Claud Bethel McDonald, the son of Stephen Claud and Roxanna Self McDonald, was born on November 24, 1894 in the Dutch Creek community near Waldron, Arkansas. After graduating from high school in Wilbarger County in 1913, Bethel held several jobs, mainly teaching in public schools in Madison County, Texas, and Sebastian and Scott Counties in Arkansas. He also, at this time, attended Mayo Normal College in Commerce, Texas. In 1918, McDonald was drafted into the army and subsequently left for training in Pike Camp in Little Rock, Arkansas on June 25, 1918. He got as far as Liverpool, England, and France before returning back to the United States of America in May 1919. After the World War I, McDonald was in various employments until he became a traveling salesman and mill representative in Missouri and Oklahoma. After his retirement in 1959 he regularly wrote an "Outdoor" column for the Minden, Louisiana, paper. This column became the basis of his regular radio broadcast in Minden. In the last decade of his life he founded the "Pop" McDonald Fishing Rodeo for young children, an event that survives under that name to this date.