The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 770: The Cornell Bear Skinner Speaks Out

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Steven Rinella talks with Cornell University student Aaron Chin.  Topics discussed: Skinning and butchering a black bear in the communal kitchen of your college residential hall; putting in the work to scout smart; when your first big game animal is a black bear on public land in New York State; lots of consideration and a careful clean up job; getting support from the Cornell University community; good 'ole American elbow grease; and more.  Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an IHeart podcast. White tail season is here, and if you're getting ready, there's no better time to gear up. From September 29th through October 5th, First Light is running their White Tail sale with savings up to 40% off. We're talking big deals on First Light outerwear, phase, core, and thermic kits, all 30% off, plus 40% off the source, jacket, and more. Don't miss it. This is the best pricing of the season. Shop now at firstlight.com. That's f-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com.

Okay, ladies and gentlemen, it's an emergency drop of Meat Eater podcast, an emergency drop. We did one of these when the guy rescued the people out of the outhouse. Wasn't that an emergency drop? No, but it was an American hero. This is an emergency drop where we have on American Hero. Aaron Chin from Cornell University. If you're a news buff, if you are a news buff, or if you're a hunter and you read your text messages a couple weeks ago,

around the week of September 8, I would say, you probably got all kinds of people texting you an article about some students from Cornell University who were in trouble, out of trouble, getting in trouble, for having skinned a bear in their communal hall at college. Right now, I typed in Cornell Black Bear Skinning into Google. And I have the Cornell Daily Sun. I'm looking at an article there.

I'm looking where it was covered in an op-ed in something called the Dartmouth. And it's a person complaining about them saying that it's not what you're allowed to do. it's what you ought to do and it's the real lesson behind this covered in the Ithaca voice Cornell students found skinning bear in campus NBC News

two Cornell students killed bear and skinned it back at blank a long spirited Reddit thing People magazine people.com two college students killed 120 pound bear

I heard it was bigger Aaron you don't have the idea where the 120 came from from, do you? Um, no, no idea. I was around around a 150. I know, I know how much my buddy weighs and, you know, I'll pick them up. It's just, you know, a little lighter than that, so 100%. Nothing wrong with 120 pound bear. Uh, here's an outdoor life article. Here's a big discussion on rock slide. I could go on and on covered all over. It was one of those things that everybody sends me the article about the two kids at Cornell who were in trouble or were not in trouble

for having, uh, dared kill a bear on campus. or not kill a bear on campus, but kill a bear and process it in a communal space on campus. And then as I followed the story along for a couple days, it turns out that police, game wardens, the student handbook, it turns out no one could find anything that was actually wrong. I said to Cren, I said, we have to talk to these guys with dying to talk to these guys. So here we have one of the butchers, Aaron Chin from Cornell, we're going to hear. um we're going to hear his story we're going to hear about what it's like to all of a sudden be a part of a national news story um what it's like to probably be real scared for a minute and then feel relieved and then what's the what's the next hunt plan but like first let's let's start off so you're at Cornell university um you're from you're from San Diego California correct yeah what's give me your hunting background how did you get started hunting so I didn't start until the very like tail end of high school I'm I'm My parents, we never really did that. We weren't really an outdoorsy family.

But that was something I was super into as a kid. I had read Bushcraft manuals and I'd watch these survival shows. So I started shooting, shoot archery thinking like early middle school and whatnot. So I was always kind of in the back of the mind. I shot Olympic archery for the longest time. I started teaching that performance archery, which primarily catered towards, I mean that's where the money is in the archery. What's performance archery mean?

It's just the bow shop. worked at oh i thought i meant a discipline called performance archery no i'm sorry yeah but yeah an archery shop yeah and um a lot of the guys um were big bow hunters and you know i was super curious and i started shooting traditional archery with kind of the hopes of being able to to hunt traditionally with just a with a with a bear bow um and yeah i went out a couple times in san diego hunting in san Diego is really difficult. All public land. It's kind of one of those things where you've got to get lucky, right time. There's not a lot of water there. So I went out for Turkey once and then and then deer another time, but pretty much very little success, very little experience. That's why part of

the reason I chose to go to Cornell, one besides that really good engineering school, but, you know, the proximity of woods. I saw the deer management program and I'm like, I can I can kind of learn all learn all the skills and live live the life uh learn all the skills that i wanted to as a kid and now that there's there's forests and there's there's state lands to do that so yeah yeah there's a real like we spent some time on the campus recording some podcasts a couple years ago and there's like a hunter's community there's like a hunters community at cornell yeah and so when you came out there you guys uh how did you become aware of uh so you're a junior third year is that right correct correct. How did you become aware of spring black bear season?

