Inquiring outdoors types want to know:

• Can you catch a fish, tie a balloon to it and release it back into the water, then follow its school around and catch even more fish?

• Is it OK to use a remote- controlled model boat to take your fishing line out farther than you can cast from shore?

• Is it fair – or even legal – for two groups of hunters to use walkie-talkies at opposite ends of a hunting ground to herd wild deer in one another's direction?

• And who in the world could tell you how to get bears out of the backyard or snakes out of a crawl space?

Carrie Wilson can. At the California Department of Fish and Game, she's the equivalent of Miss Manners, with a little bit of Heloise thrown in.

She offers advice on co-existing with wildlife, interpreting state regulations and educating the public about the great outdoors.

Her weekly dispatches from DFG central, "California Outdoors Q&A," result from handling dozens of inquiries from outdoor enthusiasts.

Lest you think Wilson has no firsthand experience, know that she has likely caught more fish and bagged more game than the average bloke in a sports bar. Her degree in marine biology and her life with a wildlife biologist husband complement what nature has taught her.

How did she end up in a role that dispels all the stereotypes about outdoors types?

Wilson grew up in the outdoors, about 70 miles north of Sacramento in Oroville, where the potential for boating, hunting and fishing meandered through her life like the nearby forks of the Feather River.

Although she had a love for the outdoors and a kinship with animals, she displayed few early signs that she would pursue a career at the intersection of outdoors and academia.

"Growing up, we weren't hunters or fishermen. But we always had animals around the house. I was in 4-H and showed horses, sheep, pigs, and we trained dogs," she said by telephone from her DFG Marine District office in Monterey. "I tried a sewing class once, but that didn't go very well."

She thought about being a veterinarian, but as she dived deeper into her studies at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, her personal call of the wild focused on environmental and systematic biology.

"I always loved fish and wildlife. When I first left college, I went down to San Diego, worked on whales and dolphins from 1984 to 1988," she said, referring to positions with the National Marine Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla and other work for Fish and Game.

She enjoyed riding commercial gill-net fishing boats to collect data for fisheries studies and later observing recreational sport fishing. Yet all of that biology work combined didn't add up to what she was making in the evenings driving a horse-drawn carriage full of tourists around San Diego Harbor.

Even so, the biology experiences – and working with the public on the fishing boats and horse carriages – would help Wilson get a full-time gig with Fish and Game and shape her into a public relations personality capable of answering the questions.

While Wilson also writes a wildlife newsletter and manages the department's Passport Fishing program, most people know her as the answer lady. She started the Q&A back in 1998. By 2000, it had morphed into something she offered to the Western Outdoor News, a weekly hunting and fishing publication based in Southern California.

It was so popular that her bosses later thought it best to spread it around, and, eventually, post it on the agency's Web site (click on www.dfg.ca.gov/news/ and choose California Q&A).

Wilson answers about 50 questions a week . Some answers come from her own research and review of regulations. Others come from expert colleagues.

Now that you know who Wilson is and what she does, we thought we'd convert the rest of this story into her favorite format.

I've been monitoring "California Outdoors Q&A" for a few months now, and some of these people ask – to borrow a fishing term – some real whoppers. How about the guy who worried that the fish he caught might have "shrunk" and become illegal? There are anglers who think a fish out of water can "shrink" from a legal-size fish at the time it was caught to an illegal fish.

Call The Bee's Bob Ehlert, (916) 321-1101.