Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Some gun writers need to toughen up!

Ken Howell wrote"... just be sure to hit 'em between the eyes (quoting Mauldin) - they charge when they're wounded."



My absolute, all-time favorite Bill Mauldin comic! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />



A close second is the guy leaning out of the window of a Piper Cub with a 1911 in his hand and saying to the guy in the backseat, "Let's go down and strafe 'em!"

Generally, the best cartoons are those that don't need (and don't have) a caption -- which is probably why most of the Bill Mauldin fans whom I've met think that his best cartoon was the one with an old cavalry sergeant standing with the muzzle of his 1911 pressed against the hood of his broken-down jeep.

Logcutter--

My friend Ken said part of it pretty well already, but I'll have to put in my 2 cents worth.

Don't know what you have against me personally, but let me give you my background and see if you're still mad. I grew up in Montana, hunting like everybody else on public land and that of some friendly ranchers.

Unlike some of my colleagues in gun/hunting writing, I didn't grow up as the sole heir to a big ranch, or with a lawyer for a father. My folks were teachers, which gave me a head start on some things but not money.

Started writing about hunting in my 20's (after hunting about 10 years) and started to make a living at it by 30. Until then did a lot of other things to make ends meet, including railroad gandy dancer, ranch-hand, farm laborer, etc.

By the time I quit those, I was foreman on a seasonal custom-cutting crew, spending a couple months a year harvesting wheat, barley, etc. Have never set a choker, but can probably run a combine with a 24-foot header better than you, not to mention rebuild the header, whiuch I have done more than once.

Never got an offer for a "free" guided hunt until I was 35. This was a bowhunt on a local ranch in Montana. After the first morning it was obvious I knew a lot more about elk hunting than the rancher-outfitter, so he turned me loose. I killed a 5-point bull that evening, and the outfitter asked me to guide for him.

Did that for a couple years, until it was obvious the rancher/outfitter was using me to do his guiding correctly for very cheap wages. I have guided now and again since then, on a couple of other occasions by outfitters that invited me to go on a "free" hunt with them, then afterward asked to fill in as a guide now and then. Have pulled a packstring or two over various passes, and helped many people to their first big game animal, or their first specimen of Western game. I have guided more people to elk, deer and pronghorn than I've been guided to myself. On black bears it's about even. Quite a few of the photos accompanying my articles are of people posing with the game I guided them to.

Didn't get invited on any more "free" hunts until I was 40, 11 years ago. Since then have taken advantage of a great many, though if I've added the money up right, such "free" hunts have cost me at least $50,000 over the last decade. In the last two years alone I've spent $15,000 of my own money on hunts that were partially paid for by discounts from outfitters, the magazines I work for, etc. I spent the money because they were irreplaceable experiences, things I needed to do to keep growing as a hunting writer. During those hunts, I've often been turned loose after a couple of days to hunt on my own, because I proved myself competent in the field. One of those hunts--a plains game hunt in Namibia--cost my wife and me $16,000 of our own money, not a cent paid by anybody else. There have been a few others like that over the years, though no others quite so expensive.

In the meantime I've still lived in Montana, and still hunt on public land every year. Don't hunt elk as much anymore, mostly because it's just my wife and me at home and we don't need the meat. But when I do, I've found the local herd still frequents the same places they did when I started hunting the local mountains 14 years ago when we moved to this valley. I hunted them hard for the first few years we lived here, partly to learn their habits, and if I really need an elk can still find one.

I have not only cut up and packed out elk from various mountains all over Montana (both in bow and rifle season) but done a few moose and sheep as well--though those have all been other folks, since I've never been lucky enough to draw a moose or sheep tag here, despite applying all my adult life. The deer killed on public land are almost countless, and yes, some of them were real trophies.

If you want, I could show you those elk, or a good mule deer or whitetail, on public land. Could also show you a darn good black bear, in a state where you can't bait or use dogs. I've been studying their ways around here for the same 14 years. We don't have near as many as they do on the Idaho side of the divide, so it takes more looking, but if you figure out the places they like, there are some nice ones around here. I took a friend from West Virginia out last spring and got him a good bear in two days. When we took it to the local taxidermists, they said hardly anybody else had brought in a bear, much less a really good one.

