MeatEater's Steven Rinella on the Economic History of Hunting

What It Covers

MeatEater founder Steven Rinella explains how hunting shaped American economic history, from colonial deerskin trade worth more than tobacco to buffalo leather driving industrial revolution, and modern conservation funding through hunter excise taxes.

Key Questions Answered

• •Colonial commodity trade: Deerskin was the second largest export from American colonies before the Revolutionary War, worth approximately one dollar per hide when that represented significant cash, shipped primarily to English tanneries for breeches and gloves worn by affluent Europeans.
• •Buffalo extermination economics: Fifteen million buffalo were killed between 1872-1883 to produce industrial leather belting for factories. Hunters could kill twenty to thirty animals daily at three dollars fifty cents per hide, yet prices never spiked after extinction because alternative leather sources remained abundant.
• •Conservation funding model: American hunters voluntarily imposed an eleven to thirteen percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition purchases in the 1930s. This self-taxation, combined with hunting license fees, funds all fifty state fish and wildlife agencies without general taxpayer money, creating a unique industry-funded conservation system.
• •Wildlife ownership structure: Unlike European systems where landowners control animals on their property, American wildlife belongs to all citizens regardless of land ownership. State and federal agencies administer this public resource through regulated hunting seasons, preventing the tragedy of commons that nearly eliminated multiple species by 1900.