Mad minute

The Mad Minute is best known as a bolt-rifle speed shooting event, which was derived from a pre-World War I rapid-fire exercise used by British Army riflemen, using the Lee–Enfield service rifle. The exercise (Practice number 22, Rapid Fire, ‘The Musketry Regulations, Part I, 1909) required the rifleman to fire 15 rounds at a “Second Class Figure” target at 300 yards. The practice was described as; “Lying. Rifle to be loaded and 4 rounds in the magazine before the target appears. Loading to be from the pouch or bandolier by 5 rounds afterwards. One minute allowed”. The practice was only one of the exercises from the annual classification shoot which was used to grade a soldier as a marksman, first-class or second-class shot, depending on the scores he had achieved.

The “Second Class Figure Target” was 48" square (approximately 1.2 x 1.2 meters), with 24” inner (61 cm) and 36” magpie (92 cm) circles. The aiming mark was a 12” x 12” (30 x 30 cm) silhouette figure that represented the outline of the head of a man aiming a rifle from a trench. Points were scored by a hit anywhere on the target. Although a 12” target is often mentioned in connection with the Mad Minute practice, this seems to have been an error originating in Ian Hogg’s book, ‘The Encyclopedia of Weaponry’. No other source mentions a 12" target. Thus according to the myth the target size would have been a 1.11 mil circle (3.82 moa), while in reality the target size was a 4.5 mil square (15.3 moa) making the area counting scoring hits over 15 times bigger.

The first Mad Minute record was set by Sergeant Major Jesse Wallingford in 1908, scoring 36 hits on a 48 inch target at 300 yards (4.5 mils/ 15.3 moa). Allegedly another world record of 38 hits, all within the 24 inch target at 300 yards (2.25 mils/ 7.6 moa), is said to have been set in 1914 by Sergeant Instructor Alfred Snoxall, but there is little documentation and it is unsure whether it was actually accomplished or British propaganda. There has been major discussion whether it is actually possible to shoot that fast and accurate with a bolt rifle.

A Mad Minute event was held in Soknedal, Norway, on 30 May 2015 featuring some of the best stang shooters in the country. The competition was called the "Mad Minute Challenge"[1], and was shot at a round 400 mm diameter target at 200 meters (2 mils/ 6.9 moa), making the target smaller than original. The winner, Thomas Høgåsseter, scored 36 hits. The average score, of 11 shooters, was 29.

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Wikipedia