I corresponded with Jack for years and much enjoyed his droll style of writing. I saved some of the letters.
I knew Elmer Keith slightly and saw him fire a .44 Magnum at a target 200 yards away. He was then well into his 70's, but he hit the target. I used to shoot enough to know that with practice, hitting a man-sized target at that range is easier than some think. I just MARVEL at the hotshots I see on the range who think it's a big deal if they hit center mass on a silhouette at FIVE YARDS!
One man posting here is confusing Jeff Cooper with Massad Ayoob. It was Ayoob who wrote, "In the Gravest Extreme." Mas is flashy and dramatic in prose. Jeff was precise, classically educated, and elitist. But both were very effective writers. I once had a letter from Warren Page demeaning Cooper soon after he began writing. Compared him to a former Field & Stream photo editor who began gun writing. Page thought he did an interesting job of copying all sorts of articles, good and bad. Informtion and misinformation, he phrased it. He didn't say who it was, and I never read any bylines that made me think this was the case.
One man asked who the gun scribe for Sports Afield was. It was Edwards (not just Edward) "Pete" Brown. He seemed knowledgeable, but seldom wrote much that I enjoyed. O'Connor's wry style entertained me more and his information was more to my liking. I still think that Jack was perhaps the most informative gun and hunting writer yet. Boddington probably shoots more animals, but I don't find him enjoyable to read and didn't care for him in person when we met briefly at a party. He is also (in my opinion) more commercial than Jack was, as are most of today's gun writers. The motto is, Plug the Product and don't fail to mention any big advertiser.
Jack was very fond of the .270, which he largely made famous. But he also liked the .30/06 a lot, and the 7X57mm. He is the only writer to have noted that a 7mm that's throated for the 175 grain bullet will burn out the barrel throat sooner if used a lot with lighter bullets. That was one reason why he switched from a 7mm to .270 for the most part. But he owned .338 & .416 rifles and used them and the .375 H&H when apppropriate. He owned at least two rifles in 7mm Remington Magnum, but thought they mostly just added weight and recoil with little advantage over the .270, as he handloaded the .270. I think he was right.
I don't think the better old time gun writers lied a lot, as one man sugested here. Mostly, they seemed pretty straight. One reason why Elmer favored .338 and heavier rifles for larger animals is that he HAD to get a kill, as he often was hunting for hs meat supply. And he'd take quartering shots that Jack would pass on. He lked to take high lung shots on broadside animals, where the .270 sufficed. On a quartering shot, even with good bullets like the Nosler, I'd probaby prefer a ..338 on larger animals, too.
I wish that Jack had lived to see the current Winchester M-70. Such a fine rifle...The Fwt.is stocked a lot like the old BSA sporters and he liked that stock style. He pretty much founded the major move toward modern classic rifle stocks.
BTW, he did have a .300 Weatherby along in Africa in a 1953 safari with Herb Klein. Klein owned part of Weatherby and was an intersting fellow in his own right. I once spent an hour in his oil office, talking guns and hunting. He willed some of his guns to the Dallas Natural History Museum, where I had the privilege of handling them. They were very ornate. I found Klein's Dallas Morning News obituary in O'Connor's book on North American Game Animals this week. The cutline writer said that he was shown with a Marco Polo "antelope." (Really a sheep.) That tells you what the mass media knows of guns and hunting!
I miss Jack and Warren Page and Jeff Cooper. All were peacocks, but they wrote solid stuff, very informative and entertaining. I think he'd have liked the 7mm-08, which about duplicates what he'd expect from a 7X57mm with 140 grain bullets. But he'd still cherish the old .270, which is now better than ever.
Oh: Jack was probably also the first gun writer to mention binoculars much. He had some nice ones, and wrote a little booklet for Bausch & Lomb. He got me interested in optics. I often think of him as I use a good binocular.
