The earlier magazines, like Shooting and Fishing, were more like the Internet forums in that they had few big Feature Articles by established writers and more short Correspondence, i.e., letters from people on specific, short topics. There doesn’t seem to be space in magazines for such miscellaneous footnotes any more. Their loss.
Jack O’Connor mentioned that any writer’s interests and expertise are necessarily finite, while the deadlines keep coming forever. Over the years, their writings start to resemble circus lemonade, where they put a lemon into a barrel of water and keep adding water as the product is dispensed. Eventually it gets kind of “thin,” like the repetitive articles of the writers.
He said one gun writer of his acquaintance once shot a bighorn ram. He got the standard photo of himself with rifle and ram, then had his guide drag the carcass all over the mountain, getting pictures of himself against different trees in the timberline, different mountains in the background, different times of day, and so forth. Then he took more pictures of the well-traveled ram hanging in camp and being dressed. Then it was off to the butcher, with the same variety of people and backgrounds being photographed as the animal was cut up. Then it was ho for the taxidermist, with photos of the head being mounted and the hide tanned.
The guy parlayed that single hunt into dozens of articles on “sheep hunts,” hunting camps, field dressing, butchering and preservation of trophies. His readers must have thought he was an expert of vast experience, and, in a way, he was kind of a genius.