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.