About the Author

David E. Petzal, the rifles field editor of Field & Stream, has been with the publication since 1972. He served in the U.S. Army from 1963 to 1969, and he began writing about rifles and rifle shooting during his service in 1964. He is a Benefactor Member of the National Rifle Association and a Life Member of the Amateur Trapshooting Association. He has hunted all over the United States and Canada, as well as in Europe, Africa, and New Zealand. Petzal wrote The .22 Rifle and edited The Encyclopedia of Sporting Firearms. In 2002, he was awarded the Leupold Jack Slack Writer of the Year Award, and in 2005 he received the Zeiss Outdoor Writer of the Year Award, making him the first person to win both.

Phil Bourjaily sold his first outdoor story--on snipe hunting--to Field & Stream in 1985. Today, he is the magazine's Shotguns columnist and co-writer, with David Petzal, of the "The Gun Nut" blog on Fieldandstream.com. He is the author of the Field & Stream Turkey Hunting Handbook and, as a turkey hunter, has renounced early mornings in favor of sleeping in and killing spring gobblers between the hours of 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. He makes his home, with his wife and two sons, in his birthplace of Iowa City, Iowa. Last spring he co-founded a trapshooting team at his son's high school and serves as one of the coaches. He has traveled widely in pursuit of upland birds, waterfowl, and turkeys, but his favorite hunts are for pheasants close to home with his English setter, Ike, and his German shorthaired pointer, Jed.

For well over a century, Field & Stream has been synonymous with the sports of hunting and fishing, and has been a leader in the conservation movement as well. The Gun Nuts blog is one of the most popular on the on its website, and has gained a unique reputation for truthfulness, insight, and unvarnished opinions.