MeatEater's Steven Rinella on the Economic History of Hunting

Tracy Alloway (0:00)

Hey there, Odd Lots listeners. It is that time of the year again. We are going to be doing a call-in show on the podcast. You can ask us any of your burning questions.

Joe Weisenthal (0:12)

That's right, you wanna ask us about finance markets and economics, go for it. You wanna ask us about the year in podcasting, go for it. You wanna ask about where Tracy is with growing chicken, or raising chickens on her versioning farm in Connecticut, go for it. This is your chance to ask us anything.

Tracy Alloway (0:33)

Joe's favorite cut of steak, right?

Joe Weisenthal (0:36)

My favorite cut of steak, my favorite Chinese restaurant in the East Village. It's all fair game.

Tracy Alloway (0:40)

All right. All you have to do is send a voice memo with your question, your name, your age and your location to oddlotsatbloomberg.net.

Joe Weisenthal (0:50)

Deadline to submit is December 17th, so get them in as soon as you can.

Tracy Alloway (0:54)

We're looking forward to hearing what you have to ask, and yeah, that's coming up.

SPEAKER_3 (1:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Tracy Alloway (1:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (1:22)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (1:23)

Joe, I have a pop quiz on American history for you.

Joe Weisenthal (1:27)

Oh, God.

Tracy Alloway (1:28)

Are you ready?

Joe Weisenthal (1:28)

Go on, go on.

Tracy Alloway (1:29)

Who was Daniel Boone?

Joe Weisenthal (1:33)

Did he have like a hat that was cool? He was like, I just think it was like someone-

Tracy Alloway (1:38)

A raccoon hat, yes.

Joe Weisenthal (1:39)

A raccoon hat, and he was probably an outdoors guy who probably didn't hang out in the cities very much. That's what I think of. Besides the hat and imagining him out in the wilderness somewhere, I have no, I don't know what year he lived in, anything beyond that, maybe 1800s, I don't know.

Tracy Alloway (1:52)

So the one fact that you know about Daniel Boone is actually, I think, contested whether or not he actually wore the raccoon cap. But do you know what he was doing when he was outdoors?

Joe Weisenthal (2:04)

No, no, no.

Tracy Alloway (2:06)

He was hunting.

Joe Weisenthal (2:07)

Okay, I guess I could have guessed that. I would have guessed that.

Tracy Alloway (2:09)

He was something called a long hunter.

Joe Weisenthal (2:11)

I don't know what that is.

Tracy Alloway (2:12)

He went on really long expeditions to hunt. Do you know what he was hunting?

Joe Weisenthal (2:17)

Nope, raccoons.

Tracy Alloway (2:19)

No, apparently not. Deer, white-tailed deer. And this is something that I think, everyone has heard the name Daniel Boone, but almost no one can actually remember one thing about him. what he was doing. And people also forget that a lot of American history is built not on manufacturing and farming necessarily, but on hunting.

Joe Weisenthal (2:42)

Have we ever done a hunting episode?

Tracy Alloway (2:43)

We haven't. And I find this whole part of US history so fascinating, and it actually really is intertwined with even how we think about money. So do you know where the term a buck came from? Lend me a buck. Give me a buck.

Joe Weisenthal (2:59)

Well, now I imagine it's probably from a deer.

Tracy Alloway (3:02)

Yeah.

Joe Weisenthal (3:02)

But had it not been for this intro in the context, I actually would have had no idea.

Tracy Alloway (3:06)

Yeah. So hunting is actually embedded in the way we talk about money. So that's what we're going to be talking about.

Joe Weisenthal (3:13)

I can't wait. A whole new avenue for us.

Tracy Alloway (3:15)

And I have to say, just on a personal note, something has happened to me recently, which is I have completely flipped on deer. I used to like them. I used to look out the window and be like, oh, these graceful animals, aren't they beautiful? But as of a week ago, they ate my entire newly planted garden and I hate them.

Joe Weisenthal (3:35)

Yeah, I get the impression that a lot of people, their view of deer flips pretty quickly when they're actually living in a location where they're prevalent. Like, it's like, oh, they're cute. Maybe you saw a movie about them or something like this. Like, oh, who wants to hunt the deer? And then you confront them and you're like, maybe we need a little bit of population management, so to speak, with the deer community.

Tracy Alloway (3:57)

So my solution to this problem, I don't hunt personally. The only thing I hunt is like leftover Thanksgiving pumpkins on my property, which we target shoot. But we have a friend who loves to hunt. And so he's going to be on our property hunting deer. And if you want some fresh venison, then let me know.