Gun Magazines Then and Now

[Char-Gar]

Frequently on this and other sites, we lament how far gun writers and gun magazines have fallen since their "golden days". I have ben part of the lament on many occasions.

This morning, I picked up a copy of Handloader No. 7 (May-June 1967) and though I would read it with fresh eyes just like I had bought it fresh off the rack. Here is what I found.

THE MYSTERIOUS SEE - BY COL. G.O. ASHLEY

This fellow shot some rounds with small charges of slow burning powder over snow, blew nothing up and concluded the SEE was much ado about nothing.

ON BULLET DESIGN - BY BOB HAGEL

This was a review of the hunting rifle bullets (jacketed) available at the time. The differences in them and which ones Hagel liked.

NEW REMINGTON 788 RIFLE - BY KEN WATERS

This was a straight forward test of the then new Remington 788. The test rifle was in 222 Remington and Waters fired two boxes (40 rounds total) of Remington factory ammo and found the rifle to be accurate and he liked it.

ROY WEATHERBY'S 224 MAGNUM- BY KEN WATERS

Waters consided the the 3 year old Weatherby rifle and caliber to be a "walking varmint rifle". He tested 14 handloads, shot one small fork horn Whitetail buck and said it was a good rifle

DESIGN FOR THE WIMBELDON - BY HOMER POWLEY

Powley wrote about the rifles that are being used for 1,000 yard Wimbeldon Match.

HANDLOADING IN ALASK - ROB STEINDLER

Steindler goes hunting in Alaska and writes about the handloads he and others used.

BULLET CASTING (PART II) - MAJ. GEORGE NONTE

A review of the most basic principals of bullet casting. This was written for the most uninformed Newbie around.

PRINCIPALS OF RELOADING - BY EDWARD YARD

Another reviews of the most basic principals of reloading. So basic he said you can knock out the primers with a 4 penny nail.

INSTANT BULLETS - OTTO SCHOFIELD

Otto takes fired cartridge cases, fills them with lead, seats bullets, turn of rims, rolls in cannelures, runs them through swaging dies and makes bullets. No loads, no accuracy tests, just how to make these bullets.

YOURS TRULY, HARVEY A. DONALDSON

This was the standard back page article by Donaldson. It was a trip down memory land with Harvey and how things were "back in the day" with black powder target rifles. This is the only thing in the magazine that has any lasting or informative value.

Bottom line - Guys the stuff they wrote in the "good ol day" was no more profound or indepth that what is written today. It was just new and fresh to us when it was written. Today it is old hat. Really, the stuff written today is no more superficial that the stuff written back then. We just think it is!

[BeeMan]

Heresy! Today's writers are all shills...:razz:

Seriously, that is pretty much what I recall. A few of those Handloader and Rifle issues were noteworthy when there was a good article or two that struck a spark. Going back to look at them now shows the content of selected articles was good but rarely was it PHD level insight.

BeeMan

[runfiverun]

:bigsmyl2:

[Kraschenbirn]

Uhmmmm...some mixed emotions here. Yeah, I've got to agree that, 'back in the day', many of the articles were just as "superficial" as what's found in today's gun rags but, IMO, they had, for the most part, a lot better quality writers. The the real shortfall I find in today's publications in the lack of genuine "how-to" articles...anyone else remember the DIY tune-up/fix-up articles in the old Rifleman. Or, the monthly reloading page/column with, now and then, original load data?

Bill

[Char-Gar]

American Rifleman still has good DIY articles from time to time. How to fix this or that, how to do this or that.

[1bluehorse]

My take is a little different. I believe a lot of the issues WE have with current writers/articles is that we're looking at them through experienced eyes.."Back in the day" probably most of what we/you read was new information to you/us so it was exciting to read about and held "new" meaning. I realize there's been a lot of advancement in equipment and technique over the years but the basics are still pretty much the same so it has to be pretty difficult to continue to come up with "new" stuff to write about for the experienced shooter/handloader/bullet caster. Soooo, when I read an article that seems "old hat" to me, I try to imagine what a new shooter/handloader/bullet caster would think of the same article and what THEY are getting from it. Don't really know if I explained it well, but I'm sure you get my line of thought here..

[waksupi]

The things I miss were not necessarily gun related. Remember Ed Zern, and Russell Annabell's stories? They were worth the price of the magazine by theirselves.

