THE TOEPP GUNS OF ALL TIMES
a compilation of articles  written by
Norman Wiltsey for Guns & Ammo (Oct., 1961)
Col. Charles Askins for American Rifleman (Feb., 1986)
From "Famous Guns From the Winchester Collection" (1958)

AS LONG as there have been firearms, there have been exceptional marksmen  to whom accurate shooting has become as instinctive as breathing. There were noted Indian fighters, scouts, buffalo hunters and gun fighters on both sides of  the law who were almost unbelievably skillful. There were also sportsmen who  gained uncanny finesse with their firearms and marksmen and trick shooters who  made their livelihood giving awe-inspiring exhibitions.

At about the same time that a lithe willowy wisp of a girl, Annie Oakley  of Greenville, Ohio, came to the attention of circus and vaudeville marksman  Frank Butler, who billed himself as the "World's Champion Rifle Shot," an Illinois sportsman, A. H. Bogardus established a record that neither Butler nor  Miss Oakley, despite far more widespread publicity of their shooting prowess,  ever matched. On the 4th of July in 1877, Bogardus, alternating with a pair of 12-gauge breech-loading shotguns, fired in rapid succession at 1000 212" diameter glass balls. He is reported to have missed only 27 of the 1000 shots, shattering one string of 303 of the glass spheres without a miss.

Twice more during the next year Bogardus turned his gun marksmanship on  1000 glass targets. In Cincinnati, in September. 1878, he scored 981 hits. Later that same year at Bradford, Pennsylvania, he blasted all but ten of the 1000. A  year later Bogardus stretched his demonstration to 5000 glass balls, destroying all but 156.

During this same period, neither the "Great" Frank Butler, nor the widely  publicized Buffalo Bill Cody, King of the Wild West touring shows, made any  official challenge to top Bogardus' legitimate mark. Don't read into this comment any attempt to disparage Cody's widely lauded marksmanship. His record,  even with his initial buffalo gun, a Springfield Model 1866 military rifle, was  fantastic. In one eighteen-month period, Cody was credited with bringing in  nearly 5000 buffalo to fulfill a meat contract he had made with the Kansas-Pacific Railroad. A fairly well authenticated report has it that with  this same 1866 Springfield, Cody killed two horse thieves with a single shot. The slug fired from the rifle passed completely through one of the two thieves and downed the second.

Cody's favorite firearms, however, were Winchesters. Of the 1873 model,  he was known to have owned at least a half dozen, a number of which are in private collections today. But once Cody left the frontier and his touring Wild  West show had added to his fame, he was forced to resort to trick loads just as  did others who gave fast action indoor shooting exhibitions before large audiences.

Reportedly Cody's 44/40 Winchester center fire cartridges were specially made and contained 20 grains (only a half load) of black powder and one-quarter of an ounce of chilled shot. Cody didn't have to resort to bird shot because he was a poor marksman but rather because firing solid bullets with a full powder charge in locations like Madison Square Garden would endanger audiences. Also making a sieve of roofs wouldn't for long meet with the approval of any  building's owners.

Whether due to personal concern as to whether he could hold his own in an  official match or more probably because he was canny enough to realize that  already having an enviable reputation for marksmanship, he had far more to lose than gain by engaging in any competition. Cody is known only once to have shot a challenge match.

In that fiasco reportedly he and his opponent interspersed each gun shot with two fingers at a nearby bar so that Cody's defeat was not a true indication  of his skill nor that of his opponent, but rather proof that his challenger was a better drinking man.

Despite her unquestioned ability as a marksman, few official Annie Oakley  records were posted. Only twice did she officially put her highly publicized shooting skill on a block.

In 1883. a Dr. A. H. Ruth stole the nation's marksmanship limelight when he shot at 1000 hand-thrown glass balls and broke 984 of these with a .22  repeating rifle. Annie Oakley's press agent, sensing the publicity value of having her shoot for a record, persuaded her publicly to attempt to break Dr. Ruth's mark. In 1884, firing a .22 rifle under the same conditions, Annie nearly  accomplished her goal. She smashed 943 of the 1000 glass balls. The 57 misses and failure by 31 shots to match Dr. Ruth didn't tarnish the sheen of her  reputation -- after all shooting was still considered to be a man's sport.

