I have another Clay Harvey story. Few know it, but it really sheds a lot of light on the writing ethics of the man.
At the end of the Kimber ground squirrel hunt, Greg Warne, Clay and I had dinner together at one of Portland's snazziest restruants. Greg was one to spend all of his investor's money on fun, rather than put into the business, so you can imagine the spread.
Greg had a surprise for us. He had given Clay a .223 Super America earlier, probably on the expectation of good press. At the dinner, he gave Clay the first Kimber .17 Mach V, and asked him to do an article on the rifle and the cartridge. Clay said he would and that he would place it well.
At the same dinner, Greg gave me the second .17 Mach V and asked the same of me. I was new (on a totally freelance basis) at Wolfe. I promised to do my best, hoping sincerely that Al Miller would accept my beginners scribblings.
As an aside, I wrote for Wolfe Publishing for many years and was never asked to become a Contributing Editor. All of my articles were strictly on a freelance basis. It was for this reason, and the stupidity of a temporary and horrible editor (who I will not name) that I eventually signed on at Varmint Hunter. In my opinion, this was Wolfe's loss and the VHA's gain. Anyway, I digress.
A few days later, Ted Curtis (I love the man) and I were manning the tech phone at Kimber. Ted caught a call that got him to laughing so badly that he had to turn it over to me.
The caller was a South Carolina farmer with an accent that you had to hear to believe. Anyway, he bought a Kimber rifle from a short, fat guy at a gun show and it was a "Seventeen Mack Vee." He'd tried .17 Remington ammunition in it and "the bolt wouldn't close on the bullets." Duh.
Laughing, and trying not to wet myself, I informed him that the cartridge was a wildcat and that he couldn't buy factory ammo for it. This didn't please him much, but he knew of a fella in the next county who "stuffed bullets," so he guessed it would be OK.
About a month later, I got a call from Clay. He told me that he was just starting load development and wanted me to send all of my data to him. Even then, I was an ethical writer (some things are just natural to a few of us) and I told Clay that my data was hard earned; he should work up his own.
Of course, I knew that he had sold the rifle to the farmer and that, even if he had the rifle, he wasn't moxie enough to load the .17 Mach V successfully. Of course, the only Mach V data available at the time was in the P. O. Ackley Manual and it was silly, dangerous stuff.
By the end of the conversation, Clay was quite aware that my data would not be shared and that there was something quite wrong.
My article was published in Handloader #132 (March-April 1988) and I doubt that Clay ever published on the subject.
I ask you, what manner of man would accept a product, only to sell it a few days later? And what manner of man would ask for load data from another writer, so that he could copy it and cover his tracks?
Clay Harvey is the lowest-quality individual that it has ever been my displeasure to know.
Charles Askins, Jr. and his antics at Kimber comes close (that's another story for another day). In my opinion, Clay is the sole winner of the Writing Schmuck Award.
Steve
Sorry to revive such an old post, but I saw Askins at an NRA Annual Event talking to the SWAROVSKI people, trying to get them to hand him a new laser range finder. They were completely dismissive of him. When he walked away I asked if they knew who he was, and they said something like they knew him all right.
To see one of my heroes treated that way was rough - a couple decades later I now know that gun writers don't walk on water, but I still like to think some of them do. Ken Howell helps me keep this little fantasy alive.
