‘American Buffalo’ by Steven Rinella

Review by Bill Doughty––

America’s most famous living hunter-conservationist is Steven Rinella. He is the brain and heart of the MeatEater Netflix show, podcast, and franchise. Rinella believes in respect for nature, conservation, and the environment. And he sees a deep connection between us and our food.

On one of his shows Rinella takes former Navy SEAL and Navy Reservist Cmdr. Rorke Denver, for a hunt in Alaska for black bear.* Denver is a fellow author who starred in “Act of Valor.” They eventually find a bear, and when he looks through the rifle’s scope at the bear now coming closer, Denver pauses to appreciate the beauty and power of the life he is about to take.

Rinella has a similar moment when he sights a buffalo, as described in gripping detail in “American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon” (Spiegel & Grau, Doubleday, Random House; 2008).

A North American buffalo.

Lucky to have won a lottery for a hunting permit for wild buffalo, Rinella is luckier still to be one of a few who actually finds and shoots one. His journey in Alaska, eluding bears and other predators, battling the elements, and navigating dangerous waterways, is compelling. So is his moment of truth as he prepares to shoot. His careful butchering of the animal is presented in precise detail. Though written fourteen years ago –– before Rinella became a world-renowned figure –– this book reveals the talents of a gifted writer and outdoorsman.

But what makes “American Buffalo” truly great and lasting is the author’s panoramic view of time and a philosophical connection to nature and life. He looks unblinkingly at the devastating destruction and near extinction of bison and other species in North America, lamenting the wanton greed and shortsightedness of people who killed only for profit and trophy. Rinella eats what he kills.

In this photo from 1892, men stand next to and atop a pile of American bison skulls waiting to be ground up for fertilizer.

Like other hunters, he sees the animal’s skull as a kind of connection to life’s mysteries.

“Buffalo skulls were put to various uses by Indians, most of a spiritual or metaphysical nature. The buffalo skull was an especially potent symbol to many Plains Indians tribes, but not because it equaled death. Rather, a skull represented a form of rebirth to many tribes. To reduce a buffalo to its skeleton was like ushering the animal back to a sort of primordial starting line, or beginning. The clean skull allowed for continuity, like a blank canvas upon which future buffalo could be created…

“I’m not a particularly religious person, though I do sense an inkling of the spiritual when I look at this buffalo skull. Many people have tried to explain to me what they feel when they look at a crucifix of Torah scroll; it’s an emotion often described as a mixture of gratitude, devotion, continuity, and awe. Looking at a buffalo skull is probably the closest I’ll ever come to experiencing those feelings, however faintly, and I’m glad to have a taste of that…”

Rinella describes how he embraces the privilege of being alive for the relatively short time we have.

Alaska's Copper River Valley

He searches for meaning and symbols. He calls the landscape he hunts in a "trophy."

And he questions the connection between his reverence for the animal he hunts and his commitment to killing and eating it.

“In a historical sense, I suppose that my confused and convoluted relationship to the buffalo is nothing new. For the entirety of man’s existence in North America, we’ve struggled with the meaning of this animal, with the ways in which its life is intertwined with our own. I think of the first hunters who walked through some long-ago gap between glaciers and stumbled onto a landscape populated with strange and massive creatures. The buffalo was just one of many then, a giant among a host of other giants, but over time these many animals were whittled away by the forces of man and nature. Eventually the buffalo stood alone, like the winning contestant in a game show.

“The prize was humanity’s never-ending attention, which was ultimately a bittersweet award. For thousands of years, the first people of North America fed on the buffalo’s meat and wore the buffalo’s skin, and then made a deity of the animal as a way of reconciling their need to slaughter the thing that granted them life. My own European ancestors came to the New World and scoffed at the heathen nature of the Indians’ ideas, then stood by as the buffalo nearly vanished from the earth beneath their notion that the animal was an expendable gift of their own God, a commodity meant to get them started before stepping aside and letting ‘civilization’ bloom in the wilderness.”

Throughout this book, Rinella blends spirituality with superstition, history with mystery, and his own life’s experiences within the context of our shared science and reality.

“American Buffalo” opens with an extended soliloquy about Neil Young and his early band Buffalo Springfield.

In a fun and mind-bending “association game,” he links “For What It’s Worth," a song against the Vietnam War ; Dances with Wolves, filmed in Canada; Hernando Cortéz of Spain; Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux; Springfield rifles; the Civil War; Black Diamond, the buffalo on the American nickel coin; President Theodore Roosevelt, hunter and conservationist; and the city of Buffalo, New York.

"Buffalo," is the name of cities in eighteen states. But, Rinella notes, no wild buffalo lived near Buffalo, New York.

On Saturday, Buffalo was the site of another race-based mass shooting by a white supremacist with an AR-15 "assault-style" rifle. Today, President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visited Buffalo. Biden, a lifelong supporter of the Second Amendment, has asked Congress to pass legislation to require new background checks for gun buyers, and ban military-style "weapons of war" and large-capacity ammunition magazines.

Steven Rinella

Rinella does not hunt with AR-15s. He uses bolt-action rifles, pump shotguns, and bows and arrows for hunting. Rinella is an ethical hunter who calls himself “an evironmentalist with a gun.”

He became interested in environmental issues, according to a profile earlier this year in The New York Times by Malia Wollan, when one of his big brothers gave him a paperback of Aldo Leopold’s “A Sand County Almanac.”According to Wollan, “Most people read Leopold as belonging to the pantheon of American environmental writers, with the likes of Henry David Thoreau, Rachel Carson and John Muir. Rinella reads Leopold as a fellow hunter.” (Marjory Stoneman Douglas is another great environmentalist in that pantheon.)

On his latest podcast, Rinella discusses hunting, fishing, and books. He talks to Cameron Hanes about Hanes’s new book, “Endure: How to Work Hard, Outlast, and Keep Hammering,” with a foreword by Joe Rogan and afterword by David Goggins. Hanes says, “If you wish you could run farther and shoot straighter, this book is for you.”

Rinella, himself, is the author of a half-dozen books, with more planned for release in coming months and years, including books for children, outdoor cooking, and an “atlas for the outdoors.”

Steven Rinella, the “environmentalist with a gun,” is also a philosopher with a pen and a voice.

Some people, especially vegans and those who prefer not to think about where their super market food comes from, will be turned off by the whole MeatEater oeuvre. But that’s the beauty of American freedom, diversity, and the right to choose.

In the MeatEater episode with former Navy SEAL Rorke Denver, after Denver bags his bear, and just before he and Rinella skin and butcher it, Rinella expresses his appreciation for the service and sacrifice of Denver and other veterans who serve in the nation’s defense.

In “American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon” readers can discover an ethos of honor, courage, and commitment.

*(Top photo: Denver and Rinella trek their bear meat and fur out of the Alaskan wilderness in a scene from MeatEater, YouTube.)