The .280 was a Ruger 77, the last rifle he had commissioned before his death.
Right, but this is what I was thinking of (fourth paragraph):
As Jack O'Connor himself once wrote, the life of a gun writer can be a somewhat slippery slope. A lot of people want publicity for their products, and hope a gun writer can provide it. This is fine as long as everybody follows some sort of ground rules, but a lot of things can interfere.
Gun writers do get offered or sent a lot of free stuff, though not as much as some readers might believe. That said, I've occasionally been given free guns I never asked for and didn't particularly want. How should that be handled? Some I tested, wrote up, and then sent down the road, usually trading them for some other firearm by the same company.
I've also had gunsmiths offer to make me custom rifles. I always offer to pay or trade for them, but have never found anyone willing to take the full price. Sometimes I get a discount, and sometimes I've been able to insist on paying for the parts or providing an action, but quite often the guy insists it's all on him. (I have ordered custom rifles myself from a couple of companies, and paid for them just like any other customer.)
Getting "free" custom rifles is a mixed blessing. Somebody who offers you a rifle often ends up making a rifle THEY like--which of course means it really isn't your custom rifle. I remember reading in O'Connor's biography about a well-known custom maker sending Jack and Eleanor a fine walnut-stocked 7x57, out of the blue. The rifle turned out to weigh close to nine pounds with scope, which as anybody who's read much O'Connor knows wouldn't be the 7x57 of his dreams. Instead on insulting the maker by telling him so, they quietly sold it--which would be their prerogative, since it was was a gift.
I dunno anything about the incident described in the original post here, but there are numerous ways a deal between a gun writer and a gunsmith can go sour. I've seen several.
