Though Toepperwein's father specialized in making rifles for use by buffalo hunters, the buffalo had been hunted to the brink of extinction by the time young Toepperwein came of age. Hired guns like Johnny Ringo and his ilk had long since been declared liabilities by the same society that once hired them. Professional opportunities in the shooting business were limited.
Toepperwein, born in Boerne and raised in nearby Leon Springs, grew up hunting and target shooting and then tried working in a crockery shop and as a cartoonist for a San Antonio newspaper. He figured he might be able to make a living by doing the thing he loved after he saw famed marksman "Doc" W.F. Carter at one of Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Shows. The young Toepperwein felt he could not only duplicate Carter's feats, but exceed them. When a shootist known as Captain Bartlett broke Carter's records, Toepperwein predicted that he would someday beat that record as well.
Toepperwein found work at a theater in San Antonio where the theater manager, George Walker, was so impressed with the young man's shooting ability that he paid Toepperwein's way to New York City in hopes that the trigger-happy young Texan might find work in vaudeville.
He did, but barely. A lot of young men of that time from all over the country had grown up shooting and were quite good at it and were also trying to make a living with their trigger fingers. Toepperwein created his own big break by closing down the shooting galleries at Coney Island simply by shooting hundreds of times without missing. The galleries he didn't clear of prize merchandise closed their doors before Toepperwein could get there. People paid attention, which caught the attention of a theatrical agent who signed Toepperwein to the Orin Brothers Circus. Billed as "Dead Eye Dick" in vaudeville circles, Toepperwein put on shooting exhibitions all over the United States and Mexico for the next eight years.
In 1901, Toepperwein left the vaudeville and circus life and went to work for the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, staging exhibitions featuring Winchester rifles. He did that for 50 years and in the process established himself as the world's greatest marksman. He also helped his wife, Elizabeth, become one of the world's top female sharpshooters.
Elizabeth Servaty worked as a cartridge assembler at Winchester's New Haven, Conn. plant when she met Ad Toepperwein in 1903, and married him just a few weeks later. Though Elizabeth had never so much as fired a gun before she met Ad, she became a part of his act by becoming one of the world's best female sharpshooters. Publicity, agents Americanized their last name and billed them as "The Famous Topperwines." She was so good that there was debate about which of the Toepperweins was the better shot.
Ad set his first world's sharpshooting record at the St. Louis Fair in 1904. Two years later, in the course of a three-day exhibit, he successfully shot 19,999 out of 20,000 hand-thrown wooden blocks; no explanation has ever been made for the one he missed.
What is widely considered to be the best shooting exhibition ever staged took place from December 13-22, 1907, in San Antonio. During that 10-day stretch, shooting three Winchester .22 automatics for seven hours a day, Toepperwein missed just nine of 72,500 wood blocks thrown in the air. A foreign enemy or a band of outlaws could have taken over the city by the end of it because Toepperwein used up every piece of available ammunition in the course of the exhibition. It was during this exhibition that he made good on his youthful boasts as he bested the records of Carver and Captain Bartlett, just as he had bragged that he would do. Of course, it's not bragging if you actually do it.
The Famous Topperwines toured together for more than 40 years. She was called Plinky because the first time she successfully shot a tin can she responded the noise it made by saying, "I plinked it!" She went on to plink a lot of targets, at one point setting the world endurance trap shooting record by hitting 1,952 of 2,000 in five hours and twenty minutes. She was inducted into the trapshooting hall of fame in Vandalia, Ohio in 1969.
Ad Toepperwein conducted shooting camps in Leon Springs after he retired from the Winchester Company in 1951, and was elected to the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. He died in San Antonio in 1962, and is buried next to Plinky in Mission Burial Park.
