John Madson (1923 in Ames, Iowa – April 19, 1995 in Alton, Illinois) was a naturalist, conservationist, journalist, and freelancer who worked in the field of outdoor writing.
[2] Madson published frequently in the 1961-1977 period in conservationists' and sportsmens' publications such as Audubon, Field and Stream, Guns and Ammo, Outdoor Life, and Sports Afield.
[4] His love of field sports, both fishing and hunting, carried him from high grounds, such as the South Dakota Badlands,[5] to the wet bottomlands of the Mississippi River.
[6] Over time, as he stalked upland birds such as pheasants, he learned more about the ways of native North American tall grass.
This drew him toward publication of his appreciation of the largely-lost network of tallgrass prairie ecosystems in Where the Sky Began (1982).