Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters A little (hopefully) constructive criticism

Printed a month before but could have been written 1-6 months or more earlier.

Critiquing gunwriters on a gunwriters forum would seem to be a bit of a slippery slope.

BH
Don't worry about it as the common denominator fpr slander is always generalizations rather than factual, provable, repeatable, differences in experiences or opinion.

"Print is dead." -Dr. Egon Spengler, 1984

I'm certainly not a gunwriter, but I'll opine that as MD said above, there are some magazines that you can tell care more about their readers than their advertisers and it's pretty easy to tell. For a great many reasons, mainly because I like to read and stay up on what is going on in the hunting/shooting industry, I subscribe to at least 15 different hunting and gun related magazines and religiously read them all. To me, it is obvious which ones cater to advertisers since I'm usually done with the magazine in an hour. The ones that care about their readers can take me days to finish and I make copies of the articles that I think can help me in the future that I file away for later reference. In these magazines, you will find writers that do make their opinions known and will tell it like it is. The caveat is that I think I can usually tell when these writers have been "assigned" a certain topic or product review and most of the time it is a very short, concise review without much praise. If this is the case, I know the writer didn't like the product much, even though he never said it outright. Unfortunately, that is the PC way most writers must have to operate in today's corporate world. At least that is how I see it.

In summary to Blackwater, pick the right magazine(s) and I think you'll probably find more of what you're looking for.

Unless, of course, the problem is a gun writer advising people to use unsafe loading practices - practices which can, and have been, proven to be unsafe.

David

MD, thanks for the very honest and informative reply. I do, as a matter of fact, understand completely about the change in our country and its mood. Seems like everybody everywhere is fragmenting out in one way or another, and to a very dysfunctional degree. It's sad, but ... it's sure as heck real!

Didn't know about the rest, and I appreciate your candor. It's one of the reasons your articles are over half of the issues I buy on the news stands. Brian Pearce is the other. Few other authors draw enough of my attention enough to make a purchase.

And just in case anyone can get the message to the owners, I hardly ever read the product reviews any more because my experience has been that they just can't be trusted. I've read an article, then found an example on the shelf at the LGS, and found something significantly different than the evaluator in the magazines, so that'll sour a guy over time, even when he really WANTS to buy and subscribe to the magazines.

I like the 'net, obviously or I wouldn't be here, but I used to keep the magazines. Had 15 big boxes of magazines and old Outdoor Life and Field & Stream Book Club books all packed nice and neat and tightly when I left for a stint across the big pond in SE Asia, and when I got back, found my mother in law had BURNED them!!! I had some back to '46 & '48, and I cherished those old mags and books. Just thought since you were so thoughtful in your reply, I'd let you know that I DO enjoy your writing, and Pearce's, and occasionally another writer or two.

For me, at least, there'll never be a substitute for having hard copies of good info. I'll still search back through them occasionally to find some stuff I need to know, or just want to read again. Kind'a like visiting an old friend, really.

So thanks for your reply and candor, and all I can say is that I really hope everything doesn't go "digital" because we'll lose some things then that I don't really think we're going to find very pleasing in the end. With all the talk about control of the internet, it's surely coming, and the "free press" COULD be significantly LESS free when that happens, but I'm just an old, crotchety curmudgeon these days, and don't know spit, so ... I just hope I'm wrong. I have a couple of really great grandsons coming up that I'd really like to see be able to enjoy even half of what I have in my time. Hope you're one of the "old heads" that are around to keep 'em straight when I'm not around any more. Your honesty is one of the things I appreciate most about your writing. It's valued a lot these days.

...edit...major internet issues. When I typed the question, I was actually responding to the comments on the first page!

One of the reasons I care less for many magazines than I used to, and only buy them on the newsstands therefore.

I would actually buy books if magazines would print good excerpts rather than the sometimes shallow articles.

It'll be a sad day when the books disappear. And content over the Internet gets "controlled" because we will have lost some real freedoms.

The techno micro bite articles geared toward the "short information crowd" (is ADD a common social disease today?) are good if you are interested in a certain piece of gear. Otherwise they read like instruction manuals. Utilitarian, but boring and lacking inspiration. They drove me away from most magazines.

There are still outdoor authors like Mule Deer who know how to write;and demonstrate the field experience to be creditworthy.

But a lot of stuff today is like watching an episode of Beevus and Butthead after reading Huckleberry Finn

Now there's some signature line stuff.

Thanks BobinNH,

Geno

There is a larger danger then the internett is controlled. And that is that information are tailor made to your specific views.

