Hope this isn�t presumptuous, because I only discovered and joined this site tonight.
Since 1967, I have made my entire living as a reporter, columnist, editor, and publisher specializing in hunting and fishing and, since 2000, as author of books for and about international big game hunters.
My clients have included Weatherby Award recipients C.J. McElroy, H.I.H. Prince Abdorreza, Watson Yoshimoto, Arnold Alward, Hubert Thummler, and David Hanlin.
�The History of Safari Club International� has my byline, but not the two books I ghostwrote for well-known hunters of mountain and African game. My own book, �Sixty Years A Hunter,� will be published by Safari Press this year.
When I complete in November the book I'm working on now, I will have sold approximately 1.4 million words since retiring from my SCI post in 1999.
My training as a writer and editor came under the pressure of a daily newspaper�s deadlines. Over the 27 years I worked for that paper, I wrote close to 2,800 twice-weekly outdoor columns and maybe twice that many feature and news articles about hunting and fishing.
Before I retired from the paper in 1994, I also worked five years on its copy desk from 4:00 to 8:00 am, writing headlines and editing and rewriting articles others had written, and served on its editorial board.
From 1984 to 1999, I also edited and directed SCI�s Safari magazine and the SCI record books as an independent contractor. I conceived and launched Safari Times and Safari Times Africa. The first became a financial success, the second lost money and was shut down. After I retired in 1999, my wife and I co-edited Safari Cub magazine during its brief life.
My tenure as editor of the SCI record books, and working closely with the club�s trophy records committee, gave me a unique education on the natural history of all the world�s big game animals.
Although I sold several gun articles to magazines early in my career, I would never call myself a �gun writer.� I�ve hunted on six continents and in a dozen countries, and I view guns the same way I do shovels. Some are better suited for certain tasks, to be sure, but most of them will do the job. When hunting the animals most Americans hunt, bullet placement is more important than caliber, maker, action-type, velocity or even bullet type.
As for Elmer Keith, who was mentioned earlier in this thread, I hold the distinction of having rejected an "article� -- and I use the term loosely -- that he sent me at Safari magazine. It began something like this: �Im duing yu faver sumiting thsi articul ... � The piece also was full of misspellings and errors of grammar, punctuation, and even fact.
