Do you just want me to run through the different sounds? Okay. Um, so yeah, a simple quack is just

and then a lot of times this morning to grab those ducks attention, I was doing five to seven quacks in a row.

So yeah, it's just just like music.

You're one with the duck.

[music]

When most of us sit down today for Thanksgiving dinner, if we're being honest, we're not really thinking all that hard about where [music] the food on the table actually came from.

It came from the grocery store.

And to the [music] degree that we did think about where it came from, maybe we shopped the local [music] freerange organic aisle, still it came from the supermarket.

But for Steven Reanella, the question of where his food comes from is almost a religion.

Reanella is a lifelong hunter, perhaps the country's most famous hunter, who shares his passion for eating what he catches through a growing media empire that includes a Netflix show and a podcast, both called Meat Eater.

If you're just by yourself and you kill a moose in September,

Yeah.

how long can one guy live off that moose?

um you know, if that's all you're eating, um you know, probably 3 months.

Mhm.

He's also written more than a dozen books, ranging from a history of the American buffalo to a series of cookbooks that explain things like how to gut a caribou or make a wild goose pastrami.

But what really defines Ranella's work is an argument and an argument that some might find kind of counterintuitive that killing animals can be part of loving [music] nature.

That reverence for the natural world is intimately bound up in the act of hunting. [music]

And so I was curious as somebody who relies [music] exclusively on the grocery store, what would it be like to visit Reanella and go on a hunt with him and then eat what we kill. [music]

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bubaro. [music]

This is the Daily. Today, my hunt with Steven Reinella.

It's Thursday, November 27th, Thanksgiving Day.

Steve, Michael Barbaro.

Michael, nice to meet you.

Tremendous honor.

Mon way.

We meet Reinella at the meate eater headquarters in Bosezeman, Montana.

Here, I'll show you around a little bit.

He gives us a little tour.

We have a a kitchen space.

We see his test kitchen.

Oh, that's a giant meat grinder. Wow.

his industrialsized meat freezer.

This is like Giannis's elk bones.

On the way,

should we go to the studio?

into his podcast studio, which I would describe the decor of as extremely carnivorous.

This is a beaver

behind you.

Yeah. This is like what the whole country was built on. I mean, you know, like that the beaver skin trade. Um, that's a muskox hide.

That's huge.

Yeah. It's a sound deadener. These are these are tan skunks.

Mhm.

Okay. A thing I've always been I pay a lot of attention to the fur trade. This right now is the hot ticket item in the fur trade.

Skunk.

Yeah. You know why?

No.

The the hats that Orthodox Jews wear for for for holidays.

Yes. They're very extravagant. They're beautiful.

The hip thing right now, the hip thing is to have those white to have them made from those white skunk hairs. I think of the Orthodox community as being kind of trend proof, but

no, they're not. There's a trend. It's hot. [laughter]

Okay. So, thank you for the tour.

Thank you for having us.

Of course. Thank you. I appreciate you coming in, especially coming all this way to come to me.

So, you have had a really interesting journey in my estimation to become the person that you are now. You're kind of an evangelist for hunting.

Champion of hunting as a way

I'm like an like an explainer of

Yeah. Okay. you know, explainer of

champion of it as a way of connecting with the land, showing reverence for the land,

and as you've put it, understanding the connection between human beings and the natural world.

Mhm.

You grew up in rural Michigan.

That's right.

Talk to me a little bit about some of these formative early hunting experiences

that you have.

To do that right, I got to go back one little generational bit.

My dad was born a long time ago. Like he fought in World War II, okay? So my dad was raised by Italian immigrant grandparents. He was born in the south side of Chicago. He grew up in a world very, very removed from rural American life.

But then when he got home from World War II, and this is a thing that he was one of those outdoorsmen that kind of was born of that experience. They had been out, you know, for over a year. you'd been out camping, out hanging out with guys, wearing wool clothes, and he was just they just got into it. Then when they came home, that's just what they did.

There was even a comment a guy a editor of a sporting magazine had made is like, "How could you how could you train an entire generation of men to to shoot and camp and not expect them

to become hunters?" So he became a hunter like out of that world.

I never thought about that.

Yeah. Like and so I got it from him. Like I never decided I never thought, "Oh, I should become a hunter and fisherman." It was just what we did. I did all the like I had all the normal stuff. I had friends. I liked music.

Alongside it all was like this this like obsession, a family obsession with hunting and fishing.

Do you remember an early experience of hunting that stays with you? Yeah, we

would strike out on bikes with 22s and go hunt squirrels, but we had so much woods around and we thought it was like public, but it was just a We just went on everybody everybody's land. Um,

why hunt a squirrel?

Oh, they're great.

There's not that much meat.

No, there's a lot.

There is?

Yeah, there's a lot.

And what do you do with it?

Oh, it's it's it's it's like it's thinking man's chicken, man. It's like it's it's the same color. My mom would there was a real wild game craze back then. It was like the whole era was like the cream of mushroom era. So my mom would take a crockpot and fill it full of parted out squirrels. So two front legs, two back legs, and we trim the saddle.

You call it the saddle.

It'd be like the loin pieces. You like take a scissor and run it up the ribs.

