Welcome.

I'm the Dale Bowman of DaleBowman.com. I'm the long-time, award-winning outdoor writer for the Chicago Sun-Times. My outdoor columns and articles appear every Wednesday and Sunday.

My writing almost exclusively focuses on the urban/suburban outdoors of the Chicago area. I fully appreciate how ``urban/suburban outdoors'' seems like an oxymoron and embrace that clash and use it to drive my writing. My work has appeared in several dozen newspapers and magazines, ranging from traditional outdoor magazines such as Outdoor Life and Sports Afield to alternative press such as the Chicago Reader.

``Bowman's Outdoor Line'' on ``Outdoors with Mike Norris'' airs on 1280-AM at 3-4 p.m. Thursdays. I'm contribute regularly to ``The Fishing Line and Outdoor Show'' on WCSJ-FM (103.1), WCSJ-AM (1550), WSPY- 107.1 and WSQR-AM 1560 from 6:30-7:30 p.m. Wednesdays.

Outdoor writing is not just my work, but my life. My wife and I were married at Illinois' second most popular state park, Starved Rock. I am a member of Illinois' 30-30 club with a muskie estimated at 34 pounds from Kinkaid Lake with Chad Cain in 2000 and a 30-pound flathead catfish from the Rock River with Todd Carlander in 2003. Deer are my favorite pursuit in hunting.

Birding nibbles bigger chunks of time. We are up to four feeders at our house, and we've taken to day-tripping to watch eagles. Because of a growing family, backpacking takes less of my time, but unofficially I was the first to thru-hike the 250-mile Tuscarora/Big Blue Trail in the eastern United States in the early 1980's. I've completed about half the Appalachian Trail.

Many thanks to two hunting and fishing companions for the site: to Mike Arndt for designing the original site and to Ken Abraham for doing the redesign work.