Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Clay Harvey

Just finished paging through a NAHC book he wrote from the 80's.
Where did he get to?

Do a search and you should find a long thread about him. He was a fraud and burnt a lot of brigdes.

I was looking at some old Guns and Ammo annuals a while back and he was in some of them. I never noticed at the time but he used some of the same pictures for different articles.

He was being sent guns for testing and he was selling them instead of returning them to the manufacturers. And he was really short on hunting experience except for deer and hogs. It seemed his every story about hunting other animals began with "My pal Rick Jamison says".

I donated a couple of photos to that book; a really incredible Mountain caribou and a hell of a sheep.

Yep, "My pal Rick Jamison" and "My buddy, Layne Simpson" got a bit old. Both are incredible rifle shots and hunters and stand-up guys, by the way.

Clay, well he is a thief and a liar.

Took a couple of Rolex watches from my jewelry store and never paid a dime. My stupidity ... I should have sensed he was a charlatan.

GREAT folks from Colt, HK, ULA and beyond got taken for many thousands of dollars. Eventually, the asswipe was blackballed from the trade.

I believe it was John Amber, the editor of Gun Digest, who shut him down ... unparalleled in the history of the trade.

The sad part is that he killed a lot of trust that manufacturers had for gunwriters. And it hasn't been the same ever since.

Last I heard, Clay was working as a gopher in a yogurt shop down in South Carolina. He is under-qualified for the job and I the nineteen-year old manager should NEVER trust him with money.

God Bless,

Steve

I posted extensively on other threads, so will only mention that Harvey also stiffed S&W, and used the money he stole from the various companies to go on a big safari in Zinbabwe--where he stiffed the safari company as well.

I know this because I hunted Botswana with his PH in 2003, who suddenly got very suspicious of me when he found out I was "one of those gun writers." We got it all sorted out quickly enough, however, after I told him the U.S. side of the Clay Harvey story.

One other, minor point. The publisher sent me a review copy of Clay's book, Popular Sporting Rifle Cartridges. Eventually I added it up, and found of the 50 cartridges "reviewed" in the book, Harvey had only taken game with a little over half--if he was telling the truth, which I doubt.

Wow. this is some of the nicest stuff Ive ever heard said of Clay Harvey.....

Oh, pitiful "Clay Story" you'll never read about in the gunfunnies.

Chub and Rick were booked for an incredible mule deer hunt in Colorado. The area was hot, the bucks were huge and the guiding outfit was the best.

Anyway, that was when Clay was using the word "transmogrification" an such, so he worked his very fat, very short body into an invitation.

Fast forward to the horse corral on the first day of the hunt. Everybody in on their horses and heading out of camp. Clay is the last rider.

Chub told me that maybe two minutes into the ride, he heard a half-dozen shots behind him. Everybody stopped.

Clay was off his horse and running through the brush with his very fat, very short body and a looong magazine in his HK. Bang, Bang, Bang.

The outfitter yells STOP, DAMMIT STOP.

Clay yelled back, DEER, DEER, DEER.

After they got Clay all calmed down and out of hyper-ventilation, they found he'd wounded three does. The outfitter stripped his HK (what in the hell was he even using that for?), threw the long magazine and boolets into the brush and put Clay on his horse back to camp.

The outfitter's wife put Clay on a plane the next day and his illegal doe meat went to a widow lady in town (we used to do that when I was guiding)

Chub went on the kill the mule deer of his dreams, a 30-inch heavy horned monster, a couple of days later. And Rick, who is a fuggin' stone killer, shot an even bigger mega-monster of a mulie.

I always wished somebody who was worthy had gone on that hunt ... and surely not Clay Harvey. Honestly, I would have traded my left bicycle for that total honor

True story.

God Bless,

Steve

Clay Harvey basically = NO ACCOUNT SON OF A SHOAT!

Clay once called me with a question.

"Steve, I know you've killed a lot of deer with the 7X57. How many rounds does it take to kill a deer."

My answer, "One."

Hell, it was the truth.

Steve

Clay must have been born C-section.

Hell, if he made any money in the gun writing biz, I should write a self-help book about being a successful life coach and marital counselor.

Steve,

Somehow I can't help myself, apparently because it's Saturday and I don't have to work: On the Zim safari Clay brought some reduced loads for his .458 Winchester, intending to use them on small stuff like steenbok. Unfortunately, he had one in the chamber when he shot at his Cape buffalo, which ran off mildly wounded and was never found, because the understandably thin blood trail quickly petered out.

Of course Clay stiffed the safari company for the trophy fee, among other things.

It's too bad. He seemed to be able to group words together well enough to become a "writer" to begin with.

But honesty and truthfulness were qualities he seemed to be completely bereft of.

I feel for his wife and kids.

ANY WOMAN TO FALL FOR HIS LIES PROBABLY DESERVED WHAT SHE GOT. powdr

Rooms,

Darn, I love Saturdays

Hugs to you and Eileen from both of us,

Steve

One of the more informative threads on Clay Harvey is this one that ran from 2006 to 2011: [color:#0000FF]So, what ever happened to ...[/color]

Some interesting points found therein:

1) Further notes elaborating on CH's tendency to practice anticipatory communism.

2) He's written some thriller-mystery fiction books under his own name and a pen name of "Leo Atkins".

3) Initially skeptical, Ken Howell read a couple of Harvey's books. Ken was "both agreeably amazed and mightily impressed! ... [CH] writes with a lot more skill than he showed as a gun writer."

4) MD/JB produced a fine statement:

--Bob

I like Clay's story about shooting a huge bear in either north or south Caroline, I don't remember which State, with a 6.5x55, maybe a ULA/NULA.

IIRC, Peter Hathaway Capstick borrowed some other Profession Hunters' experiences when he wrote about his experience as a PH in Death In The Long Grass and the books that followed DITLG.

Yeah, Clay did shoot a large black bear in North Carolina with a Swede.

Jeff,

The difference is Capstick wrote adventure stories, and even when he first started publishing some people realized his books were semi-fiction--especially many African professional hunters. Capstick reworked the stories into very entertaining books, that even African professionals appreciated, because they drew more hunters to Africa.
And while he "borrowed" other people's stories, he didn't steal guns.

John,

Those are two entirely different things, at least in my mind, one is the embellishment of stories and one is a criminal act. Harvey and Capstick both embellished their stories, borrowing from others and claiming it as their own. As far as the theft of firearms and services goes, I guess that those whose firearms and services were stolen didn't feel damaged to such a degree that they felt compelled to file charges against Harvey and pursue restitution through the courts. I have read that he stole those things, but I have never heard that he was charged, tried, and convicted of any of them. If those who were wronged chose not to pursue a legal remedy, that doesn't excuse the bad act, but it does raise the question of why they let Harvey off the hook. It seems to me that failure to act on what is right only encourages the wrong doer to repeat that behavior.

Just like our, America's, failure to deal with illegal aliens in the manner proscribed by law only encourages more foreign citizens/subjects to come to America illegally. Or so it seems to me.

Jeff