[ku4hx]

Between 1990 and 2000 I had subscriptions to several gun magazines and read each one cover to cover. I kept all of them in a box in the attic. Around 2000, I notice an interesting phenomena ... I had the strangest sense of Déjà vu. So I hauled the magazine box out of the attic and began looking through old magazines.

With the exception of recently added new gun model stories, the instances of regurgitated stories was simply amazing. I sat for hours and found story after story that was basically the same just rewritten 5,6, or more years later. Not a simple copy/paste but close enough and in all of the rags that when it came to to re-up my subscriptions I let them all lapse.

I haven't picked up a gun rag since ... got the internet instead.

[Char-Gar]

The things I miss were not necessarily gun related. Remember Ed Zern, and Russell Annabell's stories? They were worth the price of the magazine by theirselves.

Absolutly..I also remember Paul Mathew's "Ben and the Old Man" stories in the early issues of Shooting Times. If a fellow can go that far back Lucian Cary wrote stores about the barrel maker named Payne which was based on Harry Pope.

[Gunslinger1911]

Skeeter Skelton - "Me and Joe" (Must have been dusty when I read some of them)

[Rio Grande]

Nonte, Cooper, Keith, Skeeter Skelton.....
enough said.

[fecmech]

Robert Ruark- The Old Man and the Boy

[MT Gianni]

I wonder why we expect every English major that writes about a gun to be all knowledgeable? We would not expect the author of a review in Car and Driver to be able to rebuild a transmission. The fact is that someone wrote an article, they are neither idiot or expert before or after being edited, just published. If we get something from it great, if not it is time to move on.

[Green Frog]

I wonder why we expect every English major that writes about a gun to be all knowledgeable? We would not expect the author of a review in Car and Driver to be able to rebuild a transmission. The fact is that someone wrote an article, they are neither idiot or expert before or after being edited, just published. If we get something from it great, if not it is time to move on.

That's why we have editors and proofreaders... they are supposed to read the articles and correct the grammar and spelling to make the reading a little easier. What I expect is that the article have good content based on personal experience and research, preferably without a bias based on who advertises in the magazine, etc. I don't expect a guy who knows significantly less about the subject than I do to just fill up the space between the ads so the magazine can be published. :kissarse:

Having said the above, I am a published author in two small circulation magazines and know what is involved in both the writing of the articles and perhaps more importantly the gathering of the information to write about in the first place. Perhaps this is the big reason that I am less and less willing to put up with regurgitated misinformation, presented in a poor literary style... if I wanted that I could read the Editorial Page in my local newspaper! JMHO, YMMV! :coffee:

Charlie Shaeff
aka Green Frog

[williamwaco]

Heresy! Today's writers are all shills...:razz:

Seriously, that is pretty much what I recall. A few of those Handloader and Rifle issues were noteworthy when there was a good article or two that struck a spark. Going back to look at them now shows the content of selected articles was good but rarely was it PHD level insight.

BeeMan

They were too!

I knew two of them and they even admitted it.

Re read some of those articles and see in an average two page article how many manufacturer names are mentioned.



.

[SlippShodd]

I've subscribed to Guns & Ammo since I was 19... I'm 53 now. I have subscribed to other and various gun mags over the years, but G&A is the only one I've kept, and that may be pure nostalgia. I let Shooting Times go after Skeeter died; there just wasn't any point anymore. Of the current crop, I enjoy Patrick Sweeney's articles because he writes with an engaging style, infused with humor and a flair for speaking to his readers on their level Being a lover of the written word, I appreciate his works. Most of the rest of their staff can bite me, starting with Dick Metcalf.
When I was a teen, Guns magazine enthralled me with the new and wonder that BlueHorse mentioned. I have often lamented that Jan Stevenson no longer writes gunny articles, because his stuff was worth the price of admission. From him I learned about the difficulties involved in reloading for pocket pistols, such as discerning .25 ACP brass from a pile of rimfire or .32, how to shoot a bleach bottle (plastic, not glass) through the opening using a small caliber handgun without touching the neck, how to avoid acquiring a .22 caliber navel, how to shoot pistols with 3/4-inch of rifling accurately to 300 yards, and gave me my oft-used term of "adobe wadcutter." (that's a piece of found range brass plugged with dried mud, FYI)
If a person could write articles like that today and found a publisher with the eggs to print the pieces, that publisher would be both sage and successful.
>sigh<

mike
Days of smelting without incident: 4

[alamogunr]

If a fellow can go that far back Lucian Cary wrote stores about the barrel maker named Payne which was based on Harry Pope.

