December 15, 2025 • 54 mins
When we think about America’s economic rise, we usually point to agriculture or the industrial revolution. But in the early days of colonization, one of the biggest economic drivers wasn’t crops or factories — it was animal products. Deerskins were a booming trade that pushed hunters into new frontiers. In the early 1800s, beaver pelts became a fashion craze. And of course, later that century, we nearly hunted buffalo to extinction in another frenzy of resource extraction. On this episode, we talk to Steven Rinella, author and founder of MeatEater, about this overlooked chapter in US economic history, plus how the hunting economy functions today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, they're aud Loots listeners. It is that time of
the year again. We are going to be doing a
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Joe's favorite cut of steak, right.
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Speaker 6 (01:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Joe, I have a pop quiz on American history for you.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
Oh godady go on.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Who was Daniel Boone?
Speaker 5 (01:33):
Did you have look at a hat that was cool?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
He was like I just think it was like someone
raccoon hat, raccoon hat, and he was probably an outdoors
guy who probably didn't hang out in cities very much.
So 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 eighteen hundreds, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
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 out doors?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
He was hunting?
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Okay, I guess I could guessed.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That he was something called a long hunter. Mean, he
went on really long expeditions to hunt. Do you know
what he was hunting?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Nope?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Raccoons, no, apparently not deer okay, white tailed deer.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
And this is something that I think.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You know, everyone has heard the name Daniel Boom, but
almost no one can actually remember what he was doing.
And people also forget that you know, a lot of
American history is built not on manufacturing and farming necessarily,
but on hunting.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
I don't have we ever done a hunting episode.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
We have it, and I find 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?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Well, now I imagine it's probably from a deer. Yeah,
But had it not been for this intro in the context,
I actually would have had no idea.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So hunting is actually embedded in the way we talk
about money. So that's what we're going to be talking about.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
So I can't wait a whole new avenue for us.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
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 cute,
maybe you saw a movie about them or something like that.
It's like, oh, who's to hunt the deer? And then
you confront them and you're like, maybe we need a
little bit of a population management, so to speak.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
That's a deer community.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
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.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
But we have a.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Friend who loves to hunt. Yeah, and so he's going
to be on our property hunting deer. And if you
want some fresh venice I do, then let me know.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Have you arranged a deal with him where he can
keep as much as you want? Like you, does he
tie you twenty percent or whatever it is?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He pays us in meat, yeah, which is actually great
at the moment because beef prices are so insane.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
You're so lucky you're coal meat.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Anyway, I'm blessed in natural resources, just like America. That's right,
all right, Well, I'm happy to say we have the
perfect guest to talk about all of this. Someone who
I'm very excited to be talking to.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Actually, we have Steven Ronella.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
He is the author and founder of Meat Eater and
knows all about hunting and all about this particular aspect
of US economic history. So Steve, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Hey, thank you for having me on. I'm dying to
jump in and off for clarifications and corrections on our
friend Daniel Boone.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Tell us everything I got wrong, and Dantro just go
for it.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah. Boone did not like coonskin caps. That was a
thing that was added on later through Disney depictions. Boone
wore a wide brimmed hat made from beaver wool felt,
which is still the material of choice for high end
cowboy hats. Raccoons there was a commodity for a long
time in different tallos and greases. They used to hunt
(05:30):
raccoons and possums and actually render the oil from them.
Just as an example, I'm holding in my hand right
now at one court jar of rendered coon grease, which
I made for a buddy mine just as a present.
What do you do candles, Well, I've done any of it. Yeah, yeah,
you definitely make soap candles. You can cook with it.
In fact, when the English were first strategizing around establishing
(05:51):
their first colony in the New World, and they had
a sort of a list of ways that they might
monetize this colony. On that list was like animal oils,
animal greases. So yeah, Boone was in the deerskin trade,
but he also was in the bear grease trade and
the animal oil trade, as was Davy Crockett, who wore
(06:11):
the coonskin cap but was kind of mocked by his contemporaries.
But he was a showboat and he wore it to
create this atmosphere of this every man's backwoodsman, but it
wasn't regarded as a practical hat was drawn to himself.
He was a showboat. Crockett was a showboat. Boone was
(06:32):
a professional.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I love the idea of all these like manly pioneering
hunters critiquing each other's outfits.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
I also liked the idea. I also liked the idea
of like, oh, when hunters get together, they argue about
are you a Daniel Boone man or Dami Krockman.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Oh, your guy was a total showboat. He was a fraud.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
No one would have ever worn that had and the
other oh no, he did this yeah, yeah, all of these.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
My dear friend whom I'm given that one of my
jars of koon grease too. He is a crocket man
and I'm a boon Man, and we fight about this
all time. I'm a boon The other thing is one
last comment, just to get caught up. Were you to
formalize the arrangement with your deer hunter, if you were
to formalize that arrangement where there was an expected quid
(07:17):
pro quo around deer meat for access, you would be
in violation of the law. You need to keep it
non formalized. Okay, you can gift him access, he can
gift you meet. But the minute you formalize that transaction,
you would be commodifying wild game meat, which is illegal
in this country.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
Important, Tracy just admitted to a crime.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I've already reported.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Her specifically said, we don't have a formal agreement, we're
trading informally.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
This is I've already learned so much on this.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
I'm like, if we ended the episode right here, I
would have like learned so many more things that I
didn't know when I woke up this.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And you'd be looking for a new co host because
you locked.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
To be literally imprisoned for accepting venison.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Okay, well, let's not stop here, let's keep going.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
Steve.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
You know you mentioned that when England was colonizing the US,
one of the big draws was animal grease and animal products.
Talk to us a little bit more, because I think
when people think about the colonization of the New World,
a lot of people think about tobacco and farming and agriculture,
but hunting and animal products were actually a really big
(08:26):
part of it.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, in the early colonial period, one of our biggest
ports was, you know, coming out of Charleston, out of
South Carolina, so at a time in the late colonial period,
so prior to the Revolutionary War, deer skins in value
and economic value, white tailed deer skins were the second
largest commodity coming out of the out of the colonies,
(08:51):
the first one being rice. So the animal grease thing
was a thing, but it was dwarfed by the deer
skin trade. If you look at these old paintings you
see of like the King of England around the time
of the colonial period, you'll sometimes notice that they're wearing
a white breech or a white pant, a seeming white pant.
(09:12):
That's buckskin. Buckskin was used as workwear, but it was
also something that the affluent individuals wore, those white breeches,
those white buckskin pants. It was a preferred material for
clothing making. There's a historian Mac Ferriger, and he wrote
a piece about the early colonial period and he remarked
it like, among colonial Americans, so Euro American, Colonial Americans
(09:35):
and Native Americans alike, black bear meat was the food
of choice. Huh. Deer skin was the material of choice.
So they were hunting bears, that was the good stuff
to eat. Deer were what you made your clothes from.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
I'm surprised about the bear meat.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Does bear taste good?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, it's very beef like in texture. It's phenomenal. It's
one of those things that in some levels there's a
cultural taboo around it, as you'll see like Florida right
now is running a very controversial black bear hunt. People
get worked up about it. But yeah, it's an excellent food.
It was a very prized food at the time. Another
(10:15):
business that Daniel Boone was into was producing a product
called bear bacon, which was consumed domestically. Yes, smoked bacon.
It would be plausible that Ben Franklin. He could have
walked down to a market in Philadelphia and he would
have been able to purchase bear bacon or smoked black
bear hands. It was a very popular food item. Bear
(10:36):
can carry tricknosis. Most cases of trychnosis in the US
today do not come from hogs. It mostly comes from
black bear. You have to cook it. So for that reason,
a lot of people have an idea that it should
be avoided. But my family we prodigious amounts of it.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Wow, I want to Can I come by sometime and
have some bear bacon or bear steak or whatever?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Anytime, man, anytime I would knock on the door, I
will cook it. I will cook it for you and
I can fry you someone in bear grease. If you think.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Let's do a video series, let's go, let's go on
the road. I already have like a billion questions. Can
we just back up a second, like for the listeners,
Can you tell us your story a little bit?
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Why are we talking to you? What's your background?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Oh? So yeah, I grew up in Michigan. I was
born into a hunting family. That was kind of our identity.
My father was a very avid hunter. He came home
from World War two and just hunted, and I was
brought up around it. I pursued a career first in trapping.
Throughout high school, I was convinced I was going to
be a fur trapper. I became interested in writing, went
(11:40):
to graduate school for writing starting in two thousand. When
I finished school, I became a professional long form magazine writer,
started doing books, and all my stuff has always been
in the outdoor space. Eventually got into television, started doing
a show called Meat Eater, and we turned me into
a full fledged business. We have a media arm where
(12:04):
I spend the bulk of my time, but we also
work and we have a lot of consumer products. We
have four outdoor gear companies which live under the Meat
Eater umbrella. And I've intended to make a living in
the outdoors when I was a kid, and I mostly
succeeded at that. I get spent a lot of time outdoors,
and I get spent a lot of time thinking about
issues of how hunting plays into contemporary American culture, and
(12:28):
how hunting shaped our country and shaped our national experience.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, I got to plug Steve's I think it's an
audible series on the history of hunting in the US.
Where there's a whole episode on Long Hunters that I've
been listening to. Also one on like Buffalo in the
eighteen hundreds. They're really good.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, it's called Me Eater's American History and it's an
audio original through Random House Penguin. Yeah, and we've done
three so far on different commodity trades in American history,
all around wildlife.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So one thing that I did learn from the audible
series on Long Hunters is the American hunting system in
the sort of sixteen hundred seventeen hundreds, when colonials started
coming over to what would become the United States, was
very different to how hunting was done in Europe. Right.
(13:18):
In Europe, hunting was like the purview of landowners and
rich people. But in America, I guess there were no
rules and everyone could hunt animals.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, you know, good way to think about it. I
often remind people to think back to certain details of
the Robin Hood story, where you have the king's deer, okay,
and part of Robin Hood's gig right is he'll go
hunt on the king's estate to get venison, which you
would then distribute to the poor. As part of the
robin Hood narrative. So yeah, in England and in Western Europe,
(13:49):
by that point things were heavily developed. Most the woods,
the wilderness was gone. Having access to wild landscapes was
something that was relegated on to the most wealthy. You
could be have your eyes gouged out, you could be
executed for hunting animals that belonged to the aristocracy. So
(14:10):
when American colonists started showing up, like Boone's family came
from England, they did not arrive here as hunters. They
did not arrive with a hunting background. They adopted it.
The colonists, like Boone's family, for instance, they were Quakers,
his people were. But the American colonists were as impacted
(14:32):
by Native Americans as Native Americans were impacted by American colonists.
You could see it in Boone's dress. He would plait
his hair, he would braid his hair, he would grease
his hair with bear grease. He would wear buckskin. He
would hunt the animals that Native Americans taught him to hunt.
