Hey Wapati,
I know, I was just poking fun buddy. I knew what you meant, I'm just a smart alec.
But while I'm here I'll tell you what I DO like about the magazine Trail of the Sportsman.
I'm just a normal joe schmo. I'm no Ryan Hatch, I'm no Doyle Moss, I'm no Karl Malone, and my name is never mentioned in the opening prayers at the SFW banquets. I'm about as nobody as nobody's come. I have a little circle of hunting buddies I run in and we have fun. We chase deer for a couple of days in October, we chase elk too, we go fishing, we ride our horses and we chase a few lions and bears with our dogs. We even go try to shoot a duck or a dove on occasion and every November I still have to go try and find a pheasant.
I'm as "unfamous" as any hunter you'll ever meet. You'll probably never see me with anything on the cover of Trophy Hunter or Muley Crazy and Kings will never do a Commemorative Calendar to showcase all the big deer I've killed.
But I've written and submitted three stories to the Trail magazine and everyone of them was published. My buddy has also written a couple of stories and both of them were published. I told a couple of friends and they sent in some photos. Just normal photos, one with a turkey, one with two small bucks taken on the deer hunt, etc... nothing you would EVER see in some of the magazines around. All of those photos have been run in the magazine.
Don't get me wrong, I love looking at those huge animals in Trophy Hunter, Eastman's and all the others. But those outfits would laugh at the photos I have. The Trail magazine sticks them in their photo gallery. And they use my buddies photos too.
And for me, that's good enough. When I'm old and I have a few grandkids kicking around, I'll dig out a couple of old magazines and show them and they'll think I was the greatest hunter ever. I won't tell them I was really a nobody.
I don't care if they are the best magazine out there. They are the only one that will give a guy like me the time of day, and that's good enough for me. I'll leave the fame, fortune and that other stuff to guys that are Pros.
I like opening a magazine and seeing a photo of someone I know that killed a public land mule deer and didn't pay five guides to go find it for him. I don't care if it doesn't score 225 and the photo is a bit dark or grainy.
My buddy worked his tail off this year and shot a nice 4X4 muley. Nothing any of the "trophy" magazines would give a second glance. But it took him two grueling days to get it killed and off the mountain and it was one of the few days his work schedule would even allow him to hunt.
Nothing against Eastmans, or Kings, or Muley Crazy cuz I'm like everybody else, I love to see those big trophy animals. They make my blood boil. But they aren't going to give my buddies mule deer a second glance.
But it'll be in a photo gallery in a future Trail magazine, you can take that to the bank. And he's not going to care what anyone else thinks, he'll be buying more than one copy of that issue. That's what I like about them. I don't care if they can work a photo as good as the others.
I'll take a dark grainy photo of a deer like my buddies ANY DAY over a crystal clear photo of a 200+ mule deer that was located by guides and a hunter was called in to shoot after writing a six figure check.
Besides, there is a pretty good chance that photo they didn't "work" is one of mine or someone I know so I don't care. All those other magazines idea of "working" my photo is to mop up coffee spills with them. ;-) ;-)
I like the Trail magazine cuz they like me!!
First story I ever submitted, they spelled my name wrong. You think I care?
Hell no, they ran my story and I'm a nobody! Now here we are a year and a few issues later... and I got friends and neighbors saying, "Hey, where can I send some photos or a story to?"
And they are getting their photos in too. So say what you will, cuz I know a whole bunch of us that could care less cuz now we're "somebodys".
I heard they even ran a couple of photos of KTC. So of course they are going to want to blur that photo, have you seen how ugly he is in focus?