And so you got like like the the French call it a saddle of a hair, right? and you'd put it in a crock pot, fill it with cream of mushroom soup, and then turn that crockpot on. And then the minute you could pick all the meat off, you'd pick all the meat off.

Thinking man's chicken.

It

enjoy food and you don't have a set rigid idea of whatever you kind of like like meat supposed to be like this. If you just kind of like like food and like novel things, most people that do that like squirrels. They're they're very good.

I had no idea.

Yeah. At this stage of your life, are you eating everything you hunt?

Yeah, we ate a lot of stuff. We fried a lot of stuff. Yeah. You wouldn't have thrown that would not be a thing like not a thing. And

to hunt and not consume.

I remember.

Would it be a sin?

Yeah. Sin. Like, you know, I was raised in a Christian household. We wouldn't have talked about waste in terms of sin. But I remember one time in the woods, I remember my old man finding someone had dumped a bunch of wood ducks that they hadn't cleaned properly.

M

in this that they had hunted but not cleaned.

Yep. Garbage bag. It was where everybody would haul their yard waste. And I remember my old man finding a a garbage bag that had a bunch of improperly cleaned wood ducks. And it was this dude renting a house down the lake from us. And I remember my dad went banged on his door and had words with him.

It was like

well just he he would have seen that as so problematic. Why

wasteful?

Like that was the thing I I was trying to explain.

These animals lived and died for nothing if no one was going to

it was like you didn't waste stuff, man.

After being immersed in this environment, did you just say to yourself, I want to grow up and be a hunter?

Oh yeah. Well, no, because I just was I never thought I never thought about it. I I never stopped for a minute and then restarted.

you just were 100.

It just like it was never like I want to get into this. It was just that was just the main thing. Always the main thing.

Was it like the most romantic thing a kid could possibly be doing? I mean, you've explained that it's just kind of a default fact [snorts] of life for you,

but it sounds like it even at a young age is bringing you tremendous pleasure.

Yeah. Identity became like an identity. And then I fell and the thing too is through that I I fell in love with the history of it.

And how did you know the history of it? Like you're reading

that's what I got into like I would just I would read that's what I would read. That's the main thing I would read.

What was the seminal childhood book of hunting?

Trap lines north. I would check it out at the library and then I'd recheck it out and I'd recheck it out. If you went to that book now and found that in the Twin Lake Library, it dude if you went it'd be just my name again and again like on that book.

Just what's what stands out from that book. was like

and just just briefly describe it.

Okay. I again all that hunting and stuff what I wanted to do was I wanted to like hunt and trap for a living. So like you know people know all these names. Daniel Boone for instance like

people think of Boone as an explorer a pioneer like he wouldn't have thought of himself that way. Boon was a market hunter. Boon hunted for the markets. He trapped beaver. He trapped otter. He tra he hunted bears for the bear grease market. bear oil, bare bacon market, deer skin trade. Like that's what Boon did. Like Boon did that for a living. All the things he's known for came out of the fact that that's what he did for a living. So as I got into it, I would just read about people that that's what they would do. And that would generally force you backward in time. So I just read about trappers and I read about hunters, commercial hunters, professional hunters, because that's what I wanted to be.

So my understanding is that even as you're aspiring to the hunting life,

you see that life early on as at odds with the whole idea of environmentalism. Yep.

And conservation.

At that time being in high school, I I I confused in the environmental movement with the animal rights movement.

Of course,

which upset you because

Well, it upset me because the the in the animal rights movement was at that time working very aggressively to ban hunting practices and they were having success at it.

You thought they were the enemy?

Yeah, 100%.

Because they were going to prevent you.

They were going to destroy our lifestyle from

the environmentalists were going to destroy our lifestyle.

as a 17-year-old, right? We started a group.

You started

our group was hate hunters against teenage environmentalists. And we even like won the can drive.

Hunters against teenage environmentalist.

I I'll show you the shirt. I still have the shirt. I somehow um because you couldn't Google stuff, I guess. I somehow got it. My buddies and I got it. Whatever. We got it that it was that that was the environmental movement was the animal rights movement. We conflated them.

But um at the same time, remember there's this big woods we always would hunt.

Mhm.

They were going to go in and log this woods and these guys came in and marked all the wildlife trees with an orange ring. I remember me and my brother Danny sitting there matching paint. Like I'm not kidding you, matching paint to get that color and then putting it in a sprayer and going out and marking shitloads of extra trees.

Why?

cuz we didn't want them to cut the trees down, but we're like, "We're going to save the trees, but we hate envir [laughter] idiots."

You obviously

get to a place where you feel that hunting and environmentalism, hunting and conservationism are actually really wedded. Tell me that story, how it is,

how you go from a kid wearing the hate t-shirts to suddenly seeing that hunting is environmentalism, which is ultimately where you land. So what is it that happens?

Probably the mo the most impactful thing that happened well handful of things.

The buddies I grew up around, okay, guys that would have laughed at hate. We we kind of didn't know what you could do for a living. So a lot of the people in my circle were like, I'm going to be a wildlife biologist because then you could be outside or I'm going to be a game warden. So they start going into wildlife and fisheries management. And imagine like the the the awakening and you all of a sudden start understanding ecology,

right? And and then and then like conservation history out of that. One of my peers that goes into wildlife management like introduced me for instance to Aldo Leopolds the Sand County almanac which is probably which not probably which is the most influential conservation environmental text.