He would cook them in that way. He would make
his clothes in that way. So they adopted hunting as
(14:53):
a way to make a living on the American landscape.
Some of them were farmers through and through. Some became
hunters through and through, and they were at odds. These
hunting people, these kind of wild men like Boone in
the colonial period would always be hovering at the western
edge of colonial expansion. England would try to rein in
(15:14):
these American colonists. They would feel that they were kind
of drifting too far out of colonial influence. And these
American colonists like Boone, who were hunting for a living,
would cause a lot of tension with Native Americans, and
so the colonial powers didn't like these guys living this
frontier wild existence because again they were drifting away from
(15:37):
the crown and they were causing animosity with Native Americans.
Would then blame the English for these incursions onto their landscape.
So it was like a rich kind of area of
adoption of a wilderness aesthetic while still trying to live,
you know, under colonial rule in Boone's early days.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Are you watching the new ken Burns documentary at all?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
No, but everyone else's it seems like I'm started there.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I've watched the first episode so far, and it's just
interesting because obviously, you know, the version of independence that
we learned about in school, was just incredibly simplified. And
this idea that there really were all different kinds of
tensions between the colonists and the sort of norms and
the laws and the rules of the old country really striking.
(16:39):
I hadn't really appreciated this dimension before about the hunting,
but I think, you know, it really shows how I
guess from day one there was a certain I don't
know if egalitarian was a democratic element of colonial society.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
That sounds very.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Distinctly different from where they were coming from.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, there's an interesting passage where Washington, George Washington, criticizes
folks like Boone. He criticizes these frontier individuals that are
living off the land out on the frontier and market hunting.
He criticizes them because he feels like a tip of
the hat would push them over to the Spanish or whoever,
(17:21):
whatever other colonial entity was out there. He did not
feel that they were adequately American. And then, as much
as Boone has been adopted, there's one one guy joke
that Boone has become an honorary founding father. As much
as Boone has been adopted as this American icon, Boone
in his contemporary so again, speaking of these long hunters,
these colonial white tailed deer skin hunters. They would not
(17:42):
have identified as American loosely, but they would identify it
in family clans. And they were not what you would
call if you look at around the revolutionary period, you
would not refer to these guys as patriots. They were
opportunists and they were mostly beholden two small villages made
(18:03):
up of people. They were related to these networks. That
was their allegiance.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Didn't Boone actually end up striking a deal with the
Spanish for land. That's one thing I learned from the series.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah. Again, like the same way, like he's an honorary
filing father. Boone in some ways is the father of Kentucky.
He was not the first, but one of the first
people to go through this thing called the Cumberland Gap
and start hunting in what is now Kentucky. He got
fed up with the government there. He got fed up
with America. When Spain had the Louisiana territory, Spain was
trying to fill the place up. He struck a deal
(18:36):
with Boone and his people where they would become subjects
of the Spanish crown in exchange for money, and so
Boone moved out, and he moved west of the Missouri
River and became a Spanish subject. He swore that he
would never step foot back in Kentucky again when Boone died.
(18:57):
So Boone lived through the Louisiana purchase and became again
an American just through the fact that that America bought
the Louisiana purchase. He died and was buried in Missouri
and was later exhumed and brought back to Kentucky, even
though in his lifetime he said I'll never step foot
back there. So people like to say Missouri has his heart,
(19:17):
meaning his soft tissues, Kentucky has his bones. And there's
like this little ongoing dispute about whether or not they
really dug up the right guy and reburied him. But yeah,
Boone willfully left American rule to go live under a
different crown. He was married to the hunt, and he
was married to his family clan. That was how he identified.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
It's super interesting. Tell me about a long hunt. What
are the logistics? So it's difficult. What are the logistics
of a long hunt?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, the logistics of a long hunt. It was very decentralized,
unlike if we have time and we get into the
beaverskin trade. Of these American icons like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith,
John Colder, these guys that were engaged in the Rocky
out In beaver trade, which was very formalized, very top down.
The long hunter area, so this colonial deer skin hunting
(20:07):
area was very decentralized. A group of long hunters were
probably mostly family networks, so it'd be maybe a patriarch,
his kids, his sons in law, okay, his cousins, and
they would embark on these very long trips. They would
leave these frontier colonial establishments, let's say the Yadkin Valley
(20:30):
in North Carolina. A ton of long hunters came out
of the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina. They would travel
over the Appalachian Range and they would drop down into
Kentucky portions of Tennessee and they would hunt deer skins.
They might be gone six months. I think Boone's longest
long hunt was two years. It was all based off
(20:53):
pack trains, so everything was based off of using horses
to carry stuff, and they would build up a year's
worth of deer skins. In the winter, the deer skins
weren't as valuable, so they'd switch their efforts to beaver
and otter trapping. They would transport all those deer skins
back across the Apple Aachian divide and sell them a
(21:14):
good price. A way to think about it again is
they were worth about a dollar, which was a lot
of money back then, and some would go to tanneries
in Philadelphia, Boston and New York, but the bulk would
be shipped to tanneries in England to be turned into
leather for making breeches and gloves and other high end items.
(21:37):
And that was the economy and they had. These were
farming people, but this was their only access to cash.
Much of what they did was black market, to be
honest with you, in two ways. When they would cross
the Apple Achians to go hunt, they were doing it
against the wishes of the crown, which again did not
want to antagonize Native Americans because it caused warfare and trouble.
(21:59):
They were also doing it in violation of Native American
claims to the land. So when they would go into Kentucky,
they were hunting on say, Shawnee land, so they were
sort of doubly trespassing. But that's how they made their
living and it allowed them to live very isolated existences,
and it gave them a cash economy so they could
buy guns and other things that they couldn't trade corn for.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Wait, I'm going to take the bait on the beaver
trade that you just mentioned, So talk to us. How
is that formalized and how does it contrast with the
long hunters.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, the beaver skin trade had been going for a
long long time, so you know, when the Dutch first
came to Manhattan, one of the primary things they were
after is beaver skins. Beaver's it's surprisingly easy to wipe
them out. So if you look at American history from
the colonial period on, we kind of have we had
a way because of unregulated trapping, We had a way
that we would that ahead of civilization would mark a
(22:53):
depopulation of beavers. So we fast forward up to the
Lewis and Clark expedition. Here we do the Louisiana Purchase.
Thomas Jefferson dispatches the Lewis and Clark Expedition to go
find a mostly water route to the Pacific and also
to look at natural resource abundance. Right, Lewis and Clark
come back and they report mind boggling numbers of beavers
(23:16):
in the inner Mountain West. All right, right away, right
on their heels, goes a bunch of American trappers out
to explore this land and trade in beavers. A beaver
pelt was, you know, going for maybe three bucks. That's
more than you'd make in a day as a laborer.
It was real money. But guys got onto it and
(23:37):
they formalized it, and people would go out and get investors. Okay,
a group would go out and get investors. Well, for instance, Astor,
if you go to Astor Place in New York, Astor
was America's first homemade millionaire. Astor's first business was the
beaver trade. So guys would get investors. They would run
advertisements to hire trappers. If you look at these really
famous mountain men like, for instance, Jim Bridger, these guys
(24:01):
answered an ad in a newspaper. They ran an ad
that says looking for one hundred enterprising young men. And
these young guys, some of them escaped indentured servants, people
running away from apprenticeships, would go higher on as a
fur brigade, and they would hire on as a day rate,
and they would be backed by financial backers, and they
(24:23):
would send these young men out to the inner Mountain
west to trap beaver as a day labor. In time,
some of these guys would spin off and do their
own thing and go independent. But it was a very
formalized structure that was sending these young men out to
catch beaver in order to bring them back, and they
would be exported and turned into wolffeldt. If you look
(24:46):
back to Abe Lincoln's hat. Okay, Abe Lincoln didn't wear
beaver wolfelt hat. He wore a silk hat, which we'll
get to, but that style of hat was the rage
in Europe. All sophisticated men, many poor people who aspired
to look more affluent, would wear one of these top hats.
They were made from beaver wool felt. So that was
(25:07):
a huge export industry coming out of it. And again
it became formalized. And what killed it is they were
too effective. Two things killed the trade. One, they were
running out of beaver anyway, and then a fashion change
crashed the industry. And it was probably a good thing
that it did, because they may have pretty much exterminated
(25:30):
the animals from the landscape. I probably got a little
ahead of.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
There, but no, that's great that's great.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
And actually the thing about the fashion change reminds me
of one of my all time favorite bubbles market bubbles,
which was the ostrich feather bubble in the eighteen hundreds
where women would want ostrich feathers for their hats and
they became really, really expensive, and then the bubble burst
and all these ostrich farmers, mostly in Africa, I think,
(25:54):
went bust.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, that was they called the plenary trade and all
kinds of shorebirds and and it's hard to picture now
that you could just without regulation and coastal areas of
the country go hunt herons egrets to sell the feathers
to adorn hats.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
You know, it's funny when you think about like conservation
efforts or you think about endangered species, all these ideas
feel very modern to me, Like, you know, maybe they
started thinking about this stuff in the nineteen seventies or whatever,
but obviously that's not the case. How early on in
the process of the hunting or hunting history did people
(26:33):
start becoming aware of the fact that without some sort
of regulation or laws or curves, that this natural resources
could be irreversibly depleted.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Surprisingly early, And I'll get to some of the earliest examples,
but I want to clarify what I think motivations might
have been. Some of the earliest examples we see of
a conservation effort would even be in the colonial period.
And I was trying to put some parameters around deer hunting,
because again, these were valuable animals for people to use
(27:05):
for material. So when we see people trying to get
to put in hunting seasons, like not to kill them
when they're fawning, when they're dropping their fawns, or put
in restrictions about outsiders coming into hunt, they probably weren't
motivated by some sort of environmental ethic. They were motivated
by guarding and protecting a resource. When you start to
(27:25):
see an emergence of a real, more emotional, spiritual environmental
movement is in the late eighteen hundreds, and its birth
is this. It's birth is gentlemen hunters such as Theodore Roosevelt. Okay,
you have these gentlemen hunters that want to connect to
this piece of American history or American culture, but they're
(27:47):
recognizing that unregulated hunting, this unregulated market hunting that we've
been discussing, is going to make hunting impossible because these
unregulated commodity hunters are going to drive everything to extinction.
