Once he threw a large washer and said he would shoot right through the hole. Of course after he did it, someone suggested that he was just missing the whole target.
He had obviously used this as a set up because he then said he would just nick the inside of the washer and proceded to do just that.
I still think it may have been some sort of trick but not sure.
LOL! That's like the magician's gag of putting cups over the balls, announcing that he's changing the balls' color (tap, tap, tap), announcing that he's changing them back (tap, tap, tap), then showing the balls, then proceeding to do the actual trick.
Sounds a lot more like slight of hand than sharpshooting.
don't know if they're true or not, but i've heard similar stories. however after a couple shots like that someone would always bring up that point. usually was fixed by a piece of tape over the hole and shooting thru it.
Ed McGivern in the 1920's and 30's was an expert shooter of aerial targets with a double action revolver. He could hit 5 thrown targets at a time. He also could hit coins and has a picture of the washer trick in his book "Fast and Fancy Revolver Shooting". He did not use shotshells but standard .38 special target loads. He was also the fastest shooter of his time, being able to fire 5 rounds in 2/5's of a second into a playing card sized group at 15 feet. He developed primitive electronic timing devices to measure these feats.