I remember those. At the time I never heard of Harry Pope and didn't make the connection to J.M. Pyne.

[Rattlesnake Charlie]

I've subscribed to Guns & Ammo since I was 19... I'm 53 now. ....

I remember when the changed the name from "Guns & Hunting" to "Guns & Ammo". And, I'm just a little older than 53.

For as long as I've been reading gun rags, they have been pretty much the same on the technical articles. Mostly, they were "advertising". But hey, that's how the magazine's pay the bills.

I do pine for the "last page" articles.

[rockshooter]

I missed the Lucian Cary stories about JM Pyne so much that I ran down a collected volume of them Edited by Guy Lautard- has 17 of the stories in one spot.
Loren

[runfiverun]

the one i trully miss is finn agaard

[btroj]

I will freely admit that I don't find the gun magazines as interesting today as I did 20 years ago.
I don't think the magazines changed as much as I did.
My interests are much more defined, I am far ore knowledgable, and have much less free time. This all means that what I want to read is much more specific and targeted. Get outside that narrow window and I just don't have the interest like I used to.

Thanks for an interesting perspective Char-gar. Amazing how nostalgia tends to "modify" reality, isn't it?

[dsbock]

I have a collection of American Rifleman magazines from the 40s through today.

Looking back on issues from the 70s, many of the legislative articles are dealing with the same concerns we have today. The reloading articles of that era seem to be less concerned with warning the reader to be careful than talking about reloading.

I'll have to look back at some issued from the 40s, 50s, and 60s and see how they compare.

David

[44man]

There are some differences but I admit there was a lot of fluff back then too. There were still good stories.
I can look for loads, say a .45 Colt and find 4 or 5 issues with pretty extensive information. I can't count 45-70 articles. A lot of cast info.
Today, stuff is too abrupt.
I did like the one in the Rifleman about the new Ruger rifle this month.
Instructive stuff is gone, like taking a certain rifle to tack driver status.
What I hate today are 4 pages of million dollar pictures with 10 words about the gun.
The next worst are writers with a preference for one gun make and push it to death. Right after they say anything about it, the next page is a huge add for the gun.
I don't think there is a single writer that understands cast, just how to make buckets full of poor shooting piles of lead. They prefer factory bullets because they get them free to write about.
Maybe we have surpassed it all but there are still beginners going into loading and casting every day.
Some here can use the entire magazine for one article! Sorry, it will not make the rag any money. [smilie=l:

[1bluehorse]

Some here can use the entire magazine for one article! Sorry, it will not make the rag any money. [smilie=l:

I think you're spot on with your entire post 44man, I only highlighted this portion as that's the EXACT reason I purchased each of the issues I have of Handloader. Maybe I'm wrong here but I believe the limits of cast bullet articles in hunting and shooting magazines pertains to the percentage of readers who actually reload their own ammo, and especially who reload their own cast bullets..I'll bet we're a very small percentage of the Hunting/Shooting magazines readership.

[EMC45]

The only mag I buy anymore is Handloader.

[Wolfer]

I'm with blue horses first post. There was a time when the world was new and I felt that most gun writers knew more than me but as I get older I find that I've moved past a lot of the articles. Rifle, handloader is the only thing I subscribe to anymore and it seems any other rag I read is written for the general public and there are many here that have moved past that. There are also many here that are young enough to still find a lot of interesting stuff out there.

[smoked turkey]

The thing I notice about many of the articles are they ring of being quotations by factory personnel of the firearm in question. I don't see many "evaluations" anymore. Some of the mags are basically advertisements for the rifle, shotgun or handguns being reviewed. I do like to see real nice firearms but a lot of them are just plain too much money for the average reader. As such I don't put much stock in the evaluations. I will say that writers like Wiley Clapp, Layne Simpson, Lane Pearce, Mike Venturino, and Craig Boddington warm my heart with their writings. There are a lot of good field editors out there but you have to look for them.

