Philip Bourjaily was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and has lived there all his life, with time out for high school in Barcelona, Spain, and college in Charlottesville, Virginia. After vigorously resisting his father Vance's early attempts to turn him into a hunter, he took up the sport on his own after college and began writing about it shortly thereafter. To his ongoing astonishment, he is today a full-time freelance outdoor writer.
Bourjaily's work appears regularly in Sports Afield and Field & Stream as will as several other national and regional sporting publications. He is also co-author (with Vance Bourjaily) of the book "Fishing by Mail", and his work has appeared in the Countrysport anthologies, "Pheasant Tales" and "A Breed Apart".