That same year Miss Oakley also unsuccessfully tried to duplicate  Bogardus' feat. Rotating between three 16-gauge shotguns, "Little Miss Sure Shot" fired at 5000 glass balls, missing 228, scoring 62 fewer hits than Bogardus had five years before but again she gained added luster by skilled  press agentry.

The shooting of glass balls, of course, should not be confused with  modern trap-shooting. Skeet target traps are adjusted to skim a clay pigeon at  the height of 15 to 20 feet for a distance of 45 to 50 feet with the trap changing angle of throwing direction with each shot. The clay disk shooter does not know which way the target will soar. The old glass ball traps catapulted the  target to a height of about 35 feet for a distance of about 35 feet from the  trap. Hand thrown targets simulated this same procedure. The direction of target movement was much the same for each shot. So even when shooting at 5000 of these  objects, the marksman knew almost exactly where his next target would be. Any of  these shooting records placed greater emphasis on endurance and consistency rather than incorporating the added feature of quick directional reaction  required for trapshooting. However, the sheer physical wear of these old-time shooting marathons was fantastic.

In 1885 a colorful dentist by the name of Dr. W. F. Carver gave up tooth extracting and gold bridgework in favor of the greater lure of silver to be  gained from his uncanny marksmanship with a rifle. Doc Carver came pretty close to making good his claim of being the world's greatest rifle shot. In fact in  the late nineteenth century the ex-forceps fumbler was for a time the undisputed  ruler of the sharp-shooters' domain.

At a demonstration in a local armory at New Haven, Conn., Carver plinked away steadily with a .22 rifle for ten or eleven hours a day. At the end of six  days he had shattered 55,151 glass balls with 60,016 shots. The next year at  Minneapolis he tried again to smash his announced goal of 60,000 targets. This time the bicuspid mechanic racked up a total of 59,340 hits.

This looked like a record that would stand for all time but in 1889, a Captain Bartlett dethroned the dentist. Bartlett's performance was staged under  even slightly more difficult conditions than Carver's dramatic display of marksmanship. In six days and six nights, Bartlett destroyed 59,720 composition  balls, 2¼ inches in diameter, one-quarter inch less in size than the glass balls fired at by Carver.

In 1869 at Boerne, Texas, Ad Toepperwein was born to the trigger, so to  speak, for his father was a gunsmith, specializing in custom-built rifles for  buffalo hunters.

The Chinese have a saying that "even the cobblestones in the street hate a ten-year-old boy." However, it wouldn't have been healthy for anyone to hate Ad Toepperwein at the age of ten (when his father died) for young Toepperwein was already the equal of most men in handling firearms of all sorts. When Ad was six, his father made him a cross bow. At eight Ad already was out shooting most adult veterans with a big 14-gauge muzzle-loading shotgun. Shortly before his  death, the senior Toepperwein had given young Ad a Flobert .22 caliber single  shot rifle and the youngster spent every spare moment plinking at targets until firing his .22 became as instinctive as eating or walking. It was that year that Ad, who had been impressed by publicity stories about the great Doc Carver, saw  Buffalo Bill's top marksmen in action at a touring Wild West show.

Ad was given to bragging a bit after watching his idol that he would someday break the Doc's record. Later when Captain Bartlett became the king of the tossed targets, Ad boasted that someday he would beat the Captain's mark, too.

The world's marksmanship record was a long cry, however, from Ad's job in  a San Antonio crockery shop. There he doubtless could have gotten a lot of target practice if the proprietor had been willing, but dusting instead of  smashing crockery was a pretty dull job for a young boy with a gun and Ad  finally quit. He didn't seem to progress much farther toward his quest of a world's marksmanship record when he landed a job as a newspaper cartoonist with the San Antonio Daily Express. The new job, however, did give him funds for practice ammunition and though he didn't realize it at the time, his talent for drawing was later to be transferred from pen to the sight end of his rifle and gain him an international audience for his cartooning artistry.

Shortly before he was twenty Ad was booked as local talent into a San  Antonio theater. The theater's manager George Walker was so impressed by Ad's marksmanship that he paid Ad's expenses to New York, hoping to place Ad on the  vaudeville circuit.

