Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Whatever happened to John Barsness?

I love being semi retired. I only deal with existing clients and referrals, work when I want and enjoy life.
John will you be doing another collection of RLN the third 5 years? I don't know if the third 5 years has been reached or not but when it does count me in. I enjoy going back and reading them.

In the early 80s I was a magazine hound, hitting the mag racks once a month. In a couple of years had a stack or two and decided to go through and look for what I really liked. Three authors were the general theme, one had retired, one disappeared and there was JB. Barsness had been my guy for a long time now for not regurgitating others opinions, for trying things before stating his views.

May you and your wife enjoy the quasi retirement.

Enjoy your semi-retirement, John!

Coming up on 8 years for me, love it!

We all enjoy having your old flinter over the fireplace at our Sportsmen's Club. I'll send you a picture of it sometime.

Regards,
Bob.

Yes, we're going to be publishing Rifle Loony News, The Third Five Years next year about this time. It doesn't seem like almost 15 years since we started RLN, but there it is!

And thanks to everybody for the semi-retirement wishes. Started to four years ago, and just keep whittling away at the work-load....

John

Every day is Saturday Mule Deer 😁

Congrats on the move toward retirement John. I did it 100% 9 years ago and am busier than I ever expected.

My late father in law shared an article with me many years ago, and after reading it he asked how I liked it. I said you are correct that John's words are very informative to the subject of the article. I believe it was a precision shooting monthly or bi monthly magazine he enjoyed reading and was I believe small calibers and shooting sage rats / ground squirrels/ accuracy tips , as we both were very new to Northern Califonia skippy shooting and just compiling guns to enjoy the fun the act is. Not long after you were selling a hunting book here and I had you sign it. When I gave it to him and showed him your signature and words he thought I was pulling his leg. He didn't realize both you, and Steve Timm were posting and replying on a darned internet website. He also admired Steve's articles and a few caliber comments in I believe the Hornady reloading manual. Gary appreciated, used and had proven your writing was to his findings very good information. He actually had his first custom rifle built after reading yours and other writers words, and was happy he bit the bullet to get a custom made and shot his best ever groups with it.

Enjoy the free time you may have, get out in the field and enjoy your passion of the outdoors while your body allows. I have learned as I age that delaying a trip sometimes becomes a regret. And keep writing good stuff John, you are appreciated more than you know.

Allen

Thanks, Allen.

Nice to hear the story about your father-in-law!

As far as doing stuff in the outdoors, have posted elsewhere that the reasons for getting into the outdoor writing business included liking to write (was determined to be writer from about age 12), and knowing that it would offer plenty of opportunities to hunt and fish, often in other places around the world, instead of waiting until I retired to do it. That happened, in places from Alaska to Africa, including several trips to Europe and other countries such as New Zealand and Argentina. Some places were visited more than once, including eight African safaris up to a month long, and 15 hunts in Canada from British Columbia to Quebec.

In fact Eileen and I traveled enough to now be content to mostly hunt and fish in Montana (where many other people dream about traveling to!) and have taken good enough care our selves to still be able to. But are looking forward to quite a bit more fishing, which we didn't get to do as much after hunting became our main focus!

John

Excellent John.
I hadn't thought about that. It is always good to be able to enjoy your work like you have, and benefit from it as well. And also very interesting you were able to pursue, and quite successfully and well, your childhood dreams. Not many can do that, let alone do it so well.

Cheers John and Eileen.

Happy trails

Allen

Congratulations John. You don't know this but our early lives when starting out ended up about the same. I don't need to expand on this. IMO opinion, you are the greatest living writer and JOC was the greatest on rifles and Skeeter on handguns.

I'd recommend that if you're an aficionado of
Mr. Barsness's writings, find a copy of Rifle
magazine March 2008 No.236 and read his
fine article " ANYTHING BUT BOLTS " starting
on page 44

I used to loan this out to people that would
boo-hoo about me deer hunting with an "obsolete "
bow or muzzleloader, or a break action single
shot or semi automatic

What happened to John Barsness ?

its a real short story > he road away on a dark horse into the sunset never to be seen again . Happy Trails

Thanks very much!

How did your life start out?

I have a few issues of a long defunct Wolfe Publishing rag called “Hunting Horizons”, from the early 90’s (when I was about 19 and in college). There are two articles from those issues that John wrote on the 257 Roberts and 7x57 Mauser that got me hooked on both rounds, and hooked on reading everything John has written that I could get my hands on. So, about 30 years of John Barsness for me. Thanks for all the outstanding articles John! I’ve spent lots of money on firearms, and firearms related stuff/minutia over the years, largely because of JB. BTW, I’d love to hear some more handloading Haikus. That article had me rolling! Enjoy the golden years John. You deserve it!

"And have taken good enough care of ourselves to still be able to". That gentlemen is the secret. No truer words were ever spoken than these,,, (YOUR HEALTH IS YOUR WEALTH). BCM

As some humans have observed in the past, you're only as old as you feel!

Oh crap!

Exactly! And never having been 70 before, I have no idea how it feels--especially to others!

Thanks for years of honest efforts, MD. 👍

Thank you!

The question that opened this thread is what brought me here to the Campfire over a decade ago. I realized that I hadn’t seen a “John Barsness” byline in “Handloader” or “Rifle” for a while so I thought I would just do a internet search and wa la …😁 or voila! for some of our friends up North.

It didn’t take long to figure out that our “Mule Deer” was the one and only…😊