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Originally Posted by shaman
Yes, he stole ideas. Yes, he stole rifles. Yes, he claimed experience where he did not have it. However, before I found this place, I used The Hunter's Rifle quite a bit as a primary reference and it did not fail me.

It would be fitting if you stole your copy.


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My favorite gun writer was Jack O'Connor. The others were a distant second, although I regularly read John Jobson, John Wooters, Pete Brown, Warren Page, as well as some of the others of that time period.

My favorite outdoor writer was Archibald Rutledge. I consider him to be one of the best writers ever, and I've read everything by him I could get my hands on, in addition to visiting Hampton Plantation. Others that wrote for the magazines during that time period were also good......Babcock, Corey Ford, Ruark, Whelen, and others who's names I can't remember. The 1950's and 60's were my favorite times.

Also, I really liked the stories that Erwin Bauer wrote for Outdoor Life during that time period as well.

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Originally Posted by Theo Gallus
Originally Posted by shaman
Yes, he stole ideas. Yes, he stole rifles. Yes, he claimed experience where he did not have it. However, before I found this place, I used The Hunter's Rifle quite a bit as a primary reference and it did not fail me.

It would be fitting if you stole your copy.



grin

Actually, I got it as part of the NAHC book club. North American Hunting Club-- now there's a dark stain on the history of the Outdoors! I made the mistake of signing up and after the first few lousy books and some cheesy medallions, I told them I was opting out. The books kept coming. I finally got tired of dealing with them and stopped returning the books and stopped paying the bills. After a few more books, they sent me a nastygram and that was it. They folded shortly thereafter. Harvey's tome showed up somewhere in the middle of all that. I never asked for it, and I wasn't going to pay to return it.

So, yes, in a way, I probably did steal my copy.


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The difference between then and now is the old writers could tell stories. Many of the new ones can just recite data. For stories, you can't beat Skeeter's Good Friends, Good Guns, Good Whiskey.

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A few comments:

First, thanks to those who mentioned me.

Second, this may or may not matter to the original poster (teal) but quite a few of the writers mentioned so far were NOT gun writers. Instead they were hunting writers.

Those are not mutually exclusive occupations, but a gun AND hunting writer is still a gun writer. A hunting writer may mention guns in passing, but is generally not as technically oriented as somebody more interested in hunting guns.

A few years ago I wrote an article on books essential to understanding the history of hunting rifles--then expanded it a little in a chapter for GUN GACK II. This isn't necessarily a list of the most entertaining hunting-gun books, since some are pretty technical, and for more immediately practical than historical books I would certainly include a couple already mentioned, Bob Hagel's GAME LOADS AND PRACTICAL BALLISTICS FOR THE AMERICAN HUNTER and Finn Aagaard's HUNTING RIFLES AND CARTRIDGES. (My originally new copies of both eventually started falling apart. I replaced Hagel's with a new reprint, but Finn's book is held together with at least two kinds of tape.)

Here's a list of the historical works, listed in the alphabetical order of the author's last name:

Craig Boddington: SAFARI RIFLES IIGen. Julian S. Hatcher: HATCHER'S NOTEBOOK
Elmer Keith: RIFLES FOR LARGE GAME
Larry Koller: SHOTS AT WHITETAILS
Bryan Litz: APPLIED BALLISTICS FOR LONG-RANGE SHOOTING
Charles Landis: HUNTING WITH THE TWENTY-TWO
Jack O'Connor: THE HUNTING RIFLE
Stuart Otteson: THE BOLT ACTION, A DESIGN ANALYSIS
Philip Sharpe: THE RIFLE IN AMERICA
John Taylor: AFRICAN RIFLES AND CARTRIDGES
Harold Vaughan: RIFLE ACCURACY FACTS
Townsend Whelen: THE HUNTING RIFLE

The Litz book is included not to encourage long-range hunting, but it because it corrects many ballistic myths believed by many if not most hunters.

For wingshooting I would pick Bob Brister's SHOTGUNNING: THE ART AND SCIENCE. For handguns, a combination of Keith and Skelton.

There would be a different list for HUNTING books.



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Thanks John

Always nice when someone of knowledge and who shares in a nice manner
and format posts here.


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Rifles and Hunting- Finn Aagaard, Jack O'Conner. Elmer Keith, Bob Milek. Bob Hagel, Col Towsend Whelan, Francis Sell, Jim Carmichel, Craig Boddington, John Barsness, Russel Annabel, Peter Capstick, Larry Koeller, Warren Page
Handguns- Skeeter Skelton, Elmer Keith, Col Jeff Cooper, Rex Applegate, Ed McGivern, Col Charles Askins, Bob Milek, John Taffin, George Nonte, Lee Jurass
Shotguns/bird hunting- Bob Brister, Gordan MacQuarre, Gene Hill, Francess Sell,

more to add as I remember


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The best thing about 24 hour campfire is the writers feedback.
It is quite amazing and I hope it continues.
Keep up the good work JB and others, and thanks for chiming in .

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I always enjoyed G. Sitton and Ross Seyfried.


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Originally Posted by EdM
I always enjoyed G. Sitton and Ross Seyfried.


As did I.


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M D said above ^^^

"Those are not mutually exclusive occupations, but a gun AND hunting writer is still a gun writer. A hunting writer may mention guns in passing, but is generally not as technically oriented as somebody more interested in hunting guns."

When I started reading the mags (rags), I was more interested in the hunting + what they used.
I still like the 'hunting stories' but always want to know what rifle and ammo they used.

Then there are Xs I want more info on the Gun OR the Bullet used.

I HAD shelf after shelf of Hunting, Shooting, Rifle, Handgun, mags but in 2007 when I moved there was TOO much weight so I had to reduce.

