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A month later, the first "MacDonald Cup" shooting competition was held at the Royal Rose Racecourse in New York.

Bob sat in a chair, waiting to play, and the stands not far from him were full of spectators who had come to watch the game.

"Bob, why are there so many people?" His teammate Iverson asked.

Bob also thinks it is strange that most of the events of the shooting competition are actually not suitable for a large number of spectators, because the target is far away, and the spectators will definitely not be able to see clearly unless they have their own binoculars. At most, they saw a puff of white smoke rise and heard a burst of gunfire. Compared to horse racing and other events, this kind of competition is much less spectacular, so it should not have such a large audience.

"Because these spectators are coming in with free tickets." Said a person next to him. Bob turned his head to look and recognized it as their leader, Captain Robson.

Captain Robertson was originally working as a riding instructor, but after the crisis came, the business of the riding club immediately deteriorated, and as a result, Robertson only worked for a month before he was laid off, so he also became a member of the unemployed army. At this time, Scrooge found him, hoping that he could be the leader of this shooting team, this kind of pie-in-the-sky thing, of course he would not refuse, and this matter is also very suitable for him, isn't this similar to bringing a group of recruits?

"Complimentary tickets?" Bob asked.

"Yes, you should also know that the boss is not holding this competition for ticket money at all, he is just advertising." Captain Robson said, "But let's say we have a good gun, better than any I've ever used." ”

Speaking of the rifle he used, Bob couldn't help but admire: "That's right, this gun is stronger than the Springfield 1816 I used when I was fighting the Mexicans, I don't know how much stronger, it's completely heaven and earth." ”

"Let's not talk about smoothbore guns like 1816, they are not of a generation at all, they are not comparable at all. I served in the National Guard, and when I was fighting the Indians, I used the Springfield 1855 -- the best gun in the army today, but in terms of performance, it was nowhere near as good as the one I have now. I think it's cheating to compete with this gun, and the guys are going to be dumbfounded. It was Bob's teammate Mason who spoke. He was a shooting maniac, and when he arrived at the MacDonald Shooting Team and saw the McDonald Model 1857, he fell in love with it so much that he even held it in his arms while sleeping.

"Don't be busy bragging first, it's not a lot of wind today, and bullets are easy to fly, so don't hit a missed target and make people laugh out of their big teeth." Captain Robson smiled.

"Captain, Mason won't miss the target, he'll just accidentally hit someone else's target." Another team member named Michael chimed in, and the laughter broke out below.

"Not this time, absolutely not, a good gunner doesn't make the mistake he wants to hear twice!" Mason's face flushed and he defended, obviously, during training, Mason must have made such a mistake.

At this time, the audience was already seated, and the referee team (most of them were volunteers) began to let the contestants draw numbers to decide the order of the game. The first competition was rifle precision shooting, with the targets at one end of the runway and the shooting position at a distance of 1oo meters. In the first round of the competition, a total of 5 groups of players will participate in the competition, each player will shoot ten bullets, and then more than half of the players will be eliminated according to their results, leaving only the best mission players to enter the final round.

Bob was drawn to the first group, and the McDonald Shooting Team has a total of five players competing in this event, who will be assigned to each group, and Scrooge hopes they will win all of them.

Captain Robson gave Bob a gentle pat on the shoulder and said, "Good look, it's up to you!" Bob didn't speak, just looked at Captain Robson and nodded, and then he picked up his MacDonald 1857 rifle and walked out.

Bob stood still in the shooting position, and beside him was a target reporter with a telescope. These people were hired by Scrooge temporarily, and although they had been trained for a while, their professionalism was not necessarily reliable. Therefore, if a player disagrees with the results they have reported, they can also pause the game and go forward to check the target.

Seeing that all the players were in position and ready to play, the referee announced the start of the match.

"Bang!" As soon as the referee's order was given, someone couldn't hold his breath and fired a shot. Several other contestants also opened fire when they saw his influence, and the gunfire suddenly rang out, and the firing point was covered with a cloud of white smoke.

Bob didn't shoot right away, he was still aiming his gun while carefully pacing his breathing. After a while, in this kind of competition, there is no need to compete in shooting, he can make the man and the gun better coordinated before shooting.

"Bang!" It was only after the smoke from the other people's shots slowly cleared that Bob fired his bullet. Without waiting for the target reporter to report the number of rings, he sat down to adjust his condition.

"1o Ring!" The target reporter reported Bob's results.

This result was within Bob's expectations, at a distance of 100 meters, without limiting shooting, hitting such a big target, and not hitting ten rings, that was unexpected. However, the other players around him did not see it that way, although they all used rifled guns with Mini bullets, but at a distance of 100 meters, it was not easy to ensure that every shot hit the target. Now, someone actually shot ten rings with one shot, and everyone couldn't help but sigh at his good luck.