Like what did you dig into? Like how did you, how did it hit you that like, hey man, let's go out and let's go out and do a little bear hunting, you and your body? Saw it on the DEC website, you know, reading it through all the rules, looking at the seasons. And the biggest thing is when I first got here. Sorry, not a spring bear season. I'm sorry, fall bear season. Yeah. Like you get a, everyone gets a black bear tag with all their, with all their accoutrements and, and, and, and, and, and. So when you buy a hunting license, you're issued a black bear tag? Uh-huh. Everyone gets a black bear tag. Like a regular, yeah.

So I was like, this could, this sounds really cool. And I saw, um, I saw a, a, uh, a recipe somewhere, um, like, like, black bear pastrami. I, I, I don't know where. And I was like, that, that sounds delicious. I mean, I love a good trammie and rye. I'm like, I, you know what? Two and two. Let's maybe really cool.

Um, I was reading about them. And at this point, um, I'd got a rifle. So I was like, well, this could be like a very realistic, realistic thing. So I started looking into it. And it's the first big game season of the year. So we're like, all right, you know, tests aren't going too crazy. Academics are pretty chill. Let's get her done.

Let's figure it out. And you and your hunting partner, you guys go out and you guys are hunting public land. Is that right? Yes, public land. And how did you kind of hit on like, here's the spot? Here's what we're going to try. Here's where we're going to hunt. Like lay that out for me.

A lot of research, a lot of East got in. So I'd look at the DEC, kind of there, they have the bear harvest reports. So I was looking at the regions where they have the highest, you know, bears reported in for a hundred square miles. From there, I'd look, I'd look what's closest to the university because we're full-time students, essentially. So where's the closest state forest that we can, we can hunt? And from there, read articles, figuring out, like, well, they're going to be, they're

going to be berries trying to get fat for the winter. So I honed in on a, on a piece of. a piece of state forest and I started looking for water features. That was the biggest thing. Swamps where I think like berries and shrubbery that they'd be foraging on. And then we went there. Our Friday, we right after classes, we went out. And the first thing we went out, we scouted. And then the next day we kind of set up and figured it out. Yeah. When you guys set up, you and your hunting body, When you guys set up, did you guys set up in blinds? Or were you trying to like still hunt?

You're trying to do a stand hunt? Like, what was your strategy? Still hunting. So the day before on Friday, we found like fresh bear, bear shit and tracks everywhere. So we're like, all right, this is a spot. We're going to bed down the next morning because, you know, we're just, season hadn't open yet. We're just looking around. So essentially there was a little, like a grove or like a, like a, there's a little clearing.

and there was a there's some shrubs in the middle of it so that's where we saw kind of like has and they're still uneaten berries so we decided the next morning you're gonna sit there looking at an active feeding area okay yep and you guys set up and it was that and it was it was it the first day of the season that you guys got a bear yeah first day okay like like like nine o'clock but we didn't get it in that clearing we heard we heard scratching and and like climbing in in a pine grove about like 100 yards to the side so we moved up to there um we waited in our first position we moved out we sat there for a good amount and then we we lost track of it there was a there's a pine grove and there was a hill like a really steep hill so we sat there

for good 30 45 minutes and we we stopped hearing the scratch and so we thought to our salzay maybe maybe uh the bear clover clover leafed around um back to back to that original clearing. So we go back and we don't see anything. We're like, all right, let's pack up. We'll go back out in the afternoon. And just as we're rounding a corner, my buddy, he sees it. I'm behind this corner.

So I just see him, you know, his eyes go full killer. He chambers around and I'm like, and I cover my ears because we've got a pretty good, kind of know each other's body language. I knew he wasn't, he wasn't just looking, looking through. And yeah, he pops off a shot and we, he gets it. And was it, did you have the big tracking job, or did you find it pretty quick? Really, really quick. It was like a 40-yard max shot.

