The very first five-shot group I fired with a McMillan Legacy and the Federal 175-grain Gold Medal loading of the .308 Winchester measured 0.299 inch. And I really wasn't trying all that hard.

When testing a new rifle, I usually start the program by firing five barrel-fouling rounds before getting down to business, and I had quickly sent four Sierra MatchKings downrange before noticing how close they had clustered on the target. That got my attention, and after carefully squeezing off my fifth shot, I was pleased to see it snuggle inside its mates with no increase in group size. What a pleasant way to kick off the evaluation of a new rifle!

I was impressed by the tiny size of that group, but I was by no means surprised by the accuracy of the rifle because the McMillan name has been associated with the accuracy world for a long time.

Brothers Mac, Pat, and Gale McMillan started handloading prior to World War II and became involved in informal benchrest shooting shortly after the war. They often traveled from their homes in Arizona to several other states in order to compete. This was quite a few years before registered benchrest competition as we know it today got started.

I first became aware of the McMillans about 35 years ago when reading about a group shot by Mac in an NBRSA-sanctioned match at the Skunk Creek rifle range near Phoenix. The date was September 23, 1973, (Mac's 59th birthday) and he was shooting a 10.5-pound Light Varmint class rifle in .222 Remington. It was just about an all-McMillan rifle. Mac had built the action, and brother Pat had designed it. The rifle also had a barrel made by Pat and a fiberglass stock built by brother Gale. It wore a Leupold 12X scope that had been bumped to 24X by Wally Siebert. The dies used by Mac to make his 50-grain bullets from J4 jackets were also made by Pat. Mac's competition load consisted of Remington cases, 23.5 grains of Hodgdon BL-C (Lot No. 1), and a prototype primer that would soon thereafter be introduced by CCI as the BR-4.

A five-shot group fired by Mac during that 100-yard event was measured by match officials with a dial caliper modified by the addition of a clear plexiglass plate containing a .22-caliber reticle. All five of his shots fit inside the reticle for an incredible group-size measurement of 0.000 inch. For the first time in recorded history, the perfect group had been shot!

Shortly thereafter, the group was measured with a special 60X microscope capable of accuracy to 0.0001 inch, and it still came out at 0.000 inch. The target was then mailed around to seven members of the NBRSA records committee (who each measured it with less sophisticated instruments), and they came up with an average measurement of 0.009 inch. Other shooters who were there when Mac shot the match were convinced that it was indeed the perfect group and were disappointed to see it grow in size a bit when officially measured, but it all turned out to be moot since as far as I know, the record continues to stand today as the smallest five-shot group ever fired in registered benchrest competition.

Pat eventually sold his barrel-making business, and Gale went from making a few fiberglass stocks in his garage for his benchrest shooting buddies to founding a company called McMillan Fiberglass Stocks in 1973. During those early years, the company mainly produced stocks for benchrest shooting, but in 1975 a contract was received from the U.S. Marine Corps for stocks to be used in building M40A1 sniper rifles. A similar stock known as the GPH (General Purpose Hunting) was soon offered to hunters and varmint shooters in the private sector.