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American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon
From the host of the Travel Channel’s “The Wild Within.”
A hunt for the American buffalo—an adventurous, fascinating examination of an animal that has haunted the American imagination.
In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds—there’s only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful—Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia. Throughout these adventures, Rinella found himself contemplating his own place among the 14,000 years’ worth of buffalo hunters in North America, as well as the buffalo’s place in the American experience. At the time of the Revolutionary War, North America was home to approximately 40 million buffalo, the largest herd of big mammals on the planet, but by the mid-1890s only a few hundred remained. Now that the buffalo is on the verge of a dramatic ecological recovery across the West, Americans are faced with the challenge of how, and if, we can dare to share our land with a beast that is the embodiment of the American wilderness.
American Buffalo is a narrative tale of Rinella’s hunt. But beyond that, it is the story of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped our national identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo’s past, present, and to the Bering Land Bridge, where scientists search for buffalo bones amid artifacts of the New World’s earliest human inhabitants; to buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands; to the Detroit Carbon works, a “bone charcoal” plant that made fortunes in the late 1800s by turning millions of tons of buffalo bones into bone meal, black dye, and fine china; and even to an abattoir turned fashion mecca in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, where a depressed buffalo named Black Diamond met his fate after serving as the model for the American nickel.
Rinella’s erudition and exuberance, combined with his gift for storytelling, make him the perfect guide for a book that combines outdoor adventure with a quirky blend of facts and observations about history, biology, and the natural world. Both a captivating narrative and a book of environmental and historical significance, American Buffalo tells us as much about ourselves as Americans as it does about the creature who perhaps best of all embodies the American ethos.
A hunt for the American buffalo—an adventurous, fascinating examination of an animal that has haunted the American imagination.
In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds—there’s only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful—Rinella managed to kill a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside and then raft the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and suffering from hypothermia. Throughout these adventures, Rinella found himself contemplating his own place among the 14,000 years’ worth of buffalo hunters in North America, as well as the buffalo’s place in the American experience. At the time of the Revolutionary War, North America was home to approximately 40 million buffalo, the largest herd of big mammals on the planet, but by the mid-1890s only a few hundred remained. Now that the buffalo is on the verge of a dramatic ecological recovery across the West, Americans are faced with the challenge of how, and if, we can dare to share our land with a beast that is the embodiment of the American wilderness.
American Buffalo is a narrative tale of Rinella’s hunt. But beyond that, it is the story of the many ways in which the buffalo has shaped our national identity. Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo’s past, present, and to the Bering Land Bridge, where scientists search for buffalo bones amid artifacts of the New World’s earliest human inhabitants; to buffalo jumps where Native Americans once ran buffalo over cliffs by the thousands; to the Detroit Carbon works, a “bone charcoal” plant that made fortunes in the late 1800s by turning millions of tons of buffalo bones into bone meal, black dye, and fine china; and even to an abattoir turned fashion mecca in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District, where a depressed buffalo named Black Diamond met his fate after serving as the model for the American nickel.
Rinella’s erudition and exuberance, combined with his gift for storytelling, make him the perfect guide for a book that combines outdoor adventure with a quirky blend of facts and observations about history, biology, and the natural world. Both a captivating narrative and a book of environmental and historical significance, American Buffalo tells us as much about ourselves as Americans as it does about the creature who perhaps best of all embodies the American ethos.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published December 2, 2008
963 people are currently reading
9361 people want to read
About the author
Steven Rinella
47 books955 followersSteven Rinella is the host of the Netflix Original series MeatEater and The MeatEater Podcast. He's also the author of six books dealing with wildlife, hunting, fishing and wild game cooking, including the bestselling MeatEater Fish and Game Cookbook: Recipes and Techniques for Every Hunter and Angler.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 854 reviews
January 27, 2020
The book is well written and researched. Rinella provides a lot of information about the American Buffalo from biology, Native American history and culture, to the history of the early western migration. There is also action and adventure as the author goes on a buffalo hunt alone in a National Park in Alaska after winning the hunting lottery. I am amazed at how much information Rinella packed into just under eight hours. If you want to know about the American Bison, this book is for you.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is seven hours and forty-two minutes. Rinella does a good job narrating his own book.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is seven hours and forty-two minutes. Rinella does a good job narrating his own book.
February 18, 2015
I once saw Steven Rinella interviewed. He told a story about how, one Christmas shortly after he was married, he preceded his wife home to his parents' house for the holidays, leaving her to follow along behind, bearing the Christmas gifts for the family, and a cooler packed with game that Steven had shot on hunting trips and carefully laid aside for the holidays. When his wife got to the airport, she discovered that the flight she was taking was overcrowded, and she had to make a decision: either to bring the meat-packed cooler or the Christmas gifts along. She chose the gifts. When she arrived at her destination and Steve found out that she'd left the meat behind, he claims he nearly divorced her. He read her the riot act about the ethics of wasting the meat after he'd taken the lives of the animals represented by those carefully-wrapped packages in the cooler. That's the kind of guy you're dealing with here - and that's the kind of book. Not for the squeamish, but if you're interested in history, ecology and the environment, the ethics of hunting, and reading a writer who's a standup, no bullshit guy, you'll enjoy it.
April 24, 2020
This is flat out the best book I have read so far this year. Mr Rinella's interest in buffalo started years ago when he discovered a partial skull while walking in the woods. That's not a particularly unusual event...folks around here find them fairly regularly and never think too much about it. Rinella's mind works on a higher level, however. He went to considerable time and expense to learn about his find, travelling great distances, and even going to the extent of having the skull radiocarbon dated and DNA tested.
