Hodgdon's 2008 Annual Manual

[Rocky Raab]

Let's go through those, raz.

Test the stuff I write about. Done (Always is for every writer I know, although some tests are brief because the same gun gets passed to several writers on VERY short schedules.)

Get three rifles out of the box. If you mean buy when you say get, that means I'd be writing one article every six or seven years, and you'd be upset that two of the rifles mentioned in the tests are old. If one of them is trash, you'd complain that I should've said so sooner. But if I accept three brand new rifles for review directly from the company, you'd claim the rifles were cherry-picked and the review invalid.

Tell people their choices are bad ideas. Okay, let's start: all your choices are bad ideas. Does that make you happier? No? Imagine that. Instead, how about I simply try to be honest and review products as I see them.

I don't care for lever actions, myself. But that doesn't mean that they aren't legitimate choices for those who do. YOUR bias barged in there, raz.

Reloading books do not suck. Waters did all his own tests (I admire and trust his work immensely, BTW) But he had NO lab gear, did NO scientifically valid testing and in some areas was quite wrong. Great books, great guy, but his data is not as trustworthy as data developed by professional ballisticians with multi-million dollar labs. That's fact.

I don't talk about magnums, because I don't own any. Other writers do because lots of people like magnums and want to know about magnums. So those writers are giving the reader what the reader wants. Imagine that.