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Special Tribute: Robert E. Petersen 1926-2007

Robert E. Petersen, noted magazine and real estate magnate and the former publisher of Sports Afield, died March 23 in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 80.

Petersen was best known for creating the largest special-interest publishing company in America and launching some of the best-known magazines in the world of guns and hunting, including Guns & Ammo, Petersen’s Hunting, Petersen’s Bowhunting, Rifle Shooter, and Handguns. His magazine empire also included top automotive titles, including Motor Trend, Hot Rod, and Rod & Custom, as well as a diverse collection of other magazines including Teen and Sport. With three dozen titles, Petersen Publishing Company was America’s leading publisher of special interest consumer magazines when Petersen sold it to private investors in 1996.

After selling his publishing empire, Petersen remained active in other business ventures including ammunition manufacturing, real estate, and aviation development. In 1999, he purchased the then-struggling Sports Afield magazine from the Hearst Corporation in New York and moved its offices to the Los Angeles area. In 2002, he sold the magazine to its current owners, Ludo and Jacqueline Wurfbain of Safari Press.

Petersen took yearly safaris to Africa, often with his wife, Margie. He had a large collection of fine guns and also served as Shooting Sports Commissioner for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, where he was responsible for building that venue from an old dairy farm within six months.

In the following tribute, Craig Boddington remembers his friend and former boss:

For the thirty years I knew him, Robert E. Petersen remained “Mr. Petersen” to me. Part of this was my upbringing, but most of it was the simple fact that I have never known any man who commanded my unqualified respect as this man did, and in so many ways: As a boss, as a businessman, as a family man, and, yes, as a hunter.

Mr. Petersen was the real deal, a fine hand with rifle, pistol, or shotgun, and a hunter’s hunter who loved it all, equally at home scrambling through chaparral after valley quail or stalking buffalo in the Africa he also loved. Petersen’s success enabled him to do so much of what most of us dream of. He did it, and he enjoyed every minute of it. He appreciated fine animals, but he was not a trophy collector. He hunted game that he personally admired, and in his mind there was no ranking between a fine day in a duck blind, or in a prairie dog town, or on a sheep mountain.

In his hunting career he took some of the finest elk, sheep, and pronghorn I have ever seen, and some of the best African trophies as well. He enjoyed them all, but he never bragged about them, and I’m not sure even the best of the best were more important to him than a nice forkhorn buck taken at Petersen Ranch. He was a hard hunter, going the distance he needed to go, never shirking or complaining, and consistently making a fine shot when the chance came.

I worked for him for nearly twenty years before I saw a glimmer of the true measure of the man he was. The legend at Petersen Publishing Company was that, if a chance arose to hunt with the Chief, one never, ever dared to take a larger animal, or dire would be the consequence. I accepted this as Gospel; bosses have their rights. On the first day in Zambia’s Bangweulu, 1996, Mr. Petersen and I headed for sitatunga stands.

Mr. P had a swollen knee, so he chose a stand relatively close to the truck. I took one some distance off into the swamp. At half-past four a huge sitatunga stepped into the clearing in front of me, and I shot it. It took a while to recover it from the muck and darkness was falling before we even started back. Only then did I realize what I had done: No one would see a bigger sitatunga on this trip. My career flashed in front of my eyes, misgivings made worse because, by now, the Chairman of the Board, on the eve of his seventieth birthday, would be waiting in the chill dark.

When we reached the truck Mr. Petersen was all smiles as he lay in the damp mud and took pictures. “Turn the head a bit. No, back. Yes, that’s right. Just a couple more.” He was as pleased as if this animal had been his, and it was not a problem that he never shot a sitatunga on what would be his last African hunt. The man was truly a legend, but there was much more to the man than any legend can portray. As his longtime friend Ken Elliott said of his passing, “The shooting sports lost an icon, but all hunters and shooters lost a real friend.”