The new episode of Enlightened Omnivore ventures into the wild with Hank Shaw — James Beard Award–winning author, chef, hunter, and one of the more thoughtful voices on eating from the land. Hank’s life defies neat categories: he started out as a sous chef at an Ethiopian restaurant, spent two decades in journalism (including a stint as political bureau chief in California’s Central Valley), and eventually turned his reporter’s precision toward food, foraging, and the ethics of the hunt.

Hank didn’t grow up hunting; he learned at 30. That late start sharpened his perspective and let him bring years of kitchen skill to wild game. His work — from Hunter Angler Gardener Cook to his seventh cookbook, Borderlands — treats wild food as an ongoing dialogue between landscape, species, and season. As he told me, “wild cooking is embracing chaos” — every duck, deer, or mushroom carries the story of where it lived, what it ate, and when it was taken.

We talked about how diet, region, and even age can change the flavor of wild meat — how a rice-fed mallard tastes nothing like one raised on acorns — and why duck should be cooked like steak, not chicken. We covered nettles and chanterelles, desert mesquite and acorn-finished hogs, and how foraging was his first love, even if it’s a book he’ll never write.

It wasn’t all hunting chatter. Hank’s new cookbook, Borderlands, reads like a love letter to the foods of the Southwest and northern Mexico — a region he knows through both taste and terrain. We dug into conservation, public lands, and how our industrial food system so often works against the very soil it depends on.

Hank’s view is both pragmatic and hopeful: small acts — planting native prairie, cooking with what’s in season, volunteering at a food bank — all are ways to restore balance, one plate at a time.

Our conversation left me thinking that the best food isn’t about perfection, but rather participation — the willingness to role up our sleeves, get close, pay attention, and let the land have a say in what’s for dinner.

And somehow, we managed to cover all of that in about an hour. Enjoy!

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