Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters John Wootters

I always enjoyed reading John Wootters. I’m sure many here did too. I recently found a web page containing pictures and many of his articles and wanted to share it here.

https://johnwootters.com/gallery

Thanks, have a couple of his books

Thnx Doc

I like JW also.
At first I was skeptical of a few things he wrote
but I verified those.

I think he was entertaining as well as informative.

I have a couple of his sayings etched in my mind.

Thnx for the link.

Jerry

Thanks.

Have mentioned before that the very first time I met John (at one of my first SHOT Shows, and I attended my first in 1988) he said that gun writing was entertainment. He'd done "real journalisim" while working for the Houston newspaper, including reporting on a major hurricane, so knew what he was talking about. That said, he was a great gun journalist--and hunting story teller!

Thanks. I have one of his books…“The complete book of Practical hand loading”. It gave me several ideas about reloading projects and techniques.
I always enjoyed reading his work, kinda like those of our Mule Deer

He was one of my favorites when I discovered Peterson Hunting in the early 90’s, along with Milek, Barsness and Coogan. I also really enjoyed reading Gary Sitton. He always grabbed my attention. I still have most of those magazines, and occasionally dig them out and take a trip down memory lane. Good stuff.

I have some of those magazines, and also dig them out!

I knew Gary Sitton too, though not was well as John Wootters--who aside from in-person meetings used to phone once in a while, and his calls were always pretty long!

Unfortunately, Gary had some personal demons (as quite a few really good writers have since the inception of the written word), and consequently left us long before he might have. Would have loved to read his take on hunting and rifles today.

Gary Sitton! Now there is someone who could really write some great articles and stories. I always turned to his page first (the last page of the magazine, iirc) whenever I got the new issue. Wish I would have kept those magazines.

Wooters was also excellent. I believe he was a big .308 fan.

Gary was one of my favorites. He never actually came out and detailed the personal demons you speak of but he clearly dropped hints along the way that he made a mess of his life at times. But he was a brilliant writer. He wrote columns under a pen name as well. Also brilliant.

I believe his pen name was Jacob Bowers.

Thanks a million for posting this !

Got to meet him once around 1990 at a Hunting&Fishing Show.I always enjoyed John's writings.

I really wish that whoever has Gary Sitton's estate would put together, as many books as it would take, an anthology of his work. His back of the magazine articles were worth the price of admission, and then some. May he RIP.

Agreed. I remember many great articles from him. Squirrel rifles, lever action rifles for turkey, hunting Alaska with a reader who won the trip, and many more.

I always like John Wooter's work. He wrote well. I enjoyed his style. I've got nothing against him, and I write this more as a question than a condemnation.

John wrote a book, Hunting Trophy Deer , published in 1977. I've got a copy here in front of me. John used his vast knowledge of hunting whitetails in Texas to its utmost. This and several articles he wrote got hunters thinking about culling inferior bucks. This is a story of unintended consequences.

The next thing you know, the whole world was burning their deer tags on every misshapen rack they could find. When I started my stint over at Deer & Deer Hunting, there was a large mass of hunters who were determined to rid the world of inferior bucks. I was appalled. I had read Wooter's book at the dawn of my hunting career-- picked it up used at the bookstore over on the next block. The part folks seemed to be missing was the part where all this culling was taking place behind a high fence. I've got nothing against high fences either. It's just that you cannot do effective culling on anything but a captive population. I was surrounded by men determined to rid their farms, national forests, and WMA's-- the entirety of our fruited plains, from sea to shining sea of inferior bucks.

Thankfully, that nonsense has died down in the past decade or so. I am proud of whatever small part I had in its demise.

As I dug back as to a reason for this madness, I came back to Wooters. It is a tribute to Mister Wooters that his idea of culling spread so far and so fully. However, I was not really paying attention to all this when it happened. I did not start deer hunting until the early 80's, and I read outdoor magazines mostly things other than hunting. On my first pass, deer hunting content got just a cursory glance. By the time I started paying attention, Hunting Trophy Whitetails had been out for some time , and there were articles everywhere about how to cull your herd and what to look out for in a cull buck.

I think one of the saddest things in all this was all the poor wretches that posted their cull buck pics on the burgeoning new medium of internet forums. Rather than proudly proclaiming their success at hunting, guys tried to make it sound like they'd done the world a favor. Truth is, that "cull buck" probably could have grown into something awesome given a few more years. It took until about the 2010's for the culling fashion to die out.

I have questions for you all. First off, am I correct in saying Wooters popularized this whole culling thing? I never read anything by anyone about this subject prior to him. Second, why didn't anyone do anything? What I mean is that it is pretty obvious that culling a wild herd is spitting in the ocean. Someone besides me must have seen the madness for what it was.

To what extent did Wooter's change high fence hunting? What I remember from early the '80s was that "cull hunts" were a big thing. Guys readily signed up for a chance to hunt deer with 8 points or less at a discount. Did Wooters influence or popularize this, or did he just document the fad?

I read that book a long time ago. I don’t recall him advocating for anything like that, but then again it was years ago. Seems at odds with my impression of Wooters.



“Not many of us live long enough to kill a giant buck by accident.” John Wooters Trophy Bucks, Sports Afield October, 1977

You are correct, Sir. I came across a few Peterson's Hunting magazines last night from the early 90's and that's the name he was writing under at the time. Very talented writer.

Yep did the same thing.
I think Seyfried contributed as well.

Wooters started the whole "trophy management" QDM, raise your very own trophy buck bullshyt that has ruined deer hunting and been responsible for millions of posted signs going up and lease fees being charged all over the Country.