Steven Rinella

Steven Rinella is an outdoorsman, writer, and television personality known for translating the hunting lifestyle to a wide variety of audiences. He is the author of The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine, American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, and most recently, Meat Eater: Adventures from the Life of an American Hunter. In addition to writing, he is the host of MeatEater, a television series on The Sportsman Channel.

Early life

Steven Rinella was born in Twin Lake, Michigan on February 13, 1974. He grew up in Twin Lake along with his two older brothers, Matthew and Daniel Rinella, who were taught to hunt and fish at an early age by their father. As a child, Rinella was an avid reader of historical narrative and tall tales about the American wilderness, especially the exploits of his hero, Daniel Boone. He began fishing at the age of three and shot his first squirrel at eight and his first deer at thirteen. He trapped furbearing animals for the commercial markets from the time he was ten until he was twenty-two. Rinella graduated from Reeths Puffer High School in 1992 and claims to have chosen the colleges he attended according to the leniency of their schedules and their proximity to good hunting grounds. He finished his college degree at Grand Valley State University in December, 1996, after attending classes at Muskegon Community College and Lake Superior State University. He received a Masters of Fine Arts in 2000 from the University of Montana-Missoula.