It's kind of a cornerstone of the movement.

Why it's the most influential is because it was written for rednecks like what we were. It was written by a guy who knew what it was to chop a tree down, who knew what it was to raise a crop, who knew what it was to hunt deer, who knew what it was to kill something and then regret killing it. Like he was talking to his people and he was saying there's a thing. It's 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. So it was like

so he assigns a special place to the hunter.

Yes.

This role of stewarding the land.

Yeah. He for many many people and this is an old book by this time. He introduces this idea of the hunter conservationist. And he introduces this idea that's like

the days of us being conquerors and destroyers had to end, right? It had to end,

right? Like Daniel Boone is known and you read about this as somebody who may not have meant to but ends up laying waste to entire

He killed what he loved

species.

He killed what he loved and he would have told you the same thing. That's why he always had to go more and more west. He had to go more and more west to get out of the areas that him and his peers had decimated.

And Leopold is saying no.

We'd always had in this country like you have like a preservation mindset as exemplified by a guy named John Mir. Like John Mir would look at a beautiful landscape and he'd say no one should touch this. You can look at it for a minute but don't touch it. Humans are evil. Preserve it.

Rose, the Roosevelt, El Leupold presented a conservation viewpoint that would be that man is going to engage with the natural world. We are going to be part of the natural world. We have to be.

Are we going to do this in a way that strengthens the integrity of these natural systems where we're going to interact or are we going to interact in a way that destroys these systems? Elder Leopold was speaking to the people that are going to interact with the systems. He he introduced people to the idea of ecology that that natural systems rely on all of their parts, right? He was like, "It's time for us to treat this as a thing we love or else we're going to lose it." And so reading that, it was

You identify with it

100%, man. Cuz he like understood people that were out on the land. Like reading this book hit like a I didn't even appreciate it till way later in life like how much that hit because I understood what he was talking about. And then I read many books of people that were very uneasy with hunting like Barry Lopez Artic Dreams had a huge impact on me. Barry Lopez is very uneasy with hunting.

Why?

Obvious.

You're taking life. He's like a Zen Buddhist. Um

you're taking life.

That brings me to what you become. Mhm.

At this stage of your life, you're in college, right?

Mhm.

After college,

you get an MFA.

Yeah.

And you start writing.

You start writing.

But then I knew I was going to be a writer,

right? So, you're not just going to be a hunter. You're going to be a hunter who writes about

cuz tra cuz I was going to be a trapper. But fur prices were so bad that you it was just was untenable. But I had a knack for writing.

I thought I was going to round out my income as a trapper by writing howto instructional trapping articles. So,

it's a great plan.

Yeah. I was going to write art I was going to write like, you know, late season muskrat techniques [laughter] through for through the ice. Right.

Well, I want to talk about I want to talk about

that's how I got that's how I like began to to write. But by the time I was finishing college, I wanted to be like a writer writer.

Yeah. Well, I want to talk about your writing because

you do a lot of really interesting writing that's very much embodies this lifestyle you have. You you write a book about recreating this famous epic 45 course meal from a famous French chef using ingredients that you have scavenged out in the world including of course wild game. You write a book about buffalo and then you write what I consider to be your manifesto

meat eater and

I think it's beautifully written

and you describe for people like me who aren't of and from the hunting world

Yeah.

and the hunting life

what is so visceral and romantic and also at times complicated difficult about hunting.

Yeah.

And there's a passage I want to read.

Let me read it to you. Let's hear it. [snorts]

Quote, "I was hungry in the wilderness and here came a few tons worth of caribou 50 yards out and closing fast. In a moment like that, there's no time for emotional doawling. It's time for unairring judgment. It is a time for speed, both mental and physical. It is a time for action and precision and discipline. It is a time to do what millions of years worth of evolution built us to do. And in the act of doing it, you experience the unconfused purity of being a human predator, stripped of everything that is non-essential. In that moment of impending violence and death, you are gifted a beautiful glimpse of life. I want you to explain this idea because this is the part of the hunting life that I think those of us who don't hunt with any regularity

probably struggle to understand.

Yes.

Can you just explain that?

Yeah. Well, I have had the the the good fortune of um

taking many many people out on their first hunting trip where they've gotten their first animal almost to the person. It's cathartic.

People cry. It's a thing that happens. If someone kills their first deer as an adult, they cry.

No regret.

Never regret. But it's like it's like something is like clicking with them about cycles of life and death. I never had that because I started so young. I deliberately started my kids very young to where nothing would surprise them. I later thought about that more when I had a chance now and then to hunt out with like indigenous hunters and gatherers in other parts of the world. You know what's absent like in their hunting practices? Remorse absent.

And these are people who for generations have hunted and fished for their living.

There is like it is joy and it is a lack of remorse. You feel honor but like no remorse. It is taking life to them is life.

It just is. It's like I continue on.

Is that the life you're describing when you say you're gifted a glimpse of life?

