"Environmentalist with a Gun": The NYT Profiles Steve Rinella

Steve Rinella (Photo: Natalie Ivis)

People toss the word "brand" around a lot, but I did not know how big a "brand" Steve Rinella has become.

Rinella is arguably the country’s most famous hunter. The final episodes of his show’s 10th season will become available on Netflix in early February. (The first six seasons ran on the Sportsman Channel, a fishing-and-hunting cable channel.) He’s the founder of a rapidly growing lifestyle brand, also called MeatEater, whose tagline is “your link to the food chain”; in addition to its ever-expanding roster of hunting, fishing and culinary podcasts and YouTube shows, his company sells clothing and equipment and serves as a clearinghouse for all manner of advice, tutorials, videos and posts, ranging from a recipe for olive-stuffed venison roast to stories with titles like “Mother Punches Mountain Lion to Save Son” and “The Best Hunting Boots for Every Season” and “Should Hunters Be Concerned About Deer With Covid-19?” Rinella is the author of six books and has a contract with Penguin Random House to write five more, including a parenting book forthcoming in May. In three years, MeatEater has grown to 120 employees from 10, and its revenue has more than tripled.

You can read it here and avoid the New York Times paywall. There is also an audio link.

Donald Trump, Jr. doesn't like him, having co-founded a competing publishing platform and podcasting business called Field Ethos.

The value of Rinella, writer Malia Wollan suggests, is that he is speaking to a broader demographic than older outdoor writers did: younger, with more women, and more minorities:

My family might be considered a part of this wave of newcomers. When the shutdowns first began, my husband and I started fishing with our two sons, then 3 and 6. Things got serious fast. We found a motorboat to rent and, whenever we could, ditched our cramped urban home for the open waters of San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Instead of children’s shows, the boys started asking to watch “catch and cook” videos — a phrase that brings up some 130,000 results on YouTube. The narrative arc of these videos is timeless, the stuff of cave paintings, really: Protagonists go out seeking fish, they catch fish, they eat fish.

I have listened to some of his Meateater podcasts, and there is good stuff there, although some episodes were a little too much "Steve and His Fans." But he is smart, well-spoken (the article mentions his MFA degree in creative nonfiction), and he puts a strong environmental-conservationist message, not to mention the game-cooking advice.