However, immediately after that, everyone was dumbfounded, because Bob hit five more ten rings in a row.

"It can't be! You must be cheating! A player next to him was furious, "At such a distance, how can it be that the guns are all ten rings?" I'm going to check the target! ”

"That's it! It is! The players next to him also coaxed, and even the spectators in the stands shouted indiscriminately.

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

There was a clear bullet hole in the bull's-eye, and Bob's shot was ten rings without any problem.

"We'll see how many shots he fired in front of him!" The gunman, who had questioned it at first, shouted unwillingly.

In the past, every time a shot was fired, a waiter would change a piece of target paper to facilitate the target reporter. So the staff hurriedly took out the target paper from Bob's first few shots and showed it to everyone - indeed, each shot was a ten-ring.

"This ...... This...... These must be fake! You changed the real target paper, you dropped the bag! ”

"If you're not convinced, a few shots from behind, you can come and be a target reporter." Bob saw that guy was hysterical, not only was he not angry, but he was a little sympathetic to this guy, well, if she hadn't touched the MacDonald 1857 rifle before, it was estimated that he would have killed him, and he wouldn't believe that anyone could play such a score.

"Good! I'm not going to fight today, and I have to see what the hell is going on! ”

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

…… Obviously, this change disrupted the guy's rhythm, and he even missed the target in a row with a few shots in the back. And Bob really waited for him to finish shooting and holding up the binoculars every time before he shot leisurely, and then hit the bullseye one by one.

Ten bullets are finished, except for one due to a sudden wind, which deviates to the nine rings, all the rest of the bullets are within the ten rings!

"There must be something wrong with your gun!" Now, there is no way to say that the opponent cheats, but the guy who made the trouble first is still not convinced, "It must be that your gun is much better than mine." ”

"The guns used in the competition are all brought by yourself, which is legal." Bob didn't deny that there was something "wrong" with his gun, and in fact the boss paid for such a thing to advertise it.

Yes, just perfectly legal. Thinking of this, the more frustrated the guy became. However, he still asked, "Can you tell me the name of this gun?" I'm going to buy one too! ”

"MacDonald Model 1857 rifle." Bob replied.

The five rounds of heats were quickly over, and ten players made it to the finals, five of whom were using MacDonald Model 1857 rifles.

The finals began, and now the contestant standing next to Bob was replaced by a fat man. He was holding a very strange rifle with a hexagonal muzzle.

Unbeknownst to Bob, this rifle was called the Whitworth rifle and was the work of the famous British engineer and entrepreneur Joseph Brown. Sir Whitworth's masterpiece, at that time, the Mini bullet had a major defect, that is, due to the need for the tail to expand quickly to close the chamber, it was necessary to use ignition powder, the result was that the bullet acted in the chamber for a short time, and could not be evenly added, which affected the penetration and accuracy of the rifle. Based on this problem, Sir Whitworth conducted some research and pioneered the design of a new rifled barrel, which is not a traditional circular compound line, but a hexagonal shape arranged in an oblique line, and uses a special hexagonal bullet, the bullet is closely rotated close to the plane when firing, ensuring the stability of flight, which greatly improves the accuracy and range of the bullet.

The special rifling makes this rifle have amazing accuracy, and in terms of accuracy, it is not inferior to the bolt-action rifle that will appear more than ten years later. However, this gun was not popularized because it had a number of fatal flaws.

First of all, its reliability and productivity are too poor, hexagonal rifling and special bullets are very difficult and expensive to process, its cost and selling price are more than 4 times higher than Enfield, the average price of Whitworth rifles sold to the United States in 186o is as high as 1oo dollars, and the price of an Enfield 1853 rifle is only about 25 dollars.

Due to the special rifling, the loading of this bullet was more difficult, it had to be stuffed diagonally into the chamber and then slowly compacted with a bougie to shoot very low, which was degrading under the tactics of face-to-face platoon fire at that time. What's more, the Whitworth rifle had to be maintained at all times, and the gunpowder residue needed to be cleaned up after each shot, which was extremely difficult to clean up due to the specificity of rifling.

This series of problems determined that the Whitworth rifle was not a military rifle suitable for equipping an army. But under today's rules of the game, all the flaws of this gun are gone. In the original history, this gun did not come to the United States immediately after its appearance in 1857, but I don't know if it was because of the influence of butterfly wings, but here in Scrooge, it appeared in advance on the North American Big 6. Now, Scrooge's MacDonald 1857 began to face a real challenge.