-What became of all the pictures and movies he [O'Connor] took? His guns and mounts?
Elmer Keith was also just a little before my time, and I've never read him, can someone recommend a good place to start?
Most of the O'Connor public legacy AFAIK was divided between the University of Idaho - Moscow and Washington State University - Pullman - I think because his children went there. University of Idaho had some full body skeletons museum mount and such on a top floor as I recall while WSU got the library and literary estate and some heads I think. But I could be completely wrong.
Some of the otherwise fungible (except for the associaton) guns, again as I recall O'Connor had a collection for show of, presumably gifts when new variations came out with a #7 serial but it may have been something else and I could be wrong made the auction and gun show circuit shortly after his death - maybe bought out as a lot and broken up? Don't know. Duplicates of a well documented sheep rifle have been offered on the instant collectible market as I recall.
Bradford has stayed active in the shooting community - last I knew was quite a few years ago now at a big double gun shoot in Eastern Oregon that was IIRC correctly written up in the Wolfe publications - and is I think more universally liked than his father. Jack was reputed to have a sharp abrasive and interesting vocabulary for a given time and place tongue for such things as local school board style activity in Lewiston. Both Jack O'Connor and Elmer Keith can be proud of their repective sons and that too says something I think.
As for where to start with Elmer Keith I'd say start with the Winchester Press edition of his autobiography - Keith. I think it benefitted from editing. A friend of mine who had the greatest respect for Keith - and although a generation or maybe two younger knew people who lived and sometimes worked with Elmer in Salmon - read Hell I was There over a bad weekend in the hospital and found the book ultimately a downer. As noted Elmer lived a very hard life.
No question in my mind that Elmer Keith always and forever told the truth precisely as he saw it including all the things some folks don't believe - I'm quite sure that had there been a camera and recorder on the scene the movie would be very close to what Keith reported.
I've sometimes thought the conclusions reached included finding major differences when a lab test after
n tries would have found no
significant differences. My point is not to knock a man for reporting differences he really did see but rather to say that Elmer never fudged what some people might call
dry labbed an observation to meet expectations. It has been reported that Elmer once in a while had an opinion in excess of his expertise as frex on the place of glass bedding and synthetics when stocking rifles - maybe so maybe not - but in taking lessons from the writings it pays to remember the time and place written and how times and hardware and land access and game management have changed.
After that the books can I think be divided into hunting stories and hardware stories and read whatever strikes your fancy - start with whatever is on hand at your local library or easy to get. Petersen printed and reprinted a lot in full letter size format and there is a good deal of mix and match with some obscurity about when a paragraph was first written so again draw conclusions with that in mind. Remember it's another age and the difference between Major Askins and Colonel Askins and all the rest. A great new discovery awaits.
