I would certainly hope we'd be allowed to modify (if not totally change) our opinions as we gain experience.

Many years ago, when I was a relative youngster in this business, an older editor friend told me that it was a hunting/gun writer's duty to try everything possible. This wasn't to become an All-Knowing Authority, but to gain some perspective for informing readers who get to hunt and shoot a lot less.

I have tried to follow his advice. At last count I'd taken big game animals with over 50 cartridges, some using black powder and home-cast bullets, along with traditional muzzleloader and bow and arrow. What I found out was that all work. There ain't any "magic" in any of them if the hunter can't hunt, and all do the job if the hunter can get close enough and shoot competently.

Of course I have my preferences, but I hope you'll never hear me saying there is one perfect answer for anyything. That tends to paint the gun writer into an untenable corner.

This is a small part of the reason Ross Seyfried doesn't work for Wolfe Publishing anymore. Ross was fond of calling this bullet or that rifle or some scope The Very Best And Perfect. To some people this made it sound like he'd tried everything. Others eventually became convinced that he hadn't looked very hard. This is not the place to debate that question. I bring it up merely to sugges that lots of experience tends to widen a hunter's perspective of what's possible, not narrow it.

As far as the hunting side of it goes, I have been both a subsistence and trophy hunter. In my 20's I was married to a tribal member of the Fort Peck Reservation, which gave me tribal hunting privileges--basically unlimited. I hunted a lot with her grandfather (born in 1898) and learned a lot of things, including how to kill sharptailed grouse on the wing with nothing but a stick. We were desperately poor then, and the wild meat we got was almost essential.

In my 40's I was able to hunt a great many places, and for large trophies. I've made 10 trips to the northern reaches of North America (which I define as any place caribou live), and have been to Africa a number of times. I've also hunted in Europe and South America more than once, and hunted in half the 50 states. On some of those hunts I got to hunt with "subsistence hunters" from other cultures, whether Inuits in the north country, Bushmen in Africa, or French-Canadian trappers, and learned a lot from all.

Is subsistence hunting harder than trophy hunting? In some ways yes, in some ways no. In subsistence hunting you're after the first piece of edible meat that crosses your path. In trophy hunting you're looking for a needle in haystack. Subsistence hunting can be made much harder by hunting where a lot of other subsistence hunters hunt. Trophy hunting is a lot harder where a lot of trophy hunters hunt.

The techniques in either case are very similar--if you are to be successful. Some have described certain hunting technqiues as "magic," but I have found them pretty similar the world over. If you don't learn to stalk, track or read sign correctly at an early age, you probably never will. Subsistence hunting may weed out the incompetents more quickly, but truly succesful trophy hunters generally know how to hunt very well. It might pay to remember that most trophy hunters weren't trophy hunters earlier in life. A few may not have been hunters at all, but most started hunting when young, and probably learned as meat hunters, if not "subsistence" hunters, however you want to define that term.

By the way, I still learn something every time I visit the range or head into the hills.

MD