Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Is it just me or is "American Hunter" magazine pretty bad

SAKO75--

While I have no real opinion one way or another, having not tried a VX-L longer than a few shots at a range, I do hear from Leupold that they cannot make enough of them, the demand is that heavy.

JB

No one ever went broke understimating the taste of the American Public...

I'm not much for hunting mags, preferring shooting/handloading mags. Being former military, I find AR most interesting. But, like others I didn't become a Life member for a magazine subscription.

As an after thought, the hunting population is growing older,attracting fewer new hunters. It is possible NRA has oriented AH to attract a young hunter.

muledeer,

Great point about three excellent publications! I have to get my subscriptions reinstated to Rifle and Handloader. I don't know about Successful Hunter, however. At my age suddenly becoming successful might just be too much of a shock to the system.

Rifle and Handloader are without a doubt the best of their kind!

That would be one idea, but a better one might be, just to cancel both of them, and replace with a Newsletter about the latest in Anti-Gun legislation etc., without all the glossy photos of themselves, and the dramatic write-ups, like they're some kind of heroes.

I get the AR, only because I'm a Life Member. The AR used to be about the last word on everything gun related. Like other people I used to save the magazines. Now they're barely worth looking at. What a joke. I wonder if they even pay for themselves.
Smitty of the North

Trigernossis asked:"So, what are some good mags.?"

.........out of a cloud of sulphurous smokes drifts bleary eyed advice.

and this, not to dismiss those already recomended, as an alternative to mad. ave. hype

* Black Powder Cartridge Rifle News

* The Single Shot Exchange

..........buckling on his swashes, he disappears back into the smoke.

GTC

Wolfe's stuff is the best...

For those who are concerned or fed up with NRA's endless mail solicitations you can go to their website and click on "Do Not Solicit", which I believe is somewhere under Member Services.

Doug

"Q: How can I reduce the amount of mail I receive from the NRA?
A: Simply email us at membership@nrahq.org or dial 800-NRA-3888 and request to be placed on the "Do Not Promote" list. This will significantly reduce the amount of mail you receive without affecting important mailings, magazine service, or your membership renewal."


Scroll down to see:
https://www.nramemberservices.org/faq.asp

Let me put in a good word for Precision Shooting. The writing is usually amateurish, the content is sometime stupefyingly technical, but there is a lot of good stuff. It is not completely restricted to bench rest and target shooting these days.

i like precision shooting

+1 on the Wolfe pubs being the best in their classes by far. I have almost no interest in BPCR, but I read the articles because they're well written and entertaining. A small step below is Sports Afield, then a bigger step down to Shooting Times, AH, NAH, Rifle, (formerly) Peterson's Hunting, etc. BTW, I think the best use for the recent mags is an excuse to visit the nearest VA Hospital (Manchester NH for me). I drop a pile every 2 months or so at the library, and they always seem to be gone by the next visit. Also Soldier of Fortune, which used to be WAY out on the fringe, but seems closer to the center post 9/11. (Or maybe I'm just closer to the fringe myself!) Fonman

Lets take a closer look at the American Hunter. Going by the contents page the April 2007 AH references 23 articles or sections on topics. Of those 23 twelve of them were about hunting or hunting gear and the rest of the eleven are about legislation, gun rights and NRA business.

Now take a look at the Mar.-Apr. issue of RIFLE. It has seventeen articles all of which are about guns or gear. No article in the Rifle mentions gun legislation etc. There is an article there by Spomer, who writes for the NRA as well, called "Mans great escape". which interests me. I will have to read that later.

I just skim read some of the articles in the subject AH and I find them quite good and interesting. For an article to be interesting to me it has to make me think about something that I had forgotten about or new information. If it goes over the same old then its less interesting. The article in AH by Michael Hanback "The Bucks Stop Here" was of interest to me. It tells how improve your spot.

I like to rest my mind just like many do and read an article on some fancy gun or gear. However the real world is that our ownership of guns and places to use them is in a war. Please don't ignore that all of the time.

To be frank with you ladies and gentlemen. If your not a member of the NRA or active in some other gun rights group then you should rethink that.

For those who don't want either NRA magazine, remember, advertising rates are based on circulation, among other things.

No, your not alone. For me, the AH was at it's pinnacle when they had articles and excerpts from Peter Capstick. That was >25 years ago and Peter has long since joined the Silent Majority. Too bad.

Were those the ones where Capstick advocated using solids in North America before someone pointed out to him they are illegal in most states or the one about shooting insects in the backyard with an air gun?

Ordinarily, yes. And there's a lot of circulation on both magazines. But AR and AH are like icons and get a lot of advertising based on the fact they're NRA organs.

I think if the magazine was in the newstands and in competition with other gun mags (and it may be) sales would be very, very slow.

I think the article about the air gun was in Guns & Ammo. The air gun was a model that shot BBs like a machine gun, using I think a can of Freon. In the sunlight the BBs appeared like tracers, so it was possible to walk the stream of BBs onto a flying target. The article described Capstick shooting dragonflies out of the air in his backyard in Florida. As I recall he was imagining the dragonflies to be enemy aircraft.

[Rant=on] I was turned off by his shooting of dragonflies. Adult dragonflies capture and eat other flying insects, and have been recorded as taking a dozen+ mosquitoes per hour. As immature nymphs, one of their favorite foods is mosquito eggs. Mosquitoes are a nuisance, unless you're a saleman for insect repellant; they are certainly a health problem. As I read the article I found myself hoping Capstick would get malaria from a mosquito that the dragonflies he shot would have eaten. [/Rant]

--Bob

it is a horrid magazine. but they try
i like the handloader/rifle/successful hunter series ALOT (whole reason i found this forum), also like fur fish and game, backwoodsman, and a local New England fishing mag called ON THE WATER. other than those and that one magazine i get thats all about handguns,
can't remember the name, but john taffin, mike venterenio (sorry about the spelling) chuck connors clint smith and bunch of others write in,

i do think all gunwriters are nuts, no way you'd get me to put in writing what i think, just settin yourself up every single month for a hellstorm of angry you don't know nuttin about anything kinda mail. but i appreciate stickin your neck out just so i can multi-task on the can. thanks

YOU MEAN SOMEONE ELSE SHOT DID THAT TOO!! their wasn't a carpenter bee within 3city blocks of my house.