So in order to save wildlife and save hunting, which
they recognized as a very important piece of American culture,
(28:09):
they needed to sort of bifurcate American hunting efforts into
sport hunting which was regulated and had an environmental ethic
or a conservation ethic, and unregulated market hunting, which is
what we've been discussing. One of the great ironies is
this one of the earliest conservation organizations that Theodore Roosevelt
(28:30):
was involved in, involved in founding, involved in running is
called the Boone and Crocket Club, and they're still a
major player in American conservation today. What's ironic is the
names Boone and Crocket, which Americans today here and they
think of hunting. But these were just the kind of
individuals that the Boone and Crocket Club needed to stop
(28:51):
in order to save American hunting. Was these market hunters
who were out there doing nothing to compensate the American
people for the wildlife they were taking, and they would
kill it all, and once they killed it all, they'd
move a little bit west and kill all of that,
and they about undid American wildlife.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, so there's a tragedy of the commons dynamic going
on here where you have this public resource, which is animals,
and if too many people tap into it, the public
resource ceases to exist. Can you talk a little bit
about the buffalo trade, because I think this is probably
the biggest example of that dynamic actually happening.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, it's the biggest, most regrettable example. And when I
say it's for drettable is because by this point we knew,
we meaning news reading, engaged educated Americans knew where this
was headed. Okay, and I'll back up a little bit.
So if we get to the time of European contact
(29:49):
in the New World, there were maybe the fashionable number
today is somewhere around thirty to forty million American bison
or buffalo, those words are the same thing. Million to
thirty million buffalo on the American landscape. By the end
of the Civil War, they've been removed from the eastern
part of the country. So you know, at a time
(30:10):
there would have been buffalo New Orleans, there would have
been buffalo in present day Washington, d C. There would
have been buffalo in present day Nashville. All those had
been wiped out by hunters at the end of the
Civil War. There's probably about fifteen million of them on
the Great Plains, which has always been the nexus of
the population. That was always the that's where the bulk
of the animals were. The country really turned westward after
(30:33):
the Civil War once the South, you know, the Union
was saved. We sent our army out to pacify hostile
tribes in the west and to protect economic interests in
the west. And with that shift westward, we started looking
for leathered resources out west, and they identified this fifteen
million buffalo. There was nothing special about buffalo leather. We
(30:56):
had an insatiable appetite for leather. What became is we
needed it to produce industrial belting. Okay, leather prices shot up.
We were producing industrial belting to drive the industrial revolution,
and the animals were just yet another source of leather.
(31:17):
But they could be gotten for no investment. Okay, a
buffalo hide, let's say it's worth three dollars and fifty
cents four dollars, where the foreman at a tannery would
make three dollars and fifty cents a day, but a
buffalo hide hunter could kill twenty or thirty buffalo a
day and sell the hides at three dollars and fifty
cents apiece, and he didn't have to put any money
into it. You're not raising them, you're not feeding them.
(31:40):
It's totally different than cattle. They're just out there.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Oh yeah, Is it true that, like the buffalo just
stood there while the hunters shot at them, like they
didn't really understand.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Okay, it's not true. They were just so good at
what they did, they knew how to make that happen. Okay,
this is a complicated thing. You get into where you
want to look at what they did, and you want
to look at the atrocity of what they did. And
what it causes people to miss is this is going
to sound weird. It causes people to miss the professionalism
and skill set that goes into this. Like a big
(32:11):
part of my career is reconciling the skill set, the dedication,
the bravery against the atrocity. Right. But no, they wouldn't
just stand there. These guys were masters. They were experts
at what they did, and they knew how to get
that outcome. You would not go out and get that
same outcome. You would go out and not get any
(32:31):
I don't mean the hack on you.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
I have no doubt I would be unable to shoot
a buffalo.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
That's fine, not even I don't even mean you wouldn't
be able to get one because of emotional or constraints.
It's just like they were so good. They were training
their whole life to do this. They were too good.
And this is one of the most astounding things. When
they start really getting after them. Around eighteen seventy two,
the market really opens up in American tanneries. The appetite
(32:59):
for these buffaloes really opens up to where they're like,
we'll take as many as we can get. That hits
in eighteen seventy two, and it coincides, not coincides. It's
subject to the fact that the railroad hits Dodge City, Kansas, Okay.
So now you can load these things on a train
and send them to tanneries. By eighteen eighty three, eleven
years later, that fifteen million animals is gone. It compressed everything.
(33:26):
It took forever to almost wipe out beaver, It took
for hundreds of years to almost wipe out white tail deer.
With the buffalo, they were so good at it, and
the country was so primed industrially, we were so primed
with railroads, with big tanneries, the tannery buildings that were,
(33:46):
you know, one thousand yards long, that we could just
bam burn through a resource with astonishing quickness. And the
crazy part about it is once they shot them out,
it didn't even affect leather prices. Like a buffalo hide
at the peak could be worth five bucks, So you
would think once they killed them all the market should
spike like their scarcity. The last ones were selling at
(34:09):
the same price as the first ones because in the
end it didn't matter. They could buy cattle in South America,
they could get leather from anywhere. So we killed them
all and it wasn't like we needed them. It was
a drop in the bucket for leather production.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
So there was no market mechanism because it was just
so much abundant leather from multiple sources. There was no
market mechanism curbing the hunters.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
No, it was just they were worth what they were worth.
They were worth what a cowhide was worth. It was
just that they could get them for free, and when
they got them, it didn't affect anything. The Industrial Revolution
and leather belting was still produced and still produced and
still produced, so it almost makes it seem more shameful.
In the end, it would be like we would have,
like the country would have accomplished what we accomplished with
(34:53):
the industrial revolution had we never even exploited that reason.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Also, I never really thought about I never thought about
any of this. I certainly never thought about the connection
between the Industrial Revolution. I just imagine these ancient factories
with a bunch of wheels and these belts that are
pulling the wheels, and how that is connected to I
guess something had to be turning the wheels.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
I just never really thought about. I never really thought
about what it was.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, there's a great photo. It was later, you know,
it's later, but it's a great photo, and it's in
a Ford manufacturing plant and it's these lathing machines. And
the photo explains that overhead of the workers are fifty
miles of leather belting and these are sixteen inch belts. Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
What happened such that ultimately we still have bison because
the population eventually they didn't quite kill them all, and
now we've rebuilt the bison stock in the country. What
happened to such that we didn't quite go all the
way and completely make this animal extinct.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I'm a little bit hesitant to say this because it's
when it comes to the conservation the history of America.
It's a little bit of an anomaly. But what happened
to save him as private ownership, we shot them all
down to the point where there was just a couple
scattered animals here and there. Even at one time a
guy named William T. Hornaday, who was a taxidermist and
(36:32):
mammal expert. He wrote letters around the country trying to
see who had a few, and there was a handful
of eccentrics around the country that had managed to go
out and rope some and save them, maybe even feed
them off domestic coles when they were calves, and these
kind of slowly got broad into little herds. Interestingly, some
(36:53):
got brought to the Bronx Zoo when they started trying
to repopulate little protected populations in the West. Another great
irony as they were moving animals from the Bronx Zoo
out to Oklahoma to turn them loose. Like that's how
bad it got, and even today like we really haven't
recovered the end. We've saved them from genetic extinction. So
(37:15):
there's about a half million in existence. Ninety four percent
of them are privately owned. What we haven't saved them
from is ecological extinction of all American wildlife, of all
native American wildlife, grizzly bears, black bears, el bighorn, sheep, no, no, no, no,
the buffalo. The bison is the only animal that does
not have the rights of a wild animal. If a
(37:36):
buffalo walks off of National Park and comes into Montana,
he becomes livestock, He becomes the under the authority of
the Department of Livestock. We do not accept them as
wild animals anymore, which in my view is a great sin.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
We could go for like three or four hours easy conversation, easy,
but we can't. So I'm going to take us up
to I guess modern times. So when we were talking
loking earlier about the long hunters, we discussed there's clearly
this element of democracy and independence embedded in that particular system.
(38:11):
And if you look at the way the modern hunting
world I guess or system is structured, it feels like
we're trying to we're trying to solve that tension between
people's rights to hunt animals and the conservation public resource aspect.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. We live
under now. When I say we in this case, I
mean American hunters, American fishermen. We live under a very
complex regulatory structure which is self made our community. Modern
American sportsmen have built the system that we live under,
a very very tightly regulated pursuit. We've come up with
(38:56):
this system. Earlier we talked about how things were in
Europe in colonial period. We now refer to that with
some disdain, as the European model, where a landowner owns
the wildlife on their land, they control the wildlife on
their land. We came up with a system where American
wildlife is owned by the American people, administered on your
(39:19):
behalf by fishing, game agencies, and by governmental entities. But
American wildlife is American property. It doesn't matter whose lands
on it. That has allowed us the ability to have
a governing structure to control harvest for sustainability because the
state and in some cases the federal government has authority
(39:41):
over the animals. Meaning you could have a big property
and it has deer on it, but those deer are
not yours to decide what you want to do with
the deer belonged to the people. You own the land,
you have to get permits.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Talk to us a little bit about the contemporary market.
My guess is it's booming. I don't mean literally the
volume of life hunting that's going on, although I bet
that finger. But like in your industry, in your world
outdoorsman media, people buying.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
Gear for all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
My gut says that this is a hot area of
the economy.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Oh yeah, I mean we have a huge economic impact.
I mean, you know, you have. You know, any given year,
thirteen or fourteen million Americans will buy a hunting license
to go hunt, over twice as many people will buy
a fishing license to go fish. It generates billions dollars
in economic activity. But most of that economic activity is
(40:34):
around gear and experiences, right, it's not economic activity about
trading and trading and deer in deer.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
And it's also growing really fast, I take it, or like,
what kind of growth of your saying.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
It really spiked, No, it's remarkably stable. It really spiked
during the pandemic. You know, obviously as people turn to
you know, making sour dough bread and cooking venison. Back
to the spikes. It's remarkably stable the year.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
There are two types of Americans.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
There are sourdome Americans and they live in cities and
then veniceon Americans.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Ye, so actually that reminds me.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
So one of the things that I took from the
Long Hunter series is that gear is really important because
you guys talk so much about the gear that the
colonists and pioneers actually had.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
So I feel like there's.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
An element of consumerism in the hunting community where people
just collect guns and knives and things.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Oh for sure. Yeah, Like me and my buddies. I
mean to be honest with you, when we're sitting around,
you know, and I hang out a lot of people
involved in the conservation movement, Me and my bodies, and
we're sitting around, we mostly argue about gear. Yeah. I
came up in media, but our company, we have a
hunting apparel brand. We have a game call brand, we
have a hunting decoy brand, we have a hunting accessory brand.
(41:53):
So yeah, I mean, like gear is, it can't be
separated out. And the same way Boone was adamant about
what kind of he wore, I'm pretty about what I wear,
and that is like the economic activity today you know
is in large measure equipment and gear. And what's beautiful
about and I want to fill this in. What's beautiful
about it is that's how we fund conservation. So our
(42:14):
industry in the thirties we put ourselves under a thirteen
percent excise tax. So when you buy guns or ammunition,
any gun purchase guns, ammunition, sporting equipment, there's a anywhere
from eleven to thirteen percent excise tax which goes right
into conservation spending. You go find me another industry that
(42:35):
has anything comparable to that. It does not exist. And
then our agencies that manage wildlife in America all fifty
states have a fish and Wildlife agency. Their funding comes
from licenses, permits, and stamps paid by hunters and anglers.
