Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters definitive Seyfried thread

AlabamaGene:

Pretty sure it was the August '82 issue that contained his first feature article, cause editor Howard French wrote a sidebar biographical sketch with that first article. I don't think he actually started his own column until he essentially replaced Elmer Keith's column some time in '84.

Gun Notes II doesn't say a lot about Ross's personal life other than that he was a working cattle rancher, had a wife at that time, had met Elmer in the early 70's while guiding elk for Bob Thompson's outfit in Colorado, and would periodically come to Salmon and stay a week with Elmer. They experimented on such things as regulating the barrels of big nitro doubles with modern smokeless loads (including proof-firing into cords of firewood in Elmer's basement), buffering 10-gauge goose loads to try to achieve 100% patterns, and bench resting .375's and .458's for fun. Later he mentions Ross joining the U.S. IPSC shooting team and winning the '78 national championship and '81 world championship.

The above quote shows what REAL class in a man actually is.

I remember reading a '93 article in Hunting magazine wherein Ross shot a mule deer buck in the Breaks with a Dakota Model 10 in 7mm Brenneke. He described the location as being near the place where Lewis & Clark had a run-in with a grizzly bear. I remember him describing having to shoot off a cliff at nearly a straight-down angle and overshooting the buck on his first shot. I also remember him describing another hunter that was with him shooting a .375 with 300-grain bullets and being unable to connect with his deer. But I don't remember him saying anything about guiding other hunters. Perhaps I am referring to a different article, but I remember keeping that one for a long time because I thought Dakota Model 10's were cool.

Greg Perry

Sorry for the firestorm on Ross, but details left unsaid were:

We were dropped off in the morning at the bottom of a canyon we were to hunt and the boat wouldn't be back to pick us up until evening. We had to spend the whole day in this canyon. On the hike into the top of the canyon I had slipped on Bentonite, which is slicker that anything you will ever want to step in, fallen and banged my rifle.

You hope nothing is wrong and keep on hunting. When we got to the point where we saw the 3 hunters, we waited behind a cedar and watched them to see which direction they were going. We waited quite awhile and when they got to the bottom we knew we were going to stay high and hopefully end up south of them while they were low.

At this point I figured there weren't any mule deer bucks in our immediate vicinity and after the gun getting dropped, I did fire one round at the sandstone rock face above and beyond us and the rifle hadn't changed zero. They did notice us, but didn't move from the knob they were on in the bottom of the canyon.

I was not pissed off at seeing other hunters, as it is public land, disappointed, yes, but not pissed off. As we continued south we did jump a handful of cottontails which I love to hunt anyhow and I did shoot a couple.

Meanwhile the guys stayed on the knob in the bottom causing us to wonder why our presence hadn't made them move on. We did find that humorous, but saying we intentionally tried to screw up their hunting is wrong. If they were eating lunch or playing cribbage, I will never know, all I know is they stayed there the entire time we traversed the rim rocks at the top of the canyon.

They did eventually leave and we kept on hunting south, never crossing paths. They were not stalking a big mule deer buck, and they observed that we were not shooting at another big mule deer buck, but that is what got printed, nothing more, nothing less.

I enjoyed all the articles in G&A, especially the writing about custom knives ( a set of two knives at that time) and also various ones regarding the quality and need of good bullets.

Probably you "utes" don't remember the decades long JOC vs Keith feud.

Keith even said JOC tried to shoot him at the Olin farm annual gathering. That was in Gun Notes 1 or 2. I forget which.

Trust me, as a little published author, you have to have a pretty solid ego to even put pen to paper, not to mention with dealing with all the rejections before you actually get published.

J.K. Rowling got a dozen rejections on her first book unlil it was finally accepted by a small publisher on the advice of his EIGHT year old daughter.

Ross is a top drawer writer, and although I do a lot of SxS shotgun shooting, I buy DGJ for just one reason... his writings.

My experience on the Internet, ever since Al Gore invented it, is there are a few "bes" a few "wanna bes" and a lot of nice folks. Ross is both a "be" and nice.

yep Ross had to have done it the way he wrote and it didnt happen the way of shrapnel's story cause writers NEVER, EVER take artistic license in their writing....

i fully believe shrap but im also gonna keep reading Ross's articles in DGJ....

"I told Dave, "let's have some fun". So I took a shot into the sandstone cliff above me with my 25-06, then watched to see what they would do."

