MeatEater

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.