New York City, and vaudeville everywhere for that matter, had  nearly as many trick and fancy shooters as it did banjo players. The  jaundiced-eyed vaudeville bookers who refused to follow a banjo act with a banjo act, were unimpressed by the Texas triggerman who was just another would-be  Keith's circuit target trouper to them and no more unique than a trained  seal.

Toepperwein and his potential manager, Walker, gambled their last few dollars and persuaded a booking agent for the B. F. Keith vaudeville circuit to  accompany them at their expense to Coney Island. Up and down the shooting  gallery lanes at Coney, Toepperwein proceeded to blow dime after dime's worth of ammunition blasting every clay pipe, duck, glass ball in each of the galleries  in succession. Within fifteen minutes his amazing marksmanship had gathered a traffic-jamming throng as the Pied Piper of Triggerdom proceeded to temporarily  bankrupt each shooting pitch in turn.

Finally the word spread throughout the whole arcade area and the galleries still to be tested by Topps closed their doors. The Keith's agent  agreed that Top's skill was a bit more unique than ball balancing on a seal's  nose and that Ad's trigger finger held more audience lure than a banjo pick. Topperwein's professional career was under way.

For the next two years Topps filled in at minstrel shows and did his stint of on-stage marksmanship along with trained dog acts and jugglers until  the greater freedom of shooting expression was offered to him as a star with the  Orrin Brothers Circus. For the next eight years, he was featured under the  canvas in nearly every state in the country as well as in Mexico. Twice south of  the border Topps extended his magical touch on the trigger to "miracles."

On one occasion a local Mexican police official asked Topps to shoot at  some silver coins for souvenirs. The chief tossed three silver pesos into the air in rapid succession. Ad scored three hits before the coins reached the ground, winging the bent currency out of the local bull ring. Unknown to Ad at the time, a poverty-stricken peon had been praying for help. As she sat just  outside the adobe walls of the local amphitheater, gazing heavenward and  unclasped her weathered hands, a peso dropped into her outstretched palm.  Another coin jingled to the pavement at her feet. Her prayers had been answered by the miracle performer Toepperwein.

During another barnstorming stint on the bull ring circuit, Ad broke one of his cardinal safety rules. This was the only time during his entire shooting career that Ad fired at a distant target without checking first to be sure no one was in the vicinity of his firing. The circus troupe, en route between performances,  was passing an apparently abandoned mission a hundred yards distant on a  hillside. One of the members of Ad's party challenged him to hit a bell  partially obscured in the mission tower. Ad compensated for what he considered would be the trajectory of his .22 short for the distance. He fired and missed. Instinctively he corrected for his second shot and the bell pealed. Ad followed  up with four more shots and the bell chimed rhythmically. Unknown to Ad the clapper of the bell had long been missing. The tiny church's parishioners were too poor to replace it and had long before become resigned to their muted church  tower. Word of the miracle of the ringing of the clapper less bell spread  rapidly. Within days a tremendous revival of interest occurred in the local  church. Pilgrimages were formed and the long impoverished mission gained needed financial help.

Despite his success in both vaudeville and circus, Ad's ambition to gain the world's marksmanship title had not been fulfilled. His interest had even waned somewhat as his performances became monotonously mechanical. Then in 1901 he was offered and accepted a contract with the Winchester Repeating Arms  Company. He gave up his free-lance demonstrations to become a contract exhibition shooter. At 91, the venerable champion looked back over the long  trail with fond nostalgia. "I'd do it all over again if I had the chance - but  this time around I would stress even more the importance - the vital importance - of every American boy owning a rifle and knowing how to handle it. Working with Winchester as exhibition marksman brought me all I ever wanted; a wonderful wife, the world's rifle shooting championship, travel, good friends and a good living."

The dearest wish of Ad Toepperwein's heart was "That every American citizen  in good standing shall, in accordance with Article Two of our Bill of Rights, be  allowed to keep and bear arms, and that this Constitutional right shall not be infringed! No dictator will ever meddle with a whole nation of marksmen."

"For proof, look at Switzerland. Every man in Switzerland over sixteen is  a trained soldier, with his rifle and marching gear ready at a moment's notice.  Even madman Hitler wanted no part of the sharpshooting Swiss! America could be another Switzerland, if only our lawmakers had the brains and vision to take action. The nation's future existence may depend on it."