[ladOregon]

I am 72 now. Loaded my first shotshells for rabbits and quail with a hand loader, cardboard and foam wads at age 9. Shot them with 22 single shot before that to learn to shoot was the way my dad put it. I remeber moving to Oregon and dropping in on Francis E. Sell the writer. He live over by Myrtle Point in an old log house. Trap range in the front yard. Stopping there with my family was fine with him. We shot a couple test double guns he had and had lemonade. Think any of todays writer would do that with a lumber mill worker who just stopped by.
Still have his loading data and use it today.

[Bret4207]

With all due respect Charles, find another writer, any writer, today who is doing the Pet Loads articles like Waters did them. Find anyone who does a series of articles for casters starting at square one or for reloaders that don't state you must buy the latest, greatest high gear! The 4 penny nail may be crude, but limited means meant LIMITED MEANS back then.

Continue through you collection of Handloaders and see how the mag and it's content grew and blossomed. If you like, I can give a whole slew of examples of articles that go far, far beyond anything we'd find today in any gun rag. Look for articles by Kenneth L Waters, John Zameneck, young Jim Carmichael, etc. The meat is there, far more than you'll find today.

[Char-Gar]

Bret... I was a charter subscriber to Handloader and Rifle and have every issue every published from day one. I also was a charter subscriber to Shooting Times and have every issue from the original tabloid style to about 1990. I also have most issues of the American Rifleman from 1948 till today. I also have quite a few Guns and Ammo and a few others titles, but not a complete collection.

There are indeed differences from issue to issue, but at the end of the day, my opinion doesn't change from that expressed in the original post of this thread.

I respect the right of you or anybody else to hold an opinion different from my own, on this or any other subject. Opinions are like..well you know...everybody has one.

BTW.. I have all of Ken Water's "Pet Load" articles. These articles are about Ken's loading for his personal rifles over a period of time. They tend to be more detailed, than articles produced for a deadline. They are a good source of information, as many of the rifles used are vintage and very interesting in themselves. Waters was very knowledgable and his stuff, while not definitive is very good and still useful for folks dealing with those calibers. He did include cast bullet loads, but a close look at his cast bullet loading, will reveal not as much knowledge about the subject, as held by many of the old timers on this board, including yourself. Even so, his cast bullet material was far superior to that produced by Mike V, which is often very superficial. I don't doubt that Mike knows his stuff, it just doesn't make it into print. The stuff he wrote earlier on was much better. Waters was able to get his good stuff into print.

We used to say of Preachers that were in the tall elevated pulpits, in days gone by, they there were six feet above contridiction. There were held in much greater than the Preachers of today that get down and walk the isles of the churches. There is something about getting down to the level of others, and being available to others, that tend to breed disrespect. Perhaps that disrespect is earned, but the old saying that "familiarity breed contempt" is very true whether is be gun writers, preachers or whatever.



If there is a difference from then and now is how some writers were treated. Men like Keith, Whelen, O'Conner and others have the "gravitas" to write what they wanted and send it in and it would be published. They had to do a few obligatory "current gun tests" and "how to" articles but that was the price they paid for the freedom to chase their own rainbow as it were.

I don't know how these guys would have faired in todays Internet world. When it first got started, John Taffin and a few others were quite active in the Internet community. They dropped out because folks without their experience challenged them at every turn. We see the same thing here. If anybody says something it white, wait a few second and somebody will say it is black. These gun boards are very contentious places

[Bret4207]

I understand where you're coming from Charles. I have Rifleman going back to the 20's and 30's through present day. Handloader from #1 on. The thing is that Handloader DID print the "techy" articles along with the fluffier ones. And I will take issue with anyone that tries to say any other writer turned out anything like Ken Waters Pet Loads, no one since Ned Roberts offered detail like that, which sort of figures since Ken worked with Roberts on The Breech Loading Single Shot Rifle, as fine a gun book as ever printed.

When Wolfe and Howell were running Handloader they offered a more complete and certainly higher quality magazine. Scoville was just a pup then and even he submitted articles that were far more worthy than his current drivel. The quality has simply slipped and there can be no argument in that respect. It's just a reflection of our society, as with so much else we see.

[kenyerian]

Magazines , newspapers, and books are all dying. The internet and new technology are taking over. I think that we had better enjoy the printed word while we can as the generation coming up are more comfortable checking their I-Pad than looking for a reference book. I still have a collection of older hunting mags that i enjoy reading but my grandkids could care less about. They all hunt, shoot a lot and like to help cast boolits and reload but they just prefer to get their info electronically. The oldest one does enjoy reading McManus.

