I bought my first shooting magazine before I was
8 years old. While growing up I spent thousands of hours pouring over the words
of Jack O'Conner, Warren Page, Elmer Keith and P.O. Ackley. I was too young to
actually go and do but I could live the adventures through their words. Jack O'Conner
took me on many hunts all over the world. Warren Page started me thinking about
how to make rifles shoot more accurately while Elmer Keith and P.O. Ackley started
my lifelong love of "Wildcat" cartridges. I still own and refer to many
of those articles as they are as true today as they were when written 40 years
ago.
Unfortunately those days seem to be gone. Many of today's writers do the research
and write a fine, accurate article. Then the editor comes along and changes the
article to endorse his biggest advertisers with no consideration for the work
the writer went through to collect the data.
A case in point is the 2001 CVA "Blackpowder Guns and Hunting" magazine
published by Vulcan Outdoors. The writer, Ralph M. Lermayer, wrote an article
on methods and equipment for hunting in the western United States. Ralph did a
lot of research and tested a variety of bullets to determine the best bullets
for the task at hand. Ralph's testing confirmed that our QT Polymer Spitzer bullet
line had the highest downrange energy, was the flattest shooting and was the most
accurate. He called me with the news and said he was just wrapping up the article
and would be happy to send me a copy.
By the time Ralph's article showed up in print in the 2001 CVA / Vulcan Publishing
magazine, my bullets have disappeared from the copy and magically the CVA PowerBelt
bullets had taken their place. The CVA PowerBelt bullets were not even in the
test mix but I guess when you own the magazine, you can pretty much print whatever
you like.
I don't believe that they fool many shooters with their creative editing because
most adults know better than to believe what they read. Their biggest victims
are our children who, if like me, may be pouring over the words of their favorite
writer only to be mislead by editors who quite probably have never even shot a
muzzleloader.
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