These are my FAVs and kept close for reference and FUN reading!
There are more mags than Skeeter On Handguns but it's Cherry.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Mule Deer's books are even easier to get to near my loading bench.

In my earlier post I FAILED (sorry) to mention the Writers and former Writers who participate here on the 'fire'.
THANKS, I really appreciate it. I've been 'honored' to have 1 on 1 discussions with some I knew from the past and
NEVER THOT I'D BE PRIVILEGED to actually talk to/with.


Jerry


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Lots of good reference here. I'll just add Rifles for Africa by Gregor Woods.
Amazing how many of the previously mentioned books are on my shelf.


I am continually astounded at how quickly people make up their minds on little evidence or none at all.
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Thanks all - really looking for the book lists. I'm only 42 and I didn't grow up reading outdoor writers a lot. Found them when I found the internet. I did have a library card and spent most of my time with a very early Nosler reloading manual. That did enough for me back than.

Now I have a list of books to order/read. Appreciate it.


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I read a lot of this stuff as a little kid and the storytellers attracted me. And that means Elmer Keith, the delight he felt spinning a yarn leaped off the page and I was delighted right along with him. Col. Charles Askins was another tale teller but I felt he was a severe man. A little scary. Some things I've read since say I may have been right.

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Originally Posted by 5thShock
... Col. Charles Askins was another tale teller but I felt he was a severe man. A little scary. Some things I've read since say I may have been right.


You think!?


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Originally Posted by shaman
Originally Posted by smitty_bs
Finn Aagaard, Bob Milek, John Wooters, Jim Carmichael, Rick Jamison, Clay Harvey, Ed Matunas, and Bob Hagel to name a few.
.


I'm glad someone else had the stones to mention Clay Harvey first. They'll pelt you instead of me.

Yes, a lot of his stuff was apocryphal. Yes, he generated a lot of personal bad blood on here. However, I kept a copy of The Hunter's Rifle next to the bed for over a decade. A lot of the rifles he touted are now on my rack, and I have to agree with him. The Hunter's Rifle did a great job of slicing up the myriad of what was out there at the time and giving a framework for what to chose when.

Yes, he stole ideas. Yes, he stole rifles. Yes, he claimed experience where he did not have it. However, before I found this place, I used The Hunter's Rifle quite a bit as a primary reference and it did not fail me.

So far, there is not a name mentioned I would dispute.

John Wooters is problematic in my mind, but then all the men on Rushmore are as well. He was a great writer, no doubt about that. However, he championed the idea of culling to improve trophy quality. This led to a generation of men wandering about the woods shooting gimpy-looking bucks and thinking they were doing the world a favor.





Wooters started the whole QDM trophy hunting craze that is ruining the sport of deer hunting. Driving up prices through outrageous lease fee's and pricing many out of the sport is nothing to be proud of. Also encouraged the whole "raise your very own trophy" bullshyt that has everyone feeding deer, planting food plots, putting game cams everywhere etc. etc. until most folks have turned into deer farmers rather than deer hunters. The man should be dug up and kicked in the ass.

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+1 Ross Seyfried

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3dtestify,

I've always regretted that Ross never published a book. Of course, writing one is kind of a hassle, but it's relatively easy to collect selected magazine articles into one volume. I have a lot of his stuff in my library, maybe even most of it, but it's inside copies of GUNS & AMMO, RIFLE, HANDLOADER, SUCCESSFUL HUNTER and DOUBLE GUN AND SINGLE-SHOT JOURNAL. It would be nice to have it in a book or two, especially the stuff Ross considers his best work.


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As a more general comment, the problem with a lack of hunting stories in magazines these days was caused not by lack of story-tellers but by television and then the Internet.

Magazine hunting stories were going strong through the 1980s and into the early 90s. I know this because at one time I made more than half my living writing them--along with some fishing stories--for magazines including FIELD & STREAM, GRAY'S SPORTING JOURNAL, SPORTS AFIELD and even SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, back when SI ran "blood sports" stuff. In fact, my very first magazine sale was to SI 45 years ago, what the magazines then called a "mood piece" on flyfishing in the winter in Wyoming. Sold my second story a few months later to GRAY'S, then a brand-new magazine.

But as more hunting (and fishing) shows took over TV, and then the Internet, more magazines quit running stories, because most hunters and anglers apparently preferred watching over reading.. I quit publishing fishing stories in the mid-90s, because the pay rates really started going downhill. That was also about the time the amount of my gun writing started really rising, partly because editors wanted more technical info than hunting stories.

I still get to write a few hunting stories for SPORTS AFIELD, but gave up FIELD & STREAM YEARS ago, because it started going to "sound bites" rather than stories of any length. The latest news in the business is F&S just went from published six times a year to quarterly. (GRAY'S never was much of a market for professional writers, something I learned during a stint as the editor in the mid-90s. The only way they could afford to keep going was to mostly run stories by people who did something else for a living, who will generally accept lower pay.)

But there's also been a general decline in reading for pleasure--not information--in all magazines. While it's still a pretty strong industry (contrary to what some people think) it's mostly turned into an information market, like the gun and hunting magazines.


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I have quit subscribing to every gun magazine except for receiving my American Rifleman every month. I grew up reading JOC stories in my early teens, got hooked on Skeeter sometime in the 60s and discovered JB in the 70s. Now in my 7th decade I stopped watching the TV hunting shows years ago. If I ever have to hear Jackie Bushman clicking that Model 700 safety so loud again I think I will go nuts. As for archery, I will never again watch Tom Miranda piss his pants when he arrows a deer. I really liked Rifle and Hand Loader but they kept screwing up my subscriptions so much that I finally gave up. It wasn't the magazine content but the way it was ran IMO.

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