For nearly a year Ad did more than a creditable job demonstrating his  employer's wares, but during a visit to the New Haven plant in 1902, he met a  vivacious 18-year-old redhead, Elizabeth Servaty, who was working as a .22  caliber cartridge assembler. Oddly enough Topps didn't meet his future wife at the Winchester plant but rather at the pump in the New Haven Common. A few weeks  later they married and Ad suddenly had a new incentive to strive for even  greater skill with firearms.

Elizabeth had never fired a gun before her marriage but  enthusiastically joined Ad in his exhibition tours and showed no inclination to  remain just an admirer in the audience. Topperwein described their  relationship: "Well sir, to make a short story shorter, we hit it off right away and were married a few weeks later. It sure pleased me when she took an interest in my shooting - most women were scared of guns in those days, you know. I taught her to shoot and soon after we were married Elizabeth was part of my act on my tours, shooting one-inch pieces of chalk from between my fingers, shooting  empty shells off my fingers, and other feats of skill. Later on, she won the title of world's champion woman marksman."

"Winchester signed her too and we became widely known  as the world's greatest shooting team - The Famous Toepperwein's. Man, those were the days! Whole towns turned out to see us perform; schools were closed in order that the kids might come and witness the crack shooting exhibitions."

"Seeing the Toepperwein shooting exhibition is like going to a circus - a rapid succession of thrills and exciting feats, each more unbelievable than the  one before, presented to you by this marvelous pair of shooters with rifle, pistol and shotgun ...These gun wizards put on a program full of variety from the opening gun until the last shot is fired. They shoot at all kinds of objects from every imaginable position - with rifle, pistol and shotgun.

"Clay  pigeons - wooden blocks - composition balls - metal discs - marbles, etc; even  apples, oranges, real hen eggs - all are shattered with different types of guns. Sometimes two- three -four-and even five targets are in the air at the same  time, only to be broken before they fall back to mother earth."

It has always been a debatable question as to which of the Toepperwein's is the better shot, Mr. or Mrs. While both do the most remarkable  shooting stunts, each has a few tough ones which the other hesitates to try, so it is up to you to come and see for yourself. All America came to see for itself - and the friendly family argument was still unresolved at Mrs. Elizabeth (Plinky) Toepperwein's death in 1945. When the question was posed to Ad, he responded: "Well," he grinned, "like the booklet says, I was best at some feats  and she was best at others. Reckon it was a toss-up between us."

"I'll tell you this: She could shoot smoke-rings around Annie  Oakley or any other woman marksman who ever lived! Let me give you just a few of  her records: Her best pistol score: one hundred consecutive shots fired into a five-inch diameter spot at 25 yards. Best rifle score on flying targets was 1460 straight hits on 21/2-inch wooden blocks thrown into the air 25 feet from her  firing position. At Plinky's first attempt at trap shooting at the old DuPont  Gun Club in St. Louis, she scored 86 of 100. She was the first woman ever to score a perfect 100 at clay pigeons. Later she scored 200 straight twelve times  and later rung up 367 consecutive hits. "A hole-in-one in golf is just about like hitting a hundred straight targets in shooting. My wife Plinky did this 193 times in competition."

Until her death in 1945, Plinky continued to be tops in women's shooting,  with either a shotgun, rifle or pistol. With a .38 Colt at 25 yards, she once  turned in a score of 497 out of a possible 500, closely approximating military timed fire. With one string of 50 shots at a far higher rate than timed fire, she scored 492. For more about Plinky Toepperwein, see:

One of Ad's first large assignments for Winchester was at the World's  Fair at St. Louis in 1904. There he established his first official record by smashing 3507 21/4 inch diameter aerial composition targets without a miss. He began to think again of the Carver and Bartlett records longingly and of his youthful claims that someday he would top them. Without publicly admitting it, after his St. Louis record, Top began to train for a try at the Bartlett or  Carver scores. In 1906 he shot at 20,000 2¼ inch wooden blocks during a period of three days' shooting and scored 19,990 hits. He was sure then that all he  needed was the time and proper arrangements to make his official bid to better  Carver's and Bartlett's records.