It was pretty close. And then we're shooting 180 green point, 308, so that thing dropped pretty fast. Got it. Okay, now here's where things get interesting. You guys, you guys live on campus. Correct. Okay. You don't have an apartment. You don't have a house. You rent. You live on campus. Had you even had you guys got around of being like, well, here's what we'll do if we get one. Or were you just not even thinking about that yet? And you're just going to take it as it comes? Or did you have like a, if we get one, here's the butchering plan?

We thought about everything. And yeah, we're going to go to a buddy's place. But last. minute I think he had some some emergency to tend to so the place we were going to do it closed off and we were really paranoid that you know the the meat would spoil wanted to get it cooled as fast as possible we opened it up but just to just to get it all processed and in a fridge as fast as possible so we're like well our one one one one place was gone so might as well do it there and it was in the morning I think it was around like 10 o'clock okay so explain what this place is where you take it like what on campus like what is the place you bring the bear to just

there's like a communal kitchen on the on the first floor of kind of the the residential building it's like a really it's like a real really open space um there's like uh study tables and whatnot but it looks more like a like one of those those modern like a like a like a coffee shop okay so a lot a lot of space and then and then concrete floors because we you know carpet would just be a dick move but it's meant for people to do their cooking okay so presumably there's a big table in there and you guys You guys bring in, you bring in the bear onto the table. Correct. Who's around when you do this? Like, who's in the room? There's not a lot of people. There are a couple of people studying, but no one really comes up and makes a big deal of it. It's in the morning, Saturday morning, so people are still probably unbagged, humover, and whatnot.

So we had a couple people just throughout our two, three hours of processing. they'd walk by people would you know try to take pictures or like just don't have us in there most most people were super curious like hey we'd love to try some that's that's really interesting we're explaining i mean the whole idea of stewardship and whatnot and we were aware it was it's going to be pretty graphic but just explaining hey this is this none of this goes to waste and for the most part it was um you know people were really really curious um low foot traffic especially in the morning that's why we chose to like all right we can we thought we'd get you know yelled at by an R.A. maybe, but we didn't, we didn't expect it to blow up to the extent of which it

did. The RAs were chill, actually. Yeah. So when you, when you thought, okay, we're going to go into the communal area, we're going to go into the dorm kitchen and we're going to process our bear, you weren't having conversations like, hey, this could lead to very serious trouble and all this news attention. Like, you were just kind of doing what made the most sense in the moment. And you figured anything that came up would just, you'd just be able to resolve it through conversation. We think we both thought that, you know, maybe it'd be like a little blurb, you know, people talked about it. It was like, oh, that's, that's kind of, that's kind of odd. But we, we didn't expect for it to blow up. We were really diligent in reading all of the rules, you know,

regulations. Like, we made sure we did everything by the book because we knew, you know, we're going to be under scrutiny. So, hey, we're going to, we're going to, we're going to clean up. We're going to use, you know, bleach, Lysol wipes and whatnot. We're going to, we're going to keep it, you know, public image where no no blast in heavy metal or or or music at all we're pretty we're thinking about that we didn't know it was going to cause that much of a backlash yeah but you knew like but you knew the dorm rules and the campus rules and there's no thing saying like thou shalt not process a big game animal in community kitchen yeah nothing nothing that said against it you know we I even, you know, I labeled my, my meat bags, too, because that's what they wanted.

Later on, that would bite me in the ass because people would be like, oh, we figured it out. We know where, you know, people think it's this kid. Oh, because you're storing it in a communal freezer. Mm-hmm. Okay. For the time being, before I could get it out to people off campus indeed, yeah. Got it. Our crew at Meat Eater has centuries worth of collective experience procuring and preparing meat, hunting,

butchering, preserving, cooking it for ourselves and our families. I've chased it from one end of the world to the other, grilling caribou steaks in the Arctic, butchering elk in the high country of the Rockies, drying fish in the headwaters of the Amazon. The main thing I've learned is that there's nothing better than knowing where your meat comes from. So when we set out to make jerky and sticks

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And it's just the beginning. Meat eater snacks from folks who know meat. all right so saturday comes and goes you guys get your bear you get the bear processed and then it winds up being that sunday night what happens sunday night someone someone finally says i have to take a stand and report these young gentlemen for having cleaned a bear in the dorm something like that so there's a there's a local facebook group it's called i think itica or tomkin county scanner scanner beats it's this one one guy who's just constantly mom monitoring, like, police and fire radio. I used to be a volunteer firefighter. So this guy, like, we're on route to a call, and this guy pings up. It's like, it's crazy. This is, I think it's like a old retired guy.