[Bent Ramrod]

No matter how excellent, specialized or detailed the articles in the magazines, the editor and publisher eventually get a visit from Mephistopheles, who asks this question:

"Do you want to continue scratching along the way you're doing with a small, aging, hard core of enthusiasts that grow at a rate of maybe 100 a year, or do you want to get in on the newsstand action, get the big advertisers, be able to offer more money to your writers, spiff up the magazine with slick paper and color photos, and start making some money out of the deal?"

It's happened to the management of many of the small specialty magazines already. If you read Ken Howell's reminiscences on the early days of Rifle and Handloader, when Neal Knox and he were the editors, you will recall that the only reason the magazines came into being the way they did is because loading tool and component companies agreed to carry them, at a loss if necessary, for several years. After they became more or less viable, Ken had to take many of the cover photos himself, and struggled and begged in order to pay his regular writers more than peanuts for their articles. A lot of the time, he was unsuccessful in this, but he kept trying.

Under these circumstances, taking the deal is inevitable, just a matter of time. I still remember Scoville's warm, personal form letter to me saying that the Wolfe publications had been sold and henceforth the new owners were going to give short shrift to the aging audience that had kept the magazines afloat all those years and get with the modern trend. Color photos, animal pictures and apocalyptic headlines in garish colors on the covers for the newsstand browser, and infomercial articles began to proliferate immediately. I stayed on as long as I could, but now I'm one of those newsstand browsers, and seldom buy a copy. They have good writers and still achieve some "for the record" articles, but the good stuff is just too diluted anymore.

[ColColt]

Anyone remember Warren Page? When I think of old timers I recall him, Elmer Keith and Jack O'Connor who was the gun editor for Outdoor Life for quite a few years.

I don't recall Guns and Ammo being called Guns and Hunting. Guns and Ammo goes back at least to the early 70's.

[MikeS]

As has already been said, the time of magazines, newspapers, and books printed on paper are coming to a close. In my opinion this is a bad thing, particularly when it comes to newspapers. When something is 'printed' on the internet, it's subject to being edited, or deleted at the whim of the owner of the website where it's 'published'. Not trying to sound too paranoid, the ability of info being edited after the fact, or deleted is getting a bit too close to Orwell's "1984" than I feel comfortable with! Having said that, I'm guilty of not actually reading newspapers, instead getting my news from the internet. I'm also more comfortable reading stuff on the computer, rather than on paper, but whenever possible I try and get a paper backup whenever possible, I've even bought 2 copies of a book I want to read, one that's an old fashioned book, the other an electronic edition I can read at the computer.

When it comes to gun magazines, I find that they're pretty much the same now as they were years ago, any changes are simply ones that follow 'the times'. I think today there are a lot less folks that want to 'roll their own' be it reloading, or casting boolits. While there will always be folks that want to make their own, I think today more than ever in the 'disposable' society, people are more likely to buy their hunting ammo, rather than reload it.

[Multigunner]

THE MYSTERIOUS SEE - BY COL. G.O. ASHLEY

This fellow shot some rounds with small charges of slow burning powder over snow, blew nothing up and concluded the SEE was much ado about nothing.

Thats one big problem with gun gurus in general, opinions formed from limited experimentation then promoted as the absolute unshakeable fact.
Townsend Whelen once wrote about his experiences in using .30-06 FMJ bullets with the nose filed off as hunting bullets. He concluded that the practice was perfectly safe.
He had in fact fired many thousands of rounds with filed bullets without incident, but all those bullets were from U S military ammunition which had since 19i4 been manufactured with safeguards against blow through and jacket shedding after a great many of the standard pre 1914 had shed their jackets or blown through due to throat erosion and blowby softening the bullet and causing the core to break free of the jacket.
Before 1914 the Army issued a stuck jacket removal tool with every 1903 Springfield, after the new manufacturing methods were instituted only one jacket removal tool was issued per company.
So long as the FMJ bullets in question were manufactured with prevention of blow through in mind, making these into dum dums was not as hazardous as doing the same thing with many other makes of FMJ bullets.
Those who made home brewed dum dums from .303 British and Mauser ammo too often found that it was not a wise idea, and when a manufacturer started selling economical tublar jacketed bullets to handloaders of large bore rifles it wasn't long before a shooter lost most of his vision due to a blown out breech.

