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Gun writer biography colorful tale
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Gun writer biography colorful tale
Out & About: Book tells it like it was with outspoken Jack O'Connor
Rich Landers
Outdoors editor
He's baaack.
Jack O'Connor, the man who took the .270-caliber rifle to princely esteem, lives on in a new book, "Jack O'Connor: The Legendary life of America's Greatest Gunwriter," by Robert Anderson (Safari Press, $35).
O'Connor is probably deserving of numerous reputations for everything from being cranky and egotistical to being a family man and the 20th century's best-known firearms expert.
The author, however, an avowed O'Connor fan since he was a teenager, says that any effort to define O'Connor would miss the mark. He became famous as the gun writer for Outdoor Life, but few people know his perspective as a novelist. You'll find out about that in this book.
But readers will only get a hint of the great personal heartache O'Connor endured in 1937, which the author says sapped his faith in mankind for the rest of his life.
Seems like an inexcusable omission to make that point and let it fizzle.
But all in all, the book seems to tell it like it was. It's filled with Jack and family members holding dead animals. It spins stories, talks guns, and zeroes in on big-game hunting tactics and philosophy. Spokane gunmaker Al Biesen figures prominently at the end of the book, where O'Connor's favorite firearms are detailed.
The author produced the book with the cooperation of the O'Connor family and access to many of Jack's private papers and correspondence.
It's a good piece of history.
But O'Connor left many trails leading to insights about his interests and personality. The following is an example not so much about what has changed since he died in 1978, but how much is the same.
For example, here's a letter to the editor that Jack, a Lewiston, Idaho, resident, wrote for publication in the Lewiston Tribune on Jan. 13, 1967:
"I see by the Tribune of Jan. 9 that Gov. Don Samuelson says that he has got more criticism of the state game department than he has of any other department.
"I've got news for Big Don. If he fired every member of the department and staffed it with St. Peter, the Angel Gabriel, Sir Isaac Walton, Nimrod, Diana, Daniel Boone, and Charles Darwin he'd still get more criticism of the game department than of any other.
"In my day I have been in a fair number of states and I have yet to be in one where the game department was not under fire and where there was not a strong movement under way to get rid of the director, to hang the biologists, to have the head of the law enforcement division torn asunder by wild horses, and the chairman of the commission beheaded, drawn and quartered, and his head exhibited in front of the state Capitol on a pike.
``I long ago found out that if I wanted to get all the correct answers to the problems of game management I was wasting my time if I went to see the game department biologist. These poor slobs have only studied the various aspects of game management in universities for from four to eight years. They only spend about 250 days a year or so in the field and in the laboratory.
``They only know something about ecology, biology, chemistry, and various worthless subjects. As a consequence these biologists are all fatheads and their opinions are without value.
``If I want to get all the answers but quick I just go to any bar, barber shop, or sporting goods store. I quickly find out that many people know exactly how all the problems should be dealt with, and that all this wisdom comes to them through a sort of osmosis -- through having bought a hunting license, having spent two weekends hunting deer, or having talked to old Hi Jenkens, who used to be a market hunter and who came here in 1908.
``For my part I set little store by these swivel chair experts in the game department or any other quacks with modern scientific pretenses. If I want to know how the weather is going to be I wouldn't think of getting in touch with the weather bureau. Instead I stop some little old lady on the street. I ask her how she feels. If she tells me that her corns are hurting, I know it is going to rain.
``When I feel lousy I wouldn't think of consulting an M.D. Instead I pull a hair out of my head, send it to an old barber I went to when I was in college down in Arkansas. He burns the hair in a darkened room, notes the color of the flame, and tells me what is wrong.
``The fact that I am still alive and relatively frisky at my advanced age shows the old boy knows his stuff.''
And so did Jack.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=063002&ID=s1173642&cat=section.sports
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
Out & About: Book tells it like it was with outspoken Jack O'Connor
Rich Landers
Outdoors editor
He's baaack.
Jack O'Connor, the man who took the .270-caliber rifle to princely esteem, lives on in a new book, "Jack O'Connor: The Legendary life of America's Greatest Gunwriter," by Robert Anderson (Safari Press, $35).
O'Connor is probably deserving of numerous reputations for everything from being cranky and egotistical to being a family man and the 20th century's best-known firearms expert.
The author, however, an avowed O'Connor fan since he was a teenager, says that any effort to define O'Connor would miss the mark. He became famous as the gun writer for Outdoor Life, but few people know his perspective as a novelist. You'll find out about that in this book.
But readers will only get a hint of the great personal heartache O'Connor endured in 1937, which the author says sapped his faith in mankind for the rest of his life.
Seems like an inexcusable omission to make that point and let it fizzle.
But all in all, the book seems to tell it like it was. It's filled with Jack and family members holding dead animals. It spins stories, talks guns, and zeroes in on big-game hunting tactics and philosophy. Spokane gunmaker Al Biesen figures prominently at the end of the book, where O'Connor's favorite firearms are detailed.
The author produced the book with the cooperation of the O'Connor family and access to many of Jack's private papers and correspondence.
It's a good piece of history.
But O'Connor left many trails leading to insights about his interests and personality. The following is an example not so much about what has changed since he died in 1978, but how much is the same.
For example, here's a letter to the editor that Jack, a Lewiston, Idaho, resident, wrote for publication in the Lewiston Tribune on Jan. 13, 1967:
"I see by the Tribune of Jan. 9 that Gov. Don Samuelson says that he has got more criticism of the state game department than he has of any other department.
"I've got news for Big Don. If he fired every member of the department and staffed it with St. Peter, the Angel Gabriel, Sir Isaac Walton, Nimrod, Diana, Daniel Boone, and Charles Darwin he'd still get more criticism of the game department than of any other.
"In my day I have been in a fair number of states and I have yet to be in one where the game department was not under fire and where there was not a strong movement under way to get rid of the director, to hang the biologists, to have the head of the law enforcement division torn asunder by wild horses, and the chairman of the commission beheaded, drawn and quartered, and his head exhibited in front of the state Capitol on a pike.
``I long ago found out that if I wanted to get all the correct answers to the problems of game management I was wasting my time if I went to see the game department biologist. These poor slobs have only studied the various aspects of game management in universities for from four to eight years. They only spend about 250 days a year or so in the field and in the laboratory.
``They only know something about ecology, biology, chemistry, and various worthless subjects. As a consequence these biologists are all fatheads and their opinions are without value.
``If I want to get all the answers but quick I just go to any bar, barber shop, or sporting goods store. I quickly find out that many people know exactly how all the problems should be dealt with, and that all this wisdom comes to them through a sort of osmosis -- through having bought a hunting license, having spent two weekends hunting deer, or having talked to old Hi Jenkens, who used to be a market hunter and who came here in 1908.
``For my part I set little store by these swivel chair experts in the game department or any other quacks with modern scientific pretenses. If I want to know how the weather is going to be I wouldn't think of getting in touch with the weather bureau. Instead I stop some little old lady on the street. I ask her how she feels. If she tells me that her corns are hurting, I know it is going to rain.
``When I feel lousy I wouldn't think of consulting an M.D. Instead I pull a hair out of my head, send it to an old barber I went to when I was in college down in Arkansas. He burns the hair in a darkened room, notes the color of the flame, and tells me what is wrong.
``The fact that I am still alive and relatively frisky at my advanced age shows the old boy knows his stuff.''
And so did Jack.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news-story.asp?date=063002&ID=s1173642&cat=section.sports
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878