The result of Rinella's fascination with the bison, or buffalo as he prefers to call them, is this very excellent, wonderfully-researched book. There are actually several story lines in here. One story line concerns Rinella's skull, or rather Rinella's buffalo skull, and outlines his odyssey in trying to identify the age and specific species of the relic. The second story line concerns his research into the origin of the beast, its importance to the indigenous peoples of North America, and the near extirpation of the species due to deliberate over-hunting. These story lines (I can't call them sections or chapters because everything is intertwined here) are completely engrossing. Anything that Rinella does not know about buffalo is probably not worth knowing. To put the icing on the cake, Rinella was drawn to harvest a buffalo in Godknowswhere, Alaska. This was probably the part of the book that appealed to me the most.
If you have never been by yourself, on foot, in an area that cannot be reached by road and where your cellphone is useless, maybe you won't fully appreciate this hunt. It's liberating and spooky all at the same time! Throw in some grizzlies and inclement weather and you have a trip that will make some people frightened and miserable, but a few will draw the deep breaths of the (temporarily) free man.
Rinella does a great job relating his stalk and eventual kill. First comes the elation, and then the bitter realization that the carcass is some miles from his lonesome camp. This puts me in mind of an old saying regarding moose hunting: "moose hunting is a lot of fun until somebody shoots a moose". So Rinella, by himself, in grizzly country, has to make this huge beast into meat and get it back to camp. I remember a sweetheart deal I got on 3 bison about 10 years ago. I purchased 3 bison, 2 bulls and a heifer, from a farmer going out of the buffalo business. The condition was that these critters were on the hoof and getting them from that condition to the freezer was our concern. We started out one rainy morning in May, put the animals out of their misery, skinned them, gutted them and quartered them. We had the help of the rancher who hoisted the animals with her frontend loader, and also had a chainsaw for quartering. This job took us until dusk, and there were 3 of us! Rinella had an animal on the ground and no help to do this onerous task. Needless to say, the job required multiple trips back to camp, through grizzly territory and smeared with buffalo juice. I developed a real respect for him here, and I'm sure the forest creatures could hear his brass balls clanking together with every stride.
Rinella makes no apologies for his enjoyment of the hunting experience. A lot of folks eat hamburger but wouldn't want to personally kill a cow, and he's fine with that. Hunters are always being asked why we hunt, when all we have to do is buy meat at the store where no animals were hurt. My argument is that if God didn't want us to hunt animals, He wouldn't have made them out of meat.
I borrowed this book from the library, but I fully intend to buy a hardcover copy for myself. I know I'll be reading it again. The book isn't perfect, though. It has photos, but these are small and printed on regular paper. Maybe in the hardcover the photos will be better presented. There are a few small mistakes, like the use of the word "sheaves" instead of "sheaths" on P221, and on P169 he claims Dave Mather was an ancestor of Cotton Mather, when he should have said descendant, since Dave was born in 1851 and Cotton in 1663. These small considerations aside, this is a wonderful book and one I will be reading again. Soon.
The result of Rinella's fascination with the bison, or buffalo as he prefers to call them, is this very excellent, wonderfully-researched book. There are actually several story lines in here. One story line concerns Rinella's skull, or rather Rinella's buffalo skull, and outlines his odyssey in trying to identify the age and specific species of the relic. The second story line concerns his research into the origin of the beast, its importance to the indigenous peoples of North America, and the near extirpation of the species due to deliberate over-hunting. These story lines (I can't call them sections or chapters because everything is intertwined here) are completely engrossing. Anything that Rinella does not know about buffalo is probably not worth knowing. To put the icing on the cake, Rinella was drawn to harvest a buffalo in Godknowswhere, Alaska. This was probably the part of the book that appealed to me the most.
If you have never been by yourself, on foot, in an area that cannot be reached by road and where your cellphone is useless, maybe you won't fully appreciate this hunt. It's liberating and spooky all at the same time! Throw in some grizzlies and inclement weather and you have a trip that will make some people frightened and miserable, but a few will draw the deep breaths of the (temporarily) free man.
Rinella does a great job relating his stalk and eventual kill. First comes the elation, and then the bitter realization that the carcass is some miles from his lonesome camp. This puts me in mind of an old saying regarding moose hunting: "moose hunting is a lot of fun until somebody shoots a moose". So Rinella, by himself, in grizzly country, has to make this huge beast into meat and get it back to camp. I remember a sweetheart deal I got on 3 bison about 10 years ago. I purchased 3 bison, 2 bulls and a heifer, from a farmer going out of the buffalo business. The condition was that these critters were on the hoof and getting them from that condition to the freezer was our concern. We started out one rainy morning in May, put the animals out of their misery, skinned them, gutted them and quartered them. We had the help of the rancher who hoisted the animals with her frontend loader, and also had a chainsaw for quartering. This job took us until dusk, and there were 3 of us! Rinella had an animal on the ground and no help to do this onerous task. Needless to say, the job required multiple trips back to camp, through grizzly territory and smeared with buffalo juice. I developed a real respect for him here, and I'm sure the forest creatures could hear his brass balls clanking together with every stride.
Rinella makes no apologies for his enjoyment of the hunting experience. A lot of folks eat hamburger but wouldn't want to personally kill a cow, and he's fine with that. Hunters are always being asked why we hunt, when all we have to do is buy meat at the store where no animals were hurt. My argument is that if God didn't want us to hunt animals, He wouldn't have made them out of meat.