Yeah. It's like that's how you stay alive. Like that is that's the difference. And for like ancestral humans, for wildlife, there's like death is you not killing.

Death is you not killing.

Yeah. Cuz you starve, right? Not me now, but I'm just talking about like why do you not see signs of remorse or compassion in wildlife? Why do you not see signs of remorse or regret with indigenous hunter gatherers? Because they've they've always seen with incredible clarity that that taking of life, that killing gives life

gives life to them and their families. That relates to something else you write in this book I consider to be your your manifesto.

Why do you think so many people

feel so disconnected from this thing that's so visceral for you? Do you think it's just as simple

as the fact that

we now all rely on vast industrial,

you know, slaughterhouse operations to get our food because we all go into grocery stores and

Yeah.

you know, buy our food. You wrote you write about this. You you say people have no problem

eating their food. That proxy executioners. I'll never forget that phrase.

Hypocrisy K. Like the thing I always think about if I'm weighing the morality of this or if I'm if I'm like analyzing my world and analyzing my food, it's like you ask yourself a simple question. as much as is possible. Put yourself in the shoes of an of an animal that will ultimately be consumed by a human. Would you rather jump into and live the life of something born on a slab of concrete

and like fed every day and optimized? Yeah.

And like your your inputs are optimized for your outputs and it's like a done deal. When you hit 1,100 lb, you're dead, right?

Or imagine the life of a thing that is unaware like unaware and then one day just pow lights out in the woods. Man, that wild life for me as a human trying to understand it like that wild life is more beautiful and that wild life is better.

What you're saying is there's virtue in consuming an animal that has lived a rich and full and varied life on their own terms.

I believe so. There is a tremendous beauty in wildlife living in wild places. We culturally honor it. We build vacations around going to look at it. So when you're eating a thing that lived that life that lived that like beautiful wild free life, it's just better. It's just different,

right? It's the ultimate freerange food.

Yeah. It's like nothing to regret here, man. It was a It's a beautiful place. It's a beautiful animal. It lived a beautiful life and now it's supporting us and we're going to support its environment so it can make more. It's just it's tidy.

In writing about hunting, you you deliver an interesting and pretty stark judgment of those who would judge hunters like you. You write to abhore hunting is to

to hate something about yourself.

You write to abhore hunting is to hate the place of which you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant abstract way.

Yeah. So, human history on our continent goes back somewhere around 20,000 years. Those people were all hunters. They hunted for a living. They were hunters. Here on this continent, that only ended a couple hundred years ago. That's what's always had hap. That's how people in what is now North America survived. They hunted. If they didn't hunt, they died. They were hunters. No matter how you define, like if you brought someone from outer space and they could come down and sort of get offer you like a little bit of an analysis of hunters and they were to look at the the scope of human history and you're say, "Hey, explain humans to me." The the out of space person would look and be like, "Uh, man, they're mostly hunters." Well, not lately, [laughter] right? That's what that's like what we did. So, how is it how could it be that we've like shed all that? We haven't shed all that. So when I say that someone like abhores the practice, it's like, dude, look at yourself. Where are your eyes? They're centered on your head. So you have really good depth perception. Why do you have K-9 teeth?

It's like you're not that far away from this.

But the abhoring,

that's real what you're identifying here. There's there's a cultural chasm, right,

between the way you grew up and the way so many of us now see ourselves and how we see our relationship to food. And

why is it the case that

this thing that is so essential to you and that is at the heart of how you identify yourself

has become so rare?

I could I could answer that in 10 ways. Let me hit you with one. Sure. Just to consider. If every American tomorrow went out and killed a deer,

it'd be a real problem.

We'd have a 200 million deer deficit. So, it just became

um besides human will, besides what we want to do, it became impossible. It became impossible. It had to be like if you look at it like ecologically, it had to be as the population exploded and as we destroyed all of our landscape or much of our landscape, it had to be that we quit. That was the whole point of the agricultural revolutions allows people to live close together. There was a reason why in like in Native America, the land had a carrying capacity. Human populations in in like historic North America were the size they were because that's how much you could fit there. Mhm.

That's how much you could extract from wildlife resources. And then we discover other ways. And so you can't anymore. You can't anymore. And even like a thing I've always felt was everybody can't do it. But I wanted everyone to understand it.

So like many people in this world, you simply want to be understood.

Yeah. I want to be understood. And also you want people to recognize, this is the thing we haven't touched on yet. As I learned conservation history and I learned the role, the outsized role of hunters [snorts] in the conservation story,

I also felt like we deserve more credit than we get.

Right? And I was like, you should thank me now that I know what I know and you don't know. I know that you owe me a thanks. you owe me a debt of gratitude because by buying my hunting licenses and participating in the things I participated in like we saved American wildlife,

right? Cuz I didn't really know this or understand [snorts] it very well until I read your book and read many of your writings, although I should have known this that hunting licenses contribute directly to the funding for American conservation.

Yeah.

Steve, you've written many, many poetic passages about the act of hunting. Mhm.

And [snorts] I want to, as we wrap up our conversation,

return to one of those writings. And if you don't mind,

I'm going to ask you to read this.

Oh, wow.

You got a great reading voice.