Finally in San Antonio, on December 13, 1907, at 9:00 o'clock in the morning, Topps was ready to make good the boast he had made nearly fifteen years earlier. His preparations were painstaking. He had hired three young husky  boys to toss his targets and 60,000 21/4 inch Texas white pine wooden blocks  were stacked in a huge mound at the local fair grounds. A score keeper, judge and referee had been engaged to keep an official account of each shot.

Toepperwein on his eighty-eighth birthday in 1957 recounted the story of the official event.

"I will admit," he said, "that when I saw this big pile of blocks which  had been delivered to the fair grounds, I had some misgivings. Would I be able to go through with it? And I did not sleep very well that night. Yet I was in  perfect physical condition and perfect shooting form for I had been shooting daily for a number of years.

"Promptly at 9:00 o'clock on the 13th I fired my first shot. I continued to shoot until twelve o'clock noon when we stopped for an hour for lunch and a  little rest for my target throwers. We resumed the shooting again at one o'clock  sharp and continued shooting until five o'clock that afternoon. I followed this  schedule and program accurately for the next ten days from December 13th to  December 22nd, a total of 68½ hours. I did not shoot over seven hours a day on any day, with the exception of the last day, when I only shot for 5½ hours. I had shot up every cartridge I had and all that I could purchase in San Antonio.

"During these ten days' shooting, I shot a total of 72,500 targets. I  missed four out of the first 50,000 and nine out of the total of 72,500."

Scores for Ad's ten days' shooting were as follows:

Date Targets shot at Number missed

Dec. 13th 7,500 0

Dec. 14th 7,000 1

Dec. 15th 7,500 0

Dec. 16th 7,000 2

Dec. 17th 8,000 0

Dec. 18th 7,000 1

Dec. 19th 7,000 0

Dec. 20th 7,000 4

Dec. 21st 8,000 0

Dec. 22nd 6,500 1

Total 72,500 9

"On the 20th," he continued, "I had my worst day when I missed four targets. The weather during the entire ten days was very bad, cloudy and chilly, with three days of almost continued drizzle rain, which did not help matters much.  One of the boys offered me his raincoat, but I was afraid that it would hamper  my shooting, so I took my medicine while the spectators stood about under  umbrellas and nearby shelters.

"My equipment during the shoot consisted of three Model .03 Winchester 22  Automatic rifles and Winchester ammunition. These rifles held ten cartridges in  the magazine. In order to save time in loading, we used loading tubes, which  held ten cartridges, and all I had to do was to open the magazine and reload the  rifle with ten cartridges. This operation only took up five or six seconds. I loaded the guns myself and changed guns every 500 shots, because in such rapid  shooting, the barrels would be pretty hot. I had no trouble whatsoever with the guns operating. They worked beautifully throughout all the shoot without a  single malfunction or hang-up. The breach mechanism was cleaned every night to remove powder residue: barrels were never touched.

"We had three men to pitch up targets, changing every 500 shots, in order  to keep them from getting too tired and to make it easier for them to throw the  targets with some regularity and speed. These targets were thrown into the air  to a height of between thirty and thirty-five feet, twenty-five feet from where I was standing and as rapidly as possible. Although these young men had a pretty  tiresome job, there was no complaint, and they cooperated with me in every way. They became so accurate in throwing that I was able to shoot at practically  every target they threw. It was only in the very beginning that I refused a few  of them because they were thrown very much out of line.

"As I ran way ahead of my supposed schedule for the first few days, we were running short of blocks toward the end, and the boys selected the blocks  that were not mutilated too much for the rest of the score. Some of these blocks toward the end were rather small, but I was lucky, and I don't think I missed  any on that account. The misses that I made were mostly because my arm was so tired, and the gun seemed so heavy that I just couldn't get it into place.

"I went through this shoot the first few days without much discomfort. Of  course I was tired, but I expected that. However, it was a fact that all during the ten days I had very little sleep. These blocks were so impressed on my memory that nights were simply nightmares, and for some time afterwards I still  dreamed about shooting blocks. From the fourth day until the end.

