Dr. Dell developed his love for the outdoors while growing up on his family’s small dairy farm. This nurtured his lifelong appreciation for activities of the outdoors and his interests in the earlier trials of our nation’s pioneers, Native Americans, gunslingers, those who hunted, trapped, and cultivated survival skills. Even before the age of 9 he was quite accomplished as a trout fisherman, small game hunter, and could manage to drive most of the tractors on the farm providing his feet could reach the foot pedals. Every morning at 4:30 and the same time in the afternoon it was time to tend to the cows for their needed milking, seven days a week.
Fond memories of his farm background and the rural lifestyle that it evoked helped encourage his writing genre, perhaps like other writers who draw their readers into challenging fictitious early American outdoor adventures.