About
Phil Bourjaily lives in Iowa City, Iowa, where he serves Shotgun Editor for Field & Stream and Ducks Unlimited and contributes to numerous other outdoor publications. When he’s not chasing birds or writing about chasing birds, he enjoys cooking and eating them. In the off-season he shoots clays and tries to stay in good enough shape to keep up with bird dogs in the fall. He and his wife enjoy visiting their grown sons in Denver and Boston where they can get a taste of city life.
Experience
Bourjaily sold his first story, about snipe hunting, to Field & Stream in 1985. Since then he has hunted and shot throughout the U.S., and made several trips to Canada and South America and written about all of it. He coached a Scholastic Clay Target Shooting team for 10 years and has been certified as an National Sporting Clays Association Level I instructor.
Education
Bourjaily graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Art History. He was also a competitive rower in college.
Highlights
- He hunts upland birds, waterfowl, doves and turkeys. His favorite game depends on which day you ask him, but he probably likes hunts for pheasants around home over his German shorthaired pointer best of all.
- He enjoys teaching people to shoot a shotgun, both through his writing, and in person.
- Before he started writing, he worked at a natural history museum, on an archaeological dig, and tried his hand at raising sheep. He turned out to be better at shooting things than keeping them alive, so the sheep went and he took up writing about shotguns.
Words of Wisdom
Savor the hits, learn from the misses, then let them go. That’s good advice for shooting, and it works in life, too.