I was in constant physical misery. My arms and shoulders ached, the  muscles of my neck pained me, and I felt like somebody had pounded me all over the body. To add to this, the fingers and the wrist of my right hand cramped and  caused me a great deal of pain. This was caused mostly because I have a habit of  gripping my gun very tightly with my right hand, and doing so continuously  caused the muscles of my fingers and wrist to cramp. Finally one of the boys suggested some hot water. They made a fire and put on a pail of water, into  which I put my hand frequently to relieve the pain. I was not the only one that  was uncomfortable. My boys that threw the targets were also suffering from stiff  necks and pains in the arms. However, they did not complain and were on the job every minute. It was necessary for me to have a rubdown with the hot bath every  night and another one in the morning to get myself ready for what was before me  the next day.

"On the eighth day I passed Bartlett's record and the crowd cheered  wildly. Some of the spectators begged me to stop at this point, but I was  determined to continue as long as I could hold and aim a rifle and had  cartridges to shoot. Fact is, I was in pretty sorry shape. For the last two  nights I had been so stiff and sore that Plinky (his wife) had to undress me. I couldn't lower my arms below the waist and my shoulders were swollen and tightened. When I flexed my arms, a sharp cramp knotted the biceps of my right arm. By this time I had quite a beard, but I couldn't handle a razor so got a  barber to shave me."

"The ninth day was pretty much of a blur to me; still I continued to fire  away at those infernal targets. Eight thousand of them on this next to last day and I didn't miss a one! But I knew when I got home that night that I couldn't go on much longer. Still I wouldn't quit. I could barely eat and I had lost so much weight that I looked worse than any scarecrow you ever saw! My eyes were bloodshot and no longer came to a clean, sharp focus on the sights. Nights were filled with one long nightmare of flying blocks and the monotonous drone of the  referees, "Hit-Hit-Hit." I found I could get my arms up to shoulder height and  then could not lower them; and once brought back to waist height, I had the  utmost difficulty in lifting them once more."

"The tenth morning the boys had to help me to the firing line. The officials asked me if I was able to continue and I said "Sure!" Then the blocks started sailing up and I started shooting. I don't remember much of the morning  but that huge pile of wooden targets kept growing little by little. A hot lunch  revived me some and I went back at it again after a short rest. I fired my last  cartridge late in the afternoon, hitting the target dead center and splitting it wide open. The boys rushed up  to grab me just as I started to black out a little and then I knew it was all over. I would have liked to have gone on a while longer to have rung up 75,000  targets, but I was very tired, the day was very dark, and anyhow I was out of  ammunition. So I had to let well enough alone: 72,500 targets shot at; 72,491 hits; nine misses.

"Although all this occurred practically fifty years ago, it is all still very fresh in my memory, and I think these were the most eventful days in my  entire life. From the standpoint of the number of targets shot, the number of  targets hit, time consumed and targets hit successively without a miss, this score still stands today as the world's greatest rifle shooting  performance."

Drawing pictures with bullets was one of Ad's most popular stunts. While his art may not be as impressive as his 72,500 wooden block aerial target  score that was 99.9875872% perfect, the keen-eyed Texan's bullet drawings of  Uncle Sam, Sioux Indians in full war dress, Popeye, Jiggs, cowboys and ducks  with 300 rapidly fired shots are prized possessions of gun clubs throughout the country. This remarkable gunsman made famous the Indian-head bullet drawing.  With approximately 450 exceedingly well placed shots, the whole of them delivered in the space of a dozen minutes, he drew the perfect likeness of an  Indian chieftain in full war bonnet regalia. In his heyday, Toepperwein had many contemporaries, some of whom tried to emulate  his Indian, but their efforts were crude indeed compared to his bullet work. Our Texan had been a cartoonist for a San Antonio newspaper before he took up his  guns in the Winchester cause. This artistic background stood him in good stead when bullets replaced his pens and brushes.

His shooting was by no means confined to drawing bullet pictures. He would toss a .32-20 cartridge in the air and shoot the bullet out of the case.  He would turn the Model '03 Winchester .22 automatic on its side, pull the trigger, and as the tiny empty was ejected, flip the rifle to his shoulder and  hit it. He tossed washers in the air and shot through the hole in the middle.  When the crowd cried that it was a fake, he would reach in the box and bring out  a handful of washers with the holes covered with paper. The resulting display, the bullet neatly puncturing the paper, convinced the most doubting.

