Sports Afield

Sports Afield es una revista que acaba de llegar a mi domicilio, fresquita, desde 1958. Sí, no es mentira. Esta edición que tengo enfrente tiene más de 50 años. Al final para saber Six Shooters y en vocabulario gunslinger. Sports Afield, señoras y señores…

Sports Afield fue fundada en 1887 por Claude King, como una revista de caza y pesca, y es la publicación más vieja sobre la vida al aire libre todavía en circulación en norte América. El primer número, de enero de 1888, tenía solo ocho páginas. Estaba impreso en papel de diario y fue publicado en Denver, Colorado. La suscripción era de un dólar con cincuenta al año, con copias individuales a 15 centavos. Algunos escritores se unieron a lo largo de los años, tales como Zane Grey,  Jimmy Robinson, Gordon MacQuarrie, Archibald Rutledge, Erle Stanley Gardner, Townsend Whelen, Jack Denton Scott, Vance Bourjaily, John Madson y Russell Annabel. Sports Afield fue una de las primeras promotoras del cuidado de los recursos naturales, llevando a público a tomar consciencia del cuidado del medio ambiente.

… Another was mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner, who became known for his articles defending gun owners' and hunters’ rights…

And the TV bullets fly every which away

Circumstances forced me a while back to watch TV for nearly a year. I had to stay indoors for much of the time, and when I tired of reading, I turned on the TV set. I am not sorry, because it was a revolution in the value of TV as an educational means. I learned more in that period about guns and shooting, hunting, fishing and outdoor living than in all the previous years spent taking part in such activities. Where I had once been selective in the programs I watched, I became omnivorous and sat through juvenile westerns, “adult” westerns and what I call senile westerns (they should have been dead long ago). I saw detective tales involving shooting, and other crime pictures wherein men lived and died by the gun. I watched intrepid men staking their lives against wild beasts, savage natives, and their own contemptuous familiarity with firearms as deadly weapons.

January 1940

Thus I learned, much to my amazement, such “facts” as these:

- That the West was won with a Colt .45 revolver called a Six Shooter, probably because it could fire as many as 14 or 15 shots (by actual count) without reloading.

- That the self-contained, all-metallic cartridge was in widespread use decades before it was invented.

- That a good gunslinger, shooting from the hip could server a lynching rope at 50 feet, crease a man´s skull or pink him in the arm at will – and that the good guys seldom shot to kill the bad guys; but, at the risk of their own lives, merely wounded them so they could get a fair and square trial.

- That all Indians, with the exception of noble Cochise, were lowdown, treacherous, cruel snakes in the cactus, unless they were employed as scouts by the U. S. Cavalry, in which case they were treated like good trailing hounds. All Indians were, however, incredibly good archers… (Article by Bill Wolf, Sports Afield, September 1958, 35 cents.)

Para saber

Six Shooter:  Nearly all early revolvers and many modern ones have six chambers in the cylinder, giving rise to the slang term six-shooter; however, revolvers with a number of different chambers have been made, with most modern revolvers having 5 or 6 chambers.

Cochise: Cochise (1805 – 1874) was leader of the Chihuicahui local group of the Chokonen and principal chief of the Chokonen band of the Chiricahua Apache. A key war leader during the Apache Wars, he led an uprising against the American government which began in 1861, and persisted until a peace treaty in 1872.

Vocabulario

Contemptuous: showing deep hatred or disapproval.

Gunslinger: someone (such as a character in a story, movie, or television show) who is known for being able to handle and shoot a gun extremely well.

De la web

Shane Mahoney: Is Hunting Relevant Today?, take part in the debate of this conservationist in answering the question: is it logical to keep hunting as we did in the past?

Fuentes

Sports Afield, the new web for the old magazine.

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