WEEKS AFTER going to Finland, Nick was in the US, the first Australian ever invited to both the Winchester and Remington gun-writers’ seminars, an honour partly attributed to Winchester’s recent $1 million investment in its Geelong plant and partly to Nick having met a Remington executive in Sydney who’d first suggested he come over. Fred Huntington, head of Omark-RCBS and dubbed Mr Handloader, had heard Nick would be in the US and insisted the Australian detour to the factory on his way. Nick was thrilled by Huntington’s invitation and hospitality; the visit added more to his trove of knowledge.
AT the 1978 Winchester seminar Nick met US gun-writers he’d long admired, notably Elmer Keith, but “I regretted missing the chance of meeting Jack O’Connor and George Nonte, both of whom [had] passed away,” he wrote. Of all the gun-writers, O’Connor had probably had the greatest influence on Nick. (Nick wrote much later that he’d met O’Connor, but this must have been a false memory.)
Weaver took part, too, and Nick cornered the company’s president, Don Gobel, and had “a meaningful conversation about the shortcomings of the old model Weaver scopes which I tested …
