Posted on 08/17/2008 12:30:19 AM PDT by Neil E. Wright
So, I'm surfing around tonight and I found this page which will be of interest to all shooters. The bio of Ad Topperwein, who in 1907, set a record for shooting that stands to this day. Enjoy this snippet from a VERY LONG article. I would strongly suggest reading the whole article at the link.
..... snip .....
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. ..... end snip .....
I wouldn’t try to shoot a center-fire rifle from before the modern age of metalurgy, but I occasionally see 22’s from the late 1800s which still drive tacks, particularly the Marlin lever actions.
One of my favorite stories:
My father and uncle were watching Topperwein shoot off the Galveston sea wall (sometime during the 1930s). Throwers tossing the wooden blocks, Topperwein picking them out of the air with his .22. After 100 or so shots, my uncle (standing close to Topperwein) said to my father, “I’d give a thousand dollars to be able to shoot like that!”
Topperwein heard him and looked at him when he retorted, “That’s just about what it cost!”.
My first impression was that he was using a shotgun, and I was thinking it wasn’t that big of a deal. But a .22 lever action??? Un Freaking Real. Wow.
>22 Automatic. Still Unbeleiveable.
There is display on this at the Buckhorn Hall of Horns on Houston Street in San Antonio.
Pretty cool stuff.
WOW ! Thanx for good start to a Sunday mornin....
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To demonstrate the reliability of the newly introduced Nylon 66.
“No greater tribute could be bestowed on any rifle than what it accomplished in the hands of Tom Frye, trick shooter and field representative for Remington. In 1959, to break Ad Topperwein’s world record of hitting 72,500, 2-1/2” wooden blocks thrown into the air, Frye used three Model 66’s to hit 100,004 wooden blocks out of 100,010 thrown. To do it, Frye shot 1,000 shots an hour, eight hours a day, for 13 consecutive days without one malfunction or misfire.”
True ... Tom Frye did shoot over 100K blocks with that Remington, but he used a different protocol. The person tossing the blocks in the air stood behind his shooting shoulder and tossed the blocks along the flight path of the bullet. Not quite the same as Ad, who placed his tossers 25-30 feet away and had them toss the blocks 20-30 feet into the air.
My Dad gave me a Remington Nylon 66 for my 16th birthday. I fired thousands and thousands of .22s through that rifle without ever having a malfunction. Sold it to a friend in 1976. Wish I still had it.
I didn’t know that, thanks! Some of McGivern’s aerial shooting is amazing as well.
Thanks for the great article.
“Go hunting with your boy today and you won’t have to hunt for him tomorrow.”
Herb Parsons
I’ll have to keep my eyes open for one when I am cruising through the shows.
Taurus makes a replica.
L
I first heard about him from Unintended Consequences.
I’d be looking for the real thing.
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