In Range

The Herter’s catalog says it all. This is vintage 1965.

Nestled within the cult of Gear Junkies, a cult whose numbers are grossly underestimated, lies the Sub-Cult of Catalogue Freaks. These are folks who hoard catalogs of all kinds, reading and re-reading them, flipping back to see what was available when, and for how much, and generally wallowing in a world where, since little is ever actually purchased, there is rarely disappointment and buyer’s remorse.

As a dues-paying member of the catalog crowd, I can look back and put a finger, almost to the day and hour, when I sent off for my first “free” catalog and began waiting anxiously for the mail to arrive. Little did I know it would become the habit of a lifetime.

Back in the early 1960s, when we all bought Outdoor Life as a monthly ritual, the back pages of that revered publication were filled with clip-out coupons offering all manner of wondrous things: A coupon for a gunsmithing correspondence course insisted you would “Be the guy they listen to when it comes to guns!” Another coupon would get you the Charles Atlas body-building program, ensuring no one would ever again kick sand in your face, or, for the more ambitious, the wherewithal to start your own trapline, along with lessons on skinning, tanning and taxidermy.

Being small for my age, penniless and madly in love with guns, I might have been forgiven for returning any or all of the above in hopes of becoming a brawny trapper able to repair my trusty smokepole while knee-deep in snow and surrounded by wolves. At least, that was the image they offered.

But no. Instead, my stamped, self-addressed envelopes went off to companies with names like Marlin, Browning, C.C. Filson, Eddie Bauer, George Lawrence and Reinhart Fajen.

Believe it or not, I still have those old catalogs, carefully filed away and pulled out occasionally to check a fact, or a description, or just to reassure myself that I am not, after all, completely deranged.

Out of all of them, there was one that stood out, both at the time and in my memory, and that was the 500-plus-page opus issued by Herter’s, Inc., of Waseca, Minnesota. The Herter’s catalog was to boys (and men) what Sears was to women.

If George Leonard Herter and his company personified one thing above all, however, it was his sheer, unmitigated gall. His claims simply defied belief.

To begin with, the catalog had a very impressive coat of arms on the cover. The company was founded in 1893, and the 1965 catalog was the “75th annual.”  It’s difficult even now to get solid information about Herter, but the best I can find suggests he took over the family dry-goods store in Waseca and began to build it into a mail-order operation to rival Sears, Roebuck & Company.

In many ways, Herter’s anticipated later outfits like Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops and even Amazon, though without the credibility and solid business structure. The range of products rivaled even Amazon, but Herter’s claims related thereto were worthy of P.T. Barnum at his most outrageous.

According to the catalog, George Herter designed and manufactured reloading equipment, bullets, guns, fiberglass boats, taxidermy supplies, fishing equipment, bows, arrows, golf balls and even golf carts; he wrote books on everything from hunting to dog training to cooking to wilderness survival; he was a master chef, gunsmith, machinist, duck caller, decoy maker. You name it, he did it, or so it seemed.

Scattered throughout the catalog were photos of his son, Jacques Herter, Jr., who was, apparently, a crack shot with both rifle and bow and took “one shot” record-book animals around the world using, of course, bullets designed and made by Herter’s, loaded in ammunition using Herter’s gunpowder on Herter’s presses with Herter’s dies. It was never-ending.

The catalog contained glossy color sections showing rifle stock blanks of walnut, myrtlewood and maple, and a line of delicious recurve bows. Supposedly, there was a factory in Waseca where Herter’s stocked rifles for various gunmakers and importers and sold finished Mauser rifles under their own name.

The reloading section filled thirty some pages and told how they designed and manufactured the best loading dies, the best presses, the best powder scales, the best everything. They designed and manufactured a chronograph which, in 1965, was extraordinary if, in fact, they made any, which I’m inclined to doubt. Naturally, Herter’s published its own loading manual in both full-length and compact versions, with the full-length one coming in around 750 pages. George Herter’s favorite name for anything he offered was “Model Perfect.”

Bullets?  He offered one “true partition” bullet as if the Nosler was not along with my favorite, the “wasp-waist sonic missile-tail,” shaped like an hourglass and guaranteed to achieve higher velocity at lower pressures, hold its velocity longer, and, on impact, form its own partition. All tested, of course, in the Herter’s ballistic laboratory.

The catalog lists revolvers, both single- and double-action, designed by Herter’s, made in Germany, and chambered for the 401 Power-Mag, Herter’s own wildcat, which was “as powerful as the 44 Magnum but with less recoil than a 357 Magnum.”

Optics? Yes, they also designed and manufactured the world’s best riflescopes, binoculars and spotting scopes. But did they really?  Their riflescopes bore an uncanny resemblance to the Redfield line, while their mounts were Weavers by another name.

So how much of this, if any, actually existed?  It’s very hard to say. I never ordered anything from them, nor did any of my acquaintances, but they must have had some stock and filled some orders, or they could not have survived as long as they did. Various internet forums have testimonials, if that’s the word, from old-timers who remember them, bought from them and were completely satisfied. So, they say.

According to internet sources, the company folded around 1981, a victim of the restrictions resulting from the Gun Control Act of 1968. There were also rumors about lawsuits for patent infringement, and it would be a miracle if those had not occurred, given the products and the claims made.

In The Last Book – Confessions of a Gun Editor, Jack O’Connor told of confronting George Herter when he blatantly libeled “one Big Three shooting editor” for promoting something or other. O’Connor was advised that he, Warren Page, and Pete Brown had a solid case, since Herter had to be not only referring to one of them specifically, but smearing all three by implication. Herter responded by telling O’Connor not to take him so seriously, and in the end, they decided a suit would be more trouble than it was worth. That tells you something about both George Herter and his business.

For years, it was rare to see any Herter’s product for sale on the “used” shelves of gunshops, but now there is a wide variety offered on eBay, among other places. Outlandish claims aside, Herter’s obviously did make stuff, or had it made for them, and some of it sold.

Today, probably the most collectible thing is the catalog itself. I first saw one for sale in a used bookstore, 40 years ago. They were asking five bucks when, for that money, you could get a first edition of Horn of the Hunter. Today, it’s eBay and elsewhere, and people want up to 35 dollars for one from the 1960s. 

My original having disappeared somewhere along the line, I figured it was a good buy just to see if my memory of its outrageous claims was accurate or had become exaggerated over the years.

You will be glad to know my memory was, if anything, toning it down considerably. Now, having meandered here and there among its 500 pages of unbelievable claims, I wonder if anyone way back then believed a word of it. However, I look at the internet, and it all makes a bizarre kind of sense. George Leonard Herter, wherever he is now hawking his goods, would be proud.