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Here's one for ya guys/gals: What was the very first fishing & hunting magazine you ever read? How old were you? Did it have a significant impact on your life in the sporting world?
I was 8 or 9 years old and I picked up a well used copy of Outdoor Life on the ground, in an alley way in the apartment "flats" where I was raised. I read that issue from cover to cover. And I've been hooked ever since. Jack O'Connor was my hero. :)
The first one I can remember was Outdoor Life. I would think about 8-9 years old. I read an article about rabbit hunting, and it said to look for a black marble in the brush. It was teaching you to look for the rabbits eye. Went out behind the house and I'll be darned if it didn't work!! Still do it every fall.
Sports Afield. Had a subscription all through high school in the early 90's.
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Sports Afield, Outdoor Life and Field & Stream. Subscribed to all 3 starting in the 60's for 25 years.
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I am pretty sure the first one I ever saw was at the barber shop.I was probably only 5 or 6. Somewhere around 1964 maybe?? They usually had Field and Stream,Sports Afield,and Outdoor Life. When i got old enough I always had my own subscriptions...somewhere along the line I got aggravated about the amount of advertising and canceled all my subscriptions. I look at the online stuff sometimes.
I also am a Jack O'Conner fan. I have a book which has a collection of his stories...I re-read it at least once a year.
I use to sit in the house and read outdoor magazines on miserable weather days .But they would get me so pumped up I would grab my BB gun or cane pole and head out.
I remember specifically one day I must of been about 13 I grabbed my shotgun and headed for the door,Mom ask where I was headed.I said Rabbit Hunting..she said "son it's like four below and the winds blowing". I said I know but I gotta go...she said "don't freeze to death"....I nearly did LOL.
Outdoor life. Jack O'Conner imprinted me with the .270 win which has caused the termination of a multitude of white tails.
It was a 1975 issue of Fishing Facts. (I still have it). It featured a long article by Charlie Brewer on slider fishing. That article was a gold mine of information and has been the basis of my jig fishing.
I know we had outdoor life around the house, I was the youngest of 4 in a scouting family. Curt Gowdy and the American Sportsman and Gadabout Gaddis were on every weekend and I looked forward to the adventures on their shows. Jack O'Conner was way smarter than most people that I've ever met. Made me a .270 fan also.
man at 73 you really expect me to remember that?? :Rofl
Back in the day I read a lot. Every book in the school library that had anything to do with hunting or fishing got read. Then I discovered the public library with it's magazines. Wow, that where I first encountered fishing and hunting magazines. I'd make my monthly trek there to spend as long a time as it took to read Field and Stream, Outdoor Life, and Sports Afield. After I grew up some I had subscriptions to all of them. I had stacks of them stored away but over time as we moved, many of them got left behind and all that remain are a few copies of Field and Stream from the Sixties. The oldest is a December 1964 copy.
Jack O'Connor was also a favorite of mine and like many of y'all I also own a 270 which is the only rifle I've taken deer with. Cory Ford with his stories of the Lower Forty ring in my head today. I can almost feel the warmth of the old pot belly stove warming my hands and feet while a swig on the jug of "ol stump blower" warms my innards. I sat many a day with that bunch of no goods. My first read when Field and Stream arrived was "Cheers and Jeers" and then next on the list was "The Lower Forty" as both were on the first pages of the magazine. Next I would turn to the last page and read Ed Zern's "Exit Laughing" even though half of the time I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. After that I got down to serious business and started reading the rest of the articles usually starting at the front and proceeding one after the other to the end. Then I would spend some time reading the classified ads at the back of the book while dreaming of making trips to all the places listed.
Oh what wonderful stories I gathered from those magazines some of them so real in my mind from so long ago that it is a blur of what I really did and what I read that others did. Great writers do that to you and back then there were so many great writers. About once a year I pull out my old copies of Field and Stream and read them again. They transport me back to days that seems brighter, when life seemed so much simpler, when winters weren't so cold nor summers so hot. Reading them again reminds me of my first fish, a bluegill. Then I remember my first bass, a ten incher. But at 16 I had never caught a sac-au-lait, in fact I had never heard of one. In all the stories I read they were called crappie and I had no clue that they were abundant in my area. That first trip and those first sac-au-lait turned me on for life. Oh how I've been blessed.
It's good to look back sometimes to the "good ol' days" but then when I think about it I become sad. Sad because I know that it will never be that way again. We must change and adapt but I resist strongly. So as I've taught my sons and daughter about the outdoors I have to temper it with the new way of doing things while reminding them that it wasn't always like it is today. Of my 6 kids, two sons and a daughter are passionate about fishing and we share trips whenever possible. Unfortunately those trips are getting less and less as I age more and more. Soon they will be taking me fishing, not a thought that I cherish but one I know I must accept. I know there will come a point in life where I will get my fishing thrills just like I started, by reading about them. This time it will not be in a magazine but rather right here on Crappie Dot Com where I will be there with you via the stories and pictures of your trips that you post. So keep them coming.
"gene"
My oldest Field and Stream
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A couple of my favorite reads
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1070 copy of the most fabulous wish book
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