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

To me FS looks today,like Sports Afield did prior to the greeny take over that killed Sports afield.And lasted only a hand full of months,before petersen bought it.Its the only magazine I've ever cancelled in the middle of a subscription. The current FS just uses full page glossy pictures and short articles. Petersens hunting to me was one of the very best magazines prior to it being ruined in the last ten years.

I believe we're seeing the final death throws of an era that has long since passed. Where sportsman actually supported famous editors like Keith and O'connor. These guys were arguably idols to many. Now days the average hunter,fisherman or outdoorsman has access to all of the same gear as these editors and many of these average joes actually use this equipment far more then some writter. On top of this many hunters have access to more hunting then some writter. Not to mention the advent of the internet [bleep] expert.

I really agree with the term Vertical magazines. I see far more magazines like Reloader or Rifle in the rack, then I do general publications. The latest Sports Afield is neat,in that they've brought back hunting stories,rather then picking apart the virtues of caliber or model.

Troll alert, shedder

nice try bud.

field and stream has changed for the worse over the years, imo. many hunting/gun articles have been replaced with fishing, camping, and conservation. in my mind, they have already gone over to the "tree hugger" side. i won't buy their mag and everytime someone gives me a gift subscritpion, i cancel it. political correctness sets the standards at field and stream. i want no part of it..............

How so?

When you are sitting there scoring a deer rack and a guy openly tells you about illegal hunting and assumes you are the same because everyone he met is, what do you think?
I was involved with hunters clubs and would go to meetings, or DNR presentations, and hear things like, "Things are bad I couldn't get one with a light last year!", or they pull you aside and say, "We have to do something about the coyotes. They are getting all the deer. I use to shoot 7 deer a year and now I can't." One is the limit here. After a while you begin to get a low opinion of this.

I grew up reading the big three and absorbed the ethics expounded in them. I was na�ve enough to believe their sanitized version might reflect reality but I doubt that now.

I am new to this forum. I joined looking for gun info which I found. I also found some gun writers whose opinions I respect. I, therefore, expected a higher standard here and people I could relate to. I responded to the deersmeller post comment "definitely biased and clearly not accurate in portraying the vast majority of sportsmen." to open discourse on the possibility that things may not be as they seem. I speak from experience so I figured it would be worth something.

These forums do not seem to be moderated. I may have made a mistake by not toeing the party line. I am seeing personal attacks and flaming as I become more familiar with it. That isn't what I expected.

As much as I want to think the best of all hunters, there is a lot of evidence to the contrary. These people hurt all the rese of us.

During the last deer season, I hunted many days in Mississippi. I routinely heard shots well after legal shooting hours (30 minutes after sunset) were over, coming from directions where I had heard no previous shots. So it's hard to believe that these were follow-ups on wounded animals. Some of these shots were taken so late that they were not at all possible without a light. This is extremely disappointing. Wonder if they are the same folks who throw their lunch wrappings on my road?

Al

The 30 minute rule is just more fish and game bullsh!t designed to keep people from filling tags. Up until the 1970's,the majority of states considered an hour or 60 minutes after sunset legal shooting time and an hour before sunrise legal.

Are you suggesting it would be desirable to allow shooting 60 minutes before sunrise and 60 minutes after sunset?

You got it. You'll never see it again though.

In elk hunting the first hour prior to sunrise and the last hour after sun down are always the most critical.

I am one of those who used to take a target .22, uncased, in the New York City subway in the late 1940s. Got the occasional raised eyebrow but no horrified reactions. Today I won't bring a cased rifle the two blocks from my apartment house to the garage: I drive the car around the block to the door. I don't want to be stopped by a cop who wants to see my license plus separate registration for the particular rifle I am carrying. There are great pleasures to living in the capital of the world but ease of gun ownership is not one of them.

I subscribe to a number of fishing and hunting magazines. The scope of F&S is broad, thus thinning out my favorite subject: hunting big game. Yet I can always find an article that is worth the $10 yearly admission. The gun editor, David E. Petzal, is an often exceptional read. He is clever, opinionated, and funny; in fact his wit approaches that of Robin Williams. Rather than simply spouting discreet descriptions of the guns he writes about, he can adroitly analyze, synthesize, and criticize beyond what editors normally allow. He dares to write "The 50 Best Guns Ever Made, Favorite New Rifles from the Shot Show, and The 5 Guns I have Kept." The Field and Stream blog provides him more freedom to vent his spleen, a weekly must read: http//www.fieldandstream.blogs.com. Go there. You will have a great time.

The recent issue of F&S has some great articles in it.
One about Bear hunting in Alaka that is excellent.
Steven Dodd Hughes writes about best actions for fine custom rifles too; a good read.
F&S is a well done magazine.
I just started subscribing after I asked the question a few months ago here on this forum about what magazines our resident gunwriters write for.
Every issue has something interesting for me.
I'm glad I subscribed.