I've learned to see the earth as a thing that breathes and ws and brings forth life.

I see these revelations as a form of grace and art, as beautiful as the things we humans attempt to capture through music, dance, and poetry. And as I've become aware of this, it has become increasingly difficult for me to see hunting as alltogether outside of civilization.

Maybe stalking the woods is as vital to the human condition as playing music or putting words to paper. Maybe hunting has as much of a claim on our civilized selves as anything else.

It's really beautiful.

Oh, thank you.

It makes me want to go hunting with you.

Oh, really?

Yes. Well, I want to talk about this tomorrow morning very early.

You are taking me and my colleagues out hunting.

Mhm.

And just to explain because this episode's going to be running on Thanksgiving.

We're not going to be hunting turkeys.

No.

You were very clear about that. You can hunt turkeys here in the fall, but but [snorts] we hunt them in the spring.

Mhm.

It's just like almost like culturally in the spring during their breeding season, we hunt just the males and you hunt the males when the males are out gobbling and you can call them in and just very selective. Just get the males. In the fall, guys will hunt you can hunt them, but you you you risk killing the females. I I don't like I I've never killed a turkey in the fall. I've killed many many turkeys in the spring. I don't hunt them in the fall. So, [snorts] uh what's also fun I love this little fact. The pilgrims, they're probably eating fowl water fowl migratory waterfall. 100% deer probably seafood most certainly geese. If you look at all if you look at all the journals and stuff, they were eating migratory waterfall. [music]

So, we're we're hunting duck.

Yeah, you will see ducks for sure. Mhm.

And you will eat [music] ducks.

I promise.

We'll eat them together.

H.

All right. Well, we'll [music] see you at dawn. Till then, thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it. [music]

[music]

Oh yeah.

Wait, you guys got coffee already?

Room.

Oh, the room coffee.

Yep, there he is.

Oh, man. Is it nice out?

Prepare for the worst. Embrace the 50° 5 a.m. weather. The next morning, Steve picks us up in his very large pickup truck.

You are the picture of promptness

to drive us out to the duck hunting spot.

Unseasonably warm and windy.

Only question is, will the ducks notice?

They might get down to an area like this and the weather is suitable and then they'll just hang.

So, doesn't it seem like duck hang weather?

Yeah, very duck hanging weather.

Why would you flee this weather? Yeah.

He's like, "Dude, you should go back north. It's too hot."

Okay. So, can you just just explain where we're going? You picked us up at our hotel in downtown Bosezeman.

Yep.

I have a buddy. There's a property over here owned by a guy named Mark Beers.

Okay.

He's a friend of mine. He's a big wetlands duck conservation guy. That's his thing.

the way he like you know they run cattle out there at a farm out there but he is like his manage his land management is wildlife first ducks first

why did you want us to be hunting at this hour cuz it's 5:20 in the morning I mean

so there's the main movement that ducks will make like all day the big movement that ducks will make is at daybreak sometime in the morning

in the cold gray light of dawn on to quote Robert O'Kee Jr. They like they they like to float. They like to fly then. So that's why you want to be out there. And the other thing is it's just like there's like a tradition component. Like even if someone said if they're like, man, they're not really going to fly till 9:00 a.m.

Right.

You just kind of would feel like uh

lazy bones.

Yeah. You'd feel like a real loser. It's just like like I like hunting turkeys almost more than anything.

And we kill a lot of turkeys between 10:00 and noon, but it's a sin to not be out there at daybreak.

[music]

And I suppose this is old hat for you, but is this drive and the whole getting there process still filled with a lot of excitement for you every time you hunt?

Oh, yeah. No, it it's always it's um

yeah, there's always an anticipation of what's going to happen or there's always like an element of mystery.

It's like asking a it's like asking a question, you know. One time I was writing something about fishing. I was saying like every cast is like you're asking a question, you know, waiting for the answer. So, um

All right. So, we're now off the main road.

Yep. And we're we're kind of out in an agricultural area and this is ground out here that won't get developed ever.

So we're just pulling out into the tall grass here.

Yeah. And like and there's crop fields all around us, but we're kind of down in the we're down in the channels of water

at this point. We're about 25 minutes outside of Bosezeman and it's so dark we can honestly be anywhere.

It's quite beautiful just to see this all on the car lights.

Yeah. And it's fun when you go somewhere new or you don't know where you're at in the dark and as it gets light out you get to be like, "Oh,

I'm completely disoriented."

We pull into what looks like a grassy meadow. And we all get out and then we meet Max Barta.

Steve, how's it going?

Good. Good. Good.

This is Max. Did you meet everybody?

Max works with Steve on his TV show as a videographer. But he's here this morning because he's a very good duck hunter who brought all his gear with him along with a very important member of our hunting party. His dog Ruby.

Yeah, this is Ruby.

Hey, you're fine.

And then suddenly it's very busy. Max and Steve are unloading a ton of stuff from their trucks.

Are you going to wear your Steve?

Yeah, I'm fine.

Okay.

If you want to get real serious, I'll give you a big headlamp. I mean, wow. Look at this thing. It's like a brass lamp affixed to a hunting cap.

It's called raccoon light.

