Steven Rinella's MeatEater Bought 4 Gear Brands. 9 of His 14 Whitetail Picks Are His Own

Key Takeaways:

Steven Rinella founded MeatEater, Inc., which describes itself as an outdoor lifestyle company based in Bozeman, Montana. The MeatEater YouTube channel showed 1.87 million subscribers on October 3, 2026
The company bought four gear brands in five years: First Lite (2019), FHF Gear (2020), Phelps Game Calls (2021) and Dave Smith Decoys (2023), according to its 2023 acquisition release
Rinella's Whitetail Week picks list 14 products. Nine are sold by MeatEater or a brand it owns, three are partner products carrying the MeatEater name or his face, and two come from other brands
The renewing purchase in a hunter's season is a mapping app. onX Hunt charges $34.99 to $99.99 a year, and it's one of MeatEater's official partners, not a MeatEater product

Most creators who sell physical products start with a logo on a shirt. Steven Rinella's company went the other way. It bought the companies that made the gear his audience already watched him use. That's an unusual route, and his own shopping list for this fall shows how far it has gone.

Who Is Steven Rinella?

Steven Rinella is an American hunter, writer and television host who founded MeatEater, Inc., a hunting, fishing and wild-food media company. He hosts the MeatEater series on Netflix and The MeatEater Podcast, and his company owns four outdoor gear brands. His About page credits him with ten books, including American Buffalo and The MeatEater Fish and Game Cookbook. The show's premise is that the hunt ends at the table, and the About page says every episode covers cooking the game. The MeatEater Podcast listed 948 episodes in Apple Podcasts on October 3, 2026. The company publishes 12 shows under the MeatEater name there, including Wired To Hunt and Bear Grease, each hosted by a different member of the crew. The brand is also on Instagram and TikTok.

What Does MeatEater Own?

MeatEater, Inc. owns four gear companies: First Lite (hunting apparel, acquired 2019), FHF Gear (packs and chest rigs, 2020), Phelps Game Calls (2021) and Dave Smith Decoys (2023). It also runs its own MeatEater Store, with retail locations in Bozeman, Milwaukee and Minneapolis and a First Lite flagship in Hailey, Idaho.

Rinella's explanations point to products he and his audience already knew. On Phelps in February 2021: "The MeatEater audience loves him, too. He's a fan favorite, and his products are deeply respected by skilled hunters." On Dave Smith Decoys in 2023: "I've been using DSD for a bunch of years." The Phelps release also spells out how the deals work. Jason Phelps kept running his company from Pe Ell, Washington, as general manager. MeatEater supplied "marketing, distribution, customer service, and content support." The founder kept the craft, and the media company handled reaching customers.

What Did Steve Pick for Whitetail Week?

Steven Rinella's Whitetail Week list on the MeatEater Store held 14 products on October 3, 2026. Nine were sold by MeatEater or a brand it owns. Three were partner products carrying the MeatEater name or Rinella's face. Two came from unrelated brands, Sig Sauer and Crispi.

The nine owned items include a signed cookbook, game bags, jerky and two logo shirts from the MeatEater Store, two First Lite garments, an FHF pack and a Phelps call kit. At their listed starting prices, they add up to $999.98. The whole list adds up to $4,095.95. So the company owns most of the items but only about a quarter of the dollars. The four most expensive items are a $1,299.99 suppressor, $1,099.99 binoculars, $395 pack and $380 boots, and three of those come from other companies. That split is useful for any creator. The audience trusts the recommendation either way. Ownership decides who keeps the margin.

An audience that watches you use something every episode has already been sold on it. The question is who owns it.

Built by Foundry builds and runs the business your audience pays for, with $0 upfront and a revenue share. You own it. Most of the time that's a subscription app; sometimes it's a physical product.

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The Wore-It-On-Camera Test

Here's the lesson other creators can reuse. Before launching a product, list what your audience watches you use in nearly every video. Those products already have the audience's trust, so they're the strongest things to own, whether you build them, license them or buy the company that makes them. MeatEater passed this test with gear that keeps coming back on screen: the jacket, the pack, the call. Every hunting season puts those products back on camera. Compare that with the economics of a $30 creator tee. A logo shirt sells to fans. A game call sells to anyone who hunts elk. Chris Bumstead took a similar route in fitness: he became a co-owner of Raw Nutrition instead of taking a sponsorship fee.

Why Doesn't MeatEater Own the Subscription?

MeatEater sells products people buy once a season. The purchase that renews every year in a hunter's routine is a mapping app, and onX Hunt, an official MeatEater partner, charges $34.99 a year for Premium and $99.99 a year for Elite on the App Store.

onX is listed first on MeatEater's Official Partners page. Its iOS app had 274,456 ratings on October 3, 2026. We searched the App Store for MeatEater and found no MeatEater app. The public pages don't show the terms of the partnership. The structure is still clear: a hunter might buy a jacket once every few seasons, but they pay for maps every year. That yearly payment goes to onX. That's the gap a creator can fill. Gear brands sell during the season. A subscription bills every year, whether or not anyone posts. We explain why that difference matters in brand deals versus subscription apps.

What We Can't See

MeatEater, Inc. is private. None of its revenue, margins or acquisition prices are public, and we don't know what it earns from partners. The 14-item list is one store page on one day, and listed prices change. The Peak Refuel meal has Rinella's face on the package, but the label says Peak Refuel makes it, so we counted it as a partner product. Rating counts aren't user counts.

If You Teach a Skill Your Audience Needs Gear For

If you teach hunting, fishing, climbing, cooking or any craft, your audience buys tools because of you. Write down what you use in every video, then mark which of those things you own. MeatEater's answer took a company and four acquisitions. Most creators can start with one product that their audience uses every season or every week. Building the product is the first step. Running it after launch is the rest: support, updates, pricing and retention. That's what Built by Foundry does, and why we keep running products after launch. For a recurring-revenue example in another field, see how Mark Rober built CrunchLabs around a box that ships every month.

See What We’d Build You →

Steven Rinella's MeatEater Bought 4 Gear Brands. 9 of His 14 Whitetail Picks Are His Own

Get Creator Revenue Insights

Who Is Steven Rinella?

What Does MeatEater Own?

What Did Steve Pick for Whitetail Week?

The Wore-It-On-Camera Test

Why Doesn't MeatEater Own the Subscription?

What We Can't See

If You Teach a Skill Your Audience Needs Gear For

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