Tyree is depicted as a skilled outdoorsman, a partaker of roadkill cuisine, and a fierce and slightly unhinged opponent of sprawl and overdevelopment in the state.
Tyree was also vehemently opposed to runaway growth in Florida, and gained national recognition for his passionate speeches and legislative proposals to discourage tourism, curtail land development, and protect the environment.
Since Double Whammy, Skink has moved south to Monroe County and mainly resides inside Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge on Key Largo, Florida, rarely travelling beyond.
In the first book in which he appears (Double Whammy), Skink lives in a tumbledown shack in fictional Harney County, and occasionally hires his services as a bass fishing guide.
Wherever he goes, he travels with an immense library of first-edition books, stored at various times in his shack, in antique steamer trunks, or in old junker cars parked near his camps.
He listens exclusively to music from the 1960s and '70s: The Who, The Beatles, The Allman Brothers Band, The Rolling Stones, Buffalo Springfield, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Eagles, The Moody Blues, etc.
His teeth are startlingly perfect, straight and white, and his smile is a trademark he retains from his election days (which often contrasts jarringly with the rest of his appearance).
Skink's best friend is Jim Tile, an African-American Florida Highway Patrol trooper whom Tyree met in the 1970s while on the campaign trail, and appointed to be the head of his gubernatorial bodyguard.
When Clinton became governor, he tracked his brother down and gave him a job and home as the keeper of the (fictional) Peregrine Bay Lighthouse near Hobe Sound.
In No Surrender, Tile confides that Clinton "came into some money" a few years before the events of the novel, implying that Doyle had died and left his unspent state earnings to his younger brother.
Also in Sick Puppy, Skink strikes up a friendship with the protagonist, Twilly Spree, a passionate young environmentalist with similar ideals.
It is suggested that the two remain in touch after the events of the novel; in Skink's brief appearance in Skinny Dip he contacts and is met by an "intense young man" who is implied to be Spree.
Skink is also referenced in the Jimmy Buffett song "The Ballad of Skip Wiley," describing him as an associate of that character (from Hiaasen's first novel, Tourist Season).