We're a self funded group of Americans.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeay, it's a rarest issue. It makes sense, right, most
industries don't voluntarily want to be tax on everything. But
when you think about the fact that there needs to
be some resources to sustain the possibility of hunting for
generations to come, it is sort of makes sense that
this would be an industry in which you want there
to be some sort of price of entry. If I
(43:16):
became a hunter this winter, would you make fun of me? Like,
would I be one of like those guys who it's like, Okay,
it's my first season hunting. I'm gonna buy the most
expensive rifle. I'm gonna buy the most expensive hat. I'm
gonna buy the most expensive shoes. You must have a
name like those types, and they like show up on
the hunt with you, and it's clear they like went
(43:36):
through all the lists and just like bought the top. Yeah,
like this sort of like wanna be is it's like
their first thing and they just go down the line
and buy them deck themselves out in the top of
the line gear.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
The name I have for those people is my Buddy's Now.
I'm telling you, not a year goes by, man, not
a year goes by that. I don't take out friends, family, whoever,
people that are interested in and hunting, curious about hunting,
even sometimes uneasy with hunting, that I don't take them
out and kind of explain the world. I have three
(44:08):
young kids. I've been lucky to turn them all into
you know, avid hunters, and we share that. So no,
I like sharing this world. It's the world I care
a lot about I care about how it's perceived. Most
Americans don't hunt. In some states like California, New Jersey,
one percent of the population hunts. So in some ways
we live and exist with the blessing of the American
(44:32):
public in general. So it's important to me for people
to understand what we're up to, how we think, and
that we're willing to recognize the sins of our forefathers
and have gone out of our way to correct those sins.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
This is a slight tangent, but since we're on the
subject of conservation, I'd be curious to get your thoughts.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
But what do you think about.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Commercial hunting of endangered animals? So things like lions or
I don't know, buffalo of some sort in Africa, Because
one argument I've heard is that these animals at the
moment basically have negative value, right because they're living on
land that you can't use for anything else because you
(45:12):
have to conserve it because you need to protect the animals.
But if you allow commercial hunting in a controlled way,
you basically put an economic value on that animal such
that you know, it becomes something that people want to
maintain and preserve and stick around.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, I would first want to just clarify, I don't
mean to be a difficult guess, but be careful using
the word endangered, because it can be when I say that.
Like in the US we have the Endangered Species Act,
we have a way that we formally declare things to
be endangered. I think in the American imagination, Africa is
far away. We hear the word endangered and it's not
(45:51):
really open to certain levels of nuance about where and what.
For instance, elk. Right here in the United States, we
have robust populations of elk across the American West. We
have hunting seasons for elk, We have open hunting seasons
for elk. But elk have only been restored across about
twenty percent of their native range. Michigan was elk country,
(46:13):
Wisconsin was elk country, Virginia was elk country. Elk have
been wiped out of those places and not restored. So
you might say, well, elk are endangered because they're not
in Michigan and Wisconsin in appreciable numbers. Yet in the
American West, in some places we have a problem with
too many elk. So you gotta be careful with words
like that. But to get to the core of your question. Yes,
(46:37):
it is possible. There are places in Africa, and I'm
not a subject matter expert on Africa like I am.
I'm a subject matter expert on these issues in the
United States. But in Africa there are situations where money,
like value to hunters, is able to put so much
value on wildlife that the wildlife becomes worth protecting. Meaning
(47:03):
people that are on the landscape will recognize the presence
of wild knife generates so much economic activity that it's
best not to kill it all off for us, is
bush meat or other applications, or because it's a crop pest,
or because it's dangerous to livestock. They'll recognize that, Hey,
that lion, that thing's worth sixty thousand bucks. Half that
(47:26):
money's coming to our village. Don't mess with that lion.
I mean, that just happens. Whether you however you feel
emotionally about the killing of lions, that's an economic reality
in some places.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
I feel like, don't mess with lions is just good,
good advice generally.
Speaker 5 (47:41):
Yeah, I just have one last question.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
You mentioned bear meat. I haven't had that much wild
game in my life. I've had, you know, sausage with
venison and pork, and like when I was out in
Jackson Hole, I went to some restaurant and you know,
tried a few different like many stakes of it.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Yeah, that wasn't even wild game, that's just farm raised animals.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
What should I try that I've probably never tried before once.
I like meat a lot, So what would I like
out there?
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Some of my favorites really, you know, Mallard ducks, so
if you're in a park, you see that duck where
the mail has the iridescent green head. When you get
those that have been in one place a while and
have it migrated lately and they're getting on crops, they're
getting in grain fields, one of my all time favorite things.
This is going to sound weird, but true squirrel properly
(48:29):
done would kind of blow your mind. And it's partly
the fun of it, like, because you have a preconceived
notion of what it would be like, and then when
you taste it, you'd think, I cannot believe that's that.
That would kind of blow you away. And I think
that you would be very very surprised if you had
a bare pot roast in a classic fashion with root vegetables,
(48:51):
you know, and a good broth I think you would
also say, like I refuse to accept that that's what
it is, and I wouldn't accept that had I not seen.
Speaker 5 (49:00):
It happen, I'd love it. I want to bear pot
roast right now.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
I'll bring you some venison ragu.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
That's what I've been making so far.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Although one thing I learned is that the fat content
of venison is actually really low, so it's not very
good for making things like burgers and yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
You gotta make su Yeah, it's very waxy. Yeah, it
melts differently than be fat, so it sets up in
the inside of your mouth and it doesn't freeze well.
So if you want to freeze when you get your
venison from your hunter and you want to enjoy it
for the next year, trim the fat away, trim the
talo away. And if you do that, it's basically archival
(49:35):
once you put it in your freezer. If you leave that
talo on it, it's not that talo will turn even
in your freezer.
Speaker 5 (49:41):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Okay, my last question is what would you recommend I
make with venison.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
I would start out by making the things that you
like the most, that are easiest to make, Like you
mentioned ragou, making hamburgers, making things that you're comfortable making,
that aren't overly complex and don't have too many steps,
just so you can go and find these kind of
like points in comparison. If you, if you and your family,
(50:07):
if in the summer you like to grill burgers like
you like to grill up beef burgers, grill up with
Vendison burger, follow the same basic steps and just kind
of get comfortable with the way it's a little different,
and when you do that enough, you'll come to prefer it.
My wife, like my wife doesn't hunt man. My wife
doesn't like domestic meat. She doesn't like the taste of
domestic meat because for the last twenty years she's eating
(50:28):
nothing of game meat. She's gotten where. She don't like it,
she doesn't want to eat it.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
We're going to have to wrap this conversation up, even though,
as we mentioned before, we could go on for hours.
I have to say, I hope my husband isn't listening
to this, because I am planning on getting one of
Steve's cookbooks for Christmas.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I would love to sign it for him. If you
want to reach out, I will send you. I'll send
him a whole box and stuff if you if you reach.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Out, Okay, I might well of nominal value, of nominal value,
a book would be nice pleasure.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
I know a lot of journalists, but not the kind
like that.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
So Steve Vanella, thank you so much for coming on
odd Lots.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
That was a blast.
Speaker 5 (51:10):
That was really fun.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Blast appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (51:14):
Thank you, Joe. That was so fun.
Speaker 5 (51:29):
That was so fun.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
I don't know anything about that, but like we could
have talked for three hours.
Speaker 5 (51:33):
There are so many things I'm curious about now.
Speaker 4 (51:36):
This is underappreciated.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
I think the role of hunting in America's economic development
and it's intertwining. I didn't even know this with the
Industrial Revolution, didn't.
Speaker 5 (51:45):
Know about that either. It's exactly what I was gonna say.
I would have had no idea.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
And it's always sort of fascinating to think, like you
can't run a big factory if you don't have belts. Now, granted,
according to Stephen, there were other sources of leather, but
it's so interesting to think about, like here there's this
thing that if you don't have an access to like
one commodity or whatever.
Speaker 5 (52:04):
You know, there's a new.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
Book by the way out about rope that I want
to have And it's like a similar story about how
crucial rope was.
Speaker 5 (52:10):
Anyway, it was so it was so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Uh, you know he mentioned squirrel meat at the end,
So again I'm just throwing out tidbits that I learned
from his series. But you know, you can't really shoot
a squirrel if you're going to eat it, because they're
so small. The bullet like rips off all the meat.
So the way the pioneers used to do it, apparently,
is they would shoot at the tree that the squirrel
(52:35):
was on and sort of like shock the squirrel to
death and it would fall out of the tree and
then you can eat it.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Wait, Tracy can ask you is a question is sort
of non politically correct. Is it true that Germans can't
pronounce the word squirrel?
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Yes, Okay my personal experience when I was a kid,
I used to ask my uncle to say squirrel all
the time just for laughs. And the way he says
it is and yeah, he struggles with it.
Speaker 3 (53:02):
I just want an excuse to see if this was
confirmed during to deny it.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Okay, now that we're talking about squirrels, shall we leave
it there.
Speaker 5 (53:09):
Let's leave it there, all right?
Speaker 1 (53:10):
This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You could follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Stephen Ronella. He's at Stephen Ronella. Follow
our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carman Arman, Dashil Bennett at
Dashbod and kill Brooks at Kilbrooks. From our odd Laws content,
go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots with the
daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you can
chat about all of these topics twenty four to seven
(53:36):
in our discord Discord dot gg slash od lots.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
And if you enjoyed this conversation, if you like it
when we look into the economic history of the US,
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Speaker 4 (54:00):
Thanks for listening.
Hey, they're aud Loots 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.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
You want to ask us about finance, markets and economics,
go for it. You want to ask us about the
year in podcasting, go for it. You want to ask
about where Tracy is with growing chicken or.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
Raising chicken, growing chickens.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Raising chickens on her versioning firm in Connecticut, go for it.
Speaker 5 (00:32):
This is your chance to ask us anything.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Joe's favorite cut of steak, right.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
My favorite cut of state, my favorite Chinese restaurant in
the East Village.
Speaker 5 (00:39):
It's all fair game, all right.
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All you have to do is send a voice memo
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Speaker 3 (00:50):
Deadline to submit is December seventeenth, so get the men
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Speaker 1 (00:54):
We're looking forward to hearing what you have to ask
and yeah, that's coming up.
Speaker 6 (01:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 5 (01:22):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Joe, I have a pop quiz on American history for you.
Speaker 5 (01:27):
Oh godady go on.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Who was Daniel Boone?
Speaker 5 (01:33):
Did you have look at a hat that was cool?
