When we were growing up, JOC's work was more hunting oriented than technically oriented, while, IIRC, Warren Paige's work was significantly more technically oriented than hunting oriented. JOC was the primary shooting sports writer at Outdoor Life and WP was the primary shooting sports writer at Field & Stream. I liked JOC, while my Father, being more technically oriented, preferred WP. Neither of us were fans of John Jobson at Sports Afield, but I can't remember exactly why, maybe just because 2 magazine subscriptions was felt to be enough.
John Jobson was NOT the shooting/hunting columnist at
Sports Afield. Instead he was the camping columnist, back when each of the so-called Big Three outdoor magazines--
Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and
Sports Afield--all had camping columns, along with fishing, boating, etc. This was before the so-called "vertical" magazines started appearing which specialized in certain subjects.
Handloader and
Rifle were a couple of examples, but for a while there was also a magazine totally devoted to crappie fishing, believe it or not.
I liked John Jobson's firearms and hunting stuff a lot--and never could understand why he wasn't the "shooting" columnist at SA. The guy who was in those years, Pete Brown, had a lot of technical knowledge--much of it acquired during his military career--but his writing was flat and boring. I suspect Jobson might not have wanted to be the shooting columnist, because a lot of what SA ran back then, via Brown, was results of major competitive shotgun events. (Plus, I don't recall anything by Jobson about shotgunning or bird-hunting.) Which was part of the reason SA was a rather distant 3rd place in circulation behind F&S and OL.
