ROBERT RUARK (1915-1965) was an American author, syndicated columnist, and "big game" hunter. He grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina and graduated early from high school, enrolling at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at age 15.
Ruark began his writing career in the mid-1930s, first working for two small town newspapers in North Carolina and then moved to Washington, D.C. in 1936, where he was hired as copy boy for The Washington Daily News and worked his way up to become the paper’s top sports reporter in just a few months.
During World War II, Ruark was commissioned an ensign in the United States Navy, and served ten months as a gunnery officer on Atlantic and Mediterranean convoys. After the war, he returned to Washington and joined the Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance. Some of his columns were collected into two books, I Didn’t Know It Was Loaded (1948) and One for the Road (1949). As he became recognized, he began to write fiction.