Things Have Changed

Saying goodbye to a good beginning

While attending SHOT Show early in my writing career, Melvin Forbes introduced me to Dave Campbell. Dave was the editor of a new Magazine at the NRA called Shooting Illustrated. Not too long after that Dave assigned me an article on the 45 GAP, which was a new pistol cartridge. I was excited to potentially have an article in an NRA publication, but when Dave received the article, he called me and said, “This needs some work.”

He was right of course—sometimes Editors are right—and he told me how to fix it. But I was eager to learn what I did not know, so I asked Dave if I could come to the NRA offices and spend a day or two learning how a gun magazine was actually put together. Dave agreed, and while I was there I learned a lot more, and afterwards I contributed some more to the magazine. Being the bullet geek I am, I managed to convince Dave to edit my first book, Rifle Bullets for the Hunter, and ultimately convinced him to let me write a column for the magazine that was just about bullets. To my knowledge it’s the only regular column to appear in a gun magazine devoted entirely to bullets.

I did that for a few years, Dave left for Wyoming, a new editor was appointed, and with that came changes to the magazine. However, in less than a year my cancelled bullet column transitioned to a column devoted to just ammunition, and for well over a decade I have written that column.