A fictional Maine guide who won many friends and admirers through the pages of Field & Stream magazine in the 1920s and '30s, Dud Dean is very much a product of his creator. Arthur Macdougall was an avid outdoorsman and a minister in Bingham, Maine, a tiny town perched on the reaches of the mighty Kennebec River. The tales in this book were compiled by Macdougall's son, Walter.

Arthur Macdougall was born in Enfield, Maine in 1896. Soon thereafter, he and his family migrated to Massachusetts and then moved from town to town, following the call of his father's evangelical ministry. Arthur's kinship with the outdoors developed early. As his son Walter puts it, "he hunted and fished when he could, and trapped for any money he possessed." After a series of widely varying jobs and a part-time education at Mount Herman Academy, Arthur shipped out to France and World War I. Following the armistice, he returned to his home state of Maine and enrolled at the Bangor Theological Seminary. In 1923, he began a thirty-six-year ministry on the Kennebec River, at Bingham. Notes Walter, "He never was to make much money and always claimed that the balance of his salary was in good trout fishing." Writing, however, provided Arthur with some additional income and, clearly, a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction. In all, he wrote fifty-six Dud Dean stories, most of which appeared first in Field & Stream magazine. They were then collected in a series of books, including Dud Dean and His Country (1946), Under a Willow Tree (1946), and Where Flows the Kennebec (1947). Walter Macdougall, in addition to being a great admirer of his father's literary achievements, is an author in his own right. His nonfiction historical work, The Old Somerset Railroad -- A Lifeline for Northern Mainers, went to a second printing in less than a year. Now retired from his college teaching career, Walter enjoys writing, painting, woodworking, fishing, and doing historical research. He and his wife live in Milo, Maine