I still occasionally see posts from those who mutilate milsurp FMJ bullets for use in hunting, and they often quote Whelen's article to claim the practice is safe as houses, even though the ammo they mutilate is usually Soviet or Chinese ammo of uncertain qualities.

Blown through bullets were a common occurance when the British still used the tublar jacketed soft point bullets before the Hague Convention ruled these inhumane.
Records of turn of the century target matches reveal this was a well recognized problem which had damaged many fine rifles.

The higher the flame temperature of the propellent the more likely it would be for a bullet to shed its jacket, and bore condition is another even more critical factor.
One shooter may put thousands of mutilated bullets through a bore that is in great condition, while another shooter with exactly the same model of rifle might have a breech failure on his first few tries.

Good quality soft nosed bullets are available for practically every caliber out there, so use of dum dums is neither necessary nor worth even a small risk.
I'd rather spend a few bucks more on proper ammo than risk destruction of a fine rifle (or bulged barrel or annular indentations in the bore) or loss of an eye or worse.

[Bret4207]

It's not just Handloader. I'm sure many here recall the days of wordsmiths like Gene Hill and, as Ric mentioned IIRC, Ed Zern. Or Gordon MacQuarrie, Nash Buckingham and Robert Ruark. Those guys were PROFESSIONALS. Didn't matter if it was Gene bringing a tear to your eye talking about a new puppy or Ed detailing the latest misadventures of the Madision Avenue Rod, Gun and Bloody Mary Club (been a long time, I might have messed that one up) and getting a gut busting laugh. They could write great stuff and worked at it. Now for all I know David Fortier, Pete Kokalis and John Haviland may be truly wonderful people and outstanding shots, but they don't come up to the level of the older writers. In the technical aspect I'll put Phil Sharpe, JR Mattern or Ken Waters up against 99% of our modern breed. Even into the 80's guys like Rick Jamison were doing good articles full of meat and of course guys like Skeeter, Finn Agaard, etc. could put the flavor into a story that just lacks in a period where saying good things about a sponsors product is a major concern. True enough, the "Me and Joe went huntin" stories have been with us since day one, but you used to be able to fend off the stories of that type by buying the specialist mags, usually at a higher price. But today the choices are somehow more limited. It's the same with many things- you used to get articles in Popular Mechanics that would be considered too narrow and limited for publication today, so we have The Home Shop Machinist and Projects in Metal. We seem to have lost that in the gun and reloading area with only a few exceptions like The Single Shot Exchange, The ASSRA Journal, a few of the collector mags, etc.

It's the times boys, it's the times.

[bbqncigars]

For me, the end of the era of great gun writers was when Col. Cooper left us for the Great Hunt.


Wayne

[Char-Gar]

Of everybody who ever wrote a gun article, Jeff Cooper was my least favorite. His royal "We" stuck in my craw.

[Bret4207]

The worst for me were Craig (gag!) Boddington and Askins Jr. Can't stomach either of them for more than a couple paragraphs. Scoville is right up too over the past few years.

[milprileb]

30 yrs ago guns were really tested and you got an evaluation from Nonte, Skelton and a few other writers. Today, you have writers who write 90% of the article explaining assembly or dis assembly, shoot at close ranges and at best tell you the MSRP price and about how accurate the weapon is / could be.

Todays writers seem to have read alot about guns instead of having experience with guns. They hardly have a firm grip on any subject.

And todays guns magazines have filler pagers on trucks and knives etc etc and are not as focused on guns primarily like in the past.

In sum: the credibility of current gun writers falls short in my opinion

[1Shirt]

Only have endowment subscription to the NRA and Rifleman dating back into the 60's, Hand Loader Mag, and the Varmint Hunter Mag. Used to have subscriptions to a half a dozen or more. Have to agree with the majoritry of Negative comments posted. I miss Kieth, Page, Nonte, Skelton, and Whelan. There are a fet good ones today, but I question the editiong of a lot of their articles.
1Shirt!

[Katya Mullethov]

Someone is still printing magazines ?

[bleukahuna]

Does anyone read Precision Shooting? It's outragously expensive,$40 bucks a year but the writing is outstanding. I used to enjoy many of the gun mags"back in the day" but some time in the late eighties I noticed they had all become pretty much the same rag.
Sometimes articles were recycled from one magazine to another with just the by-line changed. I occasinally pick upa copy of Rifle or Handloader when theres an article that interests me.

