With all the comments on another thread, (mine included) I realized that I was not influenced by them, as my opinions were determined and set before I discovered them. In fact I never heard of Jack O'Connor until after he was dead.
My first read of his work was a publication put out by Guns and Ammo after his death. Prior to that, I never heard or read a single word of his and by then was already "closer" to his camp for general hunting, but also a leaning towards Elmer with a growing passion for larger bore rifles, albeit with larger doses of velocity than traditionally associated with bigger bores.
In my earlier days, Aussies were using mil-surp rifles and smaller caliber cartridges like the .222, .22/250 and .243 with a .270 considered a big rifle, a .30/06 quite rare unless you ventured into sambar country and Aussies tended to step up to the .375 and to a lesser degree the .458 for bigger game.
A door survey I conducted at an SCI convention many years back determined that the .338 handloaded with 250gn Partitions was by a long way, far ahead of anything else with international hunters.
Most Aussies tended to self determine their needs and only commonly read or agreed with reviews of what they were already using again, through self determination. If you covered "their" cartridge, they bought the magazine. It was commonly called "the flick test" but flipping through the pages on the news stand to "audition" the publication. The 1980's is where the US publications started to become more common and my generation was already an opinionated bunch by then.
