Books & Literature

Tall tales. Yarns. Fish stories. Bullcrap. Whatever you call them, half-true or entirely fabricated stories have been favorites among hunters, probably since the first nomadic peoples started chasing animals with pointy sticks. The great thing about tall tales, and why they’ve stuck around so long...

This excerpt is from Steven Rinella’s “The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival.” You can preorder it online right now or find it in bookstores on December 1. A friend of mine used to work for a guiding company that ran extended mountain backpacking trips for high school students. Their...

Francis Macomber… was thirty-five years old, kept himself very fit, was good at court games, had a number of big-game fishing records, and had just shown himself, very publicly, to be a coward. Ernest Hemingway, “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” In retrospect, it’s tough to blame poor...

Hollywood just doesn’t try very hard when it comes to depicting hunting and fishing. That’s really the only way you can explain how they get it so wrong, so consistently. From roaring sharks to fishing hooks from watch parts, movies have often ventured well past ridiculous. We’ve got a list a mile...

For our latest round of recommended books, we thought we’d share some of the MeatEater staff’s favorite wilderness survival stories. From historical accounts to fictional adventures, these titles make for great summer reading material. Once you’ve completed this list, make sure you check out Part...

Winter is when we get a lot of our reading done. Here’s another round of book recommendations from the MeatEater crew and contributors.  If you’re stuck inside the house with winter bearing down, this reading list should get you through the snowy months. Make sure you check out Part 1, as well...

At MeatEater, we’re inundated with book recommendation requests for reading lists. Here’s the first of lists from the MeatEater Team, many more to come. There’s a little of everything here from each of our contributors. You’ll find subjects as diverse as American history, hunting stories, advanced...

By Mark Kenyon I’m a huge book worm and on instagram lately I’ve been sharing quick book reviews. I thought today I’d do a more comprehensive review of five books that all hunters and anglers should read. A few are obvious recommendations, a couple are more surprising. If you enjoy a good book, grab...

Hunting has a rich history in the United States. Long before our country settled the West, hunters and trappers did the bulk of the heavy lifting which made Manifest Destiny a possibility. Mountain men like Jedediah Smith, John Colter, and many more would later become legendary historical figures...

Hunters and anglers scored a major victory with the recent defeat of H.R. 621. But, with H.R. 622, BLM 2.0 and a host of other legislation aimed at dismantling our public lands systems, the risk of losing access to public lands is sure to be a constant concern in the future. Because the fight is far...

Over the course of the last season, Steve sent out his media recommendations as a weekly companion to each MeatEater episode, complete with books, movies, articles, & more. We’ve compiled a fall reading list from the books & articles Steve recommended in these newsletters. If you’re interested in...