MeatEater Continues To Dominate The Outdoor Industry

On Wednesday, October 26th, MeatEater released episode one of their eleventh season of the immensely popular show eponymously titled MeatEater. The show that helped prop Steven Rinella to fame in the hunting and fishing community is on its well-over-100th episode. The very first episode aired on January 1st, 2012. That very first episode is titled Into The Clouds and Rinella chases Sitka blacktail deer on a remote lake in Alaska’s coastal rainforest after being dropped off by a float plane. Since then, Rinella has chased everything from whitetail deer in Wisconsin to mountain goats in Montana and monkeys in Bolivia on the show. 

Today, MeatEater is not only a show but an entire brand focusing on hunting, fishing, wild foods, and conservation. Under their media umbrella are ten shows and eight podcasts. Shows include Deer Country with famed whitetail guru, Mark Kenyon; a new series on spearfishing called SpearChef with United States National Spearfishing Champion, Kimi Werner; and the always-interesting Pardon My Plate where Spencer Neuharth tries food most people would not put a fork in. In recent years MeatEater has even acquired three other companies in their space. These are Phelps Game Calls, FHF Gear, and the very popular hunting clothing company – First Lite. 

Steven Rinella was born on February 13, 1974, in Twin Lake, Michigan. If you listen to The MeatEater Podcast you will often hear Rinella recount tales of his youth, growing up in a family where fishing, hunting, and trapping were in the blood. He was not born to money. In a recent episode of the podcast, Rinella reflected on how tickled his dad, a WWII veteran who sadly has passed, was when his boy had his first few articles as a writer published. Rinella does not take the usual approach to outdoor writing and production. A big reason his show MeatEater was so successful is because it is not like other hunting shows. As Malia Wollan references in her article on Rinella for the New York Times, an episode of MeatEater is more comparable to an Anthony Bourdain creation than it is to the typical hunting show you see on the Outdoor Channel. 

A certain level of sophistication is applied by Rinella, who has an M.F.A. (Master of Fine Arts) in creative-nonfiction writing from the University of Montana. Steve (he goes by Steve, not Steven) addresses the emotions hunters go through when killing an animal. His show features people crying after making a successful shot as they mourn for the life they just took while also feeling appreciative of the meat it will provide. He masterfully articulates what makes hunting and fishing in the beauty of nature so great even when coming up empty-handed. Though most do, not every episode of MeatEater features a kill. Sometimes Steve falls short and he is not afraid to still make these trips into episodes. I believe this makes the show more relatable to the average hunter. Hunters know that not every hunt yields a Boon and Crockett animal. In fact, many yield nothing at all, so it is refreshing to see that reality portrayed in a hunting show.

Much of the MeatEater brand is focused on conservation. Sure, the company is built on hunting and fishing but every piece of content they produce has conservation weaved into its ethos. A new edition to their podcasting arsenal is MeatEater Trivia, which is posted on The MeatEater Podcast stream every Wednesday. The trivia show is dubbed “the only game show where conservation always wins” because each week the winner gets to pick which conservation organization gets a $500 donation from MeatEater. When the trivia game first launched, that donation amount was only $100, but as the show grew they upped the ante. Now, that is an example of business as a force for good. 

Rinella describes himself as an “environmentalist with a gun” and serves on the Board of Directors for the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. Often winning MeatEater trivia, Steve donates regularly to the TRCP. He knows hunters and anglers need to be the best stewards of the environment because they take from it. Those who do not hunt often do not understand why one would want to kill an animal. But those of us who were raised around the discipline realize how important it is to be involved in the process of finding and taking our own food. As Rinella says, “hunting isn’t only about the pursuit of an animal, it’s about who we are and what we we’re made of.”  In her article on Rinella titled ‘An Environmentalist With a Gun’: Inside Steven Rinella’s Hunting Empire, Malia Wollan mentions that 95% of the US population eats meat but only 4% are hunters. For this reason, as hunters, we need to be a positive example and the apotheosis of the conservation community. Those at MeatEater do a great job in setting this example. 

The other day, I was listening to The MeatEater Podcast. The episode was called The Making of MeatEater. Rinella and Janis Putellis, who has produced many MeatEater episodes and has long been Steve’s right-hand man, were talking with cameramen who have filmed MeatEater episodes. It was a very interesting show because listeners got to hear how the making of an outdoor adventure documentary is executed by people who are never on-screen. The two things I found most fascinating while listening were the reverence that the cinematographers had for Steve and also how much they enjoyed working on the show. The cameramen spoke of their wonderful experiences getting to travel to some of the world’s most amazing places alongside Rinella. All agreed that MeatEater was their favorite show to do work for. They also conceded it was the hardest project to work on, being that they had to take trips that were often a week or so long in the pursuit of an animal and squeeze it into a twenty-two-minute video. 

For me, MeatEater has been an inspiration to eat natural, push myself to hunt and fish more and to simply just spend more time in the great outdoors. Their media has also taught me a great deal about nature due to much of it being so educationally focused. As previously stated, most of us consume meat. A much lower percentage has a hand in how this meat lands on their plate besides picking up a steak from Walmart or ordering the lobster mac and cheese on date night. What if we were the ones checking the lobster traps or if instead, our steak came from an elk we killed last Fall? I think if this were the case we would all be much more thankful for our grub. It would likely even taste a little better, knowing that we toiled for hours in pursuit of it.

I am grateful to have been raised in a family that hunted for meat and grew vegetables in a garden out back. I also am grateful to be able to order sushi or pick up bacon from the supermarket anytime I want. Life is about balance. I spend my weekdays living in a college town and working an internship in downtown Cleveland. It is nice to have a voice pushing me to leave this all behind on weekends and spend some time alone in my treestand, on the water, or in the fields. MeatEater is that voice. They are reconnecting millions with our roots of being hunters and gatherers. 

A strong connection with nature is something that is badly needed in all of us. There is a reason that we smile when we see the sunrise on the horizon or a leaf colored in an hombre of red and yellow as winter nears. Many outsiders see hunters as only rednecks who like to shoot at things but we hunters appreciate the little intricacies of the natural world more than the average joe. We notice things about an animal that those who do not pursue it never will. Through the years, the entire MeatEater team has done an incredible job explaining that there is more to the outdoorsman than meets the eye. They explain to the rest of the world that we do not hunt for the kill but for the opportunity to spend more time in the field and for a healthy meal free of preservatives and chemicals. We protect the environments that support the game we chase and deeply care about the conservation of wild places. I cannot help but hope MeatEater continues to grow the message of the hunter and supply us with an escape from concrete and steel to return to woods and water.