Steven Rinella is an interesting example of a person who used his passion for one pastime as fuel to nurture his career, and a profitable career at that. Having been born into a family that was ever close to nature, he spends most of his life doing what he is best at: hunting.
For a decade he even tried to make his living this way, until it became completely clear that fur market had collapsed to the point when it was no longer possible to provide for a decent living. Ironically, the impossibility to pursue the desired career led him to a far more profitable vocation which, at the same time, allowed him not only to continue leading the so much loved lifestyle, but to popularize and advocate it as well.
He became a fairly well-known writer and television personality telling his readers and viewers, accustomed to the modern world, about the things that for many people remained in the ages past: hunting, being united with nature and so on. In his representation hunters are not what they are often perceived by modern media. It may be news for some people who are used to getting information from television, but not all hunters are bloodthirsty hicks who massacre innocent animals with their assault rifles. They can just as easily be perceived as the precious few people who manage to be united with nature in our hectic age, and probably understand and love nature much more than the self-proclaimed animal rights activists.
In addition to that, Steven Rinella considers that his hunting lifestyle has been a major contribution to his later success not only because it provided him with unique knowledge and materials to base his fiction on, but also because it allowed him to acquire skills and abilities which proved to be indispensable for his writing career. For example, patience verging on being superhuman – when you often have to wait for hours to even have a chance of encountering your game and know that success may not come today, this week or even this month, you are more than ready to wait for a long time before your writing brings any particular results.
Or curiosity – in the sense that any news leave you curious and hungry for more, for seeing new horizons, for acquiring new experiences, for doing new things. There is hardly anything deadlier for a writer than to be stuck in his ways – and the life spent as a hunter effectively prevents him from ever becoming rigid in his ways.
In a way, Rinella thinks, the crafts of writers and hunters are not all that different, no matter how unusual this statement may sound.