And of course, they're gathering their guns and their ammo.

This is your rifle.

Well, it's shotgun. Can't hunt ducks with a rifle.

Now, just to be clear, I am here observing. I'm not going to be shooting a gun today. [music]

And then even like all all this stuff is regulated. So, this is called a 12 gauge shotgun. When hunting migratory waterfall, you have to put a thing in here called a plug that prevents you from putting more than two shells in the magazine.

So, this is a pile of plastic decoy ducks. Yeah,

there are a shocking number of duck decoys and goose decoys. Use them to fool real ducks, which is kind of crazy to me. I always make the joke whenever like the ducks don't come in um I always say, "Well, yeah, we got a pile of plastic out there and poor human beings trying to hide themselves, you know, like no wonder they're not coming in."

[music]

They're like, "That don't look good."

Nope. So,

and pretty soon we're all walking out into the grassy darkness.

Do you want one of us to carry this around?

Yeah. You can just grab them by the handles. Yep. Got one like that. Morning weight.

Yeah. So, we're setting up for the water.

How deep is it? It's like just below my knees here.

So, what we're doing is we're putting decoys here to show that there's ducks congregating here.

But then, but then the main pocket you want them to be in is right there. And that puts them more out in front of you.

So, basically right here in this now in this vacuum is where you hope the duck is going to come later.

Yeah. like kind of a good landing area right where you just cross that rock.

Yeah, right right across that rock.

I got it.

So,

it's kind of cool to now see them spread about.

Suddenly looks like there's a lot of ducks in this pond even though they're fake.

Yeah.

See, can you just describe this uh structure that we're going to be going into?

Yep. This is a very nice hunting blind. Um,

it's a it's like a it's like a very elaborately camouflaged shoe box.

Yeah, it's got a bench to sit in. It's got a little gun rack and then it's [ __ ] just like a Yeah, a shoe box big enough to hold seven people or ideally five people packed very tightly.

We're challenging the space,

but it's big. mainly it provides a structure that you can affix all this vegetation to.

Yeah. And it is like thoroughly layered with

hay brush.

It's meant to blend in. Yeah.

If you didn't know it was here, it wouldn't be here.

Ducks can see color. They're they can be very hard to trick. And so this just allows you to stay concealed.

That's a dog box.

Yeah. And that's going to make you entirely

That's for his dog. that can't

that's your dog is terrified.

Yeah, she loves it. Like it's crazy. If I don't bring her, she is so teed off at me. Just like So we pile into this duck blind. You mind if I go in?

No. No.

I'll be down on this.

Steve plants himself at the far end of the blind and Max is at the other end.

So you're

What's that?

See that's loaded now.

Mhm. Yeah, this is the safe.

Do we have everybody within earshot?

Yeah, I think so.

Because you're not shooting, there's not a lot to know about, but I really can't think of any way you'd get shot. Uh, don't

don't get shot.

Yeah, don't stand up unexpectedly. You don't have shotguns, so you can't really do any damage. Yeah, never mind. I can't picture a world in which you'd get hurt. Don't jump out of the blind, but you can't because Max is on the end. There's nothing to do.

[music]

And after all the work of placing the decoys and getting the dog into the dog blind and all of us humans and our gear into the duck blind, there's nothing to do but wait. So, it's now about 6:30 a.m. and first light is emerging and the silhouettes of the mountains now appear with the sun behind them.

Oh, and that's our first actual real bird sighting just flew right over us. I think that was a goose.

Wait, what was that?

Oh, that was me blowing my call. Duck.

That's your duck call.

Max has with him a variety of duck calls. These little wind instruments that are hanging around his neck.

Do you see that duck swimming there? Yeah, that's a Drake Mal. He blows them occasionally to attract the birds.

He's the one that's making this noise right now.

And he's really, really good at it.

Hey, Max, what was legal light?

42.

Oh, we got two minutes.

Now that we're settled, Steve and Max become very conscious of the time.

You can legally hunt ducks 30 minutes before legal sunrise.

There's a dog.

That's great.

And Max lets Steve know officially

good to go.

Yep.

That they're good to go.

Here comes some ducks right here.

And

Steve shoots a bird.

Right out of the sky. It all happens so fast.

You just shot and killed the very first duck you saw of the morning.

No, no, we saw a lot of ducks this morning.

No, you just

That was the first duck at legal light

and you hit it.

Um, yep, we hit one.

The dog returns to the blind with the duck in its mouth.

That's the most efficient thing I've ever seen.

Ruby kennel.

Max tucks the duck onto a little shelf in front of us. And right away, Steve starts to spot more and more birds flying overhead.

Look at all those ducks. What are those?

And the rest of the morning proceeds just like that. There are these very long periods of silence,

some hits

and

uhhuh

some misses.

Know, you know those people that make those rugs and they put an imperfection in there so that it's not insulting to God, you know,

like Max has this little thing where he'll do a miss now and then.

What was that?

You making fun of me cuz I missed.

No, he's calling you godlike. Oh,

and we're just kind of hanging out together. Well, no. He doesn't want to seem pompous to God in the eyes of God. So, he misses nothing.

Inside this incredibly tiny duck blind

in the middle of this gorgeous grassy wetland.

