Eating What You Kill This Thanksgiving

What It Covers

New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro joins hunter and MeatEater host Steven Rinella for a duck hunting expedition in Montana, exploring the philosophy connecting hunting, conservation, environmentalism, and direct food sourcing through ancestral practices.

Key Questions Answered

• •Conservation funding model: Hunting licenses and related fees directly fund American wildlife conservation efforts, with hunters contributing disproportionately to habitat preservation and species recovery programs that benefit all wildlife, not just game animals.
• •Historical hunter role: Indigenous and ancestral hunters show zero remorse when taking game because death through starvation was the alternative to killing. For millions of years, successful hunting directly equated to family survival, making it a life-giving rather than life-taking act.
• •Ethical meat sourcing: Wild game lives completely free until instant death, contrasting with livestock born on concrete, fed optimized inputs, and processed at predetermined weights. The wild animal experiences a fuller, more natural existence before becoming food for humans.
• •Population mathematics: If every American killed one deer tomorrow, the country would face a two hundred million deer deficit. Modern population density makes universal hunting ecologically impossible, requiring agricultural systems to feed concentrated human populations beyond historical carrying capacity.