Speaker 3 (01:36):
He was like I just think it was like someone
raccoon hat, raccoon hat, and he was probably an outdoors
guy who probably didn't hang out in cities very much.
So 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 eighteen hundreds, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
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 out doors?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
He was hunting?
Speaker 5 (02:07):
Okay, I guess I could guessed.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That he was something called a long hunter. Mean, he
went on really long expeditions to hunt. Do you know
what he was hunting?
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Nope?
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Raccoons, no, apparently not deer okay, white tailed deer.
Speaker 4 (02:23):
And this is something that I think.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
You know, everyone has heard the name Daniel Boom, but
almost no one can actually remember what he was doing.
And people also forget that you know, a lot of
American history is built not on manufacturing and farming necessarily,
but on hunting.
Speaker 5 (02:42):
I don't have we ever done a hunting episode.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
We have it, and I find 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?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Well, now I imagine it's probably from a deer. Yeah,
But had it not been for this intro in the context,
I actually would have had no idea.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
So hunting is actually embedded in the way we talk
about money. So that's what we're going to be talking about.
Speaker 5 (03:13):
So I can't wait a whole new avenue for us.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
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 cute,
maybe you saw a movie about them or something like that.
It's like, oh, who's to hunt the deer? And then
you confront them and you're like, maybe we need a
little bit of a population management, so to speak.
Speaker 5 (03:56):
That's a deer community.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
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.
Speaker 5 (04:06):
But we have a.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Friend who loves to hunt. Yeah, and so he's going
to be on our property hunting deer. And if you
want some fresh venice I do, then let me know.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Have you arranged a deal with him where he can
keep as much as you want? Like you, does he
tie you twenty percent or whatever it is?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
He pays us in meat, yeah, which is actually great
at the moment because beef prices are so insane.
Speaker 5 (04:27):
You're so lucky you're coal meat.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Anyway, I'm blessed in natural resources, just like America. That's right,
all right, Well, I'm happy to say we have the
perfect guest to talk about all of this. Someone who
I'm very excited to be talking to.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Actually, we have Steven Ronella.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
He is the author and founder of Meat Eater and
knows all about hunting and all about this particular aspect
of US economic history. So Steve, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Hey, thank you for having me on. I'm dying to
jump in and off for clarifications and corrections on our
friend Daniel Boone.
Speaker 5 (05:04):
Tell us everything I got wrong, and Dantro just go
for it.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Yeah. Boone did not like coonskin caps. That was a
thing that was added on later through Disney depictions. Boone
wore a wide brimmed hat made from beaver wool felt,
which is still the material of choice for high end
cowboy hats. Raccoons there was a commodity for a long
time in different tallos and greases. They used to hunt
(05:30):
raccoons and possums and actually render the oil from them.
Just as an example, I'm holding in my hand right
now at one court jar of rendered coon grease, which
I made for a buddy mine just as a present.
What do you do candles, Well, I've done any of it. Yeah, yeah,
you definitely make soap candles. You can cook with it.
In fact, when the English were first strategizing around establishing
(05:51):
their first colony in the New World, and they had
a sort of a list of ways that they might
monetize this colony. On that list was like animal oils,
animal greases. So yeah, Boone was in the deerskin trade,
but he also was in the bear grease trade and
the animal oil trade, as was Davy Crockett, who wore
(06:11):
the coonskin cap but was kind of mocked by his contemporaries.
But he was a showboat and he wore it to
create this atmosphere of this every man's backwoodsman, but it
wasn't regarded as a practical hat was drawn to himself.
He was a showboat. Crockett was a showboat. Boone was
(06:32):
a professional.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
I love the idea of all these like manly pioneering
hunters critiquing each other's outfits.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
I also liked the idea. I also liked the idea
of like, oh, when hunters get together, they argue about
are you a Daniel Boone man or Dami Krockman.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Oh, your guy was a total showboat. He was a fraud.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
No one would have ever worn that had and the
other oh no, he did this yeah, yeah, all of these.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
My dear friend whom I'm given that one of my
jars of koon grease too. He is a crocket man
and I'm a boon Man, and we fight about this
all time. I'm a boon The other thing is one
last comment, just to get caught up. Were you to
formalize the arrangement with your deer hunter, if you were
to formalize that arrangement where there was an expected quid
(07:17):
pro quo around deer meat for access, you would be
in violation of the law. You need to keep it
non formalized. Okay, you can gift him access, he can
gift you meet. But the minute you formalize that transaction,
you would be commodifying wild game meat, which is illegal
in this country.
Speaker 5 (07:35):
Important, Tracy just admitted to a crime.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
I've already reported.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Her specifically said, we don't have a formal agreement, we're
trading informally.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
This is I've already learned so much on this.
Speaker 3 (07:48):
I'm like, if we ended the episode right here, I
would have like learned so many more things that I
didn't know when I woke up this.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
And you'd be looking for a new co host because
you locked.
Speaker 5 (07:57):
To be literally imprisoned for accepting venison.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Okay, well, let's not stop here, let's keep going.
Speaker 4 (08:04):
Steve.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
You know you mentioned that when England was colonizing the US,
one of the big draws was animal grease and animal products.
Talk to us a little bit more, because I think
when people think about the colonization of the New World,
a lot of people think about tobacco and farming and agriculture,
but hunting and animal products were actually a really big
(08:26):
part of it.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah, in the early colonial period, one of our biggest
ports was, you know, coming out of Charleston, out of
South Carolina, so at a time in the late colonial period,
so prior to the Revolutionary War, deer skins in value
and economic value, white tailed deer skins were the second
largest commodity coming out of the out of the colonies,
(08:51):
the first one being rice. So the animal grease thing
was a thing, but it was dwarfed by the deer
skin trade. If you look at these old paintings you
see of like the King of England around the time
of the colonial period, you'll sometimes notice that they're wearing
a white breech or a white pant, a seeming white pant.
(09:12):
That's buckskin. Buckskin was used as workwear, but it was
also something that the affluent individuals wore, those white breeches,
those white buckskin pants. It was a preferred material for
clothing making. There's a historian Mac Ferriger, and he wrote
a piece about the early colonial period and he remarked
it like, among colonial Americans, so Euro American, Colonial Americans
(09:35):
and Native Americans alike, black bear meat was the food
of choice. Huh. Deer skin was the material of choice.
So they were hunting bears, that was the good stuff
to eat. Deer were what you made your clothes from.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
I'm surprised about the bear meat.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Does bear taste good?
Speaker 2 (09:54):
Yeah, it's very beef like in texture. It's phenomenal. It's
one of those things that in some levels there's a
cultural taboo around it, as you'll see like Florida right
now is running a very controversial black bear hunt. People
get worked up about it. But yeah, it's an excellent food.
It was a very prized food at the time. Another
(10:15):
business that Daniel Boone was into was producing a product
called bear bacon, which was consumed domestically. Yes, smoked bacon.
It would be plausible that Ben Franklin. He could have
walked down to a market in Philadelphia and he would
have been able to purchase bear bacon or smoked black
bear hands. It was a very popular food item. Bear
(10:36):
can carry tricknosis. Most cases of trychnosis in the US
today do not come from hogs. It mostly comes from
black bear. You have to cook it. So for that reason,
a lot of people have an idea that it should
be avoided. But my family we prodigious amounts of it.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
Wow, I want to Can I come by sometime and
have some bear bacon or bear steak or whatever?
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Anytime, man, anytime I would knock on the door, I
will cook it. I will cook it for you and
I can fry you someone in bear grease. If you think.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Let's do a video series, let's go, let's go on
the road. I already have like a billion questions. Can
we just back up a second, like for the listeners,
Can you tell us your story a little bit?
Speaker 5 (11:15):
Why are we talking to you? What's your background?
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Oh? So yeah, I grew up in Michigan. I was
born into a hunting family. That was kind of our identity.
My father was a very avid hunter. He came home
from World War two and just hunted, and I was
brought up around it. I pursued a career first in trapping.
Throughout high school, I was convinced I was going to
be a fur trapper. I became interested in writing, went
(11:40):
to graduate school for writing starting in two thousand. When
I finished school, I became a professional long form magazine writer,
started doing books, and all my stuff has always been
in the outdoor space. Eventually got into television, started doing
a show called Meat Eater, and we turned me into
a full fledged business. We have a media arm where
(12:04):
I spend the bulk of my time, but we also
work and we have a lot of consumer products. We
have four outdoor gear companies which live under the Meat
Eater umbrella. And I've intended to make a living in
the outdoors when I was a kid, and I mostly
succeeded at that. I get spent a lot of time outdoors,
and I get spent a lot of time thinking about
issues of how hunting plays into contemporary American culture, and
(12:28):
how hunting shaped our country and shaped our national experience.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, I got to plug Steve's I think it's an
audible series on the history of hunting in the US.
Where there's a whole episode on Long Hunters that I've
been listening to. Also one on like Buffalo in the
eighteen hundreds. They're really good.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, it's called Me Eater's American History and it's an
audio original through Random House Penguin. Yeah, and we've done
three so far on different commodity trades in American history,
all around wildlife.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
So one thing that I did learn from the audible
series on Long Hunters is the American hunting system in
the sort of sixteen hundred seventeen hundreds, when colonials started
coming over to what would become the United States, was
very different to how hunting was done in Europe. Right.
(13:18):
In Europe, hunting was like the purview of landowners and
rich people. But in America, I guess there were no
rules and everyone could hunt animals.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, you know, good way to think about it. I
often remind people to think back to certain details of
the Robin Hood story, where you have the king's deer, okay,
and part of Robin Hood's gig right is he'll go
hunt on the king's estate to get venison, which you
would then distribute to the poor. As part of the
robin Hood narrative. So yeah, in England and in Western Europe,
(13:49):
by that point things were heavily developed. Most the woods,
the wilderness was gone. Having access to wild landscapes was
something that was relegated on to the most wealthy. You
could be have your eyes gouged out, you could be
executed for hunting animals that belonged to the aristocracy. So
(14:10):
when American colonists started showing up, like Boone's family came
from England, they did not arrive here as hunters. They
did not arrive with a hunting background. They adopted it.
The colonists, like Boone's family, for instance, they were Quakers,
his people were. But the American colonists were as impacted
(14:32):
by Native Americans as Native Americans were impacted by American colonists.
You could see it in Boone's dress. He would plait
his hair, he would braid his hair, he would grease
his hair with bear grease. He would wear buckskin. He
would hunt the animals that Native Americans taught him to hunt.
He would cook them in that way. He would make
his clothes in that way. So they adopted hunting as
(14:53):
a way to make a living on the American landscape.