Pronghorn are something else. Hunted them for years on public land, taking some really nice bucks, but the ATV has pretty much ruined that. So I do most of my pronghorn hunting on private land any more, though am planning to look at a new chunk of BLM land this fall, if either Eileen or I draw a tag there.

Over half the bird hunting we do is on public land, but even if not we still do it ourselves, using our own bird dog. If you see a photo of either of us with a Montana Hun, sage grouse, any sort of mountain grouse, or most waterfowl, it was taken on local public land.

Have also hunted other states on public land. One example: took an eastern friend to northwest Colorado a few years ago after mule deer. We hunted some BLM land and killed the two biggest bucks the local rancher had seen in years. Mine was probably the oldest mule deer I've taken, a heavy 3x3 that scored better than the many of the "trophy" 4x4's I've seen in magazines. My friend got a 27-inch 4x4 that scored around 175. This was on public land, no guides. If you see a photo of me posing with a big 3x3 in a patch of snowy aspens, that's the buck. If you see a photo of my friend John Forbes with his 4x4, that's the other buck.

But of course you wouldn't lower yourself to look, because I've accepted too many "free" hunts over the past 10 years. Let me tell you something: I worked very hard for those free hunts, by learning to hunt in Montana on public land, and then learning to photograph while hunting, and afterward sit down and write about it. The last two are things very few of the people envious of my job and all those "free" hunts ever want to do. And often, after my own game is down, I go out with other folks on those free hunts, just to learn more to pass on to the readers of various magazines. Which is one reason I get paid enough to spend tens of thousands of dollars on free hunts.

Sincerely,
"Some"

JB, since I don't know Jayco Logcutter, of course I can't guess or say what he's like, but his posts about writers remind me of several school-yard scenes from the 1930s and early 1940s -- scenes where I was the unwilling and uncomfortable focus.

Before I got my growth, heft, health, and strength at about 14, I was undersized, skinny, sickly, and weak -- and wore glasses -- and loved to read -- and made good grades -- and was the preacher's son -- so it was common in those days that sooner or later some of the school-yard bullies accosted me and charged "You think you're better 'n us." I didn't of course, and I didn't know then how to answer that allegation except to deny it.

Much later, I discerned that a fully accurate answer would've been "No, I don't -- but you do, and you can't stand it." And I've met a bunch of "adult" versions of those boys through the years since. Invariably, they've persuaded themselves that education is somehow emasculation. And emasculation, I've been told, is a primordial male fear roughly equivalent in magnitude to fears of the unknown, falling, snakes, etc.

I put Logcutter on my ignore list after his very first post, and didn't take him off even after Rick vouched for him. I only get a sense of what he's posting from the replies, but it seems like I made a good choice.

Thanks, Ken. I suspect you're exactly right--since I had similar experiences myself as a skinny little glasses-wearing kid. They stopped, like yours, once I got enough growth and sense.

There is a sub-category of the education-is-emasculation type, the aggressively ignorant. They don't bother me as much as they used to either.

John

I tried teaching mathematics to a bunch of people who alleged a desire

to obtain a college degree, but I suspect a good number of them were

members of the aggressively ignorant class.



Dave

I am reasonably erudite and frequently read poetry aloud for pleasure, I also owned and operated my own independant bookstore for a few years. This was both after and before many years of employment in forestry in B.C. and Alberta, for the respective Forest services and private industry; I was a professional forest fire fighter, wilderness lookoutman, assistant ranger and silvicultural supervisor. It seems that I am some sort of pussy because I can read, spell, construct a grammatically correct sentence and even listen to Beethoven, Bach, Brahms.



My response to this sort of pseudo-macho crap is to quote the 19th C. German poet, Heinrich Heine...there are some kinds of ignorance, against which, even the Gods struggle in vain.........



"Aggressive ignorance"-well put, MD!

My "some" didn't include anyone on this forum.Sorry.If you look on the Hunters Campfire,I posted about an article by Mule Deer.I was impressed.The first I've read and liked it.I really enjoy people like Muledeer-Brian and Rick that take pressure and other issues and explain them to us in detail.

