Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What is up with Field and Stream?

My sense is that Bob Marshall -- who writes the "Green Sportsman" line as the "conservation" interest -- seems to be pretty sour about hunters. He has even signed onto the idea that the difference between a sportsman and a poacher is that the sportsman is the one that did not bag any game.

This followed on the heels of the Zumbo event. Thing is, I have the sense Zumbo was and is much more tolerant of mouse guns than Marshall is of Fuddites -- yet Marshall isn't getting whacked -- perhaps only because he isn't as popular?

Dan

My personal take on that thought: any endeavor (and sportman like events apply here) where big money can influence ethics, conduct, attitude, whatever, only invites more cheating. And will always be so due to the overall nature of mankind. It is up to those in the ranks, the true sportsman to police and monitor it through whatever is available to them.

Those from other areas who use that issue as an excuse, need to look at the whole picture of humanity. Perhaps they might find something worthwhile to whine about closer to home. Then again, maybe they need to do something about it.

Anybody know - isn't Field & Stream a Time/Life publication now too? Haven't even look at one for several years.

Rem7 -- your comment is generally valid. But it occurs to me I should have posted a link to the blog in question. My complaint is that the author seems pretty sour about sportspeople. He could be offering suggestions -- even suggestions advocating a more "green" position; instead he offers insults.

http://fieldandstream.blogs.com/conservation/2007/02/when_sportsmen_.html

Dan

Given the choice between F&S and a kick in the balls, I'd subscribe to a kick in the balls. Wouldn't wipe my arse with F&S! It's amazing to me how some of these guys treat their readers. What's up with the "sportsmen" that keep buying that crap.

I disagree with the title which is not accurate and way too loaded for my taste.

I also think it is poor form for a "hunter writer" to quote a "wardens' joke" which some will find funny, but is definitely biased and clearly not accurate in portraying the vast majority of sportsmen.

Both his title and his joke are lacking in sensitivity and are poor representations of reality; therefore I find them somewhat irresponsible.

That being said, I think it would be against hunters' interest to turn this into a "national issue" like it was done with Zumbo's blog.

I don't want to tie in with the Zumbo anger issue -- except as a comparison...

Zumbo's faux pas generated far more anger, and was not consistent with his general attitudes towards 2nd amendment issues. Marshall's positions over the years have shown him to be much friendlier to liberal politics and spin (particularly re open space issues -- there has been much debate as to whether roadless areas represent closing wilderness to people without weeks and horses to get into the region, or whether the Open Fields bill that Kerry [and Schumer] signed onto [Schumer, after soliciting support for the bill -- calling it a candidacy endorsement, happened to forget to re-endorse it after the election] simply represents a bone tossed to the hunters; the interview of Kerry was very *friendly* -- not simply a question of unbiased, but it did not ask some questions that likely should have been asked):

http://publicola.mu.nu/archives/2004/12/03/trust_who.html
http://www.thegunzone.com/rkba/kerry04/jkfp-fs.html
http://www.tonydean.com/issues2.html?sectionid=6005

Very interesting spinning going on...

As for whether Marshall should be Zumboed -- it is hard to say without risking raising ire. However, I will say that, along with Zumbo, a lot of hunters have been Fudded, called "Fuddites," etc. To this extent, I am struck that the type of language leveled at Zumbo, and hunters (elitist, uninterested in 2nd amendment protections, etc) may actually apply to Marshall much more than they apply to Zumbo.

Dan

I spent years organizing a big game records club. I met 1000's of "sportsman". I was hoping to find people that shared my interests and ethics. I found a handful. The rest were sportsman of convenience meaning law and ethics were to be used only when it suited them.
George Rieger, the former F&S conservaton columnist, had a column years ago where he speculated that rural people were more ethical hunters because of their supposed connection to the land. I wrote and told him the reality around here and he replied that he wrote the article wishing it was more true than it was.

http://blog.kingsoutdoorworld.com/

Field & Stream, Outdoor Life Bought by New Owner
FIELD & STREAM, OUTDOOR LIFE MAGAZINES FIND NEW OWNER

Sweden�s Bonnier Magazine Group will acquire Time Inc.�s Parenting Group and Time4Media titles, which include Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and 16 others. With the purchase, Stockholm-based Bonnier and its U.S. magazine partner, Winter Park, Fla.-based World Publications, will become one of the largest consumer publishing groups in America, with 40 titles and annual revenue of more than $350 million. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approval.

The acquired magazines are as follows: Parenting, Babytalk, Popular Science, Field & Stream, Outdoor Life, Yachting, MotorBoating, Salt Water Sportsman, Skiing, SKI, TransWorld SKATEboarding, TransWorld SNOWBOARDING, TransWorld MOTOCROSS, TransWorld SURF, ride bmx, QUAD, SHOT BUSINESS and TransWorld business. Editorial, sales and marketing staff will remain in New York, California and Colorado.

What is up wiht F&S?

Well, it sucks, and it's sucked for a long time.

I agree that F and S had declined in quality. I do not need to know how to start a fire, use a compass, skin a buck.