Some of them were farmers through and through. Some became
hunters through and through, and they were at odds. These
hunting people, these kind of wild men like Boone in
the colonial period would always be hovering at the western
edge of colonial expansion. England would try to rein in
(15:14):
these American colonists. They would feel that they were kind
of drifting too far out of colonial influence. And these
American colonists like Boone, who were hunting for a living,
would cause a lot of tension with Native Americans, and
so the colonial powers didn't like these guys living this
frontier wild existence because again they were drifting away from
(15:37):
the crown and they were causing animosity with Native Americans.
Would then blame the English for these incursions onto their landscape.
So it was like a rich kind of area of
adoption of a wilderness aesthetic while still trying to live,
you know, under colonial rule in Boone's early days.
Speaker 5 (16:11):
Are you watching the new ken Burns documentary at all?
Speaker 1 (16:13):
No, but everyone else's it seems like I'm started there.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I've watched the first episode so far, and it's just
interesting because obviously, you know, the version of independence that
we learned about in school, was just incredibly simplified. And
this idea that there really were all different kinds of
tensions between the colonists and the sort of norms and
the laws and the rules of the old country really striking.
(16:39):
I hadn't really appreciated this dimension before about the hunting,
but I think, you know, it really shows how I
guess from day one there was a certain I don't
know if egalitarian was a democratic element of colonial society.
Speaker 5 (16:54):
That sounds very.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Distinctly different from where they were coming from.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Yeah, there's an interesting passage where Washington, George Washington, criticizes
folks like Boone. He criticizes these frontier individuals that are
living off the land out on the frontier and market hunting.
He criticizes them because he feels like a tip of
the hat would push them over to the Spanish or whoever,
(17:21):
whatever other colonial entity was out there. He did not
feel that they were adequately American. And then, as much
as Boone has been adopted, there's one one guy joke
that Boone has become an honorary founding father. As much
as Boone has been adopted as this American icon, Boone
in his contemporary so again, speaking of these long hunters,
these colonial white tailed deer skin hunters. They would not
(17:42):
have identified as American loosely, but they would identify it
in family clans. And they were not what you would
call if you look at around the revolutionary period, you
would not refer to these guys as patriots. They were
opportunists and they were mostly beholden two small villages made
(18:03):
up of people. They were related to these networks. That
was their allegiance.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Didn't Boone actually end up striking a deal with the
Spanish for land. That's one thing I learned from the series.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
Yeah. Again, like the same way, like he's an honorary
filing father. Boone in some ways is the father of Kentucky.
He was not the first, but one of the first
people to go through this thing called the Cumberland Gap
and start hunting in what is now Kentucky. He got
fed up with the government there. He got fed up
with America. When Spain had the Louisiana territory, Spain was
trying to fill the place up. He struck a deal
(18:36):
with Boone and his people where they would become subjects
of the Spanish crown in exchange for money, and so
Boone moved out, and he moved west of the Missouri
River and became a Spanish subject. He swore that he
would never step foot back in Kentucky again when Boone died.
(18:57):
So Boone lived through the Louisiana purchase and became again
an American just through the fact that that America bought
the Louisiana purchase. He died and was buried in Missouri
and was later exhumed and brought back to Kentucky, even
though in his lifetime he said I'll never step foot
back there. So people like to say Missouri has his heart,
(19:17):
meaning his soft tissues, Kentucky has his bones. And there's
like this little ongoing dispute about whether or not they
really dug up the right guy and reburied him. But yeah,
Boone willfully left American rule to go live under a
different crown. He was married to the hunt, and he
was married to his family clan. That was how he identified.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
It's super interesting. Tell me about a long hunt. What
are the logistics? So it's difficult. What are the logistics
of a long hunt?
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, the logistics of a long hunt. It was very decentralized,
unlike if we have time and we get into the
beaverskin trade. Of these American icons like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith,
John Colder, these guys that were engaged in the Rocky
out In beaver trade, which was very formalized, very top down.
The long hunter area, so this colonial deer skin hunting
(20:07):
area was very decentralized. A group of long hunters were
probably mostly family networks, so it'd be maybe a patriarch,
his kids, his sons in law, okay, his cousins, and
they would embark on these very long trips. They would
leave these frontier colonial establishments, let's say the Yadkin Valley
(20:30):
in North Carolina. A ton of long hunters came out
of the Yadkin Valley in North Carolina. They would travel
over the Appalachian Range and they would drop down into
Kentucky portions of Tennessee and they would hunt deer skins.
They might be gone six months. I think Boone's longest
long hunt was two years. It was all based off
(20:53):
pack trains, so everything was based off of using horses
to carry stuff, and they would build up a year's
worth of deer skins. In the winter, the deer skins
weren't as valuable, so they'd switch their efforts to beaver
and otter trapping. They would transport all those deer skins
back across the Apple Aachian divide and sell them a
(21:14):
good price. A way to think about it again is
they were worth about a dollar, which was a lot
of money back then, and some would go to tanneries
in Philadelphia, Boston and New York, but the bulk would
be shipped to tanneries in England to be turned into
leather for making breeches and gloves and other high end items.
(21:37):
And that was the economy and they had. These were
farming people, but this was their only access to cash.
Much of what they did was black market, to be
honest with you, in two ways. When they would cross
the Apple Achians to go hunt, they were doing it
against the wishes of the crown, which again did not
want to antagonize Native Americans because it caused warfare and trouble.
(21:59):
They were also doing it in violation of Native American
claims to the land. So when they would go into Kentucky,
they were hunting on say, Shawnee land, so they were
sort of doubly trespassing. But that's how they made their
living and it allowed them to live very isolated existences,
and it gave them a cash economy so they could
buy guns and other things that they couldn't trade corn for.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Wait, I'm going to take the bait on the beaver
trade that you just mentioned, So talk to us. How
is that formalized and how does it contrast with the
long hunters.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
Yeah, the beaver skin trade had been going for a
long long time, so you know, when the Dutch first
came to Manhattan, one of the primary things they were
after is beaver skins. Beaver's it's surprisingly easy to wipe
them out. So if you look at American history from
the colonial period on, we kind of have we had
a way because of unregulated trapping, We had a way
that we would that ahead of civilization would mark a
(22:53):
depopulation of beavers. So we fast forward up to the
Lewis and Clark expedition. Here we do the Louisiana Purchase.
Thomas Jefferson dispatches the Lewis and Clark Expedition to go
find a mostly water route to the Pacific and also
to look at natural resource abundance. Right, Lewis and Clark
come back and they report mind boggling numbers of beavers
(23:16):
in the inner Mountain West. All right, right away, right
on their heels, goes a bunch of American trappers out
to explore this land and trade in beavers. A beaver
pelt was, you know, going for maybe three bucks. That's
more than you'd make in a day as a laborer.
It was real money. But guys got onto it and
(23:37):
they formalized it, and people would go out and get investors. Okay,
a group would go out and get investors. Well, for instance, Astor,
if you go to Astor Place in New York, Astor
was America's first homemade millionaire. Astor's first business was the
beaver trade. So guys would get investors. They would run
advertisements to hire trappers. If you look at these really
famous mountain men like, for instance, Jim Bridger, these guys
(24:01):
answered an ad in a newspaper. They ran an ad
that says looking for one hundred enterprising young men. And
these young guys, some of them escaped indentured servants, people
running away from apprenticeships, would go higher on as a
fur brigade, and they would hire on as a day rate,
and they would be backed by financial backers, and they
(24:23):
would send these young men out to the inner Mountain
west to trap beaver as a day labor. In time,
some of these guys would spin off and do their
own thing and go independent. But it was a very
formalized structure that was sending these young men out to
catch beaver in order to bring them back, and they
would be exported and turned into wolffeldt. If you look
(24:46):
back to Abe Lincoln's hat. Okay, Abe Lincoln didn't wear
beaver wolfelt hat. He wore a silk hat, which we'll
get to, but that style of hat was the rage
in Europe. All sophisticated men, many poor people who aspired
to look more affluent, would wear one of these top hats.
They were made from beaver wool felt. So that was
(25:07):
a huge export industry coming out of it. And again
it became formalized. And what killed it is they were
too effective. Two things killed the trade. One, they were
running out of beaver anyway, and then a fashion change
crashed the industry. And it was probably a good thing
that it did, because they may have pretty much exterminated
(25:30):
the animals from the landscape. I probably got a little
ahead of.
Speaker 5 (25:32):
There, but no, that's great that's great.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
And actually the thing about the fashion change reminds me
of one of my all time favorite bubbles market bubbles,
which was the ostrich feather bubble in the eighteen hundreds
where women would want ostrich feathers for their hats and
they became really, really expensive, and then the bubble burst
and all these ostrich farmers, mostly in Africa, I think,
(25:54):
went bust.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, that was they called the plenary trade and all
kinds of shorebirds and and it's hard to picture now
that you could just without regulation and coastal areas of
the country go hunt herons egrets to sell the feathers
to adorn hats.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
You know, it's funny when you think about like conservation
efforts or you think about endangered species, all these ideas
feel very modern to me, Like, you know, maybe they
started thinking about this stuff in the nineteen seventies or whatever,
but obviously that's not the case. How early on in
the process of the hunting or hunting history did people
(26:33):
start becoming aware of the fact that without some sort
of regulation or laws or curves, that this natural resources
could be irreversibly depleted.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Surprisingly early, And I'll get to some of the earliest examples,
but I want to clarify what I think motivations might
have been. Some of the earliest examples we see of
a conservation effort would even be in the colonial period.
And I was trying to put some parameters around deer hunting,
because again, these were valuable animals for people to use
(27:05):
for material. So when we see people trying to get
to put in hunting seasons, like not to kill them
when they're fawning, when they're dropping their fawns, or put
in restrictions about outsiders coming into hunt, they probably weren't
motivated by some sort of environmental ethic. They were motivated
by guarding and protecting a resource. When you start to
(27:25):
see an emergence of a real, more emotional, spiritual environmental
movement is in the late eighteen hundreds, and its birth
is this. It's birth is gentlemen hunters such as Theodore Roosevelt. Okay,
you have these gentlemen hunters that want to connect to
this piece of American history or American culture, but they're
(27:47):
recognizing that unregulated hunting, this unregulated market hunting that we've
been discussing, is going to make hunting impossible because these
unregulated commodity hunters are going to drive everything to extinction.