I borrowed this book from the library, but I fully intend to buy a hardcover copy for myself. I know I'll be reading it again. The book isn't perfect, though. It has photos, but these are small and printed on regular paper. Maybe in the hardcover the photos will be better presented. There are a few small mistakes, like the use of the word "sheaves" instead of "sheaths" on P221, and on P169 he claims Dave Mather was an ancestor of Cotton Mather, when he should have said descendant, since Dave was born in 1851 and Cotton in 1663. These small considerations aside, this is a wonderful book and one I will be reading again. Soon.
July 6, 2011
This book is kindof like meeting a cute guy at a party and wondering why nobody else is talking to him. Then you realize why b/c he keeps talking and talking and talking and rambling and entertaining noone but himself with his limitless amount of detail and running off on tangents that you definitely don't want to follow him off on but there is just no time to break in and even mention needing a bathroom break. Finally you manage to get that bathroom break, but then you realize he might be a diamond in the rough and maybe he is interesting after-all, an he kindof is. just a little obnoxious too. you end up talking to him for the rest of the party then when you leave you hope you don't run into him again sometime soon, but a little part of you sortof hopes you do.
December 12, 2011
I'm an outdoor writer (fly fishing magazines), so I have what you might call a professional appreciation for Rinella and his work. I've also interviewed him and I like him personally. Clearly, I am squarely in his target demographic, a hunter and fisherman as well as someone who is forced by realistic circumstances to live in a big city (Atlanta).
All that said, this is my favorite of the "microhistories" which have weighed down booksellers' shelves in recent years, in large part because Rinella is so legitimately authentic. His closest analogue is probably Mark Kurlansky, author of "Cod" and a former professional cod fisherman. Rinella is truly an elite hunter. You don't roll into the Wrangell-Elias and expect to make it a week with nothing but your wits, a rifle and a backpack. Certainly you don't expect hunting success, even though bison are notoriously stupid. The country is too big, the herd too small. Rinella if anything soft-sells his own extreme skill, inviting you in to his world and letting you piggyback on what were actually years of unacknowledged practice.
And yet the frame story, that of Rinella's hunt for a bison, truly takes a back seat to what I viewed as the most interesting part of the novel: the history of Man's entry into North America (as best we understand it now). We take things that "Science" says for granted these days, but there is no true consensus about how men and women entered North America. To Rinella's credit, he took the time to actually examine the on-the-ground evidence. His efforts to contextualize what we do know--from Clovis points to the biology of Bison bison--are top notch, and the best in this field.
An excellent read, one of my favorite ever, and a great insight into the world of an elite big game hunter at the top of his game.
All that said, this is my favorite of the "microhistories" which have weighed down booksellers' shelves in recent years, in large part because Rinella is so legitimately authentic. His closest analogue is probably Mark Kurlansky, author of "Cod" and a former professional cod fisherman. Rinella is truly an elite hunter. You don't roll into the Wrangell-Elias and expect to make it a week with nothing but your wits, a rifle and a backpack. Certainly you don't expect hunting success, even though bison are notoriously stupid. The country is too big, the herd too small. Rinella if anything soft-sells his own extreme skill, inviting you in to his world and letting you piggyback on what were actually years of unacknowledged practice.
And yet the frame story, that of Rinella's hunt for a bison, truly takes a back seat to what I viewed as the most interesting part of the novel: the history of Man's entry into North America (as best we understand it now). We take things that "Science" says for granted these days, but there is no true consensus about how men and women entered North America. To Rinella's credit, he took the time to actually examine the on-the-ground evidence. His efforts to contextualize what we do know--from Clovis points to the biology of Bison bison--are top notch, and the best in this field.
An excellent read, one of my favorite ever, and a great insight into the world of an elite big game hunter at the top of his game.
January 1, 2020
What a great idea for a book. The author wins a lottery to go on a buffalo hunt in Alaska and takes the reader along for the ride. Along the way, he recounts the story of the buffalo from prehistoric times through the glory of the old west to present. It made a very good audiobook that kept me thoroughly entertained from start to finish. It even made me laugh a few times. The buffalo is an American icon and played a significant role in our history and their demise inspired the original conservation movement. Years after the buffalo were annihilated, the buffalo hunters surmised that the great heard would come down from the north or appear out of nowhere. They couldn’t believe the great heard was gone. They killed the goose that laid the golden egg. The buffalo should roam.
May 4, 2021
Great listen. Incredibly insightful.
March 25, 2009
I heard an interview with the author on NPR and bought this book for my father. I have to say, he sounded a lot more articulate and focused in the interview than he does in the book. This book rambles a lot about buffalo and their place in the American psyche and little trivia bits, but it also goes on at great length about a buffalo hunt (the author drew a buffalo tag in an Alaskan hunting lottery), and that part was frankly boring to me. He also tended to insert a lot of himself into those sections, and I found myself getting pretty irritated by him. The trivia and history stuff was better, though he has a tendency to wildly speculate, which got old. I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did.
January 14, 2025
As extremely well researched as it is, the author weirdly fails to mention the buffalo being culled as a means to starve Native American tribes, as a part of their genocide.
August 14, 2024
Who knew that there were bison in Alaska? I've visited Wrangell National Park and even rafted a river ten miles from the one that is featured in the book. I for one never knew there were bison in Alaska.
This is one of those books that is a worthwhile read because the author's take is refreshingly unconventional and there is a lot of history about bison that spice up the book.
I did not love the author's personal bison hunting narrative that was threaded within the larger story. I think a long introduction containing the hunting narrative would have worked better for me.
Solid 4 stars. Maybe even 5 stars for someone who is not averse to hunting.
This is one of those books that is a worthwhile read because the author's take is refreshingly unconventional and there is a lot of history about bison that spice up the book.
