THE GREAT OUTDOORS
One of the greatest pleasures I experience is to read the works of the great
gun writers of the last century. I'm too
young to remember greats such as Col.
Townsend Whelen and Warren Page.
Even as a young sprat I saw very few of
their works in print. The heyday of
sportswriters (I'm talking about REAL
sportswriters, hunting andfishing,not
this namby-pamby tennis-golf-curling
stuff) was the late 1950's and 1960's, My
three all time favorites were Jack O'Conner, Col. Charles Askins and Elmer
Keith. All three gentlemen have passed
on to the Happy Hunting Grounds, All
three of these fellows were about as diametrically opposed in upbringing,
lifestyles and firearms preferences as
one could possibly imagine.
O'Conner and Keith spent their
whole lives at each others throats, disagreeing on just about everything to do
withfirearms.O'Conner grew up in Arizona to a relativelyfinanciallycomfortable family and made his living, if I remember correctly, as a university level
English professor. Elmer Keith was born
in Missouri, nearly died in a hotel fire at
a young age and grew up tougher than
shoe leather from there on. He spent his
adult life as a Montana/Idaho rancheroutfitter-trapper-horse wrangler-gun
nut. He was a well-educated man with a
rough mountain-man cowboy edge to
himself that he carried proudly all his
life. His life was threatened on several
occasions by other men and he threatened the lives of several men on occasion throughout his life. The threats to
his life were faced head-on without
quarter and the others always backed
down. The occasions upon which he
threatened someone else he had good
cause and from his writings I have no
doubt mat he would have carried
through if the other men did not give
way.
Col. Askins grew up in Texas, I believe, to a military family and a father
who was a Major in tire Army and a
well-known firearms pundit in his own
right. As a lad I can remember a reprint
or two of the senior Charles Askins writings. The junior Charles Askins was a
typical Texas firebrand. He was opinionated and did not suffer fools easily.
All three of these gentlemen were
marksmen of exceptional order.
Jack O'Conner's writing style reflected his knowledge of the English
language and his irascible nature and
wry sense of humor. His technical
knowledge of firearms was second to
none. He was a gentleman's shooter.
He enjoyed the side-by-side shotgun
above all other styles and loved the
tweed jacket-style upland bird hunting. He appreciated the fine art of a
British double. At the same time, he
also realized that the average shooter
could not afford such niceties and
wrote accordingly. Jack was still a rifleman at heart and his philosophy
was that the average shooter was
much better off with a lighter rifle that
he could hit what he was aiming at
with instead of trying to use a big
boomer that kicked so hard that you
flinched so badly that you wounded
game. He loved fine wood with exquisite checkering. He killed several
Grizzlies and Brown bears with
30/06's and 270's and never felt endangered. He also was the first person
to tell you that if you wished to use a
.375 H+H Magnum on whitetails you
would get no argument from him if
you could handle the recoil. He was a
nuts and bolts writer who had very little tolerance for exaggerated claims
for any hot new caliber that came
along. He took a lot of flack for making the statement that the difference
between the .270-.280 classrifleand
7mm. Remington Magnum was
"peanuts" in a 22 inch barrel. It didn't
take shooters long to realize that Jack
wasrightand demanded that the 7mm.
Mag. needed at least a 24-inch barrel
to burn the powder held in that large
case efficiently. The same thing happened to the .264 Winchester magnum, Winchester, caving in to everyone in their quest for lighter, easier to
carry rifles began, producing the .264
in 22-inch barrels. After a few years
Winchester realized the folly of this
and returned to the 26-inch tube on
their plains rifle. You will not find a
7mm. magnum with anything less
than a 24-inch barrel today and some
offerings are with a 26-inch barrel. I
have carried a Ruger M-77 in that caliber with the 24-inch barrel and while
it wouldn't be my first choice to crawl
through a tag alder swamp with, I
wouldn't walk around the swamp just
because I happened to be carrying that
particular gun either. The 24 inch tube
made for a wonderfully steady off-^
hand gun. The balance of the gun has a
lot more to do with the comfortable
portage of a gun than its actual dimensions. As you already know, the Ruger
stockfitsme like a buckskin glove and
it is an exceedingly comfortable gun
to carry and shoot for me.
Elmer Keith's philosophy was "carry the biggest da~d gun you can shoot!"
