First and foremost, I’m a professional butcher, nerd, and a novice hunter. My journey began in 1997 at Burritt’s Meat Market in Traverse City, Michigan, when I was just 16 years old. Working in the meat industry is what eventually led me to become a hunter and gave me an appreciation for everything that happens after the harvest.
Over the course of 12 seasons at Burritt’s, I sharpened my skills and learned the craft the right way—by doing the work, day after day. During that time, I personally skinned and processed more than 5,000 animals, including whitetail deer, elk, moose, and caribou brought down from Canada.
Beyond skinning and processing, I learned the fundamentals of meat cutting, grinding, seasoning, and sausage making—the kind of skills that only come from repetition, experience, and respect for the animal. To date, I have stuffed well over 50,000 pounds of sausage.
Those years of hands-on experience eventually grew into something more. I began documenting what I had learned, developing and refining my own recipes, and writing books designed to help hunters and home processors get more from their harvest. My books combine traditional meat-market knowledge with recipes and techniques inspired by the many countries and cultures I have experienced throughout my life, along with family recipes that have been passed down and refined over time.
That same experience also led me to become an inventor. After countless hours spent making sausage and working with manual sausage stuffers, I developed the patent-pending DrivePin Pro™—a drill-powered adapter designed to replace the traditional hand crank on compatible manual sausage stuffers. It was created for a simple reason: to make sausage stuffing faster, easier, and more efficient for hunters, home processors, and sausage makers.
Whether I’m developing a new tool, writing a book, creating a recipe, or processing wild game, everything I do comes back to the same foundation: hands-on experience and respect for the harvest.
My recipes and products are made for hunters by someone who understands both sides of the process—from field to butcher block, grinder to stuffer, and finally to the table.
My goal is simple: help people make the most of their harvest and turn it into something worth sharing.
