Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters JB: Why did Gary Sitton disappear from Handloader in 1999?

Sadly, on both counts, our loss.

What is the "story for another day" regarding being editor of HANDLOADER and RIFLE? Sounds like an interesting job.

"Never let your lips say what you did not see with your own eyes."

In many instances, hearsay and rumor could be greatly lessened by the providing of facts.

Sitton was a brilliant writer. He would write an entire story about emptying the pockets of his hunting jacket at the end of the season and it was captivating reading. He also wrote columns under the name Jacob Bowers. He is missed.

Great to have you stop by Tom.

Interesting take on the current state of shooting sports writing.

When we were growing up, JOC's work was more hunting oriented than technically oriented, while, IIRC, Warren Paige's work was significantly more technically oriented than hunting oriented. JOC was the primary shooting sports writer at Outdoor Life and WP was the primary shooting sports writer at Field & Stream. I liked JOC, while my Father, being more technically oriented, preferred WP. Neither of us were fans of John Jobson at Sports Afield, but I can't remember exactly why, maybe just because 2 magazine subscriptions was felt to be enough.

In his most recent podcast, Ron Spomer answered a question about how to break in to the outdoor writing field. It's interesting to listen to and read different perspectives on the same.

Gary Sitton was certainly one of the very best shooting and hunting writers. I would say that most people who write about guns and hunting are only passable as writers. They may know a lot about the subject, but few have high level writing skills. Gary Sitton was one of the few who could really write. I would include Mule Deer on that relatively short list.

Clay Harvey could really write. I realize he had other issues but he was a master of the written word

Oh was he now?

I've been a member of DU for as long as I can remember, even though I haven't hunted ducks in years, and I discovered Gordon MacQuarrie when I was in high school. I've lost count of the number of times I've read the Willow Creek Press collection of his writings. For my nickel he was one of the best "hunting story" scribes who ever pecked on a typewriter. As JB said, the technical articles may be more popular now, but I find the stories to be equally enjoyable. It's one of the reasons Sports Afield is at the top of my list as far as print hunting/shooting periodicals is concerned: it has a decent balance of both.

I do miss reading Tom McIntyre's back page though...but we've been through that on a different thread.

Just my $02.

N.B. The most recent issue of Ducks Unlimited arrived in the mail today, and lo and behold there's an article about MacQuarrie. That one will be a keeper.

I think Petersen's Hunting had a pretty good line up mid 80's early 90's. Sitton, Milek, Boddington, and Wooters, pretty easy to go cover to cover. I have 5-6 of JB's books, but my all time favorite is Jim Carmichael. One writer that I don't hear much about is Hugh Birnbaum. Hugh wrote for the American Rifleman for a while and shortly before he passed, he was the optics editor for Shooting Times. Hugh had a pretty dry sence of humor that cracked me up.

John Jobson was NOT the shooting/hunting columnist at Sports Afield. Instead he was the camping columnist, back when each of the so-called Big Three outdoor magazines--Field & Stream, Outdoor Life and Sports Afield--all had camping columns, along with fishing, boating, etc. This was before the so-called "vertical" magazines started appearing which specialized in certain subjects. Handloader and Rifle were a couple of examples, but for a while there was also a magazine totally devoted to crappie fishing, believe it or not.

I liked John Jobson's firearms and hunting stuff a lot--and never could understand why he wasn't the "shooting" columnist at SA. The guy who was in those years, Pete Brown, had a lot of technical knowledge--much of it acquired during his military career--but his writing was flat and boring. I suspect Jobson might not have wanted to be the shooting columnist, because a lot of what SA ran back then, via Brown, was results of major competitive shotgun events. (Plus, I don't recall anything by Jobson about shotgunning or bird-hunting.) Which was part of the reason SA was a rather distant 3rd place in circulation behind F&S and OL.

A "master of the written word?" We're going to have to completely disagree on that.

I thought Clay Harvey's writing sucked. He was one of those who used too many words, and too many big words (something called "over-writing" by many), which got in the way of the story-line, whether it was technical or a hunting tale.

But that's a matter of taste--though it also tended to obscure how little actual experience he actually had. I had a copy of his book Popular Sporting Rifle Cartridges for a while, but after reading it a couple times realized he'd never hunted with about half of the rounds he wrote chapters on--and maybe never even fired a rifle chambered in some of 'em.

That's aside from him selling a bunch of guns loaned to him by various manufacturers, and some of his "adventures" in the hunting fields. On one of my safaris I was guided by a PH who'd guided Harvey, and when he found out I was a gun and hunting writer his eyes narrowed. The stuff he told me about Harvey is too long to list here, but let's just say Mr. Clay was roundly despised not only by my PH but the rest of the safari camp staff who'd been on that hunt.

As a more general comment, it would be very difficult to find a publisher willing to put together a collection of Gary Sitton's writing. Aside from the reasons already mentioned, publishing actual books is pretty expensive, even paperbacks, which both Tom Gresham and I know about personally--and it's based on how many they might sell.

I know a few people on this thread say they'd buy one, but it takes more than a handful to make a book profitable, especially a book actually printed rather than a cyberspace edition. But even a e-book would require somebody to put it together, which requires finding the printed articles and stories, then turning them into a suitable computer form--which would take considerable work and even expense, whether for scanning the words or actually having somebody type them into a computer. Even then breaking even might be doubtful. A PDF version of the actual original articles might be easiest, but also tends to be easily "pirated."

If somebody wants to take all that on, there are ways to do it. But Eileen and I have been teaching a monthly adult-education class for around 15 years to people who want to get paid for their writing, and these days a lot of the class is about self-publishing, whether on an Internet website or as a printed book. It can definitely work, and we can provide advice to somebody who might want to put together a collection of Gary's stuff. But it would be a real long-shot, given the realities of today's market.

I think of Faulkner as the king of run on sentences and Hemingway as using very short descriptive sentence structure?

Anyway thanks for posting. It's been a long time since I read either author. Faulkner's The Bear is probably the work of outdoor literature I was most impressed with ever.

https://www.bartleby.com/essay/The-Bear-by-William-Faulkner-F3JAVJ23TJ

William Faulkner’s novella “The Bear” from his collection of works, Go Down Moses, is a symbolic exploration of the relationship between man and nature in the eyes of a young boy. The heart of the issue, the warped idea of the ownership of land, is revealed thought the clash of man and nature in a wild chase that ends only in blood and death. The prey is nature itself, represented by a bear, while the hunters are men, full of greed and destructive possessiveness, pursuing that which they do not understand. Ike’s idea of the bear, presented in section 1 of the novella, expresses the idea of symbolism in relation to the bear and to the hunters and what the battle between the two represents. The bear itself, Old Ben, is a symbol for…show more content…
Upon his first encounter with the woods, Ike is lost in wonder, it has been his dream for as long as he could remember to join the men on the hunt and explore the beauty of the big woods. What sets Ike apart from the other men, however, is his wonder of the wilderness, not just of its size, but of what mysteries it contains. When he arrives he feels the need “to earn for himself from the wilderness the name and state of hunter provided he in his term were humble and enduring enough.” (192) Ike doesn’t desire the approval of any of the other hunter, his cousin, or even his wise mentor Sam Fathers. Instead he knows that the right to claim the name of hunter lies in earning the approval “from the wilderness” and to do so he must be “humble and enduring.” (192) Those words do not seem to fit with the violent acts of the other hunters; to them the ability to shoot and kill is all that really matters, hence the disrespect for Boon and the position of Walter Ewell as a senior hunter. By using gentle words Faulkner states that there is more to “hunting” than killing, what Ike desires and seeks to prove himself worthy of is belonging to nature, to feel its beauty and strength running through him. Without this sense of approval and belonging from the woods, Ike feels he is unworthy to take the life of an animal and to use what he has gained from death to

I don't remember Pete Brown at all, just Jobson, but we didn't have a subscription to SA so the only time that I saw a copy of SA was at the barber shop every 6 weeks.

I do remember that my Father was also a fan of a guy name Pete Kuhlhoff who wrote for Argosy. Kuhlhoff was a serious 'chuck hunter and they had mutual friends in that northeastern hunting circle, so maybe that is why he liked him.

I have a number of Hunting Horizons magazines. Excellent magazines that featured a fair bit of Sitton's work.