Announcing MeatEater’s Latest Audiobook: The Long Hunters

This is the beginning of a big project, and this is only the first installment of MeatEater’s American History, where we explain in great, lively, bloody detail chunks of American history.

Steven Rinella and Clay Newcomb gather listeners for a new round of stories, this time drawing from the lives of the rugged Long Hunters, who include such figures as Daniel Boone, Henry Skaggs, and Kasper Mansker. These were the commercial hunters and trappers who explored and exploited the First Far West, the land across the Appalachian Mountains, in the era between the Seven Years War and the American Revolution—one of the most fabled periods of American history.

This is the definitive telling of the story of the Long Hunters. It's perfect for you if you’re a person who understands or wants to understand how backwoods hunting actually happened in the years before the American Revolution and how market hunters, folks who hunt for a living, went about the business of killing, skinning, and selling scores of deer per season. If they were successful, this endeavor could be more lucrative than farming.

As you might expect from the name, these hunters would be gone a long time on hunting trips. They’d take off on expeditions beyond the line of British colonial settlement for months or even years at a time, killing hundreds, if not thousands, of deer.

Their adventures include some of the most hair-raising and jaw-dropping stories of wilderness living and deer hunting known to man. In this audio original, you're going to hear about buffalo stampedes, bear attacks, people getting lost, bodies getting found, long journeys, close calls, and the rise and fall of a forgotten trade and the skin of a creature that remains America's favorite big game animal.

The feats of these courageous, resilient backwoodsmen forever shaped a national identity centered around individualism, capitalism, freedom, and the need for wild places and wild animals.

Click here to download your audiobook now.