He stacked five clay pigeons on the stock of the Model 12 Scatter gun, heaved them a dozen feet into the air, then shuffling the slide like a demon,  would break all five before any touched the ground.

He would ask the biggest man in the crowd to come forward and throw an egg for him. The egg would go so high some of the audience would lose sight of it. But not Toepperwein. At the very top of its ascent the eagle-eyed exhibitionist would burst it with nothing more lethal than a dinky ½ ounce load of No. 9 shot from the pipsqueak .410 shotgun. He threw two clay targets, ran twenty feet, turned a somersault, snatched up his trusty shotgun and powdered both of 'em before either could hit the ground. Toepperwein is more than six feet tall and was as agile as a circus acrobat.

His act also included the pistol and some of his best stunts were done with the belt gun. He would lay one six shooter over his shoulder pointed  backward. A second would be aimed forward. The front-looking gun he aimed with his left eye, the backward pointing weapon was aimed with a mirror and the right eye. Try it sometime. When the two guns spoke, they always went right together  and both targets were neatly transfixed.

He had a variation to this trick which was just about as impressive. He  stood directly between two tin cans, each tin about 20 feet distant. He would  take his two six shooters, fire at both cans at the identical moment and  puncture both. This stunt involved aiming carefully at the right-hand can, and  once this aim was good the hand, the arm and the gun had to remain absolutely fixed while he turned his head, aimed with the left gun and once this aim was  okay, then to pull both triggers, neither weapon in the interim having swung wide of the marks.

Many of these phenomenal feats of Ad Toepperwein and his wife Plinky are available on VHS or DVD in the 1941 color video entitled: "The Topps for 40  Years--Ad and Plinky" from www.showmanshooter.com

One time Toepperwein was in Bisbee, Arizona, a miner's town and a tough  spot some fifty years ago. He was doing his stuff before a crowd of miners and,  like every gathering, he had a few hecklers. One of these kibitzers was  especially obnoxious. He questioned the validity of most of the shots which Topperwein made. Finally a big bumble bee came belching out of a hole at the  shooter's feet.

"If you're so damn good, let's see you hit that bee," the miner  bellowed.

Without so much as a second's delay, our Texan swung the little .22  auto-loader from the Indian head which he was fashioning and fired. The bullet did not hit the bee but neatly clipped off a wing. The insect tumbled to the ground. Without so much as a glance our shooter swung back to his bullet drawing, the rhythm of his firing scarcely upset. The crowd fairly howled. The  heckler slunk off to the jeers of his fellows.

If any one man proved the efficiency of the repeating cartridge firearm, it was Ad Topperwein who for 68½ hours averaged more than a thousand shots an hour. In 1959, Tom Frye, a Remington gun salesman,` girded up his loins, loaded  up his Nylon 66 autos and shooting for 14 straight days succeeded in banging  away at 100,010 wooden blocks. He hit all but six. The blocks were the same  dimensions as the Topperwein's targets but the shooting distance appears not to have been the regulation thirty feet. Photos of the Frye performance, which is most exemplary and in its way most surely constitutes a record, shows the blocks were thrown from alongside the shooter's shoulder. Topperwein, it will be  remembered, stationed his thrower some thirty feet directly to his front and had  the targets heaved thirty feet into the air.

On January 5, 1960, Ad Toepperwein wrote the following letter of explanation about the Frye performance:
"It has been announced by the Remington Company that one of their shooting representatives recently shot 100,000 wooden blocks thrown into the air, missing but six. Most wonderful shooting, I would say, and I don't believe he could have hit more if he had set them on a fence post. All shooting with a rifle, pistol or shotgun is judged by distance. This is especially true when shooting a moving object. A score with a shotgun shot at 16 yards does not compare with one shot at twenty. And a score shot with a rifle at 50 yards does not equal one shot at a hundred. I have seen a great many pistol scores at pistol tournaments which produced perfect scores at 25 yards. At the same time I have never seen a perfect score made at fifty. In shooting my block record, which was shot over fifty years ago, I did everything to make it official. It was announced beforehand in all of the newspapers and was witnessed by the public. I had a referee and judge who checked every shot and a separate scorekeeper. The assistant who tossed up the blocks for me stood between 25 and 30 feet in front of me, measured, and tossed the blocks approximately 30 feet straight up in the air. Colonel Charley Askins, noted gun editor who lives in San Antonio, a few days ago received some photographs sent out by Remington. He came to see me the other day just before he set out for his African hunt and told me the pictures he has showed the assistants standing beside the shooter and the blocks were tossed in that manner close to the muzzle of the rifle ?- all of which makes this an entirely different story. This shooter, if he really shot 100,000 targets as he claimed he did, established more of an endurance test than accuracy. I am giving you this information so you may not form a concrete opinion of this man's wonderful performance. Keep your powder dry. Sincerely yours, Top "

