For nearly a decade, Bill Heavey has written the "Sportsman's Life" column on the back page of Field & Stream. His hilarious dispatches about life as an enthusiastic (but often hapless) outdoorsman who lives in suburbia have earned him legions of fans and a pair of National Magazine Award nominations. To immerse himself more fully in his subject, Heavey cheerfully disregards concepts like dignity, common sense, and personal safety. This enables him to offer important lessons about:

- Why children make perfect hunting decoys

- How to cook your brain with hand warmers

- Why you should always sleep with your pants on in camp

- How to explain the presence of bottled doe urine in your car to a teenage girl

But Heavey is more than a humorist. He also possesses a deep and infectious love of the natural world, and his writing evokes the pleasures of hunting and fishing as well as their perils. The stories in this book range from amusing tales of a modern dad struggling to navigate the finer points of parenting and married life to longer and more serious narratives that involve travel, adventure, and tragedy. In one story, Heavey and a pack of hounds chase mountain lions in the desert canyons on the Arizona-Mexico border, only to have the expedition go horribly wrong. In others, his search for hunting heaven takes him to Wyoming, Alaska, and the Arctic Circle; his fishing outings take him to Brazil, Cuba, Mongolia, and the Bahamas, to name just a few.

Whether he's traveling the world in pursuit of thrills or scheming to make his five-year-old daughter fall in love with fishing, Heavey is a master of blending humor and pathos--and wide-ranging outdoor enthusiasms--into a poignant and potent stew. As one Field & Stream reader puts it: "It's not often that, in one page, a writer can lead a reader on a roller coaster of emotions. Heavey does just that. He had me rolling on the floor at the beginning and wiping a tear from my eye by the end."