This book follows the arc of an upland hunter's life from childhood into old age. Each chapter emphasizes the larger life lessons that hunting teaches a person as they learn and then practice the sport. A large portion of the book centers on the way upland hunting integrates wing shooting and dog work into a coherent whole that, when it works well, can approach art.

About the author. Mike Lannoo carries on the tradition of 'hunter, field biologist, conservationist' exemplified by William Temple Hornaday, first director of the Bronx Zoo and bison conservationist; George Kruck Cherrie, the naturalist on Teddy Roosevelt's River of Doubt exhibition; Olaus Murie, Alaskan naturalist and author of the Peterson Field Guide to Animal Tracks; Aldo Leopold, founder of the field of wildlife biology and author of the classic A Sand County Almanac; Herb Stoddard, the biologist who added prescribed burning to the wildlife manager's toolbox; and Paul Errington, founder of the fisheries and wildlife cooperatives at land grant universities and author of The Red Gods Call. Lannoo's field research has taken him to places as distant as the U.S. Antarctic base along McMurdo Sound, the Orinoco and Atabapo Rivers in Venezuela, the Brazilian equatorial island of San Fernando de Atabapo, the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, and Sitka, Alaska. In 2001, Lannoo received from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, the Parker/Gentry Award for Excellence and Innovation in Conservation Biology, which honors 'an outstanding individual [...] whose efforts are distinctive and courageous and have had a significant impact on preserving the world's natural heritage, and whose actions and approaches can serve as a model to others.' Lannoo is the author-editor of ten books, including Leopold's Shack and Ricketts's Lab: The Emergence of Environmentalism (2010); This Land Is Your Land: The Story of Field Biology in America (2014); and, with Martha Crump, Women in Field Biology (2022).