I did not love the author's personal bison hunting narrative that was threaded within the larger story. I think a long introduction containing the hunting narrative would have worked better for me.
Solid 4 stars. Maybe even 5 stars for someone who is not averse to hunting.
October 8, 2021
Listened to it on audible, fully enjoyed it. A well informed author gives a great personal story about Buffalo along with an in depth history of the impact Buffalo have had on a perhaps global scale.
March 5, 2021
Author Steven Rinella artfully interweaves a fascinating collection of history about American bison with his own personal story of his passion for the subject, including the story of his adventurous (and almost disastrous) trip to Alaska to hunt one.
This book may not be for everyone, but for me – a lover of nature, history, ecology, outdoor adventure, and anthropology – this was an awesome read that readily held my attention through every page.
The story of the demise of the huge buffalo herds, at human hands, in a matter of a very few short years, was as riveting to me as it was disquieting and almost depressing. I kept asking myself: Are we, collectively as humans, really incapable of setting aside our immediate, orgiastic greed in order to preserve something so wondrous and beneficial to future generations? The story of the buffalo, along with many other stories that are playing out today, have forced me to be certain that we cannot.
While I am not a hunter myself, I can relate to the primitive natural instinct within us to directly acquire and process the food we need to survive – which, in the case of meat, means to hunt, kill, and butcher animals. I lament the fact that modern civilization has so dramatically removed the vast majority of us from our historical and genetic callings. I believe we should all question ourselves about our roles in this modern world, as the author himself did while in close observation of a buffalo herd:
This book may not be for everyone, but for me – a lover of nature, history, ecology, outdoor adventure, and anthropology – this was an awesome read that readily held my attention through every page.
The story of the demise of the huge buffalo herds, at human hands, in a matter of a very few short years, was as riveting to me as it was disquieting and almost depressing. I kept asking myself: Are we, collectively as humans, really incapable of setting aside our immediate, orgiastic greed in order to preserve something so wondrous and beneficial to future generations? The story of the buffalo, along with many other stories that are playing out today, have forced me to be certain that we cannot.
While I am not a hunter myself, I can relate to the primitive natural instinct within us to directly acquire and process the food we need to survive – which, in the case of meat, means to hunt, kill, and butcher animals. I lament the fact that modern civilization has so dramatically removed the vast majority of us from our historical and genetic callings. I believe we should all question ourselves about our roles in this modern world, as the author himself did while in close observation of a buffalo herd:
... my enjoyment of this animal as a simple biological being is short-lived; within seconds, my concentration is broken by a question that I've been struggling with for the past few months—how can I claim to love the very thing that I worked so hard to kill? I've thought of this often lately, yet I haven't been able to answer it with force and conviction. For now, I rely on a response that is admittedly glib: I just do, and I always will.
January 9, 2023
4.5 stars
July 7, 2020
This book really hooked me at the beginning. I found the author's experiences really interesting and, having recently been to Alaska and having started reading this book on a trip to the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in ND, I was tickled to see references to so many places that we had visited. It really was fun to see those connections and get a sense of the larger context of the "American Buffalo."
My husband and I have been fascinated with bison ever since seeing a herd in Custer State Park and have seen a few herds in a few states since then. This book is full of information about these animals. The author weaves together his personal experiences (a good chunk of the book was about his hunting trip in Alaska) with lots of interesting history about the buffalo and the way it has been used both physically and in cultural references through the centuries.
Some of my favorite tidbits:
1. "President Theodore Roosevelt, a onetime buffalo hunter and the honorary president of the ABS [American Buffalo Society], believed that the total annihilation of the buffalo would do irreparable damage to the manly mystique of the American West and that it would have overall negative impacts on the American psyche."
2. The anatomy of a buffalo that lets it run up to 40 mph (and outrun a horse in endurance).
3. "To thwart trophy hunters, it's illegal in Alaska to transport an animal's skull, horns or hide ahead of its meat."
4. The buffalo is "a symbol of the tenacity of wilderness and the destruction of wilderness; it's a symbol of Native American culture and the death of Native American culture; it's a symbol of the strength and vitality of American and the pettiness and greed of America; it represents a frontier both forgotten and remembered; it stands for freedom and captivity, extinction and salvation."
A major drawback for me, though, was a few chapters in the middle where the author gets into quite a bit of speculation about the origins of the buffalo. He discusses many theories and the overall effect on me was that they really have no idea about the true origins of the animal. He chooses to include studies and theories that are widely disputed/criticized and uses all kinds of vague language when going into depth about explanations of various possibilities.
The author also hints at his atheism/agnosticism in several places which no doubt contributes to his ability to entertain so many contradicting origin stories about the buffalo. At one point he says that it's an "Old Testament barrier" that caused the history of the buffalo to be unclear. He writes, "Until that month [July, 1926], archaeology had been compromised by the Bible, much the way evolutionary biology is plagued by that same text today." His willingness to seriously consider every possible (no matter how far fetched) theory except any that might have originated with the Bible was annoying, to say the least. Throughout the book he picks and chooses from any number of religious traditions and ultimately comes off as kind of flaky. At one point he writes, "Watching the weasel, you get the sense that a complete lack of morality is the only path to moral clarity." What an idiotic thing to say.
The chapters about where the buffalo comes from and the odd, nonsensical, quasi-spiritual sentiments sprinkled throughout almost killed the book for me, but, thankfully, he comes out of the few chapters about origins and dedicates the rest of the book to his hunt which was pretty entertaining.
