Dr. Jon Campbell, of Natchez, Mississippi, passed early Monday morning and his funeral will be held tomorrow at 2 pm.
Here's an older photo of Jon, with a Freedom Arms .454 Casull, with the results of a hog hunt in Louisiana.
Jon was a master of the art of telling stories (not untrue ones) and could truly take you to the place and events, as if you were there. Tales of the "old days" and how we used to do things in those very politically incorrect ways. Times of teens and pre-teens being allowed to hunt by themselves, with something larger than a BB gun!
He was also very knowledgeable on the practices and techniques utilized in casting bullets and handloading. In fact, is where I initially met Jon. That was back some time ago and we became good friends over the years. We visited back and forth while he was still physically able and then it got to where I would have to do the traveling. There are just times when the telephone and/or email just isn't the same as a eye to eye visit.
One of Jon's passions was bullet casting, even when he wasn't physically up to very strenuous activity. He could sit and cast or further process his work, by taking it to the proper size and lubricating it, so it would function properly and accurately. He bought on old mould quite a few years ago that was made by Ohaus for the .45 Auto Rim, but it only had a single cavity. That single cavity is a good way to slow down progress, so he began a quest for more cavities in that bullet design. Well, Ohaus had been out of the bullet mould business since the 1970s, so it was a matter of finding someone to make a new mould. After several tries to get some others to go in on a "group buy", he and another friend in California got NEI to make the mould. Here's the result of that venture, and I present it here as a sort of memorial to Jon.
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