Brister, Zutz, or McIntosh? You have to be kidding. Brister could take either one of those guys to detention hall. I would kill to have a compilation of Brister's newspaper columns.
HA! Zutz actually was a teacher. And a Wisconsin state championship skeet shooter. And, a nice guy, although I don't think he ever wore a smile in any of the pictures of himself in his books.
Zutz also liked Lefevers, in addition to model 21s. If Brister or McIntosh ever wrote anything about tightening patterns back when Don was still alive, I missed it, but Don told you exactly how to do just that. All the guys that insist on orginal bores and chokes would be likely be surprised at how he could manipulate his results with the different loads he concocted. He patterned everything, even the stuff he bought to use himself that was in the discount pile, after the season closed.
I remember seeing the guts of a Parker spread out on a table at a gunsmith's shop in Cambridge, MN one day, and asking, "Hey, is that a Parker?" The 'Smithy told me, "Yep, and it is full of soft, junk parts, not just one, but, a whole bunch of them".
He was wondering if it was worth it to try to replace them all, or harden them up and refit them. Zutz had warned us about that possibility about 15 years prior.
He didn't sugar coat anything. I liked his writing. He wasn't the kind of writer who would spend a decade telling guys they should buy a model 70, in .270, while he shot a 30-06. But, he did think highly of the Winchester model 21, a gun I can't really warm up to.
I miss Don. I only met him once, but, he was a hell of a guy.
Best,
Ted