So he, he, someone sends me a screenshot of the page and like, huh, that's, that's really interesting. And I'm, I'm, like, shopping or something. I'm not even on campus. And they're like, CUPD is there, or our police department. Oh, hold on it. The guy that monitors the scanner. is saying,

hey, law enforcement is at Cornell. And that's how you get word that law enforcement is there. Yeah, yeah. They're like,

they're at an endigo. They're investigating backup is caught. And you're like, I wonder if this has to do with me. Yeah, I was like, oh,

yeah, what they said in the report bear skinning. I'm like, what? Everything's packaged up. It's everything's super clean. What?

That's how you became aware of this? Yeah. I was like, huh, interesting. I go to, sleep Monday morning and it's like everywhere I'm like oh so that night you didn't go down there that night to see what's going on no no because I I was walking back after done shopping they were you know

there's nothing there it's a pristine kitchen so we we walk and there's there's not just like lights flashing and ambulances and okay no no okay so you wake up Monday and then what's going on um it's all over like uh so I'm not I'm not sure if you're familiar with side chat a lot of universities have like a regional like social media and it's a lot of the keyboard warriors and whatnot and people have started circulating pictures of the of the you know the bear of us processing it where people the day before came up to take you know ask if they could take pictures we're like we weren't sure about that like we know people were going to do it anyways there's like hey just don't put us in it and yeah and then and then it was it just it just

Just overnight, it just became a huge sensation. At what point did someone want to come talk to you, though? Like, at what point did law enforcement want to have a word with you? I think it was, might have been Sunday night, actually. I don't, they're just like, hey, we want to clear, clear the error because they saw my net ID on the package meeting and whatnot. Like, hey, you did nothing wrong, but we just wanted to hear. Yeah.

And then, and then I was like, oh, you didn't think too much. much about it. And then Monday, the whole, like, the world figured out. Um, but PD was super supportive. A lot of them are on the deer management program. Um, the guy officer, I spoke with before had a 300 pound black bear on his game cameras. He was talking about go hunting and whatnot. Um, so they just wanted to hear what was going on because I, you know, just on record. So they look into it. And I, and I read that like the game wardens are like, he's got a license. It's bear season. It's a legal bear. The police department was like, these guys do anything wrong

we didn't violate the student handbook but it seems like in the media coverage there's like somewhat of an expect there's somewhat of an expectation or sense of surprise that there shouldn't be repercussions for this yeah

I guess it's just something that everyone's familiar with you know a lot of people there's the rumor that it was a cub that was that was the big thing and people people people started freaking out people didn't even know it was season

like if you look at on the online forms people are you in and like oh no it's legal there people couldn't fathom that we drove like two hours to our to our spot and drove back there's just a lot of internet discourse got it so yeah so people

yeah like they're not educated about the whole thing and something they're eager that something must be wrong here yeah and did the campus like who would be who's like the campus authority. So did the campus authority at some point in time come and ask you any questions or say like, how did you clean up or where is the bear now? None of that happened. Yeah, none of that

happened. At one point, because of the news coverage, I think one of the student support people reached out, they're like, hey, we're here. We know you're probably, you know, if you're going through a stressful time, we're here. It's like, it's a gay. If I, if I hang myself or something, they don't want to get sued. But they were, you know, university didn't was super, no one said anything. I mean, we didn't, we didn't do anything wrong. I heard through, like, that, you know, Dean and Vice President was contacted at some point, but they're like, you know, did, I mean, we were, we were just, we're just, we're just doing what we were doing, you know. So we reached out, I don't know why I don't want to name. I don't want to say who we reached out.