Toepperwein followed the rules established by a group of sportswriters of  the time. In Toepperwein's words: "A group of sportswriters, who, tired and disgusted with the conflicting claims of all the self-styled champions,  suggested that all the prominent aerial target shooters of the times get together like sportsmen and gentlemen and draft a set of standard rules. Well, the `sportsmen and gentlemen' did considerable wrangling over conditions, but  they did come up with a set of rules that satisfied everybody - more or  less."

The original paper read as follows:

1. The shooter could use any kind of rifle shooting a solid ball.

2. The target was to be a standard glass or composition ball (Both were  used as shotgun targets at that time).

3. The assistants tossing the targets were to stand between 25 and 30  feet in front of the shooter.

4. The targets were to be thrown into the air at a height of 25 to 30  feet.

5 There must be officials present at all matches; a judge, a referee, and  a scorer to make each match one of record.

Toepperwein continued: "Carver, Bartlett, Dr. Ruth and Annie Oakley set  their records by these rules. Ruth set the first official world's record at aerial targets with a rifle in 1883, when he broke 984 of 1000 glass balls.  Annie Oakley tried to break his mark in 1884, but missed by 41 shots of tying  Ruth's record. Annie's score was 943 hits out of 1000 shots." For more about Annie Oakley, see:
http://www.traphof.org/inductees/oakley.htm

"Doc Carver told me about the rules right here in San Antonio in 1897,"  Ad continued. "Fact is, he wrote 'em down for me and advised me to follow them exactly if I wanted any marks I made recognized as official. He called them by a fancy name: The Carver-Bartlett Rules for Aerial Target Shooting with the Rifle. But then Doc was a fancy fellow. .. I used the rules all the time I was working my way up to be champion."

Please click on letter above for a larger image. When champion of champions Ad Topperwein retired from active campaigning for Winchester in 1951, it did not mean that he had retired from shooting and teaching shooting to others. Herb Parsons, known as the "Showman Shooter", replaced Topperwein giving shooting exhibitions all over the United States. Herb had seen Ad shoot in the 1930's at a grocery wholesale house in Somerville,  Tennessee, and decided he wanted to do the same. Herb was first hired on as a  salesman for Winchester-Western and then began exhibition shooting full time after Ad Topperwein retired. He and Topperwein corresponded regularly and he practiced new shots with "the professor" when he came to San Antonio, Texas. Herb preceded Topperwein in  death when he died in 1959 of complications from surgery. A Parsons video  (Showman Shooter) and full account of his shooting career is available from www.showmanshooter.com

At his retirement, Ad Toepperwein was still connected with the Winchester-Western Company in an honorary and advisory capacity. Although  temporarily sidelined by bad eyesight, he was keeping in shape for eye surgery  in the near future by walking three miles a day and coaching the younger  generation in the correct use of firearms. At his shooting lodge at Leon Springs, Texas, twenty miles north of San Antonio, he held free weekend classes for youths, young business men, soldiers from nearby military bases, and anyone  else who was sincerely interested in the great American sport of rifle and  pistol shooting. The old master talked and the young men listened intently and  then went out on the firing line and practice carefully and patiently what he  had taught. Not a man or boy who attended these weekend sessions doubted for a  moment that "Uncle" Ad would be right up there with them firing away and cracking those aerial targets as of yore, once the eye doctors removed those pesky cataracts from his eyes.

Adolph Toepperwein died in 1962 at the age of  93.