Jim Matthews has been a full-time news writer and outdoor columnist in Southern California since 1974. He compiled the most-read weekly fishing report in America from 1980, when he began the Outdoor News Service, until 2020. ONS provided a weekly outdoor news package to as many as 20 daily newspapers in Southern California over that time. At it's peak, the news service's circulation was over 1 million people per week.
    Since 1972, Matthews has also sold over 1,000 freelance magazine stories to virtually every major outdoor, fishing, hunting, and firearm magazine in the nation, and he’s been a regional editor for both Field & Stream and Outdoor Life back when those magazines were big deals.
    He has broad-based hunting and fishing experience all across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. He has interviewed and fished or hunted with experts in all faucets of the outdoor sports. He regularly teaches a wide range of outdoor classes on everything from stream fishing and fly-tying to outdoor navigation, maps and GPS use, hunting skills, with an annual series of classes on where to hunt birds across Southern California (The Birds Are Here X Series). He regularly gives public presentations on a wide variety of outdoor topics, including non-lead fishing tackle and hunting ammunition. He also has published a detailed where-to-go bird hunting newsletter, Western Birds, since 1996.
    In 2012, he worked as a consultant on the short-lived Top Hooker television show produced by Pilgrim Studios and aired on Animal Planet.
    Matthews, 70, lives in San Bernardino with his first and only wife of 41 years, Becky (who is company CEO and CFO). They have two adults sons. Bo is 40 and Kyle is 35.They also have a 10-year-old English Setter, Ben. In his spare time, Matthews makes custom wood quail calls (sold on this site and Etsy as Jim Matthews Signature Quail Calls), fly-rod popping bugs and crankbaits (not sold anywhere). The quail calls and fishing lures are moslty made from native woods Matthews cuts in the field.