Overall, I really liked the beginning and the end of this book, which a few chapters in the middle being quite a slog for me. I learned a lot about buffalos and it heightened my interest in them. The adventure aspect of the author's personal experience was also pretty fun to read. I'd recommend this book with the caveat that where he gets into origin theory and religion he really is out of his depth (seeming to include any theory he comes across even when he admits that its credibility has been questioned extensively) and, I hate to say it, but those sections were just downright boring.
My husband and I have been fascinated with bison ever since seeing a herd in Custer State Park and have seen a few herds in a few states since then. This book is full of information about these animals. The author weaves together his personal experiences (a good chunk of the book was about his hunting trip in Alaska) with lots of interesting history about the buffalo and the way it has been used both physically and in cultural references through the centuries.
Some of my favorite tidbits:
1. "President Theodore Roosevelt, a onetime buffalo hunter and the honorary president of the ABS [American Buffalo Society], believed that the total annihilation of the buffalo would do irreparable damage to the manly mystique of the American West and that it would have overall negative impacts on the American psyche."
2. The anatomy of a buffalo that lets it run up to 40 mph (and outrun a horse in endurance).
3. "To thwart trophy hunters, it's illegal in Alaska to transport an animal's skull, horns or hide ahead of its meat."
4. The buffalo is "a symbol of the tenacity of wilderness and the destruction of wilderness; it's a symbol of Native American culture and the death of Native American culture; it's a symbol of the strength and vitality of American and the pettiness and greed of America; it represents a frontier both forgotten and remembered; it stands for freedom and captivity, extinction and salvation."
A major drawback for me, though, was a few chapters in the middle where the author gets into quite a bit of speculation about the origins of the buffalo. He discusses many theories and the overall effect on me was that they really have no idea about the true origins of the animal. He chooses to include studies and theories that are widely disputed/criticized and uses all kinds of vague language when going into depth about explanations of various possibilities.
The author also hints at his atheism/agnosticism in several places which no doubt contributes to his ability to entertain so many contradicting origin stories about the buffalo. At one point he says that it's an "Old Testament barrier" that caused the history of the buffalo to be unclear. He writes, "Until that month [July, 1926], archaeology had been compromised by the Bible, much the way evolutionary biology is plagued by that same text today." His willingness to seriously consider every possible (no matter how far fetched) theory except any that might have originated with the Bible was annoying, to say the least. Throughout the book he picks and chooses from any number of religious traditions and ultimately comes off as kind of flaky. At one point he writes, "Watching the weasel, you get the sense that a complete lack of morality is the only path to moral clarity." What an idiotic thing to say.
The chapters about where the buffalo comes from and the odd, nonsensical, quasi-spiritual sentiments sprinkled throughout almost killed the book for me, but, thankfully, he comes out of the few chapters about origins and dedicates the rest of the book to his hunt which was pretty entertaining.
Overall, I really liked the beginning and the end of this book, which a few chapters in the middle being quite a slog for me. I learned a lot about buffalos and it heightened my interest in them. The adventure aspect of the author's personal experience was also pretty fun to read. I'd recommend this book with the caveat that where he gets into origin theory and religion he really is out of his depth (seeming to include any theory he comes across even when he admits that its credibility has been questioned extensively) and, I hate to say it, but those sections were just downright boring.
May 31, 2024
I didn’t realize I needed such an in depth analysis of the American Buffalo, but boy oh boy Steve sure convinced me to love Buffalo more than I could’ve possibly imagined
September 22, 2020
"But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.)"
-George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, 1936
"Killing a large animal inevitably gives me a sense of sorrow. I know it will hit me before it does, the way you go to bed drunk knowing you'll be hungover in the morning. It hits me as I run my fingers through the tangled mane of the buffalo's neck. The animal feels so solid, so substantive. I feel compelled to question what I've done, to compare the merits of its life with the merits of my own. It's not so much a feeling of guilt. There's no moment when I want the buffalo to stand back up and walk away, no moment when I wish that the bullet would retreat back into the barrel. It's more complicated than guilt. Seeing the dead buffalo, I feel an amalgamation of many things: thankfulness for the meat, an appreciation for the animals beauty, a regard for the history of its species, and, yes, a touch of guilt."
Steven Rinella, American Buffalo, pg. 204
I'm not a hunter. I've only been hunting once, and it barely counts. I've taken up fishing, and I've even started catching some fish. And there's something about catching a fish, keeping it, cleaning it and eating it that feels very human. Connective.
Who knows, maybe I'll take up hunting.
The actual book contains a lot more than the hunt - in fact, there's so much non-hunt stuff here that I'm not sure which was the story: was this a story about a man winning a buffalo hunting tag and going on the hunt with facts about buffalo throughout, or was it a book about Buffalo with a man's hunting yarn thrown in as the attempted driver?
My favorite parts of the book dealt with Native Americans, and the giant fauna of ages past. Rinella says that every schoolboy learns that Native Americans used every part of the buffalo. (We - who read it together - all agreed: yes. We had all heard that exact phrase.) But Rinella makes it clear throughout that they weren't using every part of every buffalo. And dang: if there wasn't a lot of wasted buffalo.
And right now we're going through a phase of romanticizing Indigenous Peoples. Romanticizing Europeans and explorers has certainly fallen out of favor - and rightfully so. But the pendulum swinging too far to the opposite side is also detrimental to the historical record.
The guy who chose this book brought buffalo steak to grill. I don't know how that really ties in with this review other than saying - if you choose this book to read as part of a group, I think you're obligated to buy some buffalo steaks and give thanks.
