Mitt Romney’s running mate is a cheesehead, gym rat and avid hunter who wrestles catfish with his bare hands and taught his 10-year-old daughter to shoot a rifle.

Seven-term Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan also brings deep Washington experience to the GOP presidential ticket, having worked on Capitol Hill most of his adult life.

Ryan, 42, is best known for his controversial “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a budget plan that relies on cutting taxes and Medicare spending to stanch the federal-budget deficit.

After he released the plan in January 2010, Ryan was hailed as a leading conservative thinker and became a Tea Party darling.

Even those who dislike Ryan’s politics praise his character.

“My immediate reaction is that Gov. Romney picked a terrific individual,” state Sen. Tim Cullen, a Democrat from Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“He is the serious guy that the media portrays him as, and he works hard on things,” he said.

The tall, easygoing Ryan is a fifth-generation Wisconsin resident. He was the youngest of four children in a prominent Roman Catholic family in Janesville, a city of 60,000 in the southeast corner of the state.

Ryan attributes his serious nature to growing up fast. His father, a local lawyer, died of a heart attack when Paul was a teenager, leaving the young Ryan to care for his grandmother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, while his mother returned to school.

“It was just a big punch in the gut,” Ryan told The New Yorker. “I concluded I’ve got to either sink or swim in life.”

Ryan was a bright student and in high school was voted class president, prom king and “biggest brown-noser.”

He collected Social Security benefits until age 18 and saved his money before heading to Miami University in Ohio to study economics and political science.

In college, he was a voracious reader of Ayn Rand and Friedrich Hayek, authors he credits with influencing his views on free-market economics.

After graduating in 1992, he signed on as an intern for then-Wisconsin Sen. Bob Kasten, and paid his bills in Washington by working as a personal trainer and as a waiter at a Mexican restaurant.

Ryan’s résumé also includes working for Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback and one of his mentors, the late New York Rep. Jack Kemp.

One summer, he hawked turkey bacon and Lunchables as a salesman for Oscar Mayer in Minnesota. He’s rumored to have driven the Wienermobile.

After spending time working for his family’s construction business, Ryan won a seat in Congress in 1998.

At age 28, he was the youngest member of that year’s freshman class. He represents a swing district that has voted for George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

Ryan quickly rose up the GOP ranks, and today, the conservative wunderkind is chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Ryan campaigned for Gov. Scott Walker in his state’s heated recall election earlier this year, saying that if the embattled governor lost, it would prevent state legislators from tackling budget issues.

He is described as a friendly Midwesterner who uses words like “gosh,” grows a beard during deer-hunting season, and makes his own Polish sausage.

An avid bow hunter, Ryan is a proud member of his hometown’s archery association, the Janesville Bowmen.

The outdoorsman has been known to whisk past reporters on Capitol Hill wearing headphones — ignoring them while listening to Rage Against the Machine and Led Zeppelin.

While in Washington, Ryan sleeps in his office on a rollaway bed and said he usually spends two hours a night reading.

Every morning, he leads P90X workout sessions with Capitol staffers and lawmakers.

Ryan proposed to his wife, attorney Janna Little, at Big St. Germain Lake in northern Wisconsin.

Janna, who has degrees from Wellesley College and George Washington University, grew up in Oklahoma and is the niece of the state’s former Democratic governor.

The couple has three children: Elizabeth, 10, Charles, 8, and Sam, 7.