He hadno use for the 30/06 for anything
bigger than whitetail or mule deer. He
had precious little use for the ,270 AT
ALL. The .270 was okay for pronghom
(maybe) and shooting varmints like
"ehimpmukies" as Elmer used to call
them. He wanted nothing to do with any
bullet weighing under 250 grains and at
least .33 caliber for elk and other heavy
game. Jack O'Conner was content to
grant Elmer that the heavier caliber's
certainly gave one more leeway in the
angle of shot you could take on heavy
game, but he maintained that a .270
through the lungs is just as effective as a
.33 caliber bullet.
Elmer, on the other hand, would
have none of that. He considered the
.270 a "joke" for elk and would refuse to
guide anyone going after elk witha .270.
He was always getting in a jab at O'Conner, without ever mentioning his name,
at every opportunity in his writing.
Elmer thought nothing was out of the ordinary to tackle a pronghom with a .338
magnum or a .400 Whelen.
I am going to quote a few paragraphs of Jack O'Conner's take on the
subject from his book, "The Hunters
Shooting Guide." It is a darned good
read andit pretty well sums up the extent
of the life-long disagreement of these
two gentlemen on the subject "In spite
of a half-century of successful use all
over the world, die .270 is soil to some
extent a controversial cartridge. Ever
since the cartridge appeared it has outraged the believers in heavy bullets and
big bores. Since I was an early user of
the .2701 read with interest almost 50
years ago in the American Rifleman an
article by a Montana man who said the
.270 was a "joke on elk." Since I had at
the time never shot anything bigger than
a deer with the ,2701 wondered if the
guy might be right, Just why the ,270
was a joke Idid notknow-and the writer
did not say. H e did not bother to tell
where the animals that presumably got
away were kit, how far they went, or
anything else.
This sniping at the ,270 has gone on
in a similar vein ever since. Generally
the criticisms are in the form offlatstatements. Many times they are by people
who have never had any experience with
the ,270, and sometimes they are by people who have had little experience with
anything. Saying the ,270 (or any other
cartridge) is "a miserable failure" requires explanation and amplification. It
is like the blanket statement that "Sally
Jones is not a very nice girl." Just why
ain't ole Sally nice? Does she run away
with other women's husbands? Does she
partake too freely of the grape, grow
rowdy, shoutribaldries,and in general
make a damned nuisance of herself?
Does she dance nude in the rain on summer afternoons? Let's get with it! Let's
lay it on the linej Just why is little Sally
Jones naughty and why did the ,270 fail
on those iron-plated elk?"
I could go on for several paragraphs of Jack's debunking many of the
statements made about the .270, butyou
get the idea. Of course in the 1920's and
1930's bullets weren't of the qualify we
take for granted now days. Some of the
bullet desips were pretty sorry, indeed.
Bullet manufacturers were still trying to
come to grips with the dynamics of high
velocity. The problem of making a bullet
that will not blow up at 3,000 feet-persecond at 50 yards and still expand properly at 1,000 feet-per-second at 300
yards was an engineering problem of
gargantuan proportions that had not
been encountered in the days of black
powder and l,4O0 foot-per-second velocities. Most of the failures of lighter
caliber's were bullet failures, not failure
because of the bore size, Elmer's contention that you should use a heavier
bullet and a bigger bore had some merit
based on those facts. He also realized
that moderate velocity also helped to
keep the bullets from coming apart.
Both points of view have merit and it is
exceedingly interesting to read these gattersnakes.
Charlie didn't always get bis facts'
two gentlemen's works over their lifetime and understand the life-long antag- straight, buthenever let that stead in tim
way of a good story. And a good stas^*
onism between them.
Col. Charles Askins badahankerin' tellerhe was. Cbarliewas one of tfcebel|
for high velocity rifles. He also had an offhand shots this world hasever&nav«|
arlnity to the 8mm. caliber. He was al- and yet he would never take aa oftharwl
ways trying to posh 8mm. bullets faster shot if there were any kind of rest availj
than God, man, or the laws of physics able. He wasn't above poking fun ni Jug
ever intended them to go. He had little own misadventures, e i t e . He told mm
tolerance for the cry-baby that whined time of his penchant for only putting f
about the "piddlin"' recoil of puny cal- couple of rounds in the magazine of hi*
iber's such as the 30/06 and 7mm, mags. rifles when, he goes hunting and bmm
"Why recoil don't amount to nothin1 ftill jumped up and Mtfaim once. He b e c a ^
you get into the 70 pound range!" he'd afflicted with a case of overcotnToenag
scoff. He considered the .340Weatherby and missed his first shot, After missir ~
1
about right as an all-aroundrifle.If a ri- u®firstshot, measy one, irtfront oft
fle-bullet combination didn't achieve the guide he then got smackedrightup sid
magic 3,000 fps. mark, itheldna interest ftebeadwitharip-snortingcaseofbuc
whatever to Askins. If It would have fever. He missed both of his shots ar*ff
been possible to drive an 8mm. bullet tells how he is ayingtodigmore arrangj
6,000 fps. Charlie would have been a out ofras pocket and cram it into ihegu*
while the critter is running away aeros(|
happy man indeed!