Don

Last year I received free 1 year subscriptions to OL and F&S. After 3 months I asked them to cancel the subscriptions. Parts appeared to be exactly the same pages I read as a kid in the late '50's. Parts seemed to have nothing to do with any interests of mine. Even free I felt they were not worth my time. That is true however of most of the gun rags, in part because there is very little new to say. How many times can a mag recycle "Top Home Defense Handgun - Our Experts Choose" Rifle manages to hold my interest, largely because of John Barsness, and this year I am looking at American Handgunner.

Back to the original topic, Bob Marshall is in the "green" faction of outdoor writers. Kind of not surprising given his name, same as the wealthy socialist Bob Marshall who had a "job" working for the Forest Service and wound up dying young. But Bob M the First had several million that went to founding the Wilderness Society...this in the depths of the Depression.
Anyway, I think Bob the Next is one of those purists who moons for the frontier while plotting his next escape from his newspaper cubicle. And anyone who doesn't "appreciate" the outdoors properly is subject to his contempt.

I have to agree with DMB on this one. I usually really enjoy the breadth of the magazine, particularly the stories on real life hunters, tips for the field, and Petzal's rifle stuff. Some environmental stories are OK because I think that we have to be very mindful to project an image of putting the habitat and the animals first, and let our hunting be seen as an integral part of their management for it to be accepted well by the mass public today. I believe all true sportsmen and hunters appreciate the need to preserve habitat and our game animals, but the antis want to strip that from us to make us seem to be nothing more than blood thirsty egomaniacs. Field & Stream may not always be everything to everyone, but it is the most viable of the old big 3 (F&S, Outdoor Life, and Sports Afield) hunting and fishing mags.

Those were indeed good articles, but they appeared in the latest issue of Sports Afield, NOT F&S..........

Quite honestly, F&S has, over the last few years, deteriorated so much and has become so light of content that I will not renew when my subscription expires.

They allow Dave Petzel maybe two whole pages with which to present what have become largely sophmoric rifle articles that are largely content-free paid advertising write-ups that might appeal to a beginner, but not an experienced rifleman.

Compare some of Petzel's articles to a Warren Page article from 40-50 years ago or a Bob Brister article from 30 years ago, and the dispartiy of quality and content will speak for itself.

Heck, compare the whole current magazine to a copy of F&S from even 20 years ago, and it's painfully clear that the magazine is in deep decline, and quite honestly I doubt that it will recover without a drastic makeover, including new editorship...........

AD

Some aspects of hunting, thankfully, never change. Equipment comes and goes (some happily, some with significant sadness). Some of those comings and goings are interesting to me. Some of those stories about how things don't change stay with me for years.

I still remember a very precious article about a man taking his father, who was suffering from terminal cancer, squirrel hunting. He talked about how the rifle he got for his dad, one with a plastic stock, didn't quite fit. How his dad, who had seemed too big to fit in a house and needed all outdoors to fit in, had been reduced in frailty and pain... The trip looked like it had come too late. His father, racked by the suffering, saw the gift his son had given him... and accepted the gift. He called to the squirrels and they came. To take that gift, he had to give some of his remaining energy, to give something back to his son. I hate to say it, but I don't even remember the magazine that story was in... I do recall that some letters to the editor complained about the sentimental stuff. Huh. I liked it. It has been one of those stories that has stuck with me for years.

Some news is VERY important. New things: QDM, new commissioners, new management plans. The fights over bear hunting. What's happening with "Open Fields" and CRP. One example of a very interesting question is the relationship between roadless areas, conservation, and hunter access. Further, the impact of some logging is also of interest: the Adirondacks have seen huge reduction in deer densities since logging stopped (some of that has to do with coyotes, but that's a long way from all of the story). Yet, the low deer densities reduces the presence of a parasitic brainworm, P. tenuis, that is vectored by whitetails but lethal to moose. So, moose can come back. The management changes have significantly altered deer hunting in that region: those management choices are of mixed benefit. There is much less hunting in the Adirondacks than there was even 40 yrs ago. Therefore, the debate of roadless areas is very interesting to me.

So, the news section is important to me, and to a large extent, the conservation news section is very important. Seeing only part of the story presented, with direct contradictions to prior descriptions of the debate without explaining the points is bad enough -- the vitriol for anyone who would dare to disagree makes for rather unpalatable fare. Condemning the ethics of all hunters, rather than identifying poor ethics of some, and further, without praising good ethics, and promoting them is simply sour. It misses the point of the passion of living that is tied up with hunting. That is one reason I felt it was worth reciting the story of the son taking his father squirrel hunting: that is, to me, the core of ethics: the passion, and the hope that our children can share in the experience of finding wild game.

Dan

Allen,

I just happened to see the magazine was Sports Afield a few minutes ago, and was going to edit my post to correct my error when I saw you picked up on it.
Thanks,

Don