To The Bone

Exploration and insights at the intersection of food, hunting, fishing and nature

Hank is not merely a chef or a recipe writer, although most people know him as such. And Holly is far more than just a fantastic photographer.

We both enjoyed an entire career as a reporter and editor for various newspapers in states ranging from Virginia to Minnesota to California.

And then, for more than 15 years, with Holly’s help, Hank has been running the website Hunter Angler Gardener Cook, and while that space used to be appropriate for writings outside the recipe space, the sad reality is that that time has passed.

And so, for a long while, Hank just shelved his stories from the field, essays on hunting, cooking, and life in general, as well as tales from the road, here in the United States as well as up in Canada and down in Mexico.

Holly did, too. She once had a wildly successful and thoughtful blog called NorCal Cazadora, where she asked hard questions about hunting, and there the debate was insightful, lively — and vital to helping both of us form our views on the pursuit. She shut that blog down in 2012, unable to devote so much time to something that didn’t help pay the bills.

Now, we’re back.

Substack has become a perfect place for the kind of writing we’ve been itching to do, for years now. It is a place where we need not worry about SEO, Google or keywords. A place where we can be ourselves: A little off-color, sometimes downright raw; analytical, a skill we’ve honed through years as journalists and data geeks; and, hopefully, at least mildly amusing and definitely never boring.

If you subscribe to this newsletter, which we will update often, ideally weekly (although we can’t promise a regular schedule since we travel so much), you will get to see those insights, as well as a look behind the scenes at whatever we are working on, in the kitchen or elsewhere. Set-piece essays yes, but also real-time musings as we have them.

“To The Bone” will be where we discuss matters both comfortable and uncomfortable, some with answers, others without.

Welcome, and thanks for reading,

~ Hank and Holly