[LUBEDUDE]

Sure we all have our favorite writers, but most of us are older experienced guys. And as Char gar and Bluehorse said or have said or alluded to, it's harder to impress or teach us something new.

[alamogunr]

Does anyone read Precision Shooting? It's outragously expensive,$40 bucks a year but the writing is outstanding. I used to enjoy many of the gun mags"back in the day" but some time in the late eighties I noticed they had all become pretty much the same rag.
Sometimes articles were recycled from one magazine to another with just the by-line changed. I occasinally pick upa copy of Rifle or Handloader when theres an article that interests me.

I have subscribed to Precision Shooting since a sister magazine, The Accurate Rifle, was discontinued and the balance of my subscription was filled with PS. While it has a lot of benchrest focus, the other articles are very interesting. Many of them are above my pay grade but I read them anyway. I especially like the "Last Resting Place"(or some such name) which are short biographies of notable gun persons, some well known and some not so much.

Subscribe for 2 years and the price comes down to $35/yr.

[tmc-okc]

OK, getting in on this a little late but how many of you remember the magazine that came out in late 67-69 time period called Gun Facts.. Apperantly some writers had an issue with what was being written about some firearms and equipment and decided to start their own mag and write the REAL facts as they saw them. I missed issues 1 & 2 but picked up the rest until the gun companies and equipment companys had enough of their REAL facts and dropped their advertising which killed the mag. I forget who the authors were. I think I still have those issues. I guess I should dig them out and see if the names ring a bell..

Ron

[SlippShodd]

I bought a couple issues of a mag in the late '70s, early '80s maybe that proposed telling the truth in gun reviews since they didn't accept ads from any gun manufacturers. I don't think they lasted very long either. Their top prize of the issue went to the "Turkey Of The Month," otherwise, the worst gun they reviewed that issue. I remember the Llama .44 Magnum being regaled with those honors.
I don't recall the writing being of particularly high quality...

mike

[John Boy]

Let's face it, the manufacturers send a magazine writer a firearm. He holds it, looks it over, takes it to the range for some chrono and groups (rifles always 50 & 100yds[smilie=1:) ... then writes the article without having any previous innate knowledge of the firearm

The complete opposite .... articles in these magazines about firearms owned by the authors with innate knowledge and various tests - tests - tests and more tests:
* the Black Powder Cartridge New
* The Single Shot Exchange
* Single Shot Rifle Journal

I have copies of the 1923 Rifleman and the articles there are real articles too by renowned sportsmen and gun cranks. Not one article has the MSRP of the gun either

[Longwood]

Prior to America falling for the liability law nonsense,,, I used to anxiously watch the calendar for when I could go buy the latest addition to all of the gun and shooting magazines.
The articles were not only interesting, they had great loading articles with accuracy being most important.
Unfortunately, most calibers seem to shoot best when loaded "HOT" and when America screwed up and made it so idiots can sue for their own stupidity, the writers and the loading data producers, backed off on all of their published data which caused me to have to work up loads I could have gotten from an article for less than $4.
Plus,,,
I asked a writer a question once and three months later got an incorrect answer.
Not like here,,
I usually get an answer in less than a day and if it is wrong, it gets noticed and corrected, without the writer being able to edit the responses.
I quit buying the mags when they went downhill so fast and soon noticed how few I saw for sale at any of the stores where I used to buy my magazines.
I might buy a subscription too a monthly video magazine if there are any.
I saw a few of an subscription on Sport Plane flying and they were fantastic and well worth the subscription price.

[10x]

Between 1990 and 2000 I had subscriptions to several gun magazines and read each one cover to cover. I kept all of them in a box in the attic. Around 2000, I notice an interesting phenomena ... I had the strangest sense of Déjà vu. So I hauled the magazine box out of the attic and began looking through old magazines.

With the exception of recently added new gun model stories, the instances of regurgitated stories was simply amazing. I sat for hours and found story after story that was basically the same just rewritten 5,6, or more years later. Not a simple copy/paste but close enough and in all of the rags that when it came to to re-up my subscriptions I let them all lapse.

I haven't picked up a gun rag since ... got the internet instead.

It ain't deja vu you are experiencing. Gun writers have a limited number of topics tor write about. I have gun magazines dating back to the mid 1950s and books authored by the folks who wrote articles for many gun rags at the time.

