doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com SDH and Shooting Sportsman

I still enjoy Tom Roster's "Shot Talk", usually, but it's not enough to keep me subscribing. When this year's subscription has expired, I'm think I'm gone too.

But, I will definitely let them know why ....................too much fluff, not enough substance.

SRH

"Shooting Sportsman" is a fine magazine and will continue to be so.

Vic Venters, Doug Tate and others have always contributed articles that are of interest to us, but maybe not all of us. Each issue of Shooting Sportsman will not be attractive to everyone, just as DGJ is not always on the mark to all of us.

However, these magazines have contributed to the love of double barrel and o/u shotguns that we all love and without them we would be less blessed than we are.

Keeping a magazine business turning a profit is a real problem in this age of the internet. They have to do what they have to do to stay in the black. If long time articles are not getting the draw that they had in the past, what can a editor do? I ask this question because I do not know.

It is not just the sporting and gun magazines that are in trouble. Look at what happened to the magazine "Southern Living". It is now a piece of trash from its heyday and will probably go boots up.

The new entry "Garden and Gun" is now a coloring book for ad writers, and I stopped reading it a couple of years back. It has some of the most beautiful and well done ads that I have ever seen. I hope that they can make it a success, but I do not know what their target readers are. If it is Millennials, then they are barking up the wrong tree.

I can remember in my 76 years when Sports Afield went downhill; something happened and it woke up and now is better, but not good enough for me to subscribe to it. It is still not like it was in the 1950's when I started reading it and it will never be; and I hope that it will not be. There was much about the 1950's 1960's and so on that I liked but there was much that I wish to forget.

I like fine wine, but I do not like sour grapes.

I have a complete set from issue one through today and have watched SSM evolve. Not sure I like it as much as I once did, but still like it. I realize there has always been a challenge in terms of conflict of interests between articles and advertisers.

I regret to hear the reasons behind SDH�s departure. I have always enjoyed his writing. My thank�s to SDH.

Reference Roster and his pro non-tox, that more than anything is making me want to let them go. When there editorial decisions run counter to hunters, they cease to be worthy.

You may not want it to happen but many states require non-tox for upland game hunting (mine does on many public grounds), so the Roster articles have some merit for me. What I don't like about Roster is his complete denial of the existence of CIP standards and that many of the SSM readership (even those with modern doubles) need lower pressure alternatives, which he tends to ignore. Since he sells reloading data he is (probably correctly for him) loathe to provide any advice that may come back to bite him re: pressure.

Having said that, I agree that SSM does not speak to me so much any more. I read it each month in the hope that there will be something interesting and I find less and less that is interesting. I do like the gun reviews. I am sorry that writing with solid content is vanishing, like that of SDH. I'll have to see how I feel when my subscription expires.

Bruce

Dropped SSM at least 7-8 years ago, probably longer than that. Speaking of Garden and Gun, I loved their initial run with some really fine articles on sport, guns, music, art and artisans, and food. Then they pissed me off because they refused to run NRA ads. I dropped them, but now they send it to me free anyway. Far too Madison Avenue chic, but I do enjoy a few things they put in their mag.
JR

I have seen some copies of Gun and Garden and I can't, for the life of me, figure out what they are about. I don't find anything of interest or even very sophisticated about it.

This thread got me thinking. So with nothing better to do, I counted the full page ads in the current issue of SSM. By combining the half page ads in to full page, there are 67 pages of ads in the total of 120 pages. I did not count the small ads. There are 12 full page ads before you get to the table of contents. Me thinks the ad to content ratio is off a bit.

Read it for free every few times a year at B's and N's.

Garden and Guns,SSM on steroids. Yes paying customer wife loves it.

Quit SSM years ago. SC not much difference I suspect. Subscriber for years and then a lifetime subscriber since they offered it and ad content has increased significantly with much fluff thrown in becuse it's supposed to be read. I would of quit it years ago 'cept I'm still this side of the dirt. Bless their hearts, they did call and check once to see if I was still breathing! Now I just take them to the hospital, they are glad to get them.