Thank God we live in a country where we not only have guns, but we can use them to hunt and shoot and we can write and talk publicly about them!
I once heard someone say "I wish I was born a 100 years earlier!". Well, for me I have no regrets about when I lived, for I propose we are in the Golden Age of shooting and hunting. And, I'm glad I'm a small part of it.
I've only one published article, one about the Blackhawk helicopter. Got a lot to say, just can't seem to put it on paper.
My days are filled with work. I'm happy if I can manage a couple of weeks of hunting and shooting each year. I know, only I can fix that, but.....
I do enjoy what I do. After a mediocre career as an Army enlisted man, Warrant Officer and Officer, mostly flying helicopters and playing cavalry, I've settled in as a contractor helping train our combat brigades at Ft. Irwin, CA on their way to Iraq and Afghanistan. It's a suck place to live with respect to weather, hunting and fishing, etc., but it's for a reason I live here.
I'm a long time hunter, mostly working on the premis that "even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then". I have a few heads on the wall. Having a bad case of tinitis tends to send me to the prairies to hunt, rather than to the woods. I admit to an affliction called Ruger Collector. Again, I'm not very good at it. I just can't stop myself from dragging out one that they only made a very few of to go hunting. Last year's elk rifle was a Ruger 1S in .300 H&H.
I've read every thing JO, EK, and BH ever wrote. As a kid the new issue of Field and Stream was like Christmas every month. My mom bought me my first Gun Digest for a Christmas present in '68. To this day, that's the present that means the most to me. I've been lucky that my wife of 32 years knows what I want for Christmas and sees fit to buy it for me. Yeah, I know it comes out in Feb or so each year, but I purposely avoid it at B&N until Christmas, cause I know after all the presents are opened I'll get to read it on Christmas day. It's always been worth waiting for. I really like the One Good Gun articles.
When I got back from RVN in '71 I gave myself a Christmas present of a new Ruger M77RS in .350RemMag. I bought it from SR&Co. in Fayetteville, NC for $165. I've been "stuck on stupid" when it comes to Rugers and .350s ever since.
To all you great gun writers now. Keep doing what you're doing. Kids, both young and old, still enjoy reading and dreaming over your work every month. And please, put some of yourself in every article. Be technical when you need to be, but be human the rest of the time.
