Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters JB: Why did Gary Sitton disappear from Handloader in 1999?

All I know is he had time enough to have lunch with this boy when he 30 years old and gave me his address and phone number. I was only around him a few hours but he was very gracious and funny.

I too would read his back page articles first each month. I saved a lot of them and take them out and read them once in a while still. His writing was amazing, he could craft a sentence with the best writers I've ever read. JB produced the same type product in his book "The Life of the Hunt". I can count on one hand the outdoor writers who can write as well as JB and Gary Sitton...and I may still have three fingers left.

I hang on to many of my old G. Sitton stories, they are just so very good!

He is surely missed.

Does anyone have the Backpage story he wrote about a used Model 70 Winchester? I have tried to find my copy several times but must have lost it somewhere along the way. It was an ode to a used Model 70 and the man who owned it previously. If anyone has a copy I would love a scan or Xerox. Odessa

I seem to recall an article he did (on the back page) where he was paring down his collection of guns and moving to Texas. You could always count on good advice in his writings, like JB.

Paul

Too many writers need alcohol like machines need oil. I truly miss him and his work.

Odessa,

I went through my collection of his works and couldn't find the one you're asking about. I'll look around, I thought I had some more of his articles stashed away.

Jeff M.

Too many are defending him from what is not even an attack on his character. As pointed out, there are a number of writers who have their bottle troubles. Gary, a very talented writer, and who seemed to emulate Jack O'Connor (look at the way he dressed and his glasses for one thing) obviously had his troubles but that still doesn't answer the original question! I have no opinion of him as a man, but he was a fine scribe nonetheless.

Ditto.

I can't even BEGIN to guess the interest in WHY he left Handloader. It sure as hell ain't any of my business, nor do I care to know why a dead man left a job 9 years ago.

I talked to him once after he divorced and moved to Texas,invited him to come hunting but he never did. He seemed like a sad soul,but his writing was genius.

He is one of a handful of 20th century gun scribes who could really write as well as anyone has. The others are Robert Ruark,Jack O'Connor,John Hunter,and John Barsness.

Britt

Every time I see this topic come up the first thing I post, is that I'd buy a copy of his collected works in a heart beat if they were ever published.....

+1 the man had soul......

Gary Sitton was not a writer, he was a word artist. The stuff he wrote for Peterson's under pen name Jacob Bowers was some of his finest. His reloading and gun articles were second to none. Would love to have a book containing his works.

GreggH

At a Las Vegas gun show I admired but passed on a Springfield 7mm with a Sukalle barrel. A few weeks later I was in funds again, got hold of the seller, who told me he had sold the rifle to Gary Sitton. I had met GS at a bird hunting lodge a year or two before that so I wrote him and said that if he tired of the rifle to sell it to me. We went back and forth about it for another couple years but never made a deal, then he passed on and where the rifle is today I don't know.

All I guess can be said is Godspeed

A dead mans reputation.

Old writers who died old leave us short-handed and grieving.

Old writers who died young leave us short-handed and grieving.

New writers who don't come along leave us short-handed and grieving over the old ones whom we've lost. We should also grieve (I do) that so few good new ones are coming along.

I also grieve when good ones just quit writing.

And boy! am I grateful that we still have so many good ones!

Ken, you have to wonder why anyone would want to be a writer. I know I tried to get started when I was a teenager, but rejection notices sort of quenched the fire for me. I realize that what I wrote probably wasn't very good, but a little encouragement would have gone a long way.

Now, many times I refrain from making contributions to this forum because I don't want to subject myself to un-warranted (or even warranted) criticism by strangers. Why would I care? Who knows? Maybe it is the idea of casting pearls before swine. Or, maybe I really have nothing to say (sus Minervam docet). Anyway, I have to think: why bother? Why put up with the hassle?

As an artist soon realizes, everybody is a critic, and everybody has a better vision of what you are trying to accomplish than you do. A gunsmith has the same experience. A writer experiences it in spades!

(Banduwallah, you sound like you might be a gunsmith or an artist or something, besides having tried some writing. I hope you're a teacher of something, too. Nice to hear someone advocating encouragement for those starting out. I think too often folks just look for the prodigy and forget folks can LEARN. I suspicion most writers had an early mentor that gave 'em a boost and kept them penning. Wonder who Gary Sitton's was.... Ella)