Summary
Overview
Michael Barbaro joins renowned hunter and author Steven Rinella for an immersive Thanksgiving hunting expedition that explores the deep connection between hunting, conservation, and our relationship with food. From a pre-dawn duck hunt in Montana wetlands to butchering and cooking the kill in Rinella's kitchen, the episode examines how hunting can be understood as an act of environmental stewardship and a profound way to connect with the natural world and our food sources.
The Making of a Hunter: Rinella's Origins
Steven Rinella traces his hunting roots back to his father, a World War II veteran who became part of a generation of soldiers-turned-outdoorsmen. Growing up in rural Michigan, hunting wasn't a choice for Rinella—it was simply the fabric of his childhood, alongside squirrel hunting bike trips and a family ethos where wasting game was considered sinful. This early immersion shaped not just his skills, but his entire identity and worldview.
- Rinella's father fought in WWII and became a hunter after returning home, part of a generation trained to shoot and camp
- The family had a strict no-waste policy—wasting hunted animals was treated as deeply problematic, almost sinful
- Young Rinella would bike into the woods with .22 rifles to hunt squirrels, which his mother would cook in a crockpot with cream of mushroom soup
- Hunting became Rinella's core identity—he never decided to become a hunter, it was just what he was
" How could you train an entire generation of men to shoot and camp and not expect them to become hunters? "
" It was like you didn't waste stuff, man. These animals lived and died for nothing if no one was going to have them. "
From Anti-Environmentalist to Conservation Champion
As a teenager, Rinella founded a group called "Hunters Against Teenage Environmentalists," conflating animal rights activists with environmentalists and seeing them as threats to his lifestyle. However, his perspective transformed when friends studying wildlife biology introduced him to Aldo Leopold's "Sand County Almanac," which presented a vision of hunters as essential conservation stewards rather than nature's enemies.
- In high school, Rinella started a group called 'Hunters Against Teenage Environmentalists' because he saw environmentalists as threatening to ban hunting
- Despite his anti-environmentalist stance, Rinella and his brother secretly marked extra trees to prevent logging in their favorite hunting woods
- Aldo Leopold's 'Sand County Almanac' was the most influential conservation text, written for 'rednecks' who understood working the land
- Leopold introduced the concept of the hunter-conservationist, arguing that the days of being conquerors and destroyers had to end
" We're going to save the trees, but we hate environment. We didn't know what we were talking about. We were just idiots. "
" He was saying there's a thing, ecology. We need to know about it. Like it's our history. We're no one's going to save this, but us, no one understands it and loves it like us. "
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