December 22, 1907, San Antonio, Texas.

It was Day Ten. He’d needed help to get to the firing line today. His arms were so tired and sore, he could barely hold them up. His shoulders throbbed and, to add to his misery, the fingers and wrist on his right hand kept cramping. Still, he continued to raise the Model .03 Winchester .22 Automatic Rifle to his shoulder and shoot at one airborne block of wood after another, stopping only long enough to reload or change rifles.

It was growing dark. Numb with fatigue and close to blacking out, he fired at the final target, neatly splitting the 2¼-inch cube in half. “Hit,” called the referee. The crowd went wild. Adolph Topperwein, or Ad as he was called, lowered his rifle. He had shot at a total of 72,500 wooden targets, seven hours a day, over 10 consecutive days. That’s 1,035 shots an hour! Even more impressive, he’d missed only nine.

Ad Topperwein, the son of a gunsmith who built custom-made rifles for buffalo hunters, was initiated into the shooting life early. By the time he was eight, he knew how to use a crossbow, and he could out-shoot adults with his 14-gauge muzzleloading shotgun.

When he was 11, Ad stood spellbound as he watched the legendary Doc Carver shoot aerial targets with his rifle at Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. That’s what he wanted to do! His father had died the year before, and he had no one to coach him, but that didn’t stop Ad. He practiced constantly, developing his own tricks as he went along, and by age 16 he could duplicate everything Carter, his idol, did.

Ad became a cartoonist for a local newspaper, earning extra money at exhibitions in and around San Antonio, Texas. He was good enough to acquire an agent and, when he was 21, the two went to New York’s Coney Island and the shooting gallery concessions. There, Ad closed down six galleries, shooting every target and taking home all the prizes while gaining an ever-increasing throng of well-wishers and reporters. Other gallery owners, hearing of Ad’s prowess, quickly closed their doors rather than go bankrupt, too.

The feat was enough to get him signed to vaudeville. Over time, the sharpshooting and artistic Mr. Topperwein developed a specialty that would serve him well over the next several years as he performed in vaudeville and, later, the circus. Sitting on the ground, he’d shoot into a blank sheet of paper about 25 feet in front of him, placing the bullets at ½-inch intervals. The resulting bullet holes formed a picture of an Indian, Uncle Sam, a cowboy or some such. No other trick shooter could “draw” with bullets, and Ad became an instant crowd-pleaser.

Eventually, Ad went to work for Winchester Repeating Arms Company, where he continued to display his skills as an exhibition shooter. It was while working for Winchester that he accomplished the dream of his youth, finally beating Doc Carver’s aerial shooting scores and setting his own world marksmanship record.