Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters John Barsness' writing -

I count my self luck that I've been reading JB's writing for many years. Check out his piece in this old Field and Stream. JB will go down in history as our generations Elmer Keith or Jack O'Connor. He is that good. Thank John for all the good years.

https://books.google.com/books?id=N..._r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

I'd be very likely to agree with you.

Geno

Kinda like his writing and also his demeanor!

From the story:

',toward where the sun shone like a gauzed phosphorescence"

Using such fancy words like "gauzed" that this website tries to tell me it's not spelled correctly.

Great stuff John,

Geno

YES , J.B. has sure helped many of us on campfire .Thank you,Pete53

I like John's stories a lot. They provide a different view into his writing than the more technical pieces.

I like to read the old time gunwriters because they were so opinionated. They weren't always correct but they were adamant about it! I like to read JB because he knows the subject matter better than anybody and his stuff is always factual and I take it as gospel.

Well, this piece is pure literature! It tells a story of hunting, but it also tells you the 'why' of hunting by indirect methods. Crap, I'm not good enough to explain what this story does or how it does it, but this is dang good writing.

Concur on his writing and especially of his testing of optics and handloading articles. I do like seeing old magazines and remembering some of the writers and the ads. How about that Marlboro ad!? And I definitely remember those Remington shotgun ads.

I agree. I thoroughly enjoyed reading that story.

Thanks for posting that blast from the past. JB is definitely one of the best.

WTF? Sounds like y'all are eating potato salad over him!

Those who bemoan the dearth of "stories" in current outdoor magazines should pony up for the Rifle Loony News. Plenty of excellent stories without the constraints regular publishers impose. A real bargain since you can download all the old ones as well. That woman that lets John live with her is also a good writer, btw.

Thanks, everybody!

When I started in the outdoor writing business, there was a thriving market for both hunting and fishing stories. In fact it took several years for me to sell anything BUT stories, and start selling some technical stuff as well. Being able to sell both made paying the bills a lot easier--but back then stories paid better than technical articles. Today the reverse is true, and pay for fishing writing is worse than the hunting market, the reason I pretty much quit writing about fishing, and also part of the reason we started RIFLE LOONY NEWS.

We're working right now on the book collection of the second five years of RLN, and should have it out this summer. Hard to believe it's been a decade since we put together the first issue....

Consistency is key, and John is nothing if not consistent. Understanding the whys and wherefores of hunting and being able to portray them in words so ably that you can feel the wind and smell the sage is indeed a gift.

That was JB, before he was JB, and it was really, really good. I miss the 80's and the old Field & Stream. It had advertisements of rifles and shotguns with blued steel and wooden stocks.

You'll also notice that first couple of ads are for cigarettes and whiskey. That was known as "brown money" in the magazines back in the day when such ads were legal. When outdoor magazines lost the brown money, they lost a lot of revenue, which was one reason they started getting smaller and articles shorter. But there were other reasons as well.

I really miss the "old days" when magazine articles were stories about hunting and fishing, not technical "how to" stuff. I like to tinker with technicalities as much as anyone, but for me the real enjoyment is being outdoors, doing what we love as hunters and anglers and telling the stories after. thanks for the reminder, i enjoyed going through that magazine and was amazed at all the wonderful stories.

Yall keep on a talkin and ya gonna give JB the bighead...... nuthin smaller'n a warshtub afit!

(Hey, I enjoy the articles, too.)

One of the first things I would read in Peterson's Hunting was J B's optics column. That was a decent magazine back in the day. John Wooters was a big draw back then.

Aside from his very practical writing from a vast base of knowledge, I have to say John has shown a great deal of patience on some ‘Fire threads while remaining ever civil throughout. That speaks to character which is even more important than the reason he is here.

John has forgotten more on the subject of guns, optics, and all things related than I’ll ever know, but then I’d not expect him to write an article in an anesthesia journal either 🙂. But it’s really his collegial approach here that makes his contributions so valuable to this site.