-George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant, 1936
"Killing a large animal inevitably gives me a sense of sorrow. I know it will hit me before it does, the way you go to bed drunk knowing you'll be hungover in the morning. It hits me as I run my fingers through the tangled mane of the buffalo's neck. The animal feels so solid, so substantive. I feel compelled to question what I've done, to compare the merits of its life with the merits of my own. It's not so much a feeling of guilt. There's no moment when I want the buffalo to stand back up and walk away, no moment when I wish that the bullet would retreat back into the barrel. It's more complicated than guilt. Seeing the dead buffalo, I feel an amalgamation of many things: thankfulness for the meat, an appreciation for the animals beauty, a regard for the history of its species, and, yes, a touch of guilt."
Steven Rinella, American Buffalo, pg. 204
I'm not a hunter. I've only been hunting once, and it barely counts. I've taken up fishing, and I've even started catching some fish. And there's something about catching a fish, keeping it, cleaning it and eating it that feels very human. Connective.
Who knows, maybe I'll take up hunting.
The actual book contains a lot more than the hunt - in fact, there's so much non-hunt stuff here that I'm not sure which was the story: was this a story about a man winning a buffalo hunting tag and going on the hunt with facts about buffalo throughout, or was it a book about Buffalo with a man's hunting yarn thrown in as the attempted driver?
My favorite parts of the book dealt with Native Americans, and the giant fauna of ages past. Rinella says that every schoolboy learns that Native Americans used every part of the buffalo. (We - who read it together - all agreed: yes. We had all heard that exact phrase.) But Rinella makes it clear throughout that they weren't using every part of every buffalo. And dang: if there wasn't a lot of wasted buffalo.
And right now we're going through a phase of romanticizing Indigenous Peoples. Romanticizing Europeans and explorers has certainly fallen out of favor - and rightfully so. But the pendulum swinging too far to the opposite side is also detrimental to the historical record.
The guy who chose this book brought buffalo steak to grill. I don't know how that really ties in with this review other than saying - if you choose this book to read as part of a group, I think you're obligated to buy some buffalo steaks and give thanks.
January 14, 2010
American Buffalo is such a great read that I am surprised I haven't heard of it sooner (presumptuous of me, I know). The book is part memoir, part meditation on the American relationship with nature, part social commentary and part outdoor adventure tale. It takes quite a writer to weave that many strands together in a short book without derailing the narrative, but Steven Rinella makes it look easy.
Rinella's tone is that of a self deprecating conversationalist. He hops from topic to topic with ease, which lets him bring in a number of interesting asides about the buffalo. When it really won't quite fit, he isn't afraid to break out a half page footnote (which you should read, as they are uniformly excellent.) Many writers of adventure books puff up the exploits of the author. Rinella's excursions into wildest Alaska are amazing and would probably kill me, but rather than brag, he talks about the difficulty and the mental challenge of it. This also helps bring the reader deeper into the story.
Rinella's encounter with the buffalo began when he found a buffalo skull in Montana. His research into the animals leads him to a lab in Oxford, museums in the United States and eventually to a park in Alaska where he hunts buffalo. This part may shock readers to whom hunting is completely alien, but the care he takes in the hunt and his discussion of the history should assuage everyone who lacks a PETA membership.
This is just a fabulous read which I recommend to everyone.
Rinella's tone is that of a self deprecating conversationalist. He hops from topic to topic with ease, which lets him bring in a number of interesting asides about the buffalo. When it really won't quite fit, he isn't afraid to break out a half page footnote (which you should read, as they are uniformly excellent.) Many writers of adventure books puff up the exploits of the author. Rinella's excursions into wildest Alaska are amazing and would probably kill me, but rather than brag, he talks about the difficulty and the mental challenge of it. This also helps bring the reader deeper into the story.
Rinella's encounter with the buffalo began when he found a buffalo skull in Montana. His research into the animals leads him to a lab in Oxford, museums in the United States and eventually to a park in Alaska where he hunts buffalo. This part may shock readers to whom hunting is completely alien, but the care he takes in the hunt and his discussion of the history should assuage everyone who lacks a PETA membership.
This is just a fabulous read which I recommend to everyone.
February 14, 2009
I wish I could mark this 3.5 stars. Rinella is a good writer and at no point in the book did I ever think to myself, "man, I wish I was done reading this book so I can read something else." Essentially, the book is about the author hunting a buffalo, but he mixes in the entire history of the buffalo and it's relationship to man. I liked the history parts, the hunting parts dragged a little (five or six chapters could be summed up by "I hiked around, shot a buffalo, was really cold, cut up the buffalo, and hauled it out.") especially where he talks about how he field dressed the animal. I never wanted to know how to skin and butcher a buffalo, but now I do, and I don't really feel enriched by the knowledge. I found the history part interesting enough to bore Tyler to tears on our hike telling him all about buffalo jumps, the history of buffalo hide usage, buffalo wallows, and the like.
February 6, 2009
Okay so I don't hunt. Nor am I remotely attracted to or interested in buffalo. So why did I like this book ? First of all, there is something to be said for what Alex Gram once said to me: If you can't or are not prepared to kill it, you shouldn't eat it. I understand the intent behind that belief, I just have never had to test it. So back to the book: the author wins one of the few & desirable permits to find & shoot a buffalo in a remote wilderness area in Alaska. The book follows the hunt and also slathers on a tonne of buffalo-related information - from the inspiration for band names to rise & fall of bone meal made from the piles of slaughtered bison of the Great Plains to a history of the hundreds of known buffalo jumps across North America. And I loved it !
Steven Rinella writes perfectly - his tempo and tone are just right, he is never boring even when dispensing what could be dry information. This is a terrific book.
Steven Rinella writes perfectly - his tempo and tone are just right, he is never boring even when dispensing what could be dry information. This is a terrific book.
