David E. Petzal
David E. Petzal began at Field & Stream in as managing editor. In the ensuing years, he has held half a dozen different titles with the brand, and since has been strictly a writer, covering all manner of outdoor-related subjects, but specializing in guns and hunting.
Highlights
Noted expert on firearms and big-game hunting
U.S. Army light-weapons instructor
NRA-Certified instructor in rifle, shotgun, handgun, and firearms safety
Master in the NRA Mid-Range Rifle Competition program
Author or editor of five books
Marquis Who’s Who in America_,_
Education
Petzal graduated from Colgate University in , with a major in English. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army NCO Academy at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, June
Experience
Aside from six years in the Army Reserve, during which he was a drill sergeant, Petzal has always worked in the magazine industry. He began at a small magazine called Guns and Hunting, went to Sports Afield in , and to Field & Stream in He was executive editor at Field & Stream for 16 years, and then switched to write full time.
Petzal has spoken at writers’ seminars sponsored by Reader’s Digest, hunting seminars
The Closest Calls of David E. Petzal’s Hunting Career
GOOGLE, WHICH KNOWS all things, says that a close call is a narrow escape from danger or disaster. That’s fine, as far as it goes, but there are different kinds of close calls. There are fast close calls, for example, and there are protracted close calls.
Al McClane, F&S’s late, great fishing editor, was once scuba diving when he saw a bull shark nearby. This is a highly aggressive predator that attacks people, and this one had its back arched and its pectoral fins lowered, which is the signal for attack. Al knew this. He swam frantically for his boat and flung himself in with such force that he broke his ankle on an oarlock. Had he not recognized an imminent attack and reacted instantly, he might have lost an arm or a leg or his life. That is a fast close call.
For the other sort, I turn to my friend Wayne Fears, who is, among other things, a survival expert, the coolest of cool heads, and a hard case who has led a truly hair-raising life. Wayne had hired a pilot to fly him into an uncharted area of British Columbia in search of unspoiled hunting grounds. The plan was for him to canoe a tributary of the Stikine Ri
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WHEN I BROKE into the gun writing business in the mid s, I was an editor, not a writer, which meant that I, who did not know what I was talking about, got to meddle with the copy of people who did. And those people were a different breed from today. To start with, they were almost all veterans. Not only did this give them a certain perspective on the use of firearms, but some formal training in ballistics as well. Pete Brown studied naval gunnery at Annapolis; Warren Page was a naval gunnery officer; Charley Askins was an Army ordnance officer, as was Col. Townsend Whelen.
I had the great good fortune to get my start on a small magazine whose main writer was a fellow named Larry Koller. Koller was a consummate outdoorsman. He was an expert shot with rifle, handgun, and shotgun, and a master gunsmith, bamboo-rod maker, flyfisherman, whitetail hunter, and cook. There was nothing he could not do, and do at the master-class level.
While a few of the old gun writers were only semiliterate (Elmer Keith), most were far better educated than people are today because
Sometimes, It’s Better to Stay Home
Posted on January 23, - Fair Game, Featured
Through the s and ‘50s, Eddie Bauer of Seattle was America’s premier expedition outfitter. Jay Mellon, hunting sheep in the high Himalayas, wore Eddie Bauer’s finest. He also had the best guides. And he’s still alive.
by David E. Petzal
In my October 2nd post, titled “How Not to Get Killed While Big Game Hunting,” I gave you a set of rules that, if followed, might keep you from saying the Big Adios. This is a postscript.
On January 17, a man named Christopher Roma died while hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The cause of death was hypothermia caused by single-digit temperatures, waist-deep snow, and sustained high winds with gusts to 80 mph. You might think Roma was a beginner who got in over his head. The opposite is the case.
He was a professional long-distance hiking guide, 37 years old. He had climbed all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4,foot mountains in only 10 days. He had hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, and the Appalachian Trail. He was tough as a boiled owl, and experienced to the nth degree. The trail near Mount Guyot, near which he perished
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