Bottom line, a 30 caliber bullet at 2750 preforms much the same whether shot out of a 300 H&H, a 30/06, a 308, a 300 Savage Akley improved, or a grossly overloaded 30-30 in a well built bolt action. The real difference is in bullet construction.

Many of these gun writers have (had) a passion for shooting and hunting, but many were very opinionated. A classic example of this was the debate between Jack O'Connor and Elmer Keith that started in the late 1950s and continued for decades. This stuff was very interesting reading and sold many subscriptions for Outdoor life, Petersons hunting, Guns Magazine, and Guns and Ammo - the various publications both of these gentlemen wrote for. If you only got one publication ,you only got half of the debate, but when you got both publications it was entertaining.


http://indiansforguns.com/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=16923

http://www.chuckhawks.com/column12_jack_o_connor.htm

Both of these gentlemen passed on years ago and the debate continues. After reading books published by both of these gentlemen it is my opinion that while Mr. Keith was interesting to read Mr O'Conner was the better gun writer.

That being said the current gun writer of whom I have the most respect and admiration is Mike Venturino who seems to write in the tradition of both of O'Connor and Keith, presenting good stories, accurate descriptions of what he did, and a good dose of humble when things don't quite work.

It seems that some gun writers peruse the old issues of gun magazines for ideas for their new articles and then rewrite them. Mr. Venturino comes across as avoiding this.

Bottom line I have a subscription to Rifle and to Handloader mostly because of Mikes articles - Many of the gun magazines seem to have evolved into glossy advertisements for "new" gun products or waxing poetic about new products from the big manufactures. Same thing as 50 years ago except the pages are glossy and the photos are colour.

The gun politics section in the gun rags hasn't changed either. Gun owners are still facing the same anti gun owner rhetoric they faced 50 years ago and the concerns expressed in the magazines 50 years ago are the same concerns as today.

[Longwood]

Old magazine articles were written by those that did it. Some of them spent thousands of hours at the benches to prove to themselves what they were writing about.
Nowdays, a writer is an employee that flys around to the different manufacturers and listens to the factory reps BS.
I would sure like to see someone start a Video Magazine with Youtube type articles that can show many times more interesting photo's and info and say about 20 times as much as any mag can do and with much less cost or ill effect on the environment.
How fun could that job be.
PS
I read nearly every article and a book by Elmer Kieth. In my opinion, like several others like him, he was quite a guy, but sure was not Jesus.

[Echo]

Good quality soft nosed bullets are available for practically every caliber out there, so use of dum dums is neither necessary nor worth even a small risk.
I'd rather spend a few bucks more on proper ammo than risk destruction of a fine rifle (or bulged barrel or annular indentations in the bore) or loss of an eye or worse.

It's my understanding that the practice of filing down the nose of GI bullets is useless, in that the jacket is not made to allow expansion. I believe I remember reading of someone who did the experiments, and the bullets didn't expand...
(And I filed some noses 'way back when)

[Char-Gar]

Many of these gun writers have (had) a passion for shooting and hunting, but many were very opinionated. A classic example of this was the debate between Jack O'Connor and Elmer Keith that started in the late 1950s and continued for decades. This stuff was very interesting reading and sold many subscriptions for Outdoor life, Petersons hunting, Guns Magazine, and Guns and Ammo - the various publications both of these gentlemen wrote for. If you only got one publication ,you only got half of the debate, but when you got both publications it was entertaining.

Both of these gentlemen passed on years ago and the debate continues. After reading books published by both of these gentlemen it is my opinion that while Mr. Keith was interesting to read Mr O'Conner was the better gun writer.



O'Conner and Keith were locked down in a duel of opposing notions, about what constitutes a good hunting rifle. Each had their fan base and as I understand it, O'Conner and Keith were not on warm terms. Keith was a rought and tumble guy with minimal formal education and editors has to put his stuff into standard english for publication. O'Conner on the other hand was a College Professor and knew how to write very well.

I found both writers interesting and could find truth in both positions. I knew lots of folks who knocked of many deer and elk with the 270 Win. and 30-06 with zero problems. According to Keith these were worthless for anything larger than vermin. I thought that was nonsense, until the first time I hit a big mule deer buck with a hot loaded 45-70, which dropped in his tracks with a lung shot. Humm..thought I..perhaps old Elmer knew more than I gave him credit for.