Hadn't cast a glance at either OL or F&S for many years. Picked one or t'other up in a reception area a few years ago, only because everything else on the pile was a woman's magazine of some sort.

Nothing in that "outdoors" magazine but hiking, camping, fishing and boating articles. Not one hunting or firearms story, nor any ads for firearms neither. Did have some nice bicycle ads though.

Not the same magazine that I received as a boy, many years ago.

Classic comeback in the blog;
"Yeah, and maybe the only difference between a gun writer and a product whore is opportunity.

Absolutely pathetic."

Love it!

dubePA--

You picked up SPORTS AFIELD during a brief period (as I remember less than a year) when the suits/nitwits at the Hearst publishing company decided to turn it into a "green" magazine. This did not last long, partly because the greenies were not about to buy a copy of SPORTS AFIELD, and hunters and anglers were not abouit to buy a magazine without any hunting and fishing.

Circulation dropped about 50% in that time period, and eventually Hearst (after having almost consciously having tried to kill the magazine for a long time) sold it to Bob Petersen, the founder of GUNS & AMMO, Petersen's HUNTING, etc. He tried to revive SA but it did not work--partly because the market for general hunting'n'fishing magazines is delcining. There are too many "vertical" publications that deal with whatever specialties the reader wants to read about.

Bob eventually sold it to the folks who own Safari Press, who have turned it into an international hunting magazine, and it looks like that will work. In the meantime, SPORTS AFIELD's circulation dropped from a high of around 750,000 in the 1970's to maybe 50,000 today.

OUTDOOR LIFE and FIELD & STREAM are also shrinking, but at a slower rate. When I started writing for F&S as a staffer in the mid-1980's paid circulation was close to 3 million. Now I believe it is 1.5 million, if that.

Part of the problem is that by the 1970's all three of those magazines (once known as The Big Three) were based in New York City. As NYC grew, it got harder to persuade anybody who REALLY likes to hunt and fish to work for them, hence the editorial staffs have become, uh, very urban. Add that to the competition from the vertical magazines and you can see why they are no longer what they once were--when they were the only magazines that contained hunting and shooting articles.

John Barsness

Mule Deer,
Very interesting condensed history of "The Big Three" hunting magazines.
Thanks,
Sam

Thanks John, for once again bringing fact and clarity to a topic!

That is a great perspective, John. Thanks!!

BUT -- somehow I have the sense it isn't so much the SIZE of NYC whose change caused the impact as much as the attitude of the city towards hunting and shooting that has made it much less comfortable to live there. Specifically, I cite stories of numbers of folks who, having grown up in NYC being involved in high-school shooting sports, remember transporting their rifles on the subways and busses on the way to and from school. Numbers of my shooting club members remember that, as does Justice Antonin Scalia. Do you think some of the shift in urban tone has also had an impact -- and particularly picking up a different kind of "green" in the context of conservation values?

Dan

Dan,

You're right, it's not just the size but the attitude. My mentor in this business, Norm Strung, grew up In Queens, and used to hitchhike to the Catskills with his Savage 99 to hunt deer. Try that now!

JB

I grew up in New York City (long after the days you're describing) and am not sure it's the attitude that's changed. I think even in the '70s the average Upper East Sider wouldn't have had a favorable view of hunting. (And forget about the Upper West Side, which was--and is--much more liberal culturally.) I do think the overall environment there has made it less appealing to outdoor-oriented people, and that's partly because it takes longer and longer to get to places where you can do, instead of read about, outdoor activities.

On the other hand, I read the New York Times every day for work. While much of it may as well be dispatches from the Crab Nebula, I've noticed in the past couple of years that they regularly run neutral-to-positive articles on hunting aspects of "lifestyle," including pieces on North Dakota hunting real estate and on stores that sell antlers for home decor.

Just the other day, they ran this article http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/01/fashion/01CRITIC.html?_r=1&oref=slogin about a boutique and barbershop with a "hunting lodge and general store" theme--not in midtown near Holland & Holland or the Beretta store, but in a formerly gritty area of the Lower East Side, just a few blocks from the school where I went to 5th and 6th grade. (If you want an accurate depiction of what the neighborhood was like when I was a kid, rent "Taxi Driver.") According to another article I found, the place even has an indoor archery range!

I've been to New York and the elk hunting sucks.

AGW

Your explanation makes perfect sense. Can't say now what I picked up that day: F&S, OL or SA, but whatever it was, it was a disappointment to one who had read all three back in the late 50s/early 60s, in my youth.

My ol' huntin'pard subscribed to a mess of magazines and sometimes picked up others from the rack. For almost 25 years when he and I headed up to my camp for the first week of PA's firearms deer season, he fetched along an impressive pile of reading material.

He's been gone now for several years, but the last few years of his life, there were no longer any of the former "Big 3" that made the trip. He subscribed to Handloader/Rifle for many years, as well as a few other mags like G&A and ST. He'd decided years ago, that the "Big 3" had become a waste of time and money, apparently. Towards the end, all he bothered with were Handloader and Rifle.