Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Whatever happened to Jim Carmichael ?

About 25 years ago when I was still new to the DFW area, I was looking for a gun club to join. One afternoon I drove over to Haltom City Rifle and Pistol Club thinking I'd get a chance to shoot a little as a guest (and maybe join up). When I got there only one guy was shooting but he invited me in. He introduced himself as Jim Carmichel and I didn't make the connection at that moment. Nice fellow, whoever he was. I can't be sure that he wasn't the esteemed gun writer, to be honest, but I've often wondered. I don't know why he'd have been in this neck of the woods but you never know.

Jim gets credit for the development work of the 260 that led to its adoption as a commercial cartridge by Remington. But people forget that he also wrote about and developed a 6.5 based on an improved 250 Savage case.
That cartridge to which he also gave a cat name ,was just about identical to the 6.5 Creedmoor of today.

Read it cover to cover about five times soon after publication. I used to collect Jim's cartridge profile columns from OL. They were a great guide to a young man lusting after his first rifle, when the knowledge base of his known world thought a person needed two guns. A 30-06 for meat, and a 22 lr for birds.


I was 16 before I ever tasted a pheasant not head shot with a 22 rifle.

I always had a world of respect for Mr Carmichel, and all of his writing. I would love the opportunity to shake his hand.

Always enjoyed his Book of the Modern Rifle still have it. I also had Herb in Jonesboro re blue a Pre War Model 70 300 H&H Mag and glass bed it and refinish the stock. Sorry to hear he passed.
I travel to Johnson City quite a bit for work and wish I would run into him, as I would like to buy him a drink and visit with him as he has a wealth of knowledge.

i see one of Jim's rifles is for sale on GB

Carmichael is a class act. In his book "Classic Carmichel" (they misspelled it) there's an article "The Great Jonesboro Pigeon Shoot". It is a humor piece and a very good one. He's one of the writers that I've enjoyed for many years. He is also one of the few writers that has competed for many years and has enjoyed a lot of success at it.

I'm going to put my Carmichel books on Classified. The Modern Rifle (a bit beat up), two copies of The Book of the Rifle, and Just Jim (paperback, also a bit rough).

Thinning the herd, and they need a good home.

I was a teen in the 80's and my appetite for all things firearm was growing to meet my appetite for all things fishing. Through a buddy whose dad was a subscriber to several outdoor magazines, I learned about Outdoor Life and asked for a subscription as a birthday gift. I received it for several years, and I still remember walking to the mailbox with crossed fingers, hoping that it had been a month already, and that my next copy would be inside, waiting for me. It almost never was.

Carmichel's column was one of my favorites, even though so much of the information was over my head. I suspect it was as much his skill as a writer that kept me reading articles that I didn't fully understand as the content itself. At least 3 Carmichel stories still occupy space in my cluttered brain - "Killing" a crocodile in Africa with a borrowed .243 is one of them. I believe this was a featured story and not one of his column submissions.

Another is his tale if being snowed in on a hunt in Iran(?). He was hunting with his custom .280 Remington and, suffering from a case of cabin fever, sent a "particularly ornery looking" crow off to the crow afterlife from a few hundred yards away. This story had teenaged me babbling for months about how I was going to own a .280 one day. This did not come to pass, but I do own a 7-08.

The third Carmichel story I recall well is his description of the development of the .22 CHeetah, (the capital C and H standing for the 2 main collaborators, Carmichel himself and Fred Huntington).

For enjoyment of reading well put together writing while also imparting knowledge, he was my favorite gun writer of my youth and is probably partially responsible for my being a bit if a gun nerd, and that's something that I have no regrets about.

Bruinruin, for me that writer was O'Connor. I was 12 when Carmichel took over. I missed O'Connor, but soon began to appreciate Carmichel, and learned a lot from him. Want to get a copy of his Book of the Rifle!

I dont think he is dead or they brought him back from the grave. OL just came out with an irrelevant and redundant comparison of the .243 Win vs .244 Rem. The logic being we can now choose our twist rate rather than rely on off the shelf rifles from over 52 years ago.


https://www.outdoorlife.com/guns/243-winchester-vs-244-remington/?amp

Jim Carmichael is 76 years old and now lives in Tennessee

Creedmoor and PRC are knockoffs. Jim Carmichel’s 6.5 Leopard

https://www.outdoorlife.com/guns/6-5-cartridges-that-never-made-it/?amp

I don't know about that..................IMO & for my taste, the Dakota 76 get's that nod, along with numerous stocks from custom makers like David MIller, Al Beisen, & Keith Stegall.

Here's a Stegall rifle & a Dalota 76 that I owned & in a fit of weakness, sold both rifles to the same guy.

As for Carmichel, he's always been in a select few of gunwriters that I really, really liked.

MM

Somebody already mentioned at least once, earlier in this thread, that Jim's name is spelled Carmichel--which is indeed the correct spelling.

He writes (or at least did) a back page article for Petersen's Hunting called Rear View.

I mentioned a LONG time ago in the early life of this old thread, that Ken Waters was actually the first guy to develop a wildcat that was essentially the .260 Remington. He did it in the late 1950s by necking up .243 cases, and if I recall correctly called it the .263 Express. But Carmichel certainly gets the credit for getting it turned into a commercial round.

Might also mention that before this thread was re-resuuracted I bought one of Jim's rifles. This was back in July, when he wanted to sell one of the rare Husqvarna FFV .308 target rifles he got back in 1960s. Butch Lambert mentioned this on the Campfire, and eventually helped me get into touch with Jim, during which I talked to him on the phone for a while. We were on several "gun writer" invitational trips back in the 1990s and early 2000s, and had some good (and interesting) times but I hadn't seen him since he retired from OL, so the phone call was fun! (I also now have a copy of Jim's Federal Firearms License on my computer, in case he sells something else that calls to me....)

Around 25 years ago I arrived a couple days early at hunting camp to guide rifle hunters in northern NM. Jim Carmichel and two of his competitive shooting buddies were there, all three had already killed their elk and were waiting before heading out for their flight. I got to talk to Jim and his friends and pick their brains a bit. I had already been told in the past that Carmichel had this almost unreasonable dislike of the 270 (my fav) so I pretty much let that dog lie. But one of the things I learned was he did help design the Remington Classic stock, and mentioned he had several of the unlimited Classics and hunted with them. I did learn some things about how and why certain stocks fit in certain ways and applications.

Jim had always given me the impression in his writings that he was more of a shooter, and wing shooter, than a big game hunter. A few of the misconceptions he had about elk and elk hunting still surprised me anyway. He was quite personable towards me and others and I am glad to have met him.

I've had friends that had a strong distaste of certain cartridges, maybe more like hate... I could never understand that kind of thinking. Anyway, I kinda got the impression by reading his stuff that he was a good guy.

Sounds like it should be in a proctology journal instead.