Eating What You Kill This Thanksgiving

Here at “The Daily,” we take our annual Thanksgiving episode very
seriously.


A few years ago, we rang up an expert from the Butterball Turkey
Talk-Line, who told us that yes, in a pinch, you can cook
a turkey in the microwave. Last year, we invited ourselves over
to Ina Garten’s house to learn the timeless art of holiday
entertaining (Ina’s tip: flowers that match your napkins complete
a table.).


This year, determined to outdo ourselves, we traveled to Montana
to hunt our very own food. Our guest, Steven Rinella — perhaps
the country’s most famous hunter — is an avid conservationist and
a lifelong believer in eating what you kill.


What first drew us to Rinella was the provocative argument he put
forth in his best-selling book, “Meat Eater.”


“To abhor hunting,” he wrote, “is to hate the place from which
you came, which is akin to hating yourself in some distant,
abstract way.”


So, a few weeks ago, we spoke with Rinella at his podcast studio
in Bozeman, Mont, about the forces that turned him into what he
describes as an “environmentalist with a gun”. The next morning,
we hunted ducks with him, and then, inspired by Rinella, we ate
what we had killed.


Photo: Will Warasila for The New York Times


Audio Produced by Tina Antolini. Edited by Wendy Dorr. Engineered
by Efim Shapiro and Alyssa Moxley. Fact-checking by Susan Lee.
Original music by Daniel Powell and Marion Lozano. 


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