Steven Rinella

“Microthreats are hardly confined to the wilderness. From the common cold to the Ebola virus, various nasties could be waiting to pounce on you every time you shake someone's hand.”

“I want my kids to see, to be surrounded by adults and surrounded by people who influence them, who live a life of passion and dedication to something.”

“I'm always aware of the fact I'm talking to my tribe of people who've grown up in the outdoors, and want a relationship with the environment. But I also aim outside that circle.”

“Trust me: anyone who ascribes to that old adage about not sweating the small stuff hasn't spent much time outdoors.”

“The amount of people I meet who are afraid of having a dangerous encounter with a mountain lion is staggering.”

“When I got trichinosis, I was shooting an episode of 'MeatEater' that involved taking a Navy SEAL officer on his first hunt. He wanted an intense experience, and I figured that hunting and eating bears in the western Alaska Range would suffice. In total, three crew members and I got sick.”

“During my high-school and community-college years in western Michigan, I sold firewood to supplement my meager income from on-again, off-again construction work.”

“Early maps were generally big flat landscapes with few internal features but all the waterways were marked on them. People knew to pay close attention to that, because that is how they could figure out where they were and where they were going.”

“Books I like: John McPhee's 'Coming Into the Country,' Michael Herr's 'Dispatches about the Vietnam War,' and Evan S. Connell's 'Son of the Morning Star' - the greatest book about the American West. I also admire Joan Didion, although I don't write like her in any way, shape, or form or cover the same subject material.”

“While there's certainly no shortage of great preblended jerky-making kits on the market, it is fun and rewarding to make your own.”

“Anxiety in the parent creates anxiety in the kid.”

“When I started dating my wife, Katie, I ached for her from my knees to my throat.”

“A gadget connoisseur has to be able to suspend feelings of disbelief, pessimism, and mockery. The phrase 'That thing ain't gonna last five minutes in the real world!' can't be in his vocabulary, and though he must appreciate physics and engineering, he shouldn't be overly concerned with the 'laws' of those fields.”

“I considered myself to be a pretty adept hunter. I'm good at spotting game. I'm good at reading signs when going through the woods.”

“Even in our understanding of surviving on the Great Plains, they would cover this enormous amount of ground. I imagine these people's base skill set, it would be adaptable to so many different places, and so I admire that.”

“At its core, hunting is about food.”

“We're pragmatic creatures. People don't like to see waste.”

“When you're out in the wild, you should live so fully and recklessly that you're happy to be alive and healthy by the end of the day. You should push yourself to the point where you can rejoice in the fact that you've got a warm sack of bland food in one hand, a spoon in the other, plus a mouth full of teeth.”

“I trapped for 10 years, selling the hides and everything. Muskrats, raccoons, coyote, mink, beaver, otter, fox. When I figured out you couldn't make an actual living as a professional trapper anymore, I decided to become a professional trapping writer.”

“I'm a writer through and through. I'll always write.”