Slim RandlesSlim Randles considers himself an outdoorsman first and a writer second. His career spans more than three decades as a journalist, but is heavily dosed with life in the outdoors.

He began his career as a cowboy and mule packer in the Californa High Sierra, then spent a decade in Alaska as a "resident adventurer," as he puts it, for the Anchorage Daily News. While writing columns for the paper, he built a cabin twelve miles from the nearest road and lived in it for eight years, drove a team in the first (1973) Iditarod sled dog race, and spent eight seasons as an assistant hunting guide in the Alaska Range and the Talkeetna Mountains, working primarily for the late Clark Engle and several other fair-chase guides.

Randles has also been associate editor of Petersen's Hunting Magazine, author of hundreds of outdoor magazine articles, adjunct professor of journalism at the University of New Mexico, and a columnist for the Albuquerque Journal and New Mexico magazine. He is also a registered guide and outfitter in New Mexico, where he lives with his wife Jeannie, daughter Bridget, and what he says are "too many bluetick coonhounds" in the tiny village of San Ysidro. Read More Read Less