I found this a while ago on another site. The guys goes by CJ and claims to have known both O'Connor & Keith:
That does not mean that they were best buddies or that they always agreed with each other. If one had more animosity than the other it was probably Elmer for Jack dearly loved to pull his chain. And, was good at it. And, Elmer knew it. Especially when they were both attending group get together for writers at someplace like Nilo (Olin spelled backwards) Farms for a Winchester (Olin owned Winchester at that time) get together.
One year Elmer came home from one of those trips, where they did some bird hunting, as a group, and claimed: "That damn O'Connor tried to kill me." I couldn't respond but from the look on my face he followed that comment up with: "Blew my damned hat clear off my head".
Well, next time I saw Jack, about a month later, I asked him if he had tried to shoot Elmer at the Nilo Farms get together. He laughed. Deep. Long. And, loud. Finally, Jack said: "Elmer tell you that?" He knew I also visited Elmer on a regular basis and often times used me, without me knowing it, to help pull Elmer's chain. Jack was a very smart man and loved to have fun with his pals.
Anyway, it turns out, Jack was walking up on a roadway, he had been in a serious auto accident and didn't get around as well as he once did, and Elmer was walking below him in the tall brush of a ditch. A rooster flushed wild and Jack shot and killed it. The sound of the shot startled Elmer for he hadn't seen or heard the rooster flush. As he ducked, pure old time habit kicking in, his hat (he wore a huge special made Stetson) came off. That got Jack, who was above him, to laughing. That, in turn, got Elmer mad.
Jack asked me if Elmer had told me what he, Elmer, had said to him, Jack, next. He read my expression and continued, leaning forward in his living room chair, imitating Elmer's voice: "You do that again and I'll kill you." Well, Jack damn near fell out of his chair laughing at that memory. He told me that he had the same reaction when Elmer said those words to him out there at the farm and that even Elmer, he could see, was starting to smile as he picked up his hat, placed it just so on his head and walked away from him.
Here is another one from Fred Well's:
�Jack O�Connor and I never went hunting together, but I built a lot of guns for him and he and I spent a lot of time just like you and I sitting here jawing. I built him a .458 to take to Africa and he said, �Don�t you tell anybody you built me a big old .458.� Jack was quite a guy, great big booming voice and very opinionated. This was in the �50s, when Jack was both a journalist and a professor at Tucson.
�I first met Elmer Keith in Missoula, Montana in 1938. He did love the big bores, but I built him a little 35-caliber rifle he liked more than he told anybody. Elmer was always entertaining.
�I remember at one big gun show, Jack O�Connor and I were standing there when Elmer Keith came down the aisle. Jack looked up and said, �Here comes Mr. Bullshit.� He stepped out there and he hollered, �Draw!� Elmer came up and said, �You big sonofabitch, you�re gonna get somebody shot doing that someday.�
�Of course, Keith�s reputation was built on throwing cannons and O�Connor�s on stretching the .270, but their feud was really a put-up job for the press.
Lou
