We Took Cooking by Cut to the Meatgistics Podcast
- We Took Cooking by Cut to the Meatgistics Podcast - September 22, 2026
- LIVE! Cooking by Cut: The Wild Game Butchery and Cookbook We Wanted to Write - September 1, 2026
- World Sauces for Wild Game: Puerto Rican Pique - August 19, 2026
Cooking by Cut has officially made its podcast debut.
Adam Berkelmans and I recently joined Jon Tremblay on the Meatgistics Podcast for our first interview since releasing Cooking by Cut: A Modern Approach to Big Game Butchery and Cooking.
We went in expecting to talk mostly about the book. We did, but somewhere along the way the conversation expanded into wild pigs, overlooked cuts, hunting camps, predator meat, our respective paths into wild food, and more than a decade of Harvesting Nature. In other words, it went exactly where a good podcast conversation should go.
More Than a Conversation About a Book
One of the things we enjoyed most about this interview was getting the chance to talk about where all of this came from.
Harvesting Nature started in 2011 as a way to bring together my interests in hunting, fishing, cooking, and writing. Adam came along years later with a very different path into hunting but a remarkably similar obsession with food. Over time, those perspectives have collided through recipes, articles, podcasts, wild-game camps, butchery classes, plenty of experiments, and more than a few conversations around a campfire. Eventually, they also produced books.
Meatgistics gave us an opportunity to unpack some of that history and, more importantly, talk about the questions that continue to drive what we’re doing:
Why organize a big-game book around cuts instead of species?
What cuts are hunters still overlooking?
Why do certain wild animals develop reputations as poor table fare, and how much of that comes down to what happens after the shot?
How do you take someone from harvesting an animal to confidently breaking it down and deciding what to cook?
What can a lifelong hunter from Oklahoma and an adult-onset hunter from Canada learn from one another about wild food?
And how did years of hunting camps, butchery, cooking, research, arguments, successes, and failures eventually turn into Cooking by Cut?
We get into all of it.
The Conversation Behind Cooking by Cut
If you’ve already picked up a copy of Cooking by Cut, this episode offers a look behind the pages.
Adam and I talk about what led us to write the book, how our different backgrounds influenced it, and why we believe understanding what is actually on your cutting board can change how you butcher and cook wild game. But the conversation doesn’t stop with the book.
We talk about our upcoming whitetail deer camp in Oklahoma and why we’ve built our camps around the full field-to-table experience. We talk about cuts that are finally getting their moment in the spotlight. We get into wild pigs and why some long-held assumptions about game meat deserve another look. Somehow mountain lion, coyote, bear, moose, sea ducks, and a few other animals find their way into the conversation, too. You’ll have to listen for the rest.
Listen to Meatgistics Episode 299
If you’ve followed Harvesting Nature for a while, this episode provides a little more of the story behind what we do and why we do it. If you’re new here, it’s a pretty good introduction. And if you’re curious about Cooking by Cut, this is the first time Adam and I have sat down on someone else’s podcast and really talked through the ideas that led us to create it.
Watch or listen to Meatgistics Episode 299: “All About Harvesting Nature with Justin Townsend and Adam Berkelmans.”
Take It From the Podcast to the Cutting Board
The conversation doesn’t end with the podcast. Cooking by Cut takes the ideas we discuss on Meatgistics and puts them on the cutting board and in the kitchen.
Rather than simply telling you what to cook, the book helps you better understand the animal in front of you: identifying individual cuts, learning how to remove them, understanding what makes them different, and figuring out how to turn them into something worth gathering around the table for.
Inside you’ll find step-by-step butchery instruction, anatomy and cut identification, aging and preservation techniques, more than 40 recipes, wine pairings, and a different way of thinking about the wild game in your freezer.
Get the hardcover edition of Cooking by Cut directly from Harvesting Nature.
Paperback editions are also available through Amazon.
Listen to the conversation. Pick up the book. Then get an animal on the cutting board and put it to work.
