A quick chat with firearms, ammunition and adventure writer Bryce Towsley

Bryce Towsley is a gun writer’s gun writer. In the past four decades, he’s published numerous informative hunting- and firearms-related articles while authoring several books.

The central Vermont native serves as a field editor for the NRA’s American Rifleman and American Hunter and Shooting Illustrated magazines and is a columnist for Gun Digest Magazine. He’s hunted seemingly everywhere for just about every game species on the North American continent and beyond, documenting along the way useful information about firearms, ammunition, and adventure, to the delight of readers.

Two of his books, “Big Bucks the Benoit Way” (1998), and “Benoit Bucks” (2001), followed the legendary Benoit deer-hunting family through the forests of the Northeast and became must-read volumes for big-woods whitetail trackers.

Towsley’s most recent title, “Gunsmithing Modern Firearms” (2019), serves as a companion to his 2006 effort, “Gunsmithing Made Easy.” Both have teased the interest of the home firearms hobbyist.

You can read about Towsley on his website, brycetowsley.com. Meanwhile, we recently caught up with him for a discussion on the firearms and publishing industries in what is now the pandemic era.

ON: What are you up to these days? Are you busy?

Towsley: Things have changed. COVID has definitely had an impact. I’m still writing a lot, but I’m writing different things now. I’m not traveling near as much, which I regret as the adventure of it is great. But I also enjoy it because I’m not dealing with airlines. I’m not doing as many product reviews. One of the mainstays for me is reviewing new guns, and we’re having a hard time getting the guns and ammo to do these reviews. So they’ve been cut back quite a bit.

On the upside is the magazine has still got to fill its pages so I’ve been pitching things that I’ve been wanting to write for a long time and the editors are buying them, and we’re getting a great response. I just recently did a deer-tracking piece from the deer’s perspective, for Sporting Classics, which is, I think, one of the better things I’ve written. So, there’s always an upside.

ON: How much traveling were you doing pre-COVID?

Towsley: At one point I was on the road at least half the year. At the peak, I did about 35 roundtrips. That included hunting (trips), trade shows, and launch events. But I’m getting older, too, and I’ve had some health issues, so I wanted to slow down a little bit.

It was just non-stop. The last years I probably did 10 hunting trips a year; this past year I did some I could drive to. I’m focusing on New England. I went to Maine several times. But I cut back on flying. I miss going to wild places and hunting, though.

ON: Have you always lived in Vermont?

Towsley: I was born in Rutland (Vt.) and have lived here my entire life. I’ve been lucky to travel all over the world. I’ve been to every continent except Antarctica. I’ve been to all 50 states and every Canadian province except Prince Edward Island. So, I’ve gotten to see the world, but I’ve always lived here.

ON: Tell us about your latest books, especially the one on gunsmithing.

Towsley: My most recent book that was published was my second book on gunsmithing. It’s called “Gunsmithing Modern Firearms.” It’s been doing remarkably well. I’m very pleased with it. That actually has launched my retirement job, if you will. I’ve started taking in a few guns, and that’s grown a little bit. I’m building custom rifles and doing more repairs than I’d like to. So, that’s kind of a sideline these days. Another result of COVID because I’m home now.

My first gunsmithing book, “Gunsmithing Made Easy,” did well. For some reason the public wants these gunsmithing books. I’ve got a third one in the works as we speak.

ON: Who is buying them?

The average person doing their own stuff or the aspiring professional?

Towsley: Probably a little bit of both. The guys aspiring to be a professional are a much smaller demographic. I think it’s the people who want to be able to do hobby stuff. I think people just want to be educated a little more about their guns. There’s a section about cleaning your gun, and American Rifleman ran that chapter when the book first came out. It got a great response. I’ve never seen anything like it. I guess people just want to know how to clean their guns.

ON: What are you seeing for new firearms or loads? What do you like or don’t like? I’m going to throw ballistic coefficient in there with the same question.

Towsley: It’s all about long-range now. Every new launch has to have long-range in it. One thing I did recently was work with Remington on its tipped Core-lokt ammo. I did get on a plane to go hunting with that down in South Carolina and shot a couple of deer. That’s the main thing about it, is that it increases ballistic coefficiency and accuracy for the long-range crowd. The most popular hunting round on the market is the Core-lokt, so they’ve brought in the next generation.

What I’m seeing is a lot of guns promised and not delivered. We’re waiting on several rifles that I’ve had assignments for, for almost a year now. And ammo’s been a real issue. It’s been hard to get any ammo to do the gun test. And today, most people don’t hand-load. It’s been impossible to get any hand-loading components to do any hand-loading stories.

The (ammo) companies were running 24-7, and they probably would’ve had this ammo problem solved. Now the supply chain is screwing them up and they can’t get the materials in to build the ammo. I don’t see an end in sight. I run a pistol league at my local club and we had to shut it down – nobody can find any ammo. Everybody tells me its easing and ammo’s getting better, but I’m not seeing it yet.

What did we get, 8 million new gun owners? And if everyone bought two boxes of ammo, that’s 16 million boxes of ammo right there.

ON: If/when things do get back to normal, what do you see happening?

Towsley: I think we’re going to continue to see this long-range trend. That’s driving the design of the rifles. A lot of the new rifles are on a chassis-style stock. They’re a little bigger, heavier. That’s where the market’s going. I think that’s going to continue to drive sales.

We’re seeing a little being driven by particularly the states in the Midwest that have gone from shotgun to straight-wall rifle cartridges. I know of at least one new gun that’s in the works.