I was reading a new issue of a popular UK stalking magazine, and apart from laughing at the shooting of a park Sika being described as one of the best of british stalks, I read an article which featured an area of land which borders a friends farm.
The friend and I were talking about this and were surprised at the misquoted acreages (out by a factor of four) and some of the content, ie claims of managing the deer.
You cant really blame the journalist as they only repeat what they are told, but it did make me question how much of the content of the magazines has been made up by people selling their product?
It certainly makes me very cynical of what sporting magazines and agents tell you...

The more I hunt and the more I know about hunting....the less I buy magazines. They are great for whetting a young mans appetite for the outdoors.

I've written a couple bits for some small publications (very small!) and it's difficult to get the whole jist of what you want to say in a couple of pages and that's one reason things aren't always as informative as they could be.

That said, there's no excuse for exagerating or outright lying about anything.

There are some UK magazines about stalking which tend to keep pushing some products in their writings so you have to be wary they are more of an advertising medium than concentrating on giving good information.
Years ago, when I used to write for magazines I found that they often edited and changed some of my text which was always a nightmare. But outright factual errors should really be a no, no

My experience reflects a combination of the above.

The more field time I get, the less likely I am to refer to a magazine for useful information.

I also realised a few years ago that there is much more reliable information to be gleaned from sites such as this, once you learn to sort the genuinely experienced guys out from the bullshitters.

The crap I have read in magazines is not limited to the one refered to above, though that one does seem to be the worst.

Other very reputable and long standing publications come up with corkers also. One article about 18 months ago featured a guy claiming to offer stalking and rough shooting over huge acreages here in N Ireland. Even the most basic back checking by a sub editor would have found this to be completely incredible.

Ultimately these things are always about the same thing - money, and someone trying to accumulate it with little effort.

I now only subscribe to Mike Barnes;s Fieldsports magazine. Most of the others seem to rehash the same stuff over and over again, which is fine but as pointed out the internet is a far superior resource for information.

I enjoy Shooting, Reloading & Hunting magazines but over the years have whittled down the subscriptions to those few I consider credible.

The Hype magazines that feature their versions of the newest "gotta have's" that don't even bother to attempt glossing over their prose as more than a multi-page, over-extended advertisement have all gone by the wayside.

Like Brian said, it's all about being able to tell the difference between genuine ones from the bullsh1tters, but then anyone that has been to an AR weekend knows that often those two terms are not exclusive!!

Kiri

I read Guns Review for years and Handgunner was very good, now I don't take any on a regular basis. The recent editor of the one of the current crop did say all stalking reports had to end in a kill or readers complained, I guess he satisfied their needs.

Via memberships, the BDS Journal I enjoy, the BASC effort is a comic. There is a gap in the market, although it might not be a profitable one.

I think the business model for many of these magazines is changing rapidly. Advertising is coming in all sorts of less direct ways and the advent of video and internet content has put a severe dent in they revenues.

I've spoken to a couple of publications that are going all out this last year or two to develop secondary income streams by leveraging their circulation figures. I'm not sure how successful it will be but it seems to be helping in some way for the time being. However I think the internet will put paid to the long term viability of many published magazines in the next 5-10 years unless they become a pure advert for another business.

K

K

What really frustrates me about the british magazines, especially the Field is that most articles are only one page. The only magazine I subscribe to is Double Gun Journal where you do get good look articles, either about the guns themselves or about the use of the guns in the field. When Borders Bookshops existed I also used to buy Sporting Classics - again good long exciting hunting stories that provide good entertainment. Frankly reading about the merits of one widget compared to the next is not that interesting. Nor frankly are articles about a days driven shooting and what was served by the host for lunch.

To be honest some guides/ agents are full of cack.
Without naming a popular well advertising agent here in the uk and his website the acreage he says he has access to is a load of tosh.
I'm always coming across stalkers saying i have this and that but after a while you find that they have very little or next to nothing.
The majority of semi pro/ pro stalkers and guides tend to keep quiet and keep themselves to themselves.

Every stalking related article I've read in the UK media in the past 5 years has been pure unadulterated rubbish.

quote:

Originally posted by dorsethunter:
To be honest some guides/ agents are full of cack.
Without naming a popular well advertising agent here in the uk and his website the acreage he says he has access to is a load of tosh.
I'm always coming across stalkers saying i have this and that but after a while you find that they have very little or next to nothing.
The majority of semi pro/ pro stalkers and guides tend to keep quiet and keep themselves to themselves.

Here is a classic,

He reports that his smallest area, for Chinese water deer, is 5,000 acres, although he also has a second, larger area for this species. The largest, where he hunts European-strain red deer and what he describes as some exceptional fallow deer, is 180,000 acres. Altogether, he has more than 350,000 unfenced acres in Britain upon which he can hunt.

Pure BS

quote:

Originally posted by dorsethunter:
1894mk2- One presumes your reply was aimed at me. Could you possibly elborate on your response?

Sorry - I've made it clearer

Ahh, apologies for jumping to conclusions!

With regard to your comment I'm with you on that one...

If you give a hunt for free some journalists will write anything you want. Mike Yardley is an expert in this.

It is shame when the agent/host asks a journalist to write dishonest article just to make a few quid but more shameful is when a journalist accept this as a rule to get hunting for free.

Unfortunately some articles in some magazines are good but lots of them are sponzored and dishonest. Don't trust anything you read.

With product write ups, I look for "faint praise". They can't "can" the product but they do damn it with faint praise, the problem is the young guys just don't seem to pick up on it !!! LOL

I was just looking at one in a magazine that is rather heavy on product placement where they were praising how well Zeiss binoculars were working on the stalk, fine except all the photos were of them using Swaro's...

All of these reviewers are paid a small commission for what they do.
Not just for guns but for any product in any sector.
If they told the brutal truth they'd never get any more work and its naive to expect those in hunting or shooting to be any different.
Yes they are going to spin up the most appealing features and gloss over the faults but you already knew that by the age of six when your Rice Crispies went soggy.
The surpise isn't that they aren't any different to the thousands of others of zz list celebrities that prostitute their names for a quick buck but that anyone should seriously expect them to be.
Very few of them tell outright lies. So, as 500N suggests, look for the faint praise or the complete omission and join up the dots.