Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Where is Clay Harvey?

Glad this was revived, not necessarily to beat down Harvey (deserved) but to once again read a post by AllenDay. I enjoyed him here and am sorry he is no longer with us.

I only read a few of Clay's articles and always had a bad feeling about him. In my mind he always came across as arrogant and bombastic.

I believe that we all should have known that Clay Harvey was a total PHONY. Any writer, indeed any editor, who hides behind words that the common man does not know, or even pronounce, disqualifies himself from our adulation.

Indeed, there are those on every sporting web site, the 24HCF, who are posers. Big words, long words, do not proved education and learning, they simply show that some hide behind words.

I am privy to one of Clay Harvey's more horrible acts. Clay went on a deer hunt in one of the western states. He was armed with a H-K and loads of ammo. Before the wranglers could saddle up the horses and mules, Clay Harvey saw some does and fawns and blasted holes in some of them.

The wranglers went to my friend, who was the sales manager for one of Clay's sponsoring companies and asked, "What do we do with this crazy sonofabitch?"

The eventually killed the wounded, packed up Mr. Harvey and sent him back to the Land of Palmentos.

And I have no doubt that Clay Harvey wrote yet another article about hunting western game animals ... the mule deer, Odocoileus hemionus, as Clay Harvey would call them.

What a sad state of affairs.

Yeah, wasn't it great to read a few words of Allen Day's? I truly miss Allen. When Allen and I last talked, we discussed critters, some new kind of boots he was hot on and a copy of Tom Turpin's FABULOUS BOOK, Mastery of Wood & Metal.

Not a fortnight later, my great friend Tom Turpin sent me a copy of the book about David Miller, Curt Crum and the unreal rifles that they make together.

Apparently Allen called Tom and Tom did a nice signing ... and forwarded the book to me.

THANKS ALLEN, where-ever you are.

God Bless You Allen DAy,

Steve

Amen Steve!

If I have to throw the devil a bone, back in the mid '80's Harvey wrote a piece for G & A about the 6.5 Swede. It was good enough to get me to buy a mil surp swede and I've been hooked since.

Harvey did some interesting pieces on various pistols I was interested in at the time, but other than that, I never took his words too seriously, I thought his "in depth testing" of various pistols way off the mark.
Unlike our Dogzapper, who's stuff has always been "spot on", even if you have to read between the lines (like those WSSM articles). I got a pretty big grin out of those, BTW.

Ratsmacker,

So you caught that one?

I had to be soooo careful on the WSSM article. The dude who did the graphite barrel wrap and such was my editor's nephew. The nephew supplied the rifle and gobs of technical data that he wanted published.

Writing that piece absolutely crossed my self-imposed line in the sand .... it violated my writing ethics. Regrettably, all I could do was to write the silly piece and to do it in such a way that it screamed out to my regular readers "Don't even think about buying this piece of CRAP."

Same comments about the Remington EtroniX rifle. It was junk, but it was editor-assigned junk. So I had to write it ... and I wrote it to caution my regular readers against wasting their money on junk.

I'm absolutely delighted to be out of commercial writing. Writing for myself and a very few friends is abundantly more rewarding.

God Bless,

Steve

I was very dissapointed to learn Clay Harvey was a thief and a phony. His book, Popular Sporting Rifle Cartridges, was my resource bible when I was in high school. I can't tell you how many times I read the book, cover to cover. I really enjoyed the stories and info. After learning of his shenanigans recently, I pitched his book in the trash.

Ohhh Noooooo !

You threw away some photos of me with dead critters I'd killed.

Fat little Clay didn't have any kills of his own, so he mooched "hero photos" from the rest of us.

Blessings,

Steve

I have Clay Harvey's book "Popular Sporting Rifle Cartridges" and have found it to be pretty interesting,, but I haven't tried his loads. Generally, I stick to pressuure tested loads in reloading manuals.

wbyfan1,

I was sent a review copy of POPULAR SPORTING RIFLE CARTRIDGES, and read it entirely, being a good little reviewer. By the end it occurred to me that not only hadn't Harvey hunted with a number of the cartridges, but hadn't even fired some of them. I went back through and added it all up. He hadn't fired about 1/3 of the rounds, and hadn't hunted with another 1/3. I tossed it.

A few years later, when he was out of the business and I'd talked to a number of people who had personal CH stories, I began to doubt that he'd actually hunted with all of the other 1/3.

'Zackly why I quit buying gun magazines. Nothing but Ruger adds and Wiley Clapp's ugly mug. I think the only word he knew was "Shootout!".

And there was no ready-and-waiting bias against Mike's rifle? Was 'this piece of CRAP' an altogether objective appraisal, based on totally unbiased testing?

"he mooched "hero photos" from the rest of us"

As the saying goes, "Them that can, do; them that can't, mooch" or something like that.

He didn't have to hunt when someone was paying him to just write. It was ultimately the fault of the editor who accepted and paid for his stories. The editor (I assume) knew him better than most readers, or should have.

Ken,

Nope, no prejudice.

Blessings,

Steve

Can I buy a watch on the Harvey plan?

Heck yes, my friend. Heck of a deal



Blessings,

Steve

Getting more education from dogzapper:

When I first read the post with the above quote, I assumed DZ had made made an oopsie, intending to use "Palmetto" in referring to South Carolina ("The Palmetto State"), where Mr. Harvey lived.

However, knowing Steve to be a clever person, I made an internet inquiry about "Palmento". Now I'm not sure it was an error.

"Palmento" appears to be a Sicilian name for a place where wine is made in the old way, with big rocks to press the grapes, etc.
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"Palmento" is the name of a recent book about an American discovering the wines of Sicily. It may well be on Jon Sundra's bookshelf:
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A brief interesting video about the book is on youtube: [color:#000066]PALMENTO Book Trailer[/color]

--Bob

Pay for a Rolex, get a Timex. Both will tell you the time and they both end in "x", so what's the difference?

Bob,

Indeed, you are a friend. A friend who gave me the benefit of the doubt. Let me extend my totally heartfelt thanks for that.

Friendship, civility and downright courtesy are so rare in this world. You are a GENTLEMAN, Sit!

The truth is ...... it was absolutely a Steve-oopsie

I'm on some meds, strong meds, that knock me sideways. An errant-N and missin'-T are the LEAST of my side-effects.

Actually, I'm kinda glad the meds did that to me; otherwise you would not have discovered "palmento." We are all much wiser now; or at least, we now know something that we didn't before.

Aren't Google and the zillions of Internet search engines a miracle? It is absolutely amazing the wealth of information that is out there.

My friend, NEVER think of me as being particularly wise or clever. I'm just a guy, like the rest of you, who loves to hunt and shoot and visit with folks who enjoy doing the same. Nothing more, nothing less.

Palme[color:#660000]nto .... don't that beat all?

Blessings,

Steve

PS. Again, THANK YOU once again for proving to us all that there ARE Good Guys out there.