American Buffalo: Searching for a Lost Icon

Award-winning Steven Rinella, host of The Wild Within on the Travel Channel, embarked on a thrilling quest to hunt the American buffalo - an animal that has captivated the American imagination. In 2005, Rinella scored a coveted lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, also known as the American bison, in the rugged Alaskan wilderness. Despite the slim odds - with only a two percent chance of obtaining the permit and less than 20 percent success rate among hunters - Rinella successfully tracked down and killed a buffalo on a snow-covered mountainside. He then had to navigate a challenging journey to transport the meat back to civilization while being trailed by grizzly bears and enduring hypothermia.

Throughout his harrowing adventures, Rinella found himself reflecting on his role among the 14,000 years’ worth of buffalo hunters in North America, as well as the buffalo’s significance in the American experience. During the Revolutionary War, North America was home to an estimated 40 million buffalo, making it the largest herd of large mammals on the planet. However, by the mid-1890s, only a few hundred remained. Now, with the buffalo on the brink of a remarkable ecological recovery across the West, Americans are faced with the challenge of coexisting with a creature that embodies the American wilderness.

American Buffalo is not just a narrative of Rinella’s hunt, but also a tale of the profound impact the buffalo has had on shaping our national identity. Rinella takes readers on a journey across the continent in search of the buffalo’s past, present, and future. From the Bering Land Bridge, where scientists search for buffalo remains among artifacts of the New World’s earliest human inhabitants, to buffalo jumps where Native Americans once drove buffalo over cliffs by the thousands, to the Detroit Carbon works that turned millions of buffalo bones into bone meal, black dye, and fine china. Rinella’s blend of expertise and enthusiasm, along with his storytelling prowess, makes him the ideal guide for a book that seamlessly combines outdoor adventure with a fascinating mix of historical and biological facts and observations about the natural world. American Buffalo is a captivating narrative with environmental and historical significance, offering insight into the American ethos through the lens of this iconic creature.

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