November 5, 2022
Not bad, just dragged a little
June 19, 2021
4.5 stars. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, though I wouldn't say it changed my life. The author has an obvious admiration and respect for both the animals he pursues and the lands he traverses in search of them, which I appreciated. There is a definite edge of country humor at times, but there are also many poetic passages that balance the overall tone for more urban readers. Whatever your personal opinion about modern hunting, this book offers a fascinating glimpse into humanity's history with the buffalo that is not to be missed by any naturalist, whether they prefer to do their studying in the field or from an armchair.
April 27, 2020
This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I was skeptical at first because I am not a hunter. I've never been around guns much and have never had much interest in hunting or any adjacent topics.
I do like American history, though. And I recently read "Empire of the Summer Moon" about the Comanches. I liked that book so much that I was interested in exploring more topics related to Native American history and so I thought this book might be fun.
This book was a quick read, and I learned a lot about the history of the buffalo, which I really enjoyed. At the end of the day, I don't think I was terribly interested in the play-by-play account of the author's hunt, but I'm glad that I read it because it exposed me to some new perspectives.
I do like American history, though. And I recently read "Empire of the Summer Moon" about the Comanches. I liked that book so much that I was interested in exploring more topics related to Native American history and so I thought this book might be fun.
This book was a quick read, and I learned a lot about the history of the buffalo, which I really enjoyed. At the end of the day, I don't think I was terribly interested in the play-by-play account of the author's hunt, but I'm glad that I read it because it exposed me to some new perspectives.
December 30, 2022
The goat, plain and simple. Despite bias, I still think this book was objectively 5 stars
November 29, 2023
Worth while read…..
May 25, 2024
I have to say, I expected this book to be more documentary style (not sure why I expected this) and it took me quite a while to adjust to the “hunter’s story” with the manly undertones, but I’m glad I stuck it out! Throughout this book are fascinating details about the American bison, the natural history, and the human history involved. By the end, I wholeheartedly loved the book.
January 30, 2025
What a jam packed, wonderfully written book! The amount of research alone is quite noteworthy, coupled along with a very adventurous and death defying hunt through Alaska I could not put it down.
December 6, 2025
4.5, great read, shoutout to buffalo
January 28, 2021
A fascinating story, integrating the history of American bison with Rinella's Alaska buffalo hunting expedition. Of course, there's a challenge: "How can I claim to love the very thing that I worked so hard to kill?" and the same conflict arises in the broader history: "At once it is a symbol of the tenacity of wilderness and the destruction of wilderness; it's a symbol of Native American culture and the death of Native American culture; it's a symbol of the strength and vitality of America and the pettiness and greed of America; it represents a frontier both forgotten and remembered; it stands for freedom and captivity, extinction and salvation."
I learned a lot about the buffalo, and enjoyed Rinella's careful and detailed story of his own trip. Yes, there is a fair bit of pushing through brambles, so it can be a slow burn, but that adds to the atmosphere. Rinella also alternates ably between his story and historical anecdotes, and the balance works.
There's also a great first sentence:
> In the past week I've become something of a buffalo chip connoisseur.
> The Indians' rush to get horses and hunt buffalo on the Great Plains was like a slow-motion version of the westward exodus that accompanied the California gold rush of 1849. Many of the tribes that we now think of as dominant Great Plains buffalo hunters—the Crow, Blackfoot, Sioux, Pawnee, Kiowa, Comanche—were either weak, small tribes before the horse or part-time horticulturalists. The horse made them extremely powerful
> When the Lewis and Clark expedition was traveling up the Missouri River in 1805, they found a hundred rotting buffalo carcasses left over in a place where Indians had made a large kill. "We saw a great many wolves in the neighborhood of these mangled carcasses," wrote Lewis. The wolves were so overstuffed that Captain Clark walked up to one and killed it with his spontoon, a sort of walking staff tipped with a blade.
> One could make a cogent argument that the widespread advent of buffalo jumps marked the beginning of the end for buffalo.
> Once the railroad made it to Miles City, Montana, in 1881, word spread that the core of the last great herd had been tapped. Hide dealers calculated that 500,000 buffalo ranged within 150 miles of town. Soon there were five thousand hide hunters killing the animals. A herd that was estimated at seventy-five thousand head crossed the Yellowstone River three miles outside of Miles City, moving north as a great mass. Hunters stayed with the buffalo like sheepdogs, pushing them along. Accounts vary, but anywhere from zero to five thousand buffalo were all that was left by the time the herd reached Canada.
> The Santa Fe was greeted outside Granada, Colorado, with a mound of bones that was ten feet by twenty feet and a half mile long. Railroads would build spurs from the main line just for the sake of collecting stacks of buffalo bones.
> They also sell a lot of bone ash to movie production companies that want to replicate oil spills. Mixed with vegetable oil, bone ash makes a biodegradable dead ringer for Texas tea. If you've seen The Beverly Hillbillies, Die Hard 3, Men in Black, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or Jarhead, you've seen the contemporary products of a company that once produced about 650 tons of buffalo bone ash every year.
> There are, in fact, two classifications of North American buffalo that are recognized (by some) today: there's the wood buffalo of the Canadian boreal forests, and the plains buffalo of the Great Plains. The animals are separated by some minor variations; most notably, the hump of the wood buffalo is squarer in profile, and the wood buffalo's hair is longer, darker, and straighter. Taxonomists once described the wood buffalo as a separate species altogether, with its own name. While the plains buffalo was Bison bison, the wood buffalo was Bison athabascae. However, modern genetic research has revealed essentially no difference between the two.
I learned a lot about the buffalo, and enjoyed Rinella's careful and detailed story of his own trip. Yes, there is a fair bit of pushing through brambles, so it can be a slow burn, but that adds to the atmosphere. Rinella also alternates ably between his story and historical anecdotes, and the balance works.
