Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Whatever happened to Jim Carmichael ?

I did not know that LOL! I corrected my post.

Yes he is. A little shotgun and quite a bit of BR competition. He shares a few jokes and politics.

He is currently living in Jonesbourgh TN. I see him at a range we both go to. He seems to shoot almost only shotgun but just visits the rifle range.

Jim Carmichel's writing had a great influence on me - easily more than any other writer in my younger years. I subscribed to Outdoor Life and American Rifleman then. I soon had a 280 and I had to have a 338 Win Mag. "The Compleat Just Jim" second edition - 1981. Is on my reading pile - what a sense of humor. I know I have a gun smithing book from him also, maybe some other book(s)???
I think it was reading his gun smithing book that made me think I could make rifle stocks. After building a few I realized that my talents were "not so much", though I keep trying - especially when in quarantine for a year.

Ive read most of what Jim has written, much of it more than once. He is probably my biggest influence in all things gun. I read his articles when my schoolmates were still reading Dr. Seuss. Like his predecessor at Outdoor Life he seems to have brought out a lot of jealousy in his peers. Which is unfortunate.

I believe he called his version the 6.5 Panther.

Jim has lived in Johnson City for quite sometime. I sent money to him for 4 semi finished stocks a few weeks ago.

JB, A gunsmith near Jonesborough named Herb Reilly worked with Jim in reinventing the .263 Express just prior to the introduction of the .260 Remington. I used to drive the 175 miles just to get Herb to work on my rifles. Sadly, he passed from cancer.

I met Jim at a Centerfire Benchrest Competition here in Roanoke some years ago. At the time I was a serious Rimfire Benchrest Competitor & he wanted to talk about that & invited me to sit with him in his Camper & talk while he reloaded between rounds. I mentioned that I has several of his Books. He said to bring them next time & he would sign them. A darn good guy, & a great writer. If Butch Lambert tells you something you can take it TO THE BANK.

Jim is "a darn good guy." Have spent considerable time with him from places like Glenrock, Wyoming to a tour of all the Zeiss factories in Germany in the early 1990s. (At the time, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were 3, one in what had been East Germany).

He does know a LOT of stuff. One of the instances I remember occurred after a hard day of prairie dog shooting with a major bullet company. After we got dropped off, he invited me to have a Scotch together in his motel room in Glenrock. This was shortly after I'd published an article in National Geographic, and he wanted to talk about that a little.

The conversation then wandered to other subjects, and I eventually asked a question about optics. In the 1970s I hunted a lot with an older guy in northeastern Montana who had a low-range variable on his pre-'64 Model 70 Winchester .30-06. He'd purchased the rifle in 1937, the first year Model 70s were available, and had a Bausch & Lomb scope mounted in their adjustable mounts . As I recall it was a 1-4x, and it had reticle with a small dot centered on very thin crosshairs.

Back then a common method of hunting whitetails in that part of Montana was jumping them from brushy draws, and shooting the deer on the run--a lot like what Jack O'Connor described about hunting Coues deer in Arizona and Old Mexico, also in the 1930s. When my older hunting partner expected a close shot, he adjusted the magnification on his B&L so the dot got "larger".

After I started writing about optics a lot some 20 years later, I wondered about that--and contacted the folks at Bushnell (which by then owned B&L) and asked about what the deal was with the "adjustable dot" scope. They had no idea.

I told Jim this story that afternoon in Glenrock, and he leaned back and started thinking. I didn't interrupt him, because I could just about see the gears turning. After maybe 3 minutes he said, "It was a first focal-plane scope. When he turned the magnification up, the dot looked larger, even though the field of view was smaller." Well, yeah!

In some ways Jim was lucky. Hunting and shooting magazines paid LOT more during the years he wrote for Outdoor Life. That started changing about 20 years ago, about the time he retired from OL. But he deserved every bit of his luck, because (like most writers who manage to make a living at it) he worked HARD, and kept learning. And still is.

In the early 2000's, I was rummaging around in an antique store in Stillwater, Mn. Pretty cool place with lots of vintage hunting, shooting and fishing stuff. In a box of books, there was a copy of his book 'The Book Of The Rifle' with $8 penciled in the cover. At the hotel later that night, I started paging through it and saw it was an autographed copy.

Good shootin'. -Al

Butch Lambert - Thanks for bringing this thread back to life.

I had the pleasure of sharing an hour and a little bit of Jim's time while we were waiting in the Salt Lake airport for connecting flights. That must have been 30-years ago but I still remember that afternoon...

Huge collection of Ruger firearms. I’m guessing most were given to him or purchased at a steep discount, but maybe muledeer could elaborate,

I read somewhere, probably in one of his books, that he was involved in the design of the m-77 stock. probably had a long standing relationship with Bill Ruger.

I believe Lenard Brownell helped with the Ruger Stocks, Carmichel helped design the Remington Classic stock.

Ok, I can believe that. thanks for the correction.

Sycamore

Now that's an accomplishment to be proud of! Probably the finest all-around stock, ever.

Good shootin'. -Al

I think that's right. I do remember him writing about the classic beauty and function of the Ruger stock. It made a life long impression on me as a teenager. I still to this day hate a Monte Carlo. My first rifle at 14 was a Ruger 77 round top in 270 I had my dad special order for me. About a year later I read he and Jack O'Conner both thought the 280 a better round, but it only nagged at me a little bit. The scope that went on the rifle was a 2.5 X 8 Leupy and despite the odds it never failed me.

I met him at a truckstop in Tennessee in the mid/late '90s, when the internet was still in its infancy, so writers weren't so instantly recognizable as they are now.

I stared at him for a second or so, thinking, "that guy really looks like the picture on the back of one of Jim Carmichael's books. He caught my glance, and said, "Yes, if you're thinking I'm that gunwriter, I am."

I just said, "I really enjoyed your Book of the Rifle. I've learned a lot from it, thank you for writing it." His response was "Thank's for the kind words, and thank you for buying it."

Seemed like just a normal dude to me.

Great thread...