MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Frank Turkowski, the author of Coyotes, Trappers, Sheepherders and Urbanites, has been studying wildlife for most of his life. He conducted research on coyotes, other predators and rodents with the U. S. Fish and Wildlife and the U. S. Forest Service, and the University Of Minnesota Museum Of Natural History.

One of his first professional positions giving him experience with coyotes and other animals that damage livestock or crops was as a Mammal Control Agent, otherwise known as a government trapper, with the Predator and Rodent Control Branch of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. These experiences working with a variety of people of many occupations in many locations form the basis of the memoirs for his book.

Frank’s career has been diverse. He holds B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Zoology from Arizona State University and has attended five other institutions of higher learning. He also has done university graduate studies in Psychology. Other part time and full time positions he has held include Assistant Curator of Mammals and Zoology Lab Instructor at Arizona State University, Forestry Research Aid, and Director of Educat­ion and Research at the Phoenix Zoo where he presented natural history programs for adults and children and studied endangered species.

Research conducted while with the US Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service included efforts to learn basic life history information about predators and make trapping and other predator depredations control methods more selective, humane and efficient.

Frank has published a total of some seventy scientific papers, non-technical articles, creative essays, short stories, and poems. He has been presented with two U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Outstanding Publications Awards and various certificates of appreciation for public service. He is looking forward to the publication of his next book featuring his research activities on predators. Other books are in various stages of planning and attainment.  He is a lifetime member of the American Society of Mammalogists and the Southwestern Association of Naturalists. He also is a member of a variety of sportsmen’s and veterans organizations.

Frank says, “I’ve been around a long time and have had a variety of jobs, many of them to support myself while attending colleges and universities. As long as I am learning, I am happy.” Jobs that helped him pay his way through college including hospital orderly, truck driver, forklift operator, and construction worker. He also served for several years as an Electrician’s Mate aboard an amphibious command ship the USS Eldorado while in the U. S. Navy. The ship’s homeport was San Diego and it traveled above the Arctic Circle.

Presently he is a free-lance writer, a co owner of rental properties and a small private school. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Biology and Psychology for Central Texas College, and teaches college courses on U. S. Navy ships. His work aboard thirteen ships has allowed him to pursue knowledge and adventure and realize his love of the sea and fondness for the navy.  He has traveled on the Pacific, Atlantic and other oceans and many of the seas of the world and visited some twenty countries on six continents while on frigates, destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers and amphibious ships.  His travels have allowed him to earn seagoing labels of Blue Nose (crossing Arctic Circle), Shellback (crossing equator), Golden Shellback (crossing equator and International Date Line) and he has traveled through the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal.  He is always ready to swap sea stories with sailors or former sailors.

Frank’s hobbies include hunting, fishing, photography, military history and gardening. His photography has appeared in magazines, books, calendars, and in the decor of business and residential buildings. He is also a Volunteer at the National Museum of the Pacific War.

Frank lived in has lived in five states in the U. S.  He resided in Arizona for 28 years and in Uvalde, Texas with his wife Ann since 1975 where they raised a daughter and two sons.