Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Wally Tabor?

The American Sportsman thread got me to strolling down memory lane. Any of you guys remember Wally Tabor? He put on a show a couple of times at our grade school. Pretty sure it's his fault I began plotting to go to Africa, when I grew up.

Jeff

I knew handsome blond Wally only briefly before he died. He told me an interesting story about how he'd gotten his start as an outdoor writer.

He was a reporter on (IIRC) a Denver daily. His publisher was banging Wally's wife. So he made a deal � "You can have her if you'll pay half the tab for a safari in Africa."

Then he made a similar deal with the publisher of a rival paper � "I'll send you a daily column from Africa if you'll pay half the cost of my safari."

One summer before I helped Woody and Ginny Wood and Celia Hunter build Camp Denali in the Alaska Range, Wally was a paying "guest" there. As they were building their cache, they noticed Wally on the ground setting-up his 16mm movie camera on a tripod and pointing it up at them. While they were eating lunch in the lodge, they saw Wally wind the camera, scramble up the ladder, and act as though he was working on the cache.

That winter, in Seattle, they saw that Wally was lecturing on his life "alone in the wilds of Alaska" and went to hear him � and watched his 16mm Kodachrome footage on how "he'd built his cabin in the wilderness."

Wally was later president of the Outdoor Writers Association of America (OWAA) long before I was a member.

I remember my father taking me to a few of his shows as a youngster. I think I was too young to appreciate it (I know I was too young to remember much about it now).

My grampa printed his 'Safari Sagas' book. Limited run with a chunk of zebra hide on the cover, chock fulla great photos and stories. Ol' gramps printed a couple extra copies for family, and I'm the one that ended up with ours.......

I remember going to the local junior high auditorium to see a Wally Taber show during cabin fever season years ago. I think it was 1981 or 1982, but it could have been even 10 years earlier.

Here are a couple of his videos on YouTube:



Steve

There was another feller that made the circut of schools, Tall Cedars and fire halls, also showing African safari, Alaska and other filmed hunts, whose name escapes me at the moment.

Friend of mine and his wife got hooked up with the guy one year, when he was in this area with his show. They paid some "up front" money, on the supposition that they would get to go on one of his hunts and be featured in his films.

Nothing happened, they eventually got their deposit back and were somewhat happy with that outcome. Only thing they ever got out of him, was a pair of free Leupold jackets, up front.

Should say they were happy, until I pointed out that he probably does that in every venue he does his shows in: Gets to use peoples' money for a bit then refunds it, having used it for some time, interest free.

Wally Tabor used to do his program at an auditorium on the SMU campus in Dallas during the early to mid-'60s. Pretty impressive show; believe he used a Weatherby (.300?) for much of his hunting.

I found a copy of that book at a garage sale in Escanaba, MI. several years ago, and hopped on it like a fly on fly paper.
It's on my bookshelf now.
Interesting your Grampa printed it.
Small world, for sure.

Thanks for posting about it.

Don

Thanks for posting that Ken...great story! I spent week at Camp Denali this past May/June. Installed a new satellite communication system for the current owners, who purchased the lodge from Ginny, Woody, and Celia some years ago. Beautiful place, and super nice people. Had great weather as well....what a job!

Jeff

I seem to remember reading (Gun Digest 1963?) that Wally Tabor used to shoot Cape Buffalo with a .257 Weatherby.

Who says you can't find treasures at those things?.....good score

I remember going to see Wally Tabor at the school auditorium back in the 70's. My Dad knew Wally or one of his friends did from the local Sportsmans club and I remember meeting him and getting his autograph. Talk about the early days of hunting shows. The film or slides would run and he would talk through the entire show.
Those memories go hand in hand with meeting Fred Bear back in the good ole days when Bear Archery was in Grayling where it belonged.

Wally Tabor was most likely responsible for me going to Alaska last year and hunting sheep and moose. My mom took me to see him at the local high school in the 70s and those adventures were forever etched in my mind - enough so that the dream of one day going to Alaska hunting some day was always in teh back of my mind......Thanks Wally!

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We need more Hunting shows at High Schools.

No, we just need a whole lot fewer Socialists and Communists running the schools. Wally Tabor, good lord I have not see that fellow since the early 1960's. Little hokey for me now but when you are 7, you pay attention!

A lot more! If we had more hunting shows at high schools, it would be evidence of fewer communists and socialists running those schools.

How many Campfire members have spoken at a high school about hunting? Click here for a thread on the topic.

Steve

I found a used gun case at a garage sale. It had Wally Tabor's name on it. When I googled his name, this is one of the things that came up. I'm wondering if this will post?

My dad and I saw Wally Tabor at the Sellwood Theater (Sellwood is a suburb of Portland) in the 1950s. I still have a slick-paper book he sold at the event ... it's all about hunting in Alaska and the Yukon and such.

Good stuff and the type of action/adventure that kids thrive upon. Wally Tabor put on one heck of a show and it "initialized my life." Same comments about Jim Bond.

I went on to do what Wally and Jim did and much, much more.

An earlier comment by KH is interesting. Ken, and I knew him well and got him his last job, tended to cling to figures that apparently passed by his life ... real or imagined; that's not for me to judge.

Anyway, Wally Tabor and his contemporary, Jim Bond, inspired a generation of hunters and their sons & daughters. And that is a very, very good thing.

kd

I was wondering HOW you resurrected a thread from 2010.

I remember his name and that is about it. I don't really remember what a memory 'was'. > smirk.

Jerry

He did get around. We saw him in Sinton, Texas, around 1970 in the little movie theater there. He showed two of his films, one an African hunt and the other a polar bear hunt. Sinton could not have had even a thousand residents back then.