It’s funny how old stories that you were told just a time or two decades ago will somehow come back to memory. Once such tale that recently came back to me was about my grandfather who owned a garage in East Texas during the Great Depression. As the story was told, a magazine salesman happened to be passing through town when his car broke down. Somehow he ended up at my grandfather’s garage where he fixed the problem. Being during the Great Depression, it was very common for people to pay for things with anything they could offer in return. He asked my grandfather if he could offer him a subscription to a magazine to which my grandfather agreed. Again, in those days it was common for people to take whatever a person could offer them of value. I don’t remember the name of the magazine my grandfather picked out but I remember it being one for hunters and trappers, which I’m sure appealed to my grandfather greatly with him being an avid fox hunter. The repair must have been expensive for the time because the guy ended up giving my grandfather a lifetime subscription. Heck, I didn’t even know there was such. But I know I remember seeing it on his deck as late as the late 60’s, and knowing how tight my grandfather was with his money, I’m sure he never paid to renew the subscription.

I’m not nearly that old, but I remember a time when hunting and fishing magazines meant a great deal to me. Enough to pay for my own subscriptions when I didn’t have much of an income source. So I get it.

I remember a survival magazine that I was particularly enamored with. They always depicted traps you could make with little to no man-made materials. You can bet I made a few of those. They worked, too. I’d prove it, but my mother still thinks the coyotes are the reason her barn cats always came up missing. I’d like to keep it that way.

Sleep deprived sneaky is Iit AF!!!! I love it

That’s just the oil in my little two-stroke engine. You know what the gas is.

Too long ago to know for sure but it might have been this one. Still enjoy seeing the old artwork once used on outdoor magazines and other places.

I didn't need to hear that.

I take a couple of them and wondering why. I look them over but don’t read them. I take them to the St. Citizen Center. Not going to renew.

If you can find them there is a series of books that compile several of the articles Gordon MacQuarrie wrote.

'Stories of the Old Duck Hunters & Other Drivel'
'More Stories of the Old Duck Hunters"
'The Last Stories of the Old Duck Hunters'

My Wife's father had them as a set. Great reading. Most of them were written in the 1930s and 1940s.
Duck hunting was completely different then...Worrying about getting a limit of 20 with one box of shells, being able to use a staked out live hen in a raft of decoys..