in accuracy, compared to the original bolt action rifle which will only appear after more than a decade is also no less. However, this gun was not promoted because it had many fatal flaws.

First of all, its reliability and productivity are too poor, hexagonal rifling and special bullet processing are very difficult and expensive, it's cost and price are more than four times higher than Enfield, the average price of Whitworth rifle sold to the United States in 1860 is as high as 100 U.S. dollars, while an Enfield 1853 rifle is sold at about 25 U.S. dollars.

Because of the special rifling, this bullet is more difficult to load, it must be jammed diagonally into the chamber, and then slowly compacted with a probe, the rate of fire is very low, in face-to-face volley warfare at the time this defect is devastating. More importantly, the Whitworth rifle had to be maintained at all times, and the powder residue needed to be cleaned up after each shot, which was exceptionally difficult due to the special nature of the rifling.

This series of problems determines that the Whitworth rifle is not a military rifle suitable for equipping an army. But under today's competition rules, all the defects of this gun do not exist. In its original history, the rifle did not arrive in the United States immediately after its introduction in 1857, but I wonder if it was due to the influence of butterfly wings that it appeared on the North American continent earlier here in Scrooge. Now, Scrooge's Macdonald 1857 began to face a real challenge.