Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Ross Seyfried

Ahh yes good old Ross, who's this JB fella you talk about?
Some young upstart?

Don't trouble yourself about him. Flash in the pan. Fortunately for him, his wife has had condiderable success.

Plain and simple, Ross was badazz in everything he wrote as he knew it all far more than the rest. Any other writer denying this fact should just, well, you know...

Who cares about what Ross writes when JB's is so full of information and technical expertise. Everyone should read John's 30-06 article...

I enjoyed Ross, though blackpowder single shots would probably cost less were it not for him writing about them.

Ross has an article in about every issue of The Double Gun and Single Shot Journal and has for some time. Still as good as ever......

Dennis.

Already did.....twice.

Ross Seyfreid is one of the "old school" writers, I have always enjoyed his articles. Hope he is doing well and continues writing. For Shrapnel, I remember how he got his name. One does learn from experience.. J.B. is my favorite new "school writer" A different style that appeals to my looneyness.. Both have a lot of good info based on use not prose.

Me too, I especially like the next to last paragraph...

Not only could Seyfried write well, unlike 99.9% of "gunwriters", he could actually shoot, and not just well, but at a world class level. Shotgun, rifle, or pistol.

Concur.

Hopefully you are writing with tongue in cheek!
I agree that Ross was one of the best writers in the industry and I still enjoy reading his articles. There is no doubt he could shoot also but he still has human foibles. He wrote numerous articles with absolutly false or misleading information in them and loved making underhanded comments about other writers
Last time I talked with him at the Wolfe Publishing booth he claimed there were no bears left in Alaska as large as those taken by older Kodiak guides, even though F&G records prove different, and had the audacity to claim that photos of bears my clients had taken were photo shopped !

Ross was also quite pleased with himself and wasn't afraid to admit it. He made a claim that he had designed the rounding of the front of single action revolver cylinders and wasn't aware that Colt had been doing that at least 60 years before he was born.

He also made a pretty bold statement around some of his contemporaries in the writing business about how ignorant the readers are and you could write anything you wanted and without qualification, they would believe it...

Like how the round relief cuts in the sharp corners of English double guns were designed to collect dirt !

Are you familiar with Jan Libourel?

Can't imagine why.

He also made a pretty bold statement around some of his contemporaries in the writing business about how ignorant the readers are and you could write anything you wanted and without qualification, they would believe it...


That may actually be true to some extent. How much bs have you seen authoritatively stated and then swallowed whole here alone, let alone elsewhere on the www and in print. Some is from writers who have the wrong "facts" and some is deliberately misleading. My favorite example of the last is one well-know MSR pusher who claimed the .30 AR was more powerful than some .308 loads. That may have been true about a reduced-recoil .308 load, but was pure crap in relation to standard loads. It was a blatant attempt to deceive readers in order to push his agenda.

I'll withhold judgement on Ross until I read his report on shooting the B29.

I remember this piece and how saddened I was to read it. In the early/mid 80s Ross wrote a lot about hunting revolvers, heavy for caliber cast bullets, large as possible meplats. I remember him sticking hard to a philosophy that you would never get high enough velocities to ensure reliable bullet expansion from a wheel gun. Therefore, the shooter needed to put together a bullet/cartridge combo that would ensure the largest diameter entrance and exit hole; and focus, as always, on proper shot placement.

I was never able to afford a John Linebaugh or Hamilton Bowen custom 5 shot Ruger conversion; but I took away as much as I could from his articles and used my Ruger Super Blackhawk to take my very first heads of North American game… Mule deer buck and a truckload of pronghorn does. Eventually I also used my Ruger to cleanly take a bull elk at 125 yards.

Ross Seyfried was my favorite gun writer at the time and I hope he is doing well in Kentucky.

I've posted this before but some time ago in the last decade I was in email contact with RS, about what I do not precisely remember now.

I invited him to the 'fire and he replied, "too much chaff; not enough wheat." I replied he could be "the wind" and reduce some of the chaff. He declined.

Much earlier, I built a 340 B mainly due to an article of his circa '91 or '92 in G&A extolling that cartridges virtues. Later, after a trip to Australia where he experimented very successfully with the then new Winchester Failsafe bullets loaded in '06, he was the first, IIRC, to publicly conclude that these new premiums lifted each cartridge up a whole level of effectiveness.

He then went on later to argue the 338 over the 340 due to the new bullets. I believe that was what we were communicating about at the time I invited him here.

He certainly was opinionated but a good writer also.