So in order to save wildlife and save hunting, which
they recognized as a very important piece of American culture,
(28:09):
they needed to sort of bifurcate American hunting efforts into
sport hunting which was regulated and had an environmental ethic
or a conservation ethic, and unregulated market hunting, which is
what we've been discussing. One of the great ironies is
this one of the earliest conservation organizations that Theodore Roosevelt
(28:30):
was involved in, involved in founding, involved in running is
called the Boone and Crocket Club, and they're still a
major player in American conservation today. What's ironic is the
names Boone and Crocket, which Americans today here and they
think of hunting. But these were just the kind of
individuals that the Boone and Crocket Club needed to stop
(28:51):
in order to save American hunting. Was these market hunters
who were out there doing nothing to compensate the American
people for the wildlife they were taking, and they would
kill it all, and once they killed it all, they'd
move a little bit west and kill all of that,
and they about undid American wildlife.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Yeah, so there's a tragedy of the commons dynamic going
on here where you have this public resource, which is animals,
and if too many people tap into it, the public
resource ceases to exist. Can you talk a little bit
about the buffalo trade, because I think this is probably
the biggest example of that dynamic actually happening.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, it's the biggest, most regrettable example. And when I
say it's for drettable is because by this point we knew,
we meaning news reading, engaged educated Americans knew where this
was headed. Okay, and I'll back up a little bit.
So if we get to the time of European contact
(29:49):
in the New World, there were maybe the fashionable number
today is somewhere around thirty to forty million American bison
or buffalo, those words are the same thing. Million to
thirty million buffalo on the American landscape. By the end
of the Civil War, they've been removed from the eastern
part of the country. So you know, at a time
(30:10):
there would have been buffalo New Orleans, there would have
been buffalo in present day Washington, d C. There would
have been buffalo in present day Nashville. All those had
been wiped out by hunters at the end of the
Civil War. There's probably about fifteen million of them on
the Great Plains, which has always been the nexus of
the population. That was always the that's where the bulk
of the animals were. The country really turned westward after
(30:33):
the Civil War once the South, you know, the Union
was saved. We sent our army out to pacify hostile
tribes in the west and to protect economic interests in
the west. And with that shift westward, we started looking
for leathered resources out west, and they identified this fifteen
million buffalo. There was nothing special about buffalo leather. We
(30:56):
had an insatiable appetite for leather. What became is we
needed it to produce industrial belting. Okay, leather prices shot up.
We were producing industrial belting to drive the industrial revolution,
and the animals were just yet another source of leather.
(31:17):
But they could be gotten for no investment. Okay, a
buffalo hide, let's say it's worth three dollars and fifty
cents four dollars, where the foreman at a tannery would
make three dollars and fifty cents a day, but a
buffalo hide hunter could kill twenty or thirty buffalo a
day and sell the hides at three dollars and fifty
cents apiece, and he didn't have to put any money
into it. You're not raising them, you're not feeding them.
(31:40):
It's totally different than cattle. They're just out there.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Oh yeah, Is it true that, like the buffalo just
stood there while the hunters shot at them, like they
didn't really understand.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
Okay, it's not true. They were just so good at
what they did, they knew how to make that happen. Okay,
this is a complicated thing. You get into where you
want to look at what they did, and you want
to look at the atrocity of what they did. And
what it causes people to miss is this is going
to sound weird. It causes people to miss the professionalism
and skill set that goes into this. Like a big
(32:11):
part of my career is reconciling the skill set, the dedication,
the bravery against the atrocity. Right. But no, they wouldn't
just stand there. These guys were masters. They were experts
at what they did, and they knew how to get
that outcome. You would not go out and get that
same outcome. You would go out and not get any
(32:31):
I don't mean the hack on you.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
I have no doubt I would be unable to shoot
a buffalo.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
That's fine, not even I don't even mean you wouldn't
be able to get one because of emotional or constraints.
It's just like they were so good. They were training
their whole life to do this. They were too good.
And this is one of the most astounding things. When
they start really getting after them. Around eighteen seventy two,
the market really opens up in American tanneries. The appetite
(32:59):
for these buffaloes really opens up to where they're like,
we'll take as many as we can get. That hits
in eighteen seventy two, and it coincides, not coincides. It's
subject to the fact that the railroad hits Dodge City, Kansas, Okay.
So now you can load these things on a train
and send them to tanneries. By eighteen eighty three, eleven
years later, that fifteen million animals is gone. It compressed everything.
(33:26):
It took forever to almost wipe out beaver, It took
for hundreds of years to almost wipe out white tail deer.
With the buffalo, they were so good at it, and
the country was so primed industrially, we were so primed
with railroads, with big tanneries, the tannery buildings that were,
(33:46):
you know, one thousand yards long, that we could just
bam burn through a resource with astonishing quickness. And the
crazy part about it is once they shot them out,
it didn't even affect leather prices. Like a buffalo hide
at the peak could be worth five bucks, So you
would think once they killed them all the market should
spike like their scarcity. The last ones were selling at
(34:09):
the same price as the first ones because in the
end it didn't matter. They could buy cattle in South America,
they could get leather from anywhere. So we killed them
all and it wasn't like we needed them. It was
a drop in the bucket for leather production.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
So there was no market mechanism because it was just
so much abundant leather from multiple sources. There was no
market mechanism curbing the hunters.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
No, it was just they were worth what they were worth.
They were worth what a cowhide was worth. It was
just that they could get them for free, and when
they got them, it didn't affect anything. The Industrial Revolution
and leather belting was still produced and still produced and
still produced, so it almost makes it seem more shameful.
In the end, it would be like we would have,
like the country would have accomplished what we accomplished with
(34:53):
the industrial revolution had we never even exploited that reason.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
Also, I never really thought about I never thought about
any of this. I certainly never thought about the connection
between the Industrial Revolution. I just imagine these ancient factories
with a bunch of wheels and these belts that are
pulling the wheels, and how that is connected to I
guess something had to be turning the wheels.
Speaker 5 (35:17):
I just never really thought about. I never really thought
about what it was.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Yeah, there's a great photo. It was later, you know,
it's later, but it's a great photo, and it's in
a Ford manufacturing plant and it's these lathing machines. And
the photo explains that overhead of the workers are fifty
miles of leather belting and these are sixteen inch belts. Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
What happened such that ultimately we still have bison because
the population eventually they didn't quite kill them all, and
now we've rebuilt the bison stock in the country. What
happened to such that we didn't quite go all the
way and completely make this animal extinct.
Speaker 2 (36:11):
I'm a little bit hesitant to say this because it's
when it comes to the conservation the history of America.
It's a little bit of an anomaly. But what happened
to save him as private ownership, we shot them all
down to the point where there was just a couple
scattered animals here and there. Even at one time a
guy named William T. Hornaday, who was a taxidermist and
(36:32):
mammal expert. He wrote letters around the country trying to
see who had a few, and there was a handful
of eccentrics around the country that had managed to go
out and rope some and save them, maybe even feed
them off domestic coles when they were calves, and these
kind of slowly got broad into little herds. Interestingly, some
(36:53):
got brought to the Bronx Zoo when they started trying
to repopulate little protected populations in the West. Another great
irony as they were moving animals from the Bronx Zoo
out to Oklahoma to turn them loose. Like that's how
bad it got, and even today like we really haven't
recovered the end. We've saved them from genetic extinction. So
(37:15):
there's about a half million in existence. Ninety four percent
of them are privately owned. What we haven't saved them
from is ecological extinction of all American wildlife, of all
native American wildlife, grizzly bears, black bears, el bighorn, sheep, no, no, no, no,
the buffalo. The bison is the only animal that does
not have the rights of a wild animal. If a
(37:36):
buffalo walks off of National Park and comes into Montana,
he becomes livestock, He becomes the under the authority of
the Department of Livestock. We do not accept them as
wild animals anymore, which in my view is a great sin.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
We could go for like three or four hours easy conversation, easy,
but we can't. So I'm going to take us up
to I guess modern times. So when we were talking
loking earlier about the long hunters, we discussed there's clearly
this element of democracy and independence embedded in that particular system.
(38:11):
And if you look at the way the modern hunting
world I guess or system is structured, it feels like
we're trying to we're trying to solve that tension between
people's rights to hunt animals and the conservation public resource aspect.
Is that right?
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. We live
under now. When I say we in this case, I
mean American hunters, American fishermen. We live under a very
complex regulatory structure which is self made our community. Modern
American sportsmen have built the system that we live under,
a very very tightly regulated pursuit. We've come up with
(38:56):
this system. Earlier we talked about how things were in
Europe in colonial period. We now refer to that with
some disdain, as the European model, where a landowner owns
the wildlife on their land, they control the wildlife on
their land. We came up with a system where American
wildlife is owned by the American people, administered on your
(39:19):
behalf by fishing, game agencies, and by governmental entities. But
American wildlife is American property. It doesn't matter whose lands
on it. That has allowed us the ability to have
a governing structure to control harvest for sustainability because the
state and in some cases the federal government has authority
(39:41):
over the animals. Meaning you could have a big property
and it has deer on it, but those deer are
not yours to decide what you want to do with
the deer belonged to the people. You own the land,
you have to get permits.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Talk to us a little bit about the contemporary market.
My guess is it's booming. I don't mean literally the
volume of life hunting that's going on, although I bet
that finger. But like in your industry, in your world
outdoorsman media, people buying.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
Gear for all this stuff.
Speaker 3 (40:10):
My gut says that this is a hot area of
the economy.
Speaker 2 (40:14):
Oh yeah, I mean we have a huge economic impact.
I mean, you know, you have. You know, any given year,
thirteen or fourteen million Americans will buy a hunting license
to go hunt, over twice as many people will buy
a fishing license to go fish. It generates billions dollars
in economic activity. But most of that economic activity is
(40:34):
around gear and experiences, right, it's not economic activity about
trading and trading and deer in deer.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
And it's also growing really fast, I take it, or like,
what kind of growth of your saying.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
It really spiked, No, it's remarkably stable. It really spiked
during the pandemic. You know, obviously as people turn to
you know, making sour dough bread and cooking venison. Back
to the spikes. It's remarkably stable the year.
Speaker 5 (41:00):
There are two types of Americans.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
There are sourdome Americans and they live in cities and
then veniceon Americans.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Ye, so actually that reminds me.
Speaker 1 (41:10):
So one of the things that I took from the
Long Hunter series is that gear is really important because
you guys talk so much about the gear that the
colonists and pioneers actually had.
Speaker 4 (41:21):
So I feel like there's.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
An element of consumerism in the hunting community where people
just collect guns and knives and things.
Speaker 2 (41:30):
Oh for sure. Yeah, Like me and my buddies. I
mean to be honest with you, when we're sitting around,
you know, and I hang out a lot of people
involved in the conservation movement, Me and my bodies, and
we're sitting around, we mostly argue about gear. Yeah. I
came up in media, but our company, we have a
hunting apparel brand. We have a game call brand, we
have a hunting decoy brand, we have a hunting accessory brand.
(41:53):
So yeah, I mean, like gear is, it can't be
separated out. And the same way Boone was adamant about
what kind of he wore, I'm pretty about what I wear,
and that is like the economic activity today you know
is in large measure equipment and gear. And what's beautiful
about and I want to fill this in. What's beautiful
about it is that's how we fund conservation. So our
(42:14):
industry in the thirties we put ourselves under a thirteen
percent excise tax. So when you buy guns or ammunition,
any gun purchase guns, ammunition, sporting equipment, there's a anywhere
from eleven to thirteen percent excise tax which goes right
into conservation spending. You go find me another industry that
(42:35):
has anything comparable to that. It does not exist. And
then our agencies that manage wildlife in America all fifty
states have a fish and Wildlife agency. Their funding comes
from licenses, permits, and stamps paid by hunters and anglers.