Charlie started out workingforthe the plains in clear view. Of course b e g
Forest Service as a smoke chaser. He embarrassed that he missed the eas*
found that sitting aroundin a tower wait- shot; flustered and Mous at himself fcfg
ing for a fire to start so as he would have missing the sasceedingshots. W&tixvm
something to report, exceedingly dull. ping shelis on the ground and so on an*
His life-longfriend, George Parker,con- so on. He is literally six feet off thj£
vinced him that the Border Patrol, espe- ground and blowing smoke out of b o d |
m
cially the Mexican borderarea was a tad ears at this point.
more interesting. So Charlie joined up.
Charlie has written several book^J
Withmmefirstl2hoiffiofsigninguphe all of which are fascinating. My biggeag
was helping his partner load up the body regretJsthatlcarinotaffordtobuyalli^li
of a Mexican rum-runner, who had these wonderful writer's works. Curtis
elected to shootit out rathertfiansurren- Moser has a copy of O'Conner's "Tfajj
der, on a horselSome fun! He became a Shotgun Book," which he kindly leq£
national pistol shooting champion dur- me. I havejustfinishedreading i t It i$%
ing his tenure on the Border Patrol, He one-stop re^foreverythmgyoudwayjl
served in Vietnam and his stories of Ms wantedtoknowabout shotguns. *J5
hunting adventures in the area always
I mentioned awhile back flwfJJI
tookprecedenceoverhis combat experi- would really like to read a copy of Fetitt
ences. He told of a rare type of buffaloin Hathaway Capstick's "Death to tfeif
Vietnam that was exceedingly elusive Long Grass* and Dave Davoy raejgj*
andhehad decided to hiresomelocals to tionedhehadacopy Icould borrow. Imm
form a safari. He bought a large quantity tend to take him up on it this wintSjC*
of rice to feed the men to accompany Many of these out of print books nw»j
him. The head porter informed him that bring at least what they sold for w/r-m
„he had purchased a very poor quality gun shows and sometimes three or fqufi
"lice" and that the men would complain times their original price. That shouWl
and maybe desert them in we jungle. tell you something about the quality o £
Charlie replied that he thought "lice" their work, Capsrick has passed onto «|
was "lice." He toldhowtheswamps they better life, also, I hope that whereven
crawled through were alive with cobras these gentlemen are, they are soU enter*
constantly slithering by. "We ignored taining someone with their wit and wisj|
mem and they ignored us," was his com- dotn.
*
ment, like he was talking about so many
Enjoy the Great Outdoors.
"Where in the World
M
aire You Taking Us?
THESE NORTH COUNTRY RESIDENTS traveled to Las Vegas with Hack Tours June 2*toJuly 1. S t a r e d at Harrah's Hotel are Darlene Scovflle, CopcnI*agen| Kathryn Marrnon, holding the Journal, Lyons Fulls, Robert Scovifte, J
Copenhagen, Vickie Windover,Charaio3Bt,GeraldiaeNea!,sutimier
J
mont.
—*
STEVE HERR AND BETH KUPPERHERR enjoyed visiting. t h e Rijks*
musem is Amsterdam, Holland a t the
end of their five-week European trip in
May and June. They spent three weeks
in northern Italy, ten days i n Greece
(Athens and Santorini Island) and four
days in Amsterdam.
Steve, a 1°6? graduate of Beaver
River Centra) School, has owned and
opercated Diamond Head Resume Service for the past seven years i a Honolulu, Hawaii. Beth is a tenured associate
professor of writing and coordinator of
die Learning Resource Center at Leeward Community College (University
of Hawaii System) in Pearl City,
Hawaii. Prior t& retttrnlngto Hawaii In
1991, they both taught academic English to government employees and university students t&t seven years In
Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan,
MII1IIKWII.HU
.11 ill
mi
niiii'i H i n u iiinu m m i n i m m
i . n i Minn''
inn
I I
a 11»——»~—«liy»—
TfcJo^tmdfayqpfo^
countryordiewiWkt!
Wherever yew go, send us a picture of
friends,relativesat Kxynaittanran, and twfll
totMkm of wfctic the Bhato wttttjaaivtt
' fhRkMet te)fttJWB.
i.*iiiiiiim mi in iiinmiMi
•m i