Steven Rinella Expands Storytelling Horizons with Outdoor Channel's 'Rough Cuts' Debut

While there haven't been too many empty tailgates during the hunting career of renowned outdoors communicator Steven Rinella, there have been a few times when the hunting and wild food wizard has been forced to eat a bowl of tag soup.

Thankfully, however, those occurrences are few and far between as Rinella, the 50-year-old architect of the TV show "MeatEater" and the outdoor company by the same name roams across North America and turns adventures afield into amazing cuisine with the chief ingredients being big game, waterfowl, upland game, fish and more.

Not every wild menu plan has been a hit in front of the TV cameras, but enough have succeeded to make the Montana resident a well-known name in the outdoor world.  While it might come as a surprise to some, Rinella really doesn't consider himself a TV star. In fact, he began his career with dreams of being a writer.

“When I started, I went to writing school,” he said, with a smile I could almost hear on the other end of the phone.

Rinella isn't kidding, although he made a few pit stops along the way: Muskegon Community College in the early 1990s, followed by a mid-1990s stint at Lake Superior State University before a final spell at Grand Valley State University. That “writing school” was the University of Montana, from which he graduated in 2000 with a Master of Fine Arts in creative non-fiction.

Finding His Voice

While that might seem a long way removed from a mountainside where a skinning knife is working overtime, Rinella’s heroes in the outdoors world have always been writers he liked and wanted to fashion himself after. If you’ve ever read the works of Robert Ruark, Jack O’Connor, and Ernest Hemingway, then you might understand Rinella’s desire to bring a literary sensibility to the outdoors experience.

But along the way, Rinella discovered he was first and foremost a storyteller, and that was true no matter what the content platform was. He also learned that instead of trying to emulate someone else that he admired, he needed to be true to his own voice and share that voice with the world.

Throughout his career, Rinella has certainly found his literary voice, writing numerous magazine pieces and 10 books that include "The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine," "American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon," "MeatEater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter," and a series of wild game cookbooks and outdoors guides that cover everything from processing wild game to raising outdoors kids in an inside world and even how to survive and use wilderness skills if you get caught in an outdoors pickle.

Rinella’s MeatEater podcast ranks among the nation's best sports podcasts, a list that includes heavyweights like media giant Bill Simmons, NFL greats Jason and Travis Kelce, former Florida and Ohio State college football coach Urban Meyer, and ESPN College GameDay superstar Pat McAfee.

Rinella has also been the chief architect of the "MeatEater" television show, before other platforms were added to the mix a few years later. Today, the show can be found weekly on Outdoor Channel as well as MyOutdoorTV, to name a few.

The half-hour program is more of an adventurous travelogue than a strict hook-and-bullet how-to, taking viewers deep into the wild outback where a downed javelina gets cooked in its own stomach over an open mesquite wood fire. Or, it might be a Wyoming sage grouse and jackrabbit, each cooked over a gas-powered camp stove with fresh sage and other natural ingredients seasoning the fresh cuts of meat. Or it could be a back forty Virginia farm where a hammer shotgun, hand-poured shot pellets, and wingshooting for doves and pigeons form the wild groceries list that Rinella cooks up to the delight of his guests.

No matter where the adventure occurs, Rinella is the guide, informing viewers of what is happening, what matters in terms of the game animals and their habitat stewardship needs, and, of course, how to turn a downed big-game critter, duck or goose, upland bird, or something else into a delectable in-the-field meal. Little of this takes place in a vacuum, as Rinella often hunts with a guest, playing part-time guide, chief cook and confidant as the hunting quest plays out, and counselor when things don’t go as planned.

Rinella’s formula for television success has obviously worked for more than a dozen years now. His "MeatEater" show is one of the most popular TV efforts ever aired in the outdoors space. The show continues to draw in legions of fans, and more than one—yup, I’m talking about yours truly—has sat down and taken careful notes about how to duplicate a hunting adventure as well as in-the-field culinary experiences.

