S1 · E1 — Into the Clouds: Sitka Blacktail Deer
Hunter, author, cook and conservationist Steven Rinella treks into the world's most remote, beautiful regions, bringing game meat from field to table.
1. Into the Clouds: Sitka Blacktail Deer
Steve wants to hunt where few have hunted before. To gain access to pristine ground, he charters a float plane to drop him high in the Alpine zone of Alaska’s Coastal Rainforest at a little used landing spot. He plans to spend three days alone in the wild hunting for black tail deer. The primary challenges are steep and technically challenging terrain, drifting fog banks, and nearly incessant rain and snow. If he lands a black tail, Steve plans to cook up Rock-Pounded tenderloin to feast on before the float plane returns to bring him back to civilization.
2. The Sweetest Meat: Alaskan Black Bear
To find the best-tasting game meat, you have to earn it. As the cold Alaskan winter approaches, bears flock to the high country of Alaska's Chugach Range while feasting on cranberry and blueberry. As summer turns to fall, the bears have exhausted low-elevation fruit and their quest to fatten up pushes them into higher and less accesible terrain. The hard work and long hike pays off, as berry-fed black bears provide some of the finest tasting meat available to the American hunter. The meat is so good, that Steven Rinella plans to fry it in it’s own fat as a celebratory meal if he is lucky enough to land a bear on this trip.
3. The Water's Edge: Waterfowl in Alaska
For a waterfowler's dream hunt, Steven Rinella joins his friend, the wildlife biologist Brandt Meixell, on a river boat journey to some untouched Alaska wetlands in search ducks and geese. Using tactics ranging from decoy hunting to jump shooting, they try to fill their boat and their bellies with a constant supply of duck meat. Featured meal is willow-spit roasted whole duck.
4. The Rugged Peaks: Alaskan Mountain Goat
Every year, a handful of hunters draw a permit to hunt the Mills Creek region Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula. Steven Rinella holds one of the permits this year, and he and his brother Danny backpack into the mountains, into country they’ve never seen, in hopes of finding a billy goat. It’s a grueling hunt, and there’s the constant threat of losing your meat if the goat spills over a cliff.
5. Stalking the Grey Ghost: Arizona Coues Whitetail Deer
To hunt some of the most elusive game, the predator must become its prey. Steven Rinella drew a tag to hunt the elusive Coues Deer in the stark mountains of southern Arizona, where his spot and stalk skills will be pushed to the limit hunting these tiny, ghostlike deer. To successfully take a deer Steve will have to become equally invisible, quiet, and attuned to his surroundings...he will need to become a desert ghost. In tune with the local culture, Steve will pack a small kit of tortillas, chiles, and all the fixings to prepare fire-grilled heart tacos.
6. The New American Food Chain: Wild Pigs
Wild Hogs can thrive almost anywhere - just like Steve. On this trip, Steven Rinella travels to the Sacramento Valley in central California in search of challenge and seriously good food. 300 years ago Spanish settlers let a handful of pigs loose in order to turn acorns into bacon, and today harvesting a wild pig for food is nexus of wild living and seriously good food. Rinella will prepare a backcountry gourmet feast of Pork Loin roasted with Apples and Rosemary cooked in tinfoil over a fire.
7. Brotherhood, Badlands and Pack Llamas: Montana Mule Deer
Along with a trio of cantankerous and spit-hurling pack llamas, Steven Rinella, along with his brother Matt and good friend Matt Moison camp and hunt in the arid and frozen badlands of Eastern Montana for mule deer. Freezing cold temperatures and unforgiving topography add to the already-challenging job of finding and stalking a Mule Deer buck. In this environment the deer have all of the advantage: they can spot, smell, and hear hunters long before they are anywhere near shooting range. To combat the freezing temperatures, Rinella plans to make a hunter's stew to celebrate a successful hunt.
8. The Roughest Country: Texas Aoudad Sheep
Steven Rinella heads into the Texas backcountry after one of the continent's most elusive feral animals -- the Barbary sheep, or Aoudad, of North Africa. For most hunters, just glimpsing one of these animals is a trophy. If Steve is lucky enough to land one of these sheep, he plans to cook them up in traditional hunter-style over a fire.
9. Canyon Bottoms and Cookouts: Texas Javelina
Steven Rinella takes to the thorns and thickets of a West Texas canyon in search of javelina. Smelling the animals is easy, but getting a clear shot with a bow is a whole other story. Featured meal is boiled javelina with cactus pears.
10. Big Bucks and Small Game: Wisconsin Whitetail Deer
Steven Rinella heads to Wisconsin to spend a few days on his buddy’s historical family farm. He will enlist other locals to help him hunt for a big buck or tasty doe in the cold upper reaches of the state. Featured meal is Butterflied Venison Steaks and Hassenpfeffer (Peppered Hare Stew).
Steven Rinella
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