Читать книгу Gun Digest 2011 онлайн

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About this time, a distinct and unique episode in the history of sporting journalism began to unfold. Some of the gray-haired men sent to magazine editors descriptions of their old guns. In many cases they provided anecdotes that shed a genuine and captivating light on weapons that had been to points West under a variety of circumstances. Reminiscent Western gentlemen recalled past nineteenth century experiences and described the guns that had tagged along. Many submitted photographs. This habit, apparently encouraged by the publishers, marched to the dreaded drumbeat of progress throughout the Edwardian era. It lasted through the outbreak and duration of the War in Europe and a little beyond, until the old geezers eventually died out, or belatedly stepped into the twentieth century.

Taken as a whole, the contributors were not spinning rambling yarns. Most accounts were concise and direct treatments describing a weapon or artifact. An overview of this trend, and a sampling of a few examples, may be as useful and entertaining to modern day readers of the New Millennium as our gun crank predecessors found it a hundred years ago.