As they better understand bird vision, there's this idea that iridesence is like glowing neon. that this in their vision is like, [snorts] you [laughter] know, like very they're very tuned into that iridescence.

And I start to feel this camaraderie. We're all now in league together.

And then every so often, Max and Steve become extremely focused once again on the sky.

Everyone gets serious.

Right side, right side, right side.

And then

another duck is down.

Good girl.

Max returns to the blind with the bird

and he holds it out to me.

Yeah, Michael. Wow. Grab it. He's very pretty. Yeah, you can just grab him like this. Grab him. He's a little wet, but

Wow. I've never held a a duck in my hands before. Living or dead?

Wow.

He's got so many different colors on him, too. Like

he's It's still warm. Yeah. [music]

I'm holding this still warm duck with his beautiful feathers. Dark green, dark blue. It's kind of white fringed [music] at the edges.

Steve, I'm I'm feeling the things [music] now.

What are you feeling?

I'm feeling all the things.

Oh, really?

I mean,

you feel something.

This creature in my hands that was alive 10 seconds ago and is now [music] still warm. And

I'm feeling I'm feeling all the feelings that you you write about. It's like it's beautiful. It's sad. It's [laughter]

Do you feel uh like regret?

Do I feel regret?

Like you are you like, "Man, we shouldn't have done that."

No, that's not that's not the first duck swarming us.

That's not the feeling I have.

I just feel connected to this thing. That's what I feel. I feel connected to it in a way that's kind of hard to explain.

Like my daughter, she'll want to lay them a certain way. She kind of smooths them out. Wow.

[music]

I feel like this is changing my relationship to the sky. Just like

I'm just like scanning the sky looking for any sign of wings

cuz they come so quickly. By 9:00 a.m., there is a row of eight birds lined up inside this duck blind.

Can I stand up, Steve?

Yeah, we're done.

And Steve calls it. We're done.

So, that's it.

Yep.

We're done. Eight ducks. 2 hours.

Is that what it was?

Yeah.

After the break, our hunting expedition concludes in Steve's kitchen. [music]

[music]

Okay, so we're on our way to Steve's where the ducks await us and we're going to pluck them, butcher them, eat them. Okay.

We're here. There's no question this is Steve's house because there's a beautiful set of antlers hanging over the garage. I think it's actually a full skull. It's a huge full skull with antlers just like the meat eater logo. And a lot more antlers as we approach the front door. Oh, the door's open. Literally open door, which is very welcoming.

Come on in.

Hi there.

Not up there anymore.

The whole family's here.

The whole family's here.

So, we arrive at Steve's house.

Okay. I'm Michael.

Hi, Michael. I'm Katie.

And we meet his wife, his three kids, plus their friends.

Say hi.

Hi.

Hey. Well, go introduce yourself. Introduce your friends.

Hi, everybody.

We'll go this way to start.

Okay.

You want to wear Do you want latex gloves? You good?

I think I think I'm okay just doing it with my bare hands. Get the bear in.

So, we're in your

in the garage. We could do it inside, but we'll do it out here.

That makes sense to do it in the garage. So, when you butcher, you put your outside here in the garage.

Usually inside sometimes. Well, stuff with feathers out here.

So, here are four ducks.

Yep. You want to see how to do it?

Yeah, I would like you to show me.

Okay. So,

so you're just grabbing all the feathers on the chest and just pretty gently ripping them off.

See, those are those could be teeth marks from the dog or pellet.

Why does it feel like you're so my my plucking is so insufficient?

Oh, it's a learned thing.

It's like it's like blowing on a call. Like the [music] first time sucks and you get better and better at it.

All right. I uh I think I'm ready to face your judgment.

You're not close yet.

Like keep going. But

yeah, in the end in the end you'll get it where you can you just kind of go like this.

You don't need to do the back. Okay.

Unless you want a whole roster to bring home.

Can you take duck interstate?

Yeah. Well, you got you got to decide like I would give you this one cuz this one's perfect. So, we would pluck this, leave a fully feathered wing, and you can walk right on the plane with it. You don't even need to check it. They might detect an organic mass as they call it in TSA land, [music] but you're not there's no problem. You would just be like, "No, I have a frozen I have frozen food

and you're fine." if you'd like this to bring [music] home cuz that's a perfect spasm. Look at that thing.

It's beautiful.

Looks like something out of Christmas Carol, don't it?

Yes, it does.

Yeah.

With just a couple of pellet marks.

Mhm.

I think I'm getting the neck of my butt thumb movement.

No, you're looking good now.

So, that's what you're after. [music]

And we can even clean that up more with a blowtorrch. But

So, that's with a blowtorrch.

So, just take this very from a distance.

Burn those little hairs off.

Mhm.

Is this the right distance?

Just Just enough where you watch them just get zapped.

All right. Let me go get the top.

Is this uh

Yep. Just real light. Don't cook it.

Yeah. You're doing good.

No. When we wash them, they'll look real good.

Did not expect to be using a blow torch.

Okay. See this?

See this breast bone?

Mhm.

Come in like that.

Then you know when you see chicken tenders on a menu and kids want to order them.

Mhm.

That's that that's a duck tender.

