Brooklyn Heights resident Steven Rinella may be an urban dweller, but by trade, he’s a hunter. The former host of Travel Channel’s adventure & food show “The Wild Within,” spends 150 days per year traveling the world, hunting Dall sheep in Alaska and Himalayan tahr in New Zealand, among countless other varieties. The rest of the year, he and his family foster much of their sustenance from the exotic game he keeps in the freezer.
In a meaty profile in The Brooklyn Paper, Rinella reveals what’s in his freezer now: “Just a moment before we talked, I was integrating some caribou into the freezer. In another, we have wild turkey and black bear (and) some Himalayan tahr, shanny meat, javelina, whitetail deer and mule deer blended together in a grind, some more caribou and a couple of pieces of fish. And my brother raised some lambs so I’ve got a leg of lamb.”
He adds, “The hunters I know and admire are students of natural history. They are careful practitioners who spend a lot of time preparing and training with their tools and their weapons. They eat their game, and they do it for reasons of cultural continuity or to be closer to their food.”
Rinella will discuss his new book “Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter,” at Fort Greene’s Greenlight Bookstore on September 5 at 7:30 p.m. Address: 686 Fulton St. between S. Eliot Place and S. Fulton Street, 718-246–0200, www.greenlightbookstore.com. He has also authored “American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon” and “The Scavenger’s Guide to Haute Cuisine.”
(Photo: The Agency Group)
