As a youth raising cattle with his father, he saw firsthand the devastation that the screwworm fly and other pests wreaked on cattle herds and cotton crops. Following graduation from Texas A&M University and graduate studies at Iowa State University, Knipling began researching the screwworm fly in 1931 as a U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist in Texas, where he met Bushland. Together, the men theorized about possibly breaking the pest's lifecycle by inducing genetic defects, but their research was temporarily suspended by the outbreak of World War II.[1]