Cameron Hanes - Keep Hammering Collective - KHC 043 - Evan Hafer

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Join us for a discussion with Evan Hafer, founder and CEO of Black Rifle Coffee Company. Cam and Evan cover how Evan founded BRCC, anti hunters, military life and more. Enjoy! Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com   Evan Hafer Links: https://www.instagram.com/evanhafer/    Thank you to our sponsors: Blokes: https://blokes.com/cam use code CAM for 20% off labs Go Ruck: https://www.goruck.com use code CAM for 10% off  Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv  Black Rifle: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first Order MTN OPS: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off and Free Shipping   Timestamps: 0:00:00  Intro - Corduroy Hats & Gold 0:08:57  Small Town Idaho to CEO of Black Rifle Coffee Company 0:16:01  Most Important Work During Deployment 0:21:36  The Current War Against Terrorism 0:28:52  Why Our Special Forces So Great 0:35:32  A Difference Between Rural & City Guys in Training 0:39:44  Doing More Things That Scare You 0:45:14  The Brotherhood of the Military 0:50:59  Transitioning from the Military to Living in Normal Society 0:57:05  Finding Your Passion 1:04:21  Embracing the CEO Life 1:17:46  Who Inspires Evan 1:28:12  Evan’s Best Hunting Adventure 1:34:46  Cam’s Dream of Hunting all of September 1:37:46  Difference in Roosevelt vs Rocky Mountain Elk 1:41:16  Cam on his Favorite Hunts & Rifle vs Bow 1:48:11  Elk Hunting in Oregon with Llamas & Horses 1:57:19  Hunting Wild Country - Iconic Destinations 2:00:13  Wolves Impact on Idaho & Anti Hunters 2:09:04  Unique Experiences in Hunting 2:17:04  A Privileged Lifestyle 2:21:48  Outro  

Every step I take, I move my truth. Every time they tell me stop I use. Every comment hate that makes my feel, gather up my energy, and boom. I hear them talking, saying the way that I'm moving so reckless. That is a part of my mind I've been blessed with. Giving my blood so I am relentless. Well, here we are. It's a Keep Hammering Collective with Evan Hafer.

How you doing? I'm doing good. Yeah, thanks for having me, Cam. I appreciate it. Have you been here before to Eugene's fulfilled? No. No, somebody was telling me this on the way down here from C. Seattle, they're calling it track city.

Is that what is called or track town? Tracktown USA. Tracktown USA. Yeah. Because, you know, Steve Prefontein, I don't know if you know him. He was from here and then the University of Oregon, big track, I don't know, history and the Olympic trials are here often. We just had the world championships here.

So a lot of big track mates. But yeah, it's definitely track town. It's track town. Did you run track? No. You didn't run track. football, basketball, baseball, baseball. Okay.

No track. So I stole what I want to start your podcast with saying I stole this hat from your bathroom. I like that hat. Where's that hat from, Tanner? Uh, eBay. eBay. I went to, I was like, corduroy.

That's a clap. That's, yeah. Hey, those are like the gas station hats. Yeah. I used to buy those all the time. It was like the trucker hat foam. Yeah. And I remember I had one if I was going to hunt bear,

it had a bear on it. If I had another one, if had a deer on it and that was, that works right there. It works. My grandpa, old school Idahoan logger, he had this,

this hat growing up, obviously, you know, rural logging community in northern Idaho. My grandpa did everything. It was like the judge, the grave digger, the television repair man.

Like, he did everything. Yeah. 800 people in the town. Right. But I would drive around with them as he was doing, he would go out and check meters for water. He was an old Toyota truck.

And he had this foam hat with a pheasant on it. And I said, Idaho, big cock country. I never understood what it meant. Like, you know, like I remember, you know, he had like a wide variety of profanity that he would be able to throw it. different things. And I would, I would get these visual representations as my grandpa's saying something. I'm like, I don't have any clue what that is. Why is he wearing that stupid hat with a pheasant on it,

you know? That's like, that's Idaho. Yeah. Well, that reminds me of, I think it's an anchor man and he puts his leg up there and he says, feel that. He's like, feels lower leg. He's like, feels like a rock hard cock, doesn't it? Something like that. I don't know. Cock's just a good word. It is. It's a, powerful word. It's a very powerful word. I love Oregon. I'm from right on the border, Washington, Oregon, Idaho right there. But my uncle was a schoolteacher in LaGrand for 30 years. So, like, I spent a lot of time out here.

He's such a cool guy. He had an old mine out in, what was it, the Wallau's? Yeah. He had a mining claim out there. And so he was teaching school, you know, driving truck, had a little farm, had a mine. Looking for gold or what? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, he'd go up for weeks on it. I used to, I used to drive through La Grande every year going elk hunting because the wallows is where I hunted the eco-cap wilderness. And that's awesome, just awesome outcountry. But yeah, LaGrand is, yeah, that's a good place to live. Yeah, I like it. It's a small town. Yeah, where are we deer hunt or I'm going to take Truitt?

And this weekend, there's a guy there who's always in the creek there looking for gold he's got his god i can what is it called i can't remember what it's called but he gets rocks in there shakes him around look for the gold flakes right and he's got that in the in the creek but apparently they find gold there too seriously yeah i always think about that cruising around in the mountains you know where they where they used to mine gold and um up in northern idaho i'm like is there any gold left in this place like if they just like pull it all out i don't that's a question And that's why they keep looking. Yeah, they keep looking.

Yeah. He used to bring it out. He's such a cool guy. He died a few years ago. And he used to pull out, you know, the little shaker vial of gold and let us. Yeah, let us check it out. And he was such an eccentric, cool guy to be around. He was really used and comfortable being around kids because he was a teacher, right?

And he had three or four kids of his own. Yeah. Loophold optics has been providing my binoculars and eyewear for the last few years. I like that it's an Oregon company and they make such high quality glass. That's all I've really used. And if you can't find what you're hunting, it's going to be tough to kill. So loophole optics has really played an integral part in my success these last few years. Thank you, Lou Pold, for supporting the podcast.

We go out there and he would do these slideshows that were the fucking most boring thing you could have ever imagine your life like slides of life of like him and his cabin you know like panning for gold yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and i would go out there and be like gosh i want to hang out with guy it was my uncle guy but do we have to do this slide show like this is so bad but i could just imagine him as a teacher yeah such a such an interesting and eccentric guy that just loves a bunch of cool stuff lives kind of out in a remote farming area and uh he always had he always had like this like a profound desire to go out and do really really interesting hard things you know like his mind was 20 miles off grid yeah or you know and he built the cabin by hand out in the middle of

nowhere he he would pull in all the supplies and do all the logistics support by himself and he'd be out there for weeks on end by himself It was like, you know, the simple life. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we talked about having purpose, you know, so he knew what his purpose was, right? Right. I mean, he had a goal. He wanted to do this.

Didn't matter how long it took or who was there. That'd be, it'd be pretty freeing to, you know, we have nowadays, everything is weighing on us. People are tugging on us. We want to, you know, make an impact here and there. And it's, man