Guys, a while back I started getting offers to subscribe to a number of hunting/fishing magazines for $8-$10 a year.

Other than the NRA publications and Sports Afield, I haven't had any subscriptions in a long time, but I'm old and retired and am mostly an arm-chair hunter these days, so I decided to give a few of the offers a try.

Today (June 23rd) I received the May issue of Field & Stream.

Now, I'm not sure why I'm getting back issues (has happened with other new subscriptions, too); maybe they have a warehouse full of magazines nobody wants?

Or was I scammed, and these "super deals" are just for surplus magazines?

Anyway, when I pulled F&S out of the mailbox, at first I thought it was a sales flyer. I mean, it's about 3 millimeters thick. When I was younger, back in the stone age, outdoor magazines had some heft to them, and yeah, there was advertising, but ads didn't make up half the magazine.

I doubt I'll be renewing any of these "super deals." Old people really shouldn't be allowed to answer subscription offers. Next thing you know, I'll be sending my bank account number to the Nigerian lady who wants to give me all that money.

Kinda said isn't it? Remember way back in the dark ages when you couldn't wait for the next issue?

quote:

Originally posted by Bill/Oregon:
Kinda sad isn't it? Remember way back in the dark ages when you couldn't wait for the next issue?

Yeah, when I was a kid back in the '50s and my father started taking me hunting and fishing, I somehow wrangled a subscription to Sports Afield. I don't remember if I saved up my allowance, or if my folks subscribed for me, but I couldn't wait to get each new issue.

When I was about 12 I wanted a Browning A-5 more than anything, and I tore a full-page ad out of the back of the magazine and stuck it up on the wall of my room. I saved and saved for it (at the time, I think it sold for about $115.00), and I was almost there--had about $80. Then something--I don't remember what--came up, and I spent the money. It wasn't until I was in my late 30s that I final got an ol' humpback.

I wish I had kept some of those old magazines . . .

Nitro, I was an Outdoor Life kid. My grandmother gave me a subscription in the early 1960s and I read it religiously for years. I also joined the Outdoor Life Book Club and subsequently spent my allowance paying for books I failed to send back in time. But that's how I first encountered Col. Jeff Cooper. He wrote the handgun section in the Outdoor Life "Complete Book of Shooting." Changed my life, and that book is within reach as I type this, 50 years later.

Bill, when I was a kid in the '50s there were three magazines for po' folks like us: Outdoor Life, Field & Stream, and Sports Afield.

I picked SA. Getting more than one hunting & fishing mag would have been an extravagance.

Well, today the June/July issue of Field & Stream arrived--3 days after the May issue.

June/July is a lot "thicker" than the May issue.

I guess I should shut up and just be glad for what I got.

TV news along with this internet and it's forums and even free magazines online have replaced all the subscriptions and mag. rack buys I used to make.

All I get now are the two NRA mags. with the memberships.

When I started in the early 1950's I got Outdoor Life and later a 'shotgun news' classified once in a while. Now I have no subscriptions or over the counter reads.

In the nearest city their newspaper building is for sale. Nobody gets the paper, no paperboy either.

Savage, I was a newspaper editor, and am very grateful to be retired from that dying industry.

As a kid I read Outdoor Life, loved it, read it until Jack died..Never liked Field and Steam and Sports Afield, I was of the opine they had too many fishing and bird hunting panty wastes!!

Nitro, I remember the want of an A5 myself. Took me a bit longer to get mine though. Now I have two of them And a Citori.

As a kid I lived for and tried everything I could in the Taps Tips column. Also miss columns like the Lower Forty and The Old Man and the Boy. But then there are few writers of Fords and Ruark quality anymore. just a 73 year old man remembering.