New Direction

Even as successful as Rinella has been with "MeatEater," he knows he wants to trust his voice again and do more. That moment will come when his crew delivers a brand new show, Rough Cuts with Steven Rinella, which premieres on Monday, Nov. 4, 2024.

Found on platforms like Outdoor Channel, MyOutdoorTV and MeatEater’s YouTube Channel, this six-episode series will take a bit of a different approach, going behind the scenes for the hunt and the filming process, something viewers can see with each week’s new episode that airs on Monday night beginning at 8 p.m. ET.

Rinella has no trepidation about where the new show might go, trusting his instincts like he did earlier this century.

“When we started "MeatEater," I had a very well-intentioned individual, and one who was very knowledgeable about this industry, that told me that what we were wanting to do wouldn’t work, that it needed to be 90 percent whitetails,” said Rinella with a slight chuckle. “We didn’t do that, as you know.”

Instead, Rinella and his crew have produced a wide-ranging show that developed a unique style, voice and formula. It’s been a sort of A-to-Z linear storytelling approach about various hunts, a pathway that has obviously worked in a variety of different settings for a dozen-plus years now.

“I love ‘MeatEater,’ and we will certainly continue to make more,” said Rinella. “But we also have a certain set of obligations to the viewers to take a chance, to get into some subjects we haven’t gotten into and to get into some different subject matter with a fresh approach to film some episodes in a way we haven’t done before.”

In following a bit of a different script in the storytelling process, longtime "MeatEater" viewers can expect to see the familiar with an early-year Coues deer hunt in Sonora, Mexico. But the storytelling process will be a bit different this time as "Rough Cuts" viewers will notice. One example is during a mule deer hunt where Rinella looks at the practice and ethics of long-range shooting and attempts to answer the modern-day hunting question of how far is too far when it comes to targeting big game.

There will also be a mixed bag that includes a look at fur trapping, rattling in rut-crazed whitetail bucks and plenty more throughout "Rough Cuts" six-week run. It promises to be more great Steven Rinella storytelling ability—this time with a bit of a different television twist.

“I hope people are going to like it because there’s some really fun stuff in there,” said Rinella. “I’m excited about it, and the people I work with like it too. So, if it doesn’t work, my apologies, but give me the benefit of the doubt, and I think you’ll get a real kick out of it. And if you don’t, then stay tuned.”

If that sounds like a shift in Rinella’s outdoor content production priorities, never fear because there’s certainly plenty more ahead for "MeatEater" fans. There will also be more podcasts, new gear from MeatEater’s outdoor brands (First Lite, Phelps Game Calls, FHF Gear and Dave Smith Decoys), and top-shelf television content that lures viewers. And there will also be plenty more writing ahead, something Rinella says he plans to do until the very end.

“I’ll probably write until I die,” he said.

With that idea in mind, just how does one of the modern hunting game’s best-known icons want to be remembered someday? Well, let’s just say some viewers might be surprised, although most can certainly relate to his answer.

“In a life kind of way, as a dad who raised good, kind kids,” said Rinella. “As for professionally, I guess I’d want something chiseled into my tombstone that when you look at all that I’ve done in the different formats, that I got where I was trying to go and I accomplished what I was trying to get done.”

Rinella says his life and outdoor communication career have just sort of happened, and he never really remembers coming to an intersection where he had to go one way or the other.

“When I was 20, I didn’t even hope for or know or think about what things would look like now,” said Rinella. “I did what made the most sense in the moment.”

And now, as another chapter in Rinella’s outdoor content career begins to unfold on Nov. 4, millions of viewers will watch and likely agree that, once again, Rinella’s gut instinct has been correct.

Even though not everything Rinella does actually turns to gold, enough of it does. And that’s good enough to keep his MeatEater enterprise growing and millions of loyal fans smiling and coming back for more. And all because of a TV legend who simply wanted to be a great writer when it all began.

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