Yeah, the outdoors magazines have all been taken over by technocrap pushers. Very few stories and any that do show up are usually trying to sell something or someone's dude operation. It's the same thing with the outdoors shows but MUCH worse. Those TV programs have more advertising (overt and otherwise) than content ... literally! Ugh! In the old days the stories and the writing sold the magazines. Nowadays it's all product promotion or "how-to" stuff that's either redundant or product promotion in sheep's clothing or, most of the time, both. How many different ways can you stick a worm on the hook?
I also enjoyed the "This Happened to Me" page before the illustration became too Batmanish ("BOFF ... POW") and was hacked to four or five panes which usually meant the story of events was similarly hacked. Often it was obvious important details were missing. The attraction of that section was 1) stories of unusual harrowing events (novelty) and 2) learning how to avoid a similar disaster (education). When the editors went cheap, they lost on both counts.
Interesting that this would come up now. Yesterday I was talking to my brother in Montana and learned he'd never heard the whole story of my near death experience with hypothermia while hunting in 1971. He is still quite involved with local search and rescue so I told him everything and instructed him to pass it on to the crew. It may save someone's life ... one of the rescuers! Finding someone who's carrying a gun and in the final throws of ambient hypothermia can be extremely dangerous! How bad was I? The doctor who examined me the day after I was back home said I should have been dead in his office! The thing that kept me alive was having read a newspaper account the previous week about a girl in Oregon who watched her two friends die in a survival school exercise that went wrong. So I knew what was happening to me and could put a desperate plan in place while I still had some judgment faculties ... and stick to it as those faculties disappeared. Reality disappears. Nothing is what it appears ... and what appears is often terrifying. The ability to make decisions is out the window. It's interesting that the last of the senses to become impaired is auditory so if you find someone who may be hypothermic, shout out a warning and assurance from a safe distance. Ask if they are hallucinating and assure them you are real. Them hearing your voice may keep you from getting shot at. I'll write out the story when I have more time. It's worth passing on in detail. I've never been into the Batmanish brevity.