Meaning, we could both be reading the same article, in the same newspaper, but its worded differently, by algorithems tailor made to all my previous searches on the net.

If I am weary of X, and you are not, AI-like supercomputers would word the articles, either to raise fear level or lower it, depending on what "the powers that be" whants the population to think.

The changes would be miniscule, but would keep the population in the dark on what its really going on.

When I was ten or so I started reading books that were in my grandfather's library. He was the Dean of the Engineering Dept at Texas A&M and had a room full of books covering many topics.

The first book I read was, "Man Eaters of Kumaon", and it blew me away. I'd rather read a book than a magazine article and a magazine article over an Internet article. It doesn't seem to me that as many books are written today about hunting and most magazine articles on hunting are thinly disguised advertising. So that leaves the Internet for me.

Mr. Deer's writing is a pleasant exception.

Man Eaters is still very high on my list. I re-read it every few years. I have a tattered paperback that's at least 40 years old, but also picked up a 2-volumn hardcover omnibus a few years back. Corbett was an amazing man. RevMike put me onto the books of Kenneth Anderson, a near- contemporary of Corbett. His books can be had fo free in various e- versions, and while not quite up to Corbett's standard, they are excellent reads and give a view of another part of the country.

As for today's magazines, the Wolfe publications still stand out for quality and depth, despite the changes that have taken place over the last few years that so many grouse about. Hopefully, the change of editor won't mess things up.

I often take advantage of the discount offers to new subscibers of the other gun rags, which generally work out to about a buck a copy, but seldom renew. Most issues ain't worth the dollar.

That will certainly be a danger. Quite astute of you to point it out for those not paying attention.

Geno

Interesting thread, indeed. I'm afraid the old style of magazine in our field is, indeed gone. I think one of the big reasons is that reading, for the pure pleasure of it, is far less common. TV, internet, etc. have changed the average "reader" into, as JB pointed out, someone who doesn't want to engage a 3000+ word article.

The "article" that sells is a picture of a hunter with arrows and captions pointing to the gear being used, with a one or two paragraph blurb describing the buck harvested as a result of that gear. Pictures with captions beat out narrative every time.

There are a few writers extant that can still write an article that both informs AND entertains. And that is why I'm anxiously awaiting JB's new book! Sure wish Brian Pearce would write a book one of these days...he has that talent as well.

Great post by Mule Deer. I loved the well written longer articles of earlier days but I agree that many people don't read the way they did due to shorter attention spans. This applies to lots of other areas including music and political discourse. The world keeps changing and not always for the good.

I'm not totally convinced that the new magazine formats are a result of reader taste; more like a case of folks reading what's available. The www is headed in the same direction, bits and pieces of information buried amid ad content. Some news sites have become almost unreadable, even with pop-up blockers enabled. I've taken to also turning off JavaScript, which helps, at least on the iPad. Another issue is advertising disguised as content, especially as "news".

Wonder where we'll turn next, when the web becomes too cluttered with crap.

And just what do you old farts want a writer to write about?

When it comes to rifles and shotguns, new introductions are for the most part throwaway items, not meant to be collector pieces 75plus years from now. I would say the two most significant new rifle additions-over here-would be the Kimber and Forbes, and how many times would you be willing to read another in depth review of their pros/cons? Europe seems to be where the new quality rifles and shotguns are coming from. Unfortunately most here are not all that enthusiastic about quality.

Quality scopes and binoculars are definitely on an upward trend.

Long range shooting is the current craze and those who practice the art spend big dollars to do so. The new guys are into it. The bad knees crowd, not so much.

Most of the old crew are not all that interested in the black rifles, so those write ups usually have little attraction for them. Yet when I go to the range that is pretty much what the current generation is fooling around with.

A good writer can do a historical piece on one of the old time rifles/shotguns and most of the current generation
could care less. What's a publisher to do? What's a writer to do?

So what is current you would be willing to pay for? However for the most part, the demographic that is spending essentially cares less about what most of us old guys are into. They are making their own memories, so in order to have it go into print it best be something that attracts them also.

All excellent points.

Thirty years ago I made 95% of my living writing hunting and fishing stories, either how to do both, or just a story about a particular hunt. There was a market for that sort of STORY back then. Nowadays if you don’t kill a B&C animal there isn’t, and even then there isn’t any story, aside from what special unit you drew your tag in, or the rifle, scope, bullet, length of the shot, etc.

That was long enough ago that when Sporting Classics reprinted one of my hunting stories a year or two ago, a lot of readers asked me when I’d started writing “that sort of story.”