American Buffalo

Starred review from September 8, 2008
In this spare, eloquent memoir, Rinella (The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine
) describes his fascination with the American bison, which culminated in his tracking, shooting and butchering one. Rinella was one of 24 people in 2005 to win a lottery to hunt buffalo in the foothills of Alaska's Wrangell Mountains. So Rinella set off into the wilderness to fulfill his lifelong ambition. As he pursues the buffalo herd, Rinella also explores the long relationship between humans and an animal that they drove to the edge of extinction. In his journey through the wilderness, Rinella encounters grizzlies, white water rapids and frostbite; in his trek through history he depicts fur traders, early Native Americans and epics of slaughter that left the prairies littered with buffalo bones. Rinella's understated prose shows great flexibility, and he is by turns moving and downright funny. An experienced outdoorsman and hunter, Rinella writes with authority about the process of turning a living creature into steak, and easily renders an enormous amount of historical and scientific information into a thoroughly engaging narrative.

November 1, 2008
In 2005, Rinella was issued a buffalo-hunting permit forthe Alaskan wilderness. This hunt was the endpoint to a long journey of discovery and fascination with the American bison, or buffalo. As a young boy the author had discovered a bison skull in Montana, which started him on a quest to learn what he could about the place of the buffalo in nature and in the American psyche. As he talks of his buffalo hunt, he weaves in tales of long-extinct bison, of their travels from Asia over the Bering land bridge, and of their explosion in numbers on the fertile American plains. We learn of how the early Indians chased buffalo over cliffs and of how the invading settlers slaughtered the teeming herds to a remnant of small bands. As Rinella hunts the wilderness of the Chetaslina River, he muses on the hide hunters, the bone hunters, and the modern herds of privately owned bison.Although this is a book about a hunt, it is also a beautiful homage to one of Americas keystone species.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)