There's also a great first sentence:
> In the past week I've become something of a buffalo chip connoisseur.
> The Indians' rush to get horses and hunt buffalo on the Great Plains was like a slow-motion version of the westward exodus that accompanied the California gold rush of 1849. Many of the tribes that we now think of as dominant Great Plains buffalo hunters—the Crow, Blackfoot, Sioux, Pawnee, Kiowa, Comanche—were either weak, small tribes before the horse or part-time horticulturalists. The horse made them extremely powerful
> When the Lewis and Clark expedition was traveling up the Missouri River in 1805, they found a hundred rotting buffalo carcasses left over in a place where Indians had made a large kill. "We saw a great many wolves in the neighborhood of these mangled carcasses," wrote Lewis. The wolves were so overstuffed that Captain Clark walked up to one and killed it with his spontoon, a sort of walking staff tipped with a blade.
> One could make a cogent argument that the widespread advent of buffalo jumps marked the beginning of the end for buffalo.
> Once the railroad made it to Miles City, Montana, in 1881, word spread that the core of the last great herd had been tapped. Hide dealers calculated that 500,000 buffalo ranged within 150 miles of town. Soon there were five thousand hide hunters killing the animals. A herd that was estimated at seventy-five thousand head crossed the Yellowstone River three miles outside of Miles City, moving north as a great mass. Hunters stayed with the buffalo like sheepdogs, pushing them along. Accounts vary, but anywhere from zero to five thousand buffalo were all that was left by the time the herd reached Canada.
> The Santa Fe was greeted outside Granada, Colorado, with a mound of bones that was ten feet by twenty feet and a half mile long. Railroads would build spurs from the main line just for the sake of collecting stacks of buffalo bones.
> They also sell a lot of bone ash to movie production companies that want to replicate oil spills. Mixed with vegetable oil, bone ash makes a biodegradable dead ringer for Texas tea. If you've seen The Beverly Hillbillies, Die Hard 3, Men in Black, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, or Jarhead, you've seen the contemporary products of a company that once produced about 650 tons of buffalo bone ash every year.
> There are, in fact, two classifications of North American buffalo that are recognized (by some) today: there's the wood buffalo of the Canadian boreal forests, and the plains buffalo of the Great Plains. The animals are separated by some minor variations; most notably, the hump of the wood buffalo is squarer in profile, and the wood buffalo's hair is longer, darker, and straighter. Taxonomists once described the wood buffalo as a separate species altogether, with its own name. While the plains buffalo was Bison bison, the wood buffalo was Bison athabascae. However, modern genetic research has revealed essentially no difference between the two.
December 4, 2023
I'm not the right audience for this book, so 2 stars might be unfair. Still, it was very drawn out.
May 22, 2009
We humans have little comprehension and find it difficult to make sensible decisions when we are confronted with what I will refer to as the efficacy of booms. The slaughtering of 50,000 buffalo in a single day or J. Wright Mooar personally killing 25,000 in a lifetime and their virtual disappearance and near extinction is terribly sad. Buffalo/Bison -- Rinella tells us they are genetically one and the same -- ranged from southern Alaska through the 4 western provinces of Canada and 36 states all the way to Northern Mexico. Perhaps the most numerous land mammal to ever exist on the face of the earth; somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty two million lived on the Great Plains alone. Out of our own insatiable greed we came dangerously close to eliminating all of them and killed them not even for their meat but mostly for their skins and hides. A group of Indians gathered 2,550 tons of buffalo bones near a railroad in anticipation of shipment to eastern markets. In Colorado there was a mound of bones ten feet high, twenty feet wide and a half mile long; one in Kansas had similar dimensions but was only a quarter of a mile long and another mound in Detroit was thirty feet high and hundreds of feet long. Reading about the carnage almost made me sick and if you can recall that one particular scene on the open plains in the movie “Dances with Wolves” you get the picture of the wanton slaughter.
There are so many more instances where we have been incapable of handling the efficacy of booms. Throughout our history we have squandered our resources of plenty; even our current economic crises, stimulated by the same attitudes and failings, stands as a prime example.
This book was full of interesting facts and lore of the iconic buffalo but some of the details were quite graphic. Interspersed was the author’s own tale of a licensed buffalo hunt on the Copper River in southern Alaska and that part was just a side story from the books main theme. Rinella concludes that the Buffalo confronts our innermost thoughts with confounding contradictions. That it is a symbol of the tenacity of wilderness and destruction of wilderness; of Indian culture and the death of Indian culture; of strength and vitality and our pettiness and greed.
“Black Diamond” was the name of the Buffalo who served as the model for the Buffalo Nickel coined in 1913 and which nickels now rest secure and treasured in our dresser drawers.
There are so many more instances where we have been incapable of handling the efficacy of booms. Throughout our history we have squandered our resources of plenty; even our current economic crises, stimulated by the same attitudes and failings, stands as a prime example.
This book was full of interesting facts and lore of the iconic buffalo but some of the details were quite graphic. Interspersed was the author’s own tale of a licensed buffalo hunt on the Copper River in southern Alaska and that part was just a side story from the books main theme. Rinella concludes that the Buffalo confronts our innermost thoughts with confounding contradictions. That it is a symbol of the tenacity of wilderness and destruction of wilderness; of Indian culture and the death of Indian culture; of strength and vitality and our pettiness and greed.
“Black Diamond” was the name of the Buffalo who served as the model for the Buffalo Nickel coined in 1913 and which nickels now rest secure and treasured in our dresser drawers.
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