Hunting Party

Outside/In

NHPR

Society & Culture, Documentary, Natural Sciences, Nature, Science

4.7 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 2023, dozens of strangers gathered together in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York for three straight days. Their mission? Teach people of color how to kill, gut, and butcher a deer for the first time. Producer Felix Poon was there as a first-time hunter. He wanted to know: what does it feel like to take an animal's life to sustain your own? Given the opportunity… would he pull the trigger? In this episode we follow Felix out of his depth and into the woods, to find out if one weekend can convert a longtime city-dweller into a dedicated deer hunter. This episode was first published in early 2024, and was produced by Felix Poon. For a transcript and full list of credits, go to outsideinradio.com. Featuring Dorothy Ren, Brandon Dale, and Brant MacDuff. SUPPORT Outside/In is made possible with listener support. ⁠Click here to become a sustaining member of Outside/In. ⁠ Follow Outside/In on ⁠Instagram⁠ or join our private ⁠discussion group on Facebook⁠. LINKS⁠ Lydia Parker, executive director of Hunters of Color, discusses how to make the outdoors more equitable⁠. (The Nature Conservancy)⁠ Melissa Harris-Perry talks to Brandon Dale⁠, the New York ambassador for the Hunters of Color organization, on WNYC’s The Takeaway. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Is that on speaker?
0:03.8	Yeah.
0:06.0	Hey.
0:06.7	Hey, Nate Hedgy.
0:08.8	How are you?
0:10.0	I'm good. I'm in the car with Taylor. He's driving.
0:12.7	Hey, yeah, you guys are driving.
0:13.8	Back in December of 2023, producer Felix Poon called me on his way to upstate New York.
0:20.4	Yeah, I've been getting flashes of nervousness over the past couple of weeks.
0:23.7	And then a flash of excitement last night.
0:27.6	Part of me wishes that we don't see any deer this weekend.
0:31.6	I guess that, man. I've had that feeling before.
0:34.6	I've got that feeling.
0:36.6	At the time, Felix was 41. He had never killed an animal, never shot a gun,
0:42.9	but here he was, headed upstate to go on his first ever hunting trip. But picking up hunting
0:50.4	isn't like picking up jogging. It is a commitment. There's gear, licenses, safety courses,
0:57.0	and there's a culture to hunting.
1:00.0	97% of people who hunt in America are white. That's according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
1:07.0	And that can be enough for Felix, or any person of color to see hunting and think,
1:12.2	eh, no thanks.
1:14.3	But this hunting trip that Felix was going on, it was put together by a nonprofit called
1:19.7	Hunters of Color to teach people of color who are new to hunting how to hunt.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NHPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NHPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.