'We continued on our way, shooting at rabbits and laughing at the neophytes in the bottom of the ravine."

"but saying we intentionally tried to screw up their hunting is wrong."

Shrapnel, you wrote it. You have to own up to it.

Dan

I'm 76 and have been a pastor for 55 years. Still am. If I may say it with "humility"... YOU ARE RIGHT!

Bob

www.bigbores.ca

So much great detail here... I will respond in more depth later. But real quick, another feud even I remember was a period, maybe in the early '90s, when Ross was having an in print dispute in G&A with Bob Milek. I believe it had to do with Bob advocating zeroing hunting rifles to MPBR and Ross advocating basically a 200 yard zero for most modern hunting rifles. I will have to research it a little more and I'll report back.

Ross made me want to do a lot of things as a shooter, but I have to credit Bob Milek for my predilection for insulated tan vests, plaid shirts, and giving the camera smug looks while standing next to shot-up targets with a Remington XP-100. He pretty much owned that niche!

Ross is the best writer of my generation in my opinion. I think I like his writings because he is not afraid to call someone out on their chit writer or not.

There were a few good writers for small caliber news and varmint hunter but they have seemed to have quit writing. Now we are stuck with LP breezy...

I really hate to see how bad the writers will be in a few more years. I am starting to think some have never shot a gun or reloaded a piece of brass.

Dink

AlabamaGene:

You are spot on with the Seyfried/Milek debate. However, that was set up by the editor as an intentional pro vs. con debate, and G&A did it with several other writers and topics, like Mike Venturino vs. Wiley Clapp on the usefulness/obsolescence of the .44 Special. it was not mean-spirited.

Greg Perry

Thanks Greg! Do you remember other debates like that? The editor back then was Red Bell, right? Was he a writer back in the day before he edited? I remember seeing his byline as editor for years, but don't recall him writing any features.

The Jeff Cooper/Bill Jordan debates of 1911 vs Revolver were some of the best in print.

Dan

Ross had about 15-20 articles in BLACKPOWDER HUNTING magazine put out by The International Blackpowder Hunting Association.

There was no publisher-inspired debate between Cooper and Jordan. I had the priviledge of being on an NRA committee with both of them (inaugural "practical shooting" committee, later euphoniously misnamed, "action shooting" in 1983). I can tell you that there was little rapport and no love lost between them. It was more a Keith/O'Connor relationship than anything else. They were at odds on almost every issue. Jordan, Keith and especially Askins took swipes not so much at Jeff personally as they did the upstart "Combat" shooting of the day which they saw as a fabricated event to insure the dominance of the 1911. None of them could match Cooper's intellect nor his biting sarcasm.

Regarding Seyfried's writing background---the first by-line that I saw of Ross' was a response that he wrote in the American Rifleman to a critique that Askins did for AR about the 78' US IPSC Nationals (which Ross won). Askins pretty much ridiculed the activity as a bunch of Walter Mitty-types that couldn't shoot well enough to win at Camp Perry so they started their own game. Obviously Ross, and a few thousand others of us, took umbrage with his comments. The first full feature length "article" that Ross had in print that I remember was a match description of the 1981 World shoot in Johannesburg (which he won) that I believe he did for G&A's Specialty Books Division (annual, etc.) which I think Boddington was still editing at the time. Ross' writing style and photographic skills have improved dramatically since those times!!

It'd be pretty cool if Ross was lurking and would chime in here to set the record straight on all these little gun writer spats!

And it would be even cooler to have access to a "Best of RS" in bookform.

A very important statement from Ross Seyfried suddenly came to my mind: IIRC he looked at some british doubles at one stage and asked why they were so expensive while looking modest. Reply: " Sir, they are beautiful inside." Please consider this in an end 80 European context when everybody was locally going for gold imbedded guns from Austria. So for me these have been the educational contributions of Ross Seyfrieds writing which really made a valuable impression and created added value for me.

Was not far from you last week, Bavaria is really nice place!

About RS:
For sure a guy who know a lot about such rifles and european firearms in general. Very well educated, able to make you dream while reading his words. Could write real good adventure's books.
With an attitude too and strong ideas,i like that. This sort of men are sometime difficult to live or work with but they always bring us something of value. That change of political correctness and usual bla bla bla, mine included!

Dom