We reached out the contacts we have. This is not be hard to solve. We reached out to contacts we have at Cornell. The contacts we have at Cornell had, we're just thrilled by, it's so. great to know that there's still kids that know how to do this kind of stuff, just goes to show the caliber of the students we have. Um, you know, someone's like, oh, they, they, they might be interested in my program at the school. And they're like, but I don't, we didn't want to, they wanted to give names out. So it was kind of like, well, we'd have to check and make sure it's okay.

Like, I can't just send you their contact information. But it was like, no one, you know, um, no one that, that Corinne communicated with. our producer, no one that Corinne communicated with expressed anything other than like, oh, that's cool. Let me see if I can find them for you. And so, you know, all's well that ends well. But let me ask you this. Like, let's say, you know, later in the fall, okay, you get a deer.

Do you do the deer, do you process the deer in the communal kitchen or have you had enough? Oh, hell no. My buddy is like a bunch of people open. their doors. They saw that what happened. They're like, all right, all right. All right. You come, a lot of people opened their doors. I'm super great. People reached out to, you know, organizations that I'm known to affiliated with and they're like, hey, we're always here.

I mean, of course, the keyboard warriors and the basement wallers are, but people have been been overwhelmingly supportive. I mean, we were talking about Lab of Orenthology. last year they were gracious and Mary Margaret's been super helpful with helping me clean my my schools with dermisid beetles and and Professor Keith Tidball on Facebook kind of really respected figure defending you know I'd hear construction workers too I remember when I was when I was high point talking about I'm like wow okay this is this is the talk of the town and for the most part people in the real world have been pretty pretty supportive yeah so it's not that so you're not going to go back to the dorm but it's not because you're scared it's because

you got better options yeah pretty pretty much and then you know i don't want part two happening i mean it's kind of asking for it you know yeah i got you so would you say that um in hindsight do you feel that in hindsight are you glad you did what you did because it advanced this conversation or do you feel like it like it like it put this thing out there to test and you kind of learn from the experience and it gave you sort of a snapshot of you know your university your community right that's one approach or you could have the approach of saying in hindsight i really could have done without all the distraction i shouldn't have gone processed my bear at the dorm i'd say a little bit of both i think i should have been a little bit

more i should have i should have prepped for the worst and and realize that some people would you know, would, would, would, would blow up. I didn't think it would become that, that large and definitely if we'd probably do in the woods next time. But also that, like, looking back, no regrets for what we did, how we, we conducted ourselves. Like, the fact that we thought about the implications, and we were, we went through, we're very considerate of just our etiquette and kind of how we conducted ourselves when we were processing. I think there's a little a little bit of both. I'll tell you why I like you guys.

It's not because you cut that bear up in the dorm. What I like about it is you come, you're from somewhere else, you come to New York, you find out there's a bear season, you do the work, you scout, you spend time online,

you do the research, you make calls. A lot of guys would be like, you're never going to get a bear. Why even bother? I'm not going to go out. You never going to get a bear, blah, blah,

you ignore all that, and you go out and you had success. that's cool love to see it man like good american hunting elbow grease dude so i love it i'm glad i was so thrilled to see as i followed the story along i was so thrilled to see that nothing bad having you guys um i was thrilled to see the way people are like hey man this kind of stuff should or some people in our world are like this kind of stuff should be celebrated like you know they're they're producing food for themselves. They're taking responsibility. They're staying in accordance with the law. It advanced the conversation. Everybody got a little

smarter about everything. And yeah, I don't think I'm going out on a limb when I say you're an American hero. I appreciate it, Steve. It means the world. True American hero, in fact. Aaron Chin, thank you for coming on, man. I love hearing your story. And tell congratulations to your hunting partner, the Trigger Man. And I'm glad for you guys, and I can't wait to hear about your next hunting adventure. Thank you. I appreciate it.

I do. Appreciate it. Good luck with your studies. You've got a couple more years to go, then you're going to be entering the engineering field, so that's good. Okay. Thank you, man. Good luck with school. White Tail Season is here.

And if you're getting ready, there's no better time to gear up. From September 29th through October 5th, First Light is running their White Tail sale with savings up to 40% off. We're talking big deals on First Light outerwear, phase, core, and thermal. kits, all 30% off, plus 40% off the source jacket and more. Don't miss it. This is the best pricing of the season. Shop now at firstlight.com. That's f-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. This is an I-Hart podcast.