Oh, that's that kind of classic duck fat.

See, that's that's good stuff.

Okay. Good.

Yeah. Head to the kitchen.

Yep.

And then we move from the garage into the kitchen there. So

you kind of have an indoor kitchen [music] and an outdoor kitchen.

Yeah. And that that's nice cuz it's covered now. And winter [music] is long

where Steve has been preparing this wild game feast.

Using every imaginable [music] cooking method. He is using a smoker.

Oh, dude. That's overdone.

Ah, damn it. Apparently, we've overcooked the turkey.

The wild turkey as is Thanksgiving tradition.

Yes. Yes. Totally true.

He's using an open fire.

That's like that sousie goose.

And then you're putting it on a rack

just to like crisp it up.

Put on top of an open This is a rack on an open fire.

Yep. [music] He's cooking it on a fire.

And one by one, these dishes emerge. There's black bear that he hunted in Alaska. [music] There's wild turkey and Canadian goose from a hunting trip with his kids. [music] And of course the duck.

Like the best way to get it the skin crisp.

This is the duck skin.

Yep.

Is to put it as soon as you [music] start the burner. So

put them on there. Now and and don't heat don't preheat it. [music] Like lay them on there.

Okay. I'm going to put the skin down.

Skin down. You know what I'm saying?

Mhm. [music] Like if you put it on there when it's hot, it does it doesn't work. It doesn't get as crispy and it like instantly [music] like puckers up.

Then what you want to do Oh, from there

in the oven.

Flip it and then into the oven. 400

in the oven.

Outside for a quick second.

Is this the time to tell you how anxious I get about whether I'm overcooking meats?

Oh, the duck.

The duck.

Not long. Okay,

we'll eat that real rare. The black bear that I took out that has the bone sticking out of the end that and I've had trinosis from black bear that

that's good to know.

You have to cook the same way like in the old days you had to cook pork really well.

Yeah,

that was cooked in the oven for I saw him with the thermometer checking it.

Oh, it's like it's like 20° above

Okay.

what it needs to be. I I learned that.

So, now the duck is out of the oven.

Pretty

remarkable that that thing was flying above our heads.

That's all it

four or five hours ago.

And then we sit down at Steve's dining room table and all of this meat that Steve has been cooking

is laid out in front of us.

This is a remarkable bounty you've prepared for us. This table is filled with meat.

It's light on veggies. But what we have [laughter]

I would say it's very light on

what we have here. Try one of these. These are good. So we grow carrots and then pickle them.

All right. All right. What should where should we start?

I ruined turkey.

So, we'll start with the worst.

We'll start with the ruined turkey. [laughter] Terrible.

It's delicious.

Neutral.

Mhm.

Very dry.

I think my mother's done worse than this. So, this is the bear.

This is black bear. Um

I can definitely say I've never eaten bear before.

Yeah.

Tastes like

You'd never know it was bear me.

Tastes like lamb or beef.

Yeah. It's lamb like

Mhm.

It's just funny about you never you'd never flag it as unusual.

Mhm.

Now

is the sousied and grilled.

Yeah, that's Canada goose.

It's good.

And you can dress it up all kinds of ways.

It's really tender.

Yeah.

I'm I'm very excited to try the duck.

Mhm.

I got cold. [laughter]

Got cold.

It took a long time. Nothing wrong with cold duck.

Looks great. It's fatty.

Juicy.

Cold.

I'm just to take it back to our original conversation. It's extremely gratifying to consume food that you yourself have participated in hunting, defeathering, butchering, cooking. It's like 100% start to finish your food.

You're the only person ever touched it. [music] You ever think about that? No one's ever touched that

except us. Yeah. First person. Only person.

Yeah. It's like I feel a certain level of possessiveness over this food that I don't think I've ever felt before. It's not anonymous.

Yeah. You know, then you get into freezer freezer hoarding and stuff like that

where you get really weird or weird [music] to your family about it and everything.

There's a there's a thing that happens. [laughter]

Just talk to my wife about sometimes. Steve, I just wanted to thank you for the time you spent with us, for the lessons you've taught us, and express my gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving.

Oh, happy Thanksgiving to [music] you.

Appreciate it. It

was a really special day for us.

Thank you very much.

A really profound experience.

Next time you see [music] a goose flying by, you'd be like, "Now that

is what that tastes like."

When you see a goose in a golf course, you like, "Now that bird is a worthwhile [music] bird."

Mhm.

[music]

Today's [music] episode was produced by Tina Antalini. It was edited by Wendy Door. Our field engineer was a fem [music] Shapiro. And the episode was mixed by Alyssa Jane Moxley. It was fact checked by Susan Lee. [music] contains original music by Daniel Powell and additional music by Marian Lozano.

Special thanks [music] to Ben Calhoun, Paige Cowed, Katie Finch, Malia Woolen, and [music] Phil Taylor.

That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Mubaro. Happy Thanksgiving and see you tomorrow. [music]

Is this sanitary if I ask to try one of these?

Um, I've got a duck hole you can try. That is sanitary.

Yeah, got it.

No, just just

better.

I want one good call. Just

like not coming. [laughter]

Whatever that is, that's not real.