In skillful writing, Warren Page was right there with Ruark and O'Connor at the head of the class. I drank everything he wrote as if I'd die of thirst otherwise.
Came closest to meeting him about fifty years ago when I pulled into Charlie O'Neil's place after Page had left. Charlie was still fuming -- Page had offered to make Charlie and OKH rifles "rich and famous" if Charlie'd make him an OKH rifle and send him on an African safari with it. Charlie ran him off so fast his shoes smoked. Not long thereafter and for the rest of his life, Page spoke highly of his Mashburn rifle. Did Page take a more reasonable approach with Art Mashburn, or did Mashburn go for the same deal that Charlie rejected? Your conclusion is as good as mine -- I don't know -- or care much.
Whatever he may have been like as a person, he was without any doubt one of the greatest of American outdoor writers in a day when we had a bunch of that breed. That's the way to remember him now. One day, he made Charlie O'Neil mad enough to chew pig iron and spit nails, but over an impressive number of years, he gave an awful number of the rest of us many thousands of hours of enjoyable and edifying reading. I don't know of any instance when he falsified something for the sake of a good story -- a sin that other excellent prose stylists of his time and since were (and are) repeatedly guilty of.