There are "some" gun writers I don't like or like to read there articles.,but none are here on this forum.

Other than my spelling lesson via pm,I enjoy what you guys have to say.Not all loggers-Forest Service-Grocery Clerks or Police Officers are bad,but some are like all trades.

Sorry if you took it personal as it was not meant to be that.

Jayco.

Bro, you've ridden your horse into the ground... probably should stay off him.

Logcutter--

I did take a little offense, and if it was misplaced, I apologize. But you've made the same sort of cracks before on the Campfire, also apparently addressed at ALL gun writers. Since I was the one specifically mentioned on this thread, the logical assumption was....

Part of the problem, of course, here is assuming everybody of a certain type is exactly the same. I know an awful lot of gun/hunting writers, and their skill in both areas varies considerably. My buddy Ron Spomer, for instance, had an upbringing similar to mine, except in South Dakota. He is an outstanding hunter and shot, one among many reasons we try to get together any time we can to pursue game. Our last good hunt was in Idaho, where we chased chukars together (on public land, with our own dogs, both of which naturally got lost for part of the day).

But I also know some writers who couldn't find their way home alone a half-mile from an interstate, who take 45 minutes to gut a deer and make a mess of it, can't make a fire, and have never shot a head of game without a guide in their life.

One in particular is my age, writes for a couple of big magazines, yet has learned almost nothing in almost 4 decades of hunting. Yet because he has slain most game in North America and most of the Big Five, he is considered an expert by a great many folks, including his editors.

I have guided this guy, and he is almost totally clueless. He apparently can't walk quietly, and when "still-hunting" clomps along at 3 miles per hour, rifles slung over his shoulder with scope caps on, even on sunny days.

Once when I was lying on top of a ridge glassing some mule deer 250 yards below, hoping to get him a shot, he clomped up beside me and stood there, casually glassed the far side of the valley, then loudly declared there weren't any deer nearby. This, of course, startled the little herd below me. I could give endless examples of the same sort of cluelessness, but won't. There are other gun writers almost as bad, but he's tops in my experience.

So your suspicions are based in fact. Just don't paint all of us with the same brush.

As for spelling, don't worry about it. To some extent the ability to spell is a genetic accident, I believe, and has nothing to do with anybody's ability to think! Some of the finest spellers in the writing business are living proof.

Good hunting,
MD

Mule Deer-I sent you a P.M.

Logcutter.

That was fairly priceless.





Don't know any famous writers/hunters, but have known a few self-proclaimed expert hunters that exhibit those same traits as you mentioned. Especially the ability to make heaps of noise and miss the forest for the trees, so to speak.



Had a guy ask me one time, how the hell do you spot deer and woodchucks like that, while we were driving the gravel roads of rural Northcentral PA. Just looked at him and said you either can or you can't, I guess.



To the original point of this thread, while I have a few friends that enjoy shooting thumpers, I can't get into it myself. Never could abide shooting anything that produced a severe jolt, even before my shoulder went south. Have watched a few of them shoot the 460 Wby. and such crunchers and avoided the impulse to give them a whirl myself. Standard offer from them if I'm along, is to hold out the piece and say "You wanta piece of this one, sissy boy?" About the fiercest thing I've shot in the past twenty years, was a bud's then-new M700 8mm Rem. Magnum. Once was plenty for me.



Ain't give in to temptation yet, although one of 'em did sucker me into shooting his Siamese Mauser once, by telling me it was a reduced-load, lead bullet receipe he worked up. It wasn't. After I shot it from the bench, he informed me that hard-cast bullet load was nippin' at the heels of the 458 Winchester. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

There are also different conditions where some excel. My wife and I visited a wildlife refuge a couple summers ago -- the waterfowl impoundments were drained at the time and deer were feeding on the fairly lush growth out of the bottoms. My wife spotted a whole lot of deer before me.

On the other hand, on our honeymoon out west I spotted antelope all over the place while driving 85 mph -- the conversation was along the lines of,

"There's one ... and a herd ... and another herd."

"Where? Where?"

