Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters From the Mailbox Today: Petzal on the Old Gun Writers

Worth a read, especially if you grew up reading them, like I did.

http://www.fieldandstream.com/artic...=322294463&spReportId=MzIyMjk0NDYzS0

Thank you for the link to that article. It is always interesting to see how such descriptions of writers jibe with the personas conveyed in their work over the years.

Those writers certainly came from a different world. I'm glad that those journals existed for them to publish their work.

Thanks for the link very good read

Pretty cool article....I am reading more and more historical accounts that suggest, while Keith genuinely hated Cactus Jack, the feeling was not mutual for Jack towards Elmer, at least to the degree of hatred suggested by anecdotal evidence. I dunno...I was a young pup in high school back then.

I read that awhile ago in the magazine...then read it again a little while later. Ordered three books off amazon by Jack O'Connor, Elmer Keith and Townsend Whelen the other day. Figured since all I've been loading and shooting are the old stuff I couldn't go wrong. Probably couldn't go wrong regardless.

Brad

I grew up reading all of those guys.

Same here, I still have one of O'Connor's books,bought when I was a young pup.

mudhen- Great article and thanks for posting this.I have tried to read most everything those guys ever wrote,and there are books by O'Connor and Keith scattered all over the house.

Another great one I enjoy tremendously is John Jobson,who was the Sports Afield camping editor but a very knowledgeable gun guy,and entertaining writer.

Any of them were great story tellers and entertaining as well and their work was free of much of the techno-babble we see so much of today....I never read gunwriters to get from them what I could figure out myself through shooting and reading ballistic tables on my own.

It was the hunting experience and great stories that drew me in.

No mention of Ken Howell...Hmmmm

Always good to see people like this remembered. I didn't know any of them, although I talked to Bob Brister on the phone in the last year of his life, when he was trying to serve as editor of a new publication in Texas, and I was hoping to write for it. Without more personal knowledge, I shouldn't disagree with Petzal on some of the stuff like his comments on Keith and O'Connor - but I often don't agree with his opinions on guns and hunting.

Very enjoyable read. Thanks for posting this link.

Petzal scores again with this article. He's one of the few living writers who can speak with some level of authority on the old-timers, since he knew most of them personally.

Good read, thanks.

Bob,

When I started reading hunting and gun magazines, those were the guys who were writing them. I never could figure out why Sports Afield had Pete Brown as their gun columnist, when their camping columnist (Jobson) wrote so much better, had so many nice firearms, and obviously enjoyed hunting with 'em!

Great article, about some great men. I especially like this:

"Charley Askins didn�t hate anyone specifically, but he did like to shoot people for recreation because it cheered him up."

That's not a funny commet BTW. Read Askin's book "Unrepentant Sinner" you the only conclusion you can get is he was a pathological serial killer. There was a write up on the book by Massad Ayoob and IIRC he said basically the same thing. The one thing I remember most about Askins though as his dislike for Outdoor Life, Field & Stream and Sports Afield. Called then the cane pole fishing and coon chasing magazines. He was also fired from just about every gun rag several times over. No matter what he wrote, he appeared to offend someone. He certainly was a character that marched to a different drum.
To his credit though, in his autobiography he also showed how fiercely loyal he was to his family and close friends. Guess that has to count for something.
Paul B.

John I could never figure that one out myself....

I have an anthology of Jobson's articles published by Amwell Press,and it is fabulously entertaining and well written.He was a real rifle nut!

I do recall that now and then Jobson would do a feature article for Sports Afield dealing with rifles, so the editorial folks must have given him some literary license along those lines, I think.

Interesting article. I was very happy with the work of Warren Page and it opened my eyes to the scientific possibilities.

Of all of them I enjoy Jim Carmichael who sort of bridges old to new.

In "The Last Book", Jack O'Connor referred to one writer friend as "the moody type", a man who habitually blew off deadlines, refused to write anything at all for extended periods, etc., etc.. The guy J.O'C. was talking about was John Jobson, and that might explain why Jobson never achieved greater prominence.

Jobson and O'Connor kept up a lengthy correspondence, many of the letters being sold (by Trophy Room Books) a few years back. Comments in the letters tend to corroborate a LOT of what O'Connor merely inferred to in "TLB" (undoubtedly for libel considerations). The letters are also pretty revealing as to what O'Connor REALLY felt about some of his contemporaries, (particularly Charles Askins, Jr., whom J.O'C called "psychotic").

Great read. John Wooters is another I grew up reading.