Anyone have the backstory on why the VHA phones are disconnected?

I'm beginning to fear that I will actually outlive print media. I'll need a new reason to live!

VHA ceased to exist a few weeks ago. The news appeared elsewhere on the Campfire.

Really sorry to see it go.

Yep, I've heard from two of the Area Coordinators. Apparently, Jeff Rheborg, the Club President, called the crew into a meeting and told them that the VHA was now closed.

I truly feel for the working staff ... they are good people. The top brass, maybe not so much.

There is also this: https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbth...10014340/all/Varmint_Hunters_Association

Blessings,

Steve

For a while there, if you wanted to master your rifle, VHA and VHM were the best source of the black magick. Some real talent, all in one.

Hey Dave, I still remember the rifle you cobbled together out of stuff that most of us would throw away ... GENIUS, my good friend, total genius.

Karen says "HI" and that she'd doing a tiny bit better every day.

Blessings,

Your pal Steve

dz, glad to hear of the improvement, and prayers sent.

That rifle had a hard life, Steve.
The barrel drove me nuts until I got mad at it, ran valve compound on a tight patch, and then put together some Blue Dot loads under 40 VMs. THEN it shot, but only that load.
So THAT barrel is now on a Stevens 200 in 22 Fireball. Shoots great.
The NEW barrel, a secondhand Lilja 3 G 8 twister, got "broken" when I got distracted working up loads -- I was thinking about writing paragraphs in my head.
The action was destroyed. I had to cut it in two to get the barrel off. Thankyoupaulmauser.
The group I'd fired prior to wrecking the gun was a 0.261, and all before that were 4s and under.
Bought another action, a 1942 Steyr, cut off the back end of the barrel, put the stock back together with dowel pins. The only thing left "original" is the bolt handle, safety and the set-trigger bottom metal.
So -- while it's back together, it does not shoot well and I can't quite figure out why. Face is square, lugs 95 percent, pin good, bedding skimmed, crown ok, etc etc.

Thing is, I would have never even TRIED what I did without being a member of VHA. That's what VHM was like -- all those crazy experiments and voodoo juju, most well written but some not, is what I loved and will always treasure. The magazine and its writers, yerself included, opened worlds of possibilities others never will. The fellowship was also, and still is, much appreciated and missed.
Give my best to Karen, and you can rake off some for yourself along the way.

I learned of the VHA in the early 90's when the printing company I worked for printed 4 issues of it. I learned a lot about shooting, cartridges and rifles by proof reading those issues, and even though I was never a member and haven't read a copy in years, I'm sad to learn that it's kaput.

I put together my 223 AI in 1996 based upon the writings of Steve in VH and his blue (IIRC) rifle. Still own it.

We had a long range match scheduled at their facility in June in Pierre. It had to be moved just a few miles away. Too bad they closed, they had a nice place to shoot and clubhouse.

Bob

I always wanted to see that range. They won't let anybody use it now?




Travis

They have a tall locked gate. How good are you at picking locks? My understanding from our moved match is they decided they were done and closed one day. They notified the different match directors after their closing. It's a shame.

Bob

I'm excellent at picking locks.

I think the entire ordeal is BS. They could at least send out some sort of flyer or e-mail or something. To the lifetime membership people at a minimum.

Their web page went down, and then back up. Strange.




Travis

If I had to make a guess this Jeff guy is a bad manager and bankrupted the place. I have been a member since day one and noticed since Jeff took over the quality of the magazine has suffered greatly and went from a great magazine into nothing but an Advertising Brochure. I just renewed my membership a couple of months back and like a bunch of others lost money. I can't help but believe they took my money knowing they were going to shut down. I hate dishonest people.

Same here. I'm not too concerned about it but if they were taking lifetime memberships within the past 6 months, that's pretty Clairborne of them.




Travis

ouch!

A new verb has been introduced into the lexicon.




I like it!

"That dude got Claiborne'd like a mothafugkah."






Travis

I have been a member for 12 years. Tried to use the range in early June and was surprised to see everything locked up. You would think the basterds could at least send a postcard to their members letting them know that they are out of business.

Looks like they are too cheap to pay for a stamp. Mass e-mail to all members would have been nice tho

The fact that their site is still up, and they won't take the time to post a simple message on there, is pretty fugked up.




Clark

I wonder if they are still taking money for membership dues?

And they are still taking memberships. I got as far as entering CC info.

Was a good source of info in the day.

The early magazines were excellent. The resale price for full collections reflected it also.

Things slipped over the last few years, but I still was a member and would have continued to be at least for awhile.

Not sending out at least a mass email why they were shutting down shop shows the way things must have turned with current management.

Anybody know if they might be bought out and brought back to life or is this horse pretty much dead?

Remind me, did they ever offer DVDs of all prior issues?

I felt this same sense of loss and anger over Precision Shooting. But I knew they were a niche publication and probably no longer necessary to fulfill their original mission of providing communication among bench-resters.

What irked me about Precision Shooting was the failure to produce a DVD library of prior issues. It represented a tremendous resource, well worth preserving and should have provided a shot in the arm financially.

I keep hoping such a thing might materialize, but when an organization rides itself into the ground to the point it can't meet its obligations there are creditors in the wings waiting to seize any visible asset or income stream. That pretty well removes any incentive to preserve the material.

In the past, if your subscribed periodical went belly up you'd usually see your subscription fulfilled by another publication. I don't know if that was some legal protection required of subscription periodicals or if the succeeding periodical saw value in adding subscribers that way.

I'd like to see copyright protection limited for defunct periodicals. Maybe copyright should be effective only for a limited time after the failure of a periodical unless someone acquires it and puts it back into distribution. That way the information value of prior material could be preserved by third parties instead of just being laid to waste.

Of course, it isn't as simple as all that when you had publications like both VH and PS that sometimes ran articles with the copyright retained by the author.

Sorry to hear VHA no longer is.

I used to be a member -- have a few membership patches around here somewhere. And I wrote a piece for the magazine once, called "Death in the Long Fingers" (hat-tip to Capstick). I even got a cartoonist friend of mine to draw the cartoon. Hope those were the days people think it was a good magazine. And maybe that someone remembers the article.

And yes, as GunReader said, many of these magazines allow the writer to retain copyright. Maybe I should send this out somewhere again.

Steve.

I agree, precision shooting was one of a kind resource like none other. I still miss it, the last few years was downhill and the writing was on the wall.

Mule Deer: Well I am sad to hear that bad news regarding the Varmint Hunters Association becoming defunct!
I was with them from day one and eventually became Life Member #187.
I actually have a full collection of their VHA magazine issues and some of the pre-VHA magazines (called Varmint Hunters International - or something like that)!
Again sad to see them go under - they were a good group - I got to attend a couple of their annual meetings and partake of that fun there in the heat of S.D.
Sheesh.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

I was a huge fan of the VHA for years, when Steve Timm was invited to leave the publication took a steady decline. When they brought LP Brezny on the VHA fell off a cliff and I completely lost interest.

A couple huge blunders like this led to their demise.

LP Brezny (LPB) did to VHM what LBJ did to America.