We're a self funded group of Americans.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeay, it's a rarest issue. It makes sense, right, most
industries don't voluntarily want to be tax on everything. But
when you think about the fact that there needs to
be some resources to sustain the possibility of hunting for
generations to come, it is sort of makes sense that
this would be an industry in which you want there
to be some sort of price of entry. If I
(43:16):
became a hunter this winter, would you make fun of me? Like,
would I be one of like those guys who it's like, Okay,
it's my first season hunting. I'm gonna buy the most
expensive rifle. I'm gonna buy the most expensive hat. I'm
gonna buy the most expensive shoes. You must have a
name like those types, and they like show up on
the hunt with you, and it's clear they like went
(43:36):
through all the lists and just like bought the top. Yeah,
like this sort of like wanna be is it's like
their first thing and they just go down the line
and buy them deck themselves out in the top of
the line gear.
Speaker 2 (43:48):
The name I have for those people is my Buddy's Now.
I'm telling you, not a year goes by, man, not
a year goes by that. I don't take out friends, family, whoever,
people that are interested in and hunting, curious about hunting,
even sometimes uneasy with hunting, that I don't take them
out and kind of explain the world. I have three
(44:08):
young kids. I've been lucky to turn them all into
you know, avid hunters, and we share that. So no,
I like sharing this world. It's the world I care
a lot about I care about how it's perceived. Most
Americans don't hunt. In some states like California, New Jersey,
one percent of the population hunts. So in some ways
we live and exist with the blessing of the American
(44:32):
public in general. So it's important to me for people
to understand what we're up to, how we think, and
that we're willing to recognize the sins of our forefathers
and have gone out of our way to correct those sins.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
This is a slight tangent, but since we're on the
subject of conservation, I'd be curious to get your thoughts.
Speaker 4 (44:50):
But what do you think about.
Speaker 1 (44:51):
Commercial hunting of endangered animals? So things like lions or
I don't know, buffalo of some sort in Africa, Because
one argument I've heard is that these animals at the
moment basically have negative value, right because they're living on
land that you can't use for anything else because you
(45:12):
have to conserve it because you need to protect the animals.
But if you allow commercial hunting in a controlled way,
you basically put an economic value on that animal such
that you know, it becomes something that people want to
maintain and preserve and stick around.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Yeah, I would first want to just clarify, I don't
mean to be a difficult guess, but be careful using
the word endangered, because it can be when I say that.
Like in the US we have the Endangered Species Act,
we have a way that we formally declare things to
be endangered. I think in the American imagination, Africa is
far away. We hear the word endangered and it's not
(45:51):
really open to certain levels of nuance about where and what.
For instance, elk. Right here in the United States, we
have robust populations of elk across the American West. We
have hunting seasons for elk, We have open hunting seasons
for elk. But elk have only been restored across about
twenty percent of their native range. Michigan was elk country,
(46:13):
Wisconsin was elk country, Virginia was elk country. Elk have
been wiped out of those places and not restored. So
you might say, well, elk are endangered because they're not
in Michigan and Wisconsin in appreciable numbers. Yet in the
American West, in some places we have a problem with
too many elk. So you gotta be careful with words
like that. But to get to the core of your question. Yes,
(46:37):
it is possible. There are places in Africa, and I'm
not a subject matter expert on Africa like I am.
I'm a subject matter expert on these issues in the
United States. But in Africa there are situations where money,
like value to hunters, is able to put so much
value on wildlife that the wildlife becomes worth protecting. Meaning
(47:03):
people that are on the landscape will recognize the presence
of wild knife generates so much economic activity that it's
best not to kill it all off for us, is
bush meat or other applications, or because it's a crop pest,
or because it's dangerous to livestock. They'll recognize that, Hey,
that lion, that thing's worth sixty thousand bucks. Half that
(47:26):
money's coming to our village. Don't mess with that lion.
I mean, that just happens. Whether you however you feel
emotionally about the killing of lions, that's an economic reality
in some places.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
I feel like, don't mess with lions is just good,
good advice generally.
Speaker 5 (47:41):
Yeah, I just have one last question.
Speaker 3 (47:43):
You mentioned bear meat. I haven't had that much wild
game in my life. I've had, you know, sausage with
venison and pork, and like when I was out in
Jackson Hole, I went to some restaurant and you know,
tried a few different like many stakes of it.
Speaker 2 (47:57):
Yeah, that wasn't even wild game, that's just farm raised animals.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
What should I try that I've probably never tried before once.
I like meat a lot, So what would I like
out there?
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Some of my favorites really, you know, Mallard ducks, so
if you're in a park, you see that duck where
the mail has the iridescent green head. When you get
those that have been in one place a while and
have it migrated lately and they're getting on crops, they're
getting in grain fields, one of my all time favorite things.
This is going to sound weird, but true squirrel properly
(48:29):
done would kind of blow your mind. And it's partly
the fun of it, like, because you have a preconceived
notion of what it would be like, and then when
you taste it, you'd think, I cannot believe that's that.
That would kind of blow you away. And I think
that you would be very very surprised if you had
a bare pot roast in a classic fashion with root vegetables,
(48:51):
you know, and a good broth I think you would
also say, like I refuse to accept that that's what
it is, and I wouldn't accept that had I not seen.
Speaker 5 (49:00):
It happen, I'd love it. I want to bear pot
roast right now.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
I'll bring you some venison ragu.
Speaker 4 (49:05):
That's what I've been making so far.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Although one thing I learned is that the fat content
of venison is actually really low, so it's not very
good for making things like burgers and yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
You gotta make su Yeah, it's very waxy. Yeah, it
melts differently than be fat, so it sets up in
the inside of your mouth and it doesn't freeze well.
So if you want to freeze when you get your
venison from your hunter and you want to enjoy it
for the next year, trim the fat away, trim the
talo away. And if you do that, it's basically archival
(49:35):
once you put it in your freezer. If you leave that
talo on it, it's not that talo will turn even
in your freezer.
Speaker 5 (49:41):
Interesting.
Speaker 1 (49:41):
Okay, my last question is what would you recommend I
make with venison.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
I would start out by making the things that you
like the most, that are easiest to make, Like you
mentioned ragou, making hamburgers, making things that you're comfortable making,
that aren't overly complex and don't have too many steps,
just so you can go and find these kind of
like points in comparison. If you, if you and your family,
(50:07):
if in the summer you like to grill burgers like
you like to grill up beef burgers, grill up with
Vendison burger, follow the same basic steps and just kind
of get comfortable with the way it's a little different,
and when you do that enough, you'll come to prefer it.
My wife, like my wife doesn't hunt man. My wife
doesn't like domestic meat. She doesn't like the taste of
domestic meat because for the last twenty years she's eating
(50:28):
nothing of game meat. She's gotten where. She don't like it,
she doesn't want to eat it.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
We're going to have to wrap this conversation up, even though,
as we mentioned before, we could go on for hours.
I have to say, I hope my husband isn't listening
to this, because I am planning on getting one of
Steve's cookbooks for Christmas.
Speaker 2 (50:46):
I would love to sign it for him. If you
want to reach out, I will send you. I'll send
him a whole box and stuff if you if you reach.
Speaker 1 (50:53):
Out, Okay, I might well of nominal value, of nominal value,
a book would be nice pleasure.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
I know a lot of journalists, but not the kind
like that.
Speaker 1 (51:05):
So Steve Vanella, thank you so much for coming on
odd Lots.
Speaker 4 (51:09):
That was a blast.
Speaker 5 (51:10):
That was really fun.
Speaker 2 (51:10):
Blast appreciate it.
Speaker 4 (51:14):
Thank you, Joe. That was so fun.
Speaker 5 (51:29):
That was so fun.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
I don't know anything about that, but like we could
have talked for three hours.
Speaker 5 (51:33):
There are so many things I'm curious about now.
Speaker 4 (51:36):
This is underappreciated.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
I think the role of hunting in America's economic development
and it's intertwining. I didn't even know this with the
Industrial Revolution, didn't.
Speaker 5 (51:45):
Know about that either. It's exactly what I was gonna say.
I would have had no idea.
Speaker 3 (51:48):
And it's always sort of fascinating to think, like you
can't run a big factory if you don't have belts. Now, granted,
according to Stephen, there were other sources of leather, but
it's so interesting to think about, like here there's this
thing that if you don't have an access to like
one commodity or whatever.
Speaker 5 (52:04):
You know, there's a new.
Speaker 3 (52:05):
Book by the way out about rope that I want
to have And it's like a similar story about how
crucial rope was.
Speaker 5 (52:10):
Anyway, it was so it was so fascinating.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Uh, you know he mentioned squirrel meat at the end,
So again I'm just throwing out tidbits that I learned
from his series. But you know, you can't really shoot
a squirrel if you're going to eat it, because they're
so small. The bullet like rips off all the meat.
So the way the pioneers used to do it, apparently,
is they would shoot at the tree that the squirrel
(52:35):
was on and sort of like shock the squirrel to
death and it would fall out of the tree and
then you can eat it.
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Wait, Tracy can ask you is a question is sort
of non politically correct. Is it true that Germans can't
pronounce the word squirrel?
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (52:48):
Yes, Okay my personal experience when I was a kid,
I used to ask my uncle to say squirrel all
the time just for laughs. And the way he says
it is and yeah, he struggles with it.
Speaker 3 (53:02):
I just want an excuse to see if this was
confirmed during to deny it.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
Okay, now that we're talking about squirrels, shall we leave
it there.
Speaker 5 (53:09):
Let's leave it there, all right?
Speaker 1 (53:10):
This has been another episode of the Odd Thoughts podcast.
I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 3 (53:15):
And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You could follow me at the Stalwart.
Follow our guest Stephen Ronella. He's at Stephen Ronella. Follow
our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carman Arman, Dashil Bennett at
Dashbod and kill Brooks at Kilbrooks. From our odd Laws content,
go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots with the
daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and you can
chat about all of these topics twenty four to seven
(53:36):
in our discord Discord dot gg slash od lots.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
And if you enjoyed this conversation, if you like it
when we look into the economic history of the US,
then please leave us a positive review on your favorite
podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,
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All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel
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Speaker 4 (54:00):
Thanks for listening.
Hosts And Creators
Joe Weisenthal
Tracy Alloway
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The Burden
The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder, and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.” David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish? Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run “Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country. Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago. Season 1 - The Burden In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname. Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance. For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. Welcome to The Burden.