czech1022,
Here's a confession: I was Gillis Webster.
Back then F&S often had a writer do more than one article for an issue. In fact, in one issue four articles appeared written by Norm Strung, one of my mentors, both in the outdoors and in writing. Only one with Norm's name, and the other under three different "pen names." The reason they did this was to avoid having the magazine look like it was being written by relatively few people--even though it was.
Back then F&S (and some other wide-circulation outdoor magazines) were much thicker, due to not much competition from videos, TV shows, smaller specialty magazine. Aside from tobacco and liquor ads still being legal, advertisers flocked to the magazines they figured would get them the most coverage, and F&S was one.
With more advertising, there was more money to increase the number of articles--which attracted more readers and more advertising. But there could be a problem finding enough writers to fill an issue, so F&S often ran more than one article by various staff writers in an issue--but under different names. My other name was Gillis Webster, but I only needed one, because I was also writing for other magazines, so wasn't doing as much for F&S as Norm did. Aside from writing books, F&S was his full-time job, so he needed more pen names. The only one I can remember now was Bart Jaeger.
