Ross, I used to live near the writer you've just referred to, but lost all desire to meet him after something that my friend Hank White (owner of the H P White Laboratory) said about him. At the lab one day, Hank told me that he envied my ability to write, that he'd always wished he could. Then he waved his hand over toward the writer's place and said "Our neighbor over here can make the English language roll over and do tricks -- but he'll say anything to finish out a page." (I later heard the same kind of allegation from other stalwarts of American gundom.)

That was before I later lived near Elmer Keith and came to know him well. I'd read a lot of Keith's stuff, of course. So I asked Hank whether he knew Keith. "Oh, yes!" he said. "Very well." Then he told me that Keith (a) knew guns and game better than anyone else he knew, (b) was totally serious about guns and hunting, (c) received as a peer and friend anyone who shared his interest in guns and hunting, (d) was the best shot he knew, and (e) was totally and uncompromisingly honest in every way. In the decades that Elmer and I were friends, I found all this to be true of him -- plus the additional attributes that Truman Fowler told me about Elmer -- his instant recall and accurate memory for fine details. From my long familiarity with Elmer, I don't think anyone ever gave him more respect than he deserved. His editors and publishers (except Fowler and General Hatcher) certainly exploited him brutally and unmercifully.

Incidentally, during the senior Askins' last years, when he was bed-ridden and unable to keep up his commitment to the magazine (Outdoor Life, IIRC), Elmer ghost-wrote his articles and columns for him -- so that Askins, Sr, would continue to receive his stipend. I always got the impression that the older Askins and Elmer had a better, closer "father-son" relationship than Sr & Jr had -- at least as mutually esteemed writers.