Jim Dean, longtime editor of Wildlife in North Carolina, offers his personal observations on the pleasures and frustrations of hunting, fishing, camping, and other outdoor pursuits. Dogs That Point, Fish That Bite draws together fifty of the best columns that Dean has written for the magazine over the last seventeen years. The witty, sometimes poignant pieces are arranged into a loose chronicle of the sporting year, with a generous allowance for digression: the first is set in April, on the opening day of trout season, and the last tells of a New Year's Day spent alone in a...

The Secret Lives of Fishermen is Jim Dean's second book of essays celebrating wild places, rural traditions, and the pleasures and often humorous frustrations of fishing, hunting, hiking, and camping--or, as Dean might put it, "messing around" outdoors. It combines essays originally published in his monthly "Our Natural Heritage" column in Wildlife in North Carolina with longer pieces that appeared in other magazines. These forty-six engaging essays are arranged in a loose chronicle of the sporting year, but they seldom follow predictable routes. From a whimsical story about...