But when we stopped to look at them with binos and scope, her range estimates were dead-on -- mine were not. She says it's from her years on the swim team, she could just look at them and figure "that one's about 8 lengths away."


Mule Deer -- As a gun rag addict I love these posts, and especially the fun of trying to guess who you're dishing on!

John

JB, it was for several years my unpleasant role or function (by requests) to chase-down and clear-up rumors about writers and gun-industry people familiar to most writers. Three things stood-out from all the smaller details:

� Most of the rumors had no foundation in fact. Some had a very faint, very shallow foundation nothing like the depth that they attained in the repeated retelling.

� Many of the rumors (including some that were true) had been transferred, by repeated retelling, from one targeted writer to another. An outstanding example of such a victim was my long-time friend Elmer Keith. A substantial number of the derogatory reports of Elmer's "bad behavior" had their gestation and genesis in the behavior of other writers. Somewhere along the line, some reteller who'd heard a tale (true or false) about some Joe Inkblot (whom he'd never read or heard of) retold the story but applied it to Elmer.

This kind of transference is common -- sometimes "positive," sometimes negative. As a Mark Twain scholar, I've heard and read many "quotes" that I recognize as falsely attributed to Twain. And every bush-league Bible scholar knows that the phrase "as the Good Book says" attributes many things to the Bible that actually came from somewhere else, not from anywhere in holy writ.

� A significant number of the retellers wanted the stories to be (a) as negative as they could make 'em (b) about someone whom they already had strong aversions to. So they often knowingly applied a story about Joe Inkblot to a better-known writer whose name their listeners would recognize at once, and made their retold versions of the story sound worse than the way they'd heard it.

So I don't wonder that in some crowds, gun writers rank down there with used-car-salesmen and lawyers.

Ken--

There's an interesting story by Bill Winke in the lates Petersen's HUNTING about the huge Iowa whitetail taken by a young man last fall, which is evidently the biggest non-typical ever taken by a hunter.

It includes the stories, lies and innuendoes that many local folks came up with after the deer went down. It made Bill doubt that'd he EVER want to kill a world-record deer.

Of course, the other side of it that every time writers publish (which is admittedly an ego-driven act) they automatically leave themsevles open to criticism, both good and bad, fair and unfair. It's part of the game.

By the way, Logcutter and I have privately resolved our little "situation." Turns out he is a good guy.

John

All I want to know is: Will it improve my standing if I manage to choke a setter?

On spotting game in the woods. I am a complete dud at it. I have been in Africa once, in 1988, I could not see anything even when it was pointed at, but my wife was an ace. She could spot animals farther away than our trackers. Everyone was amazed. But she is a professional painter, trained at the Rome Art Academy, has had shows all over the US and Europe. She says she spots an animal because it does not quite fit the color and shape pattern of the vegetation and ground cover - doesn't recognize it as an animal, just as something that is different. She would say "what's that?" and the trackers would then exclaim in surprise and identify it. I wish I had that ability. As for Mule Deer's acquaintance who clomped along, the PH told my wife, Madam, your husband is hopeless, he has two locomotives for feet, our only chance is that the game will be so astonished by the racket that it will wait to see what is coming. So much for my hunting skills, honed by a lifetime on the pavements of Manhattan.

The only things I know about Ken Howell is what I've read here both on the home page and in his posts including his health/age issues. All I can say is he is one tough SOB.

As far as J.B. goes just the fact that he stays around here posting makes me think he is too. Seen alot of names over the past few years start posting and then get fed up with the nit picking and disappear. Leupold as of late comes to mind.
Hope you keep saying it like it is John even though it must be frustrating at times and make you wonder ,"why bother?"

Good attitude Mule Deer, I like the way you recognize that you will get some criticism along with praise, doesn't mean that you have to take lying down though does it.

Personally I would take all the free guided hunts anyone offered me, and why anyone would begrudge the writers that take advantage of the perks of the job must be jealous to the point of needing some serious psychological therapy. Personally I can't think of an article that I have read about hunting or shooting that I could say made me sick to my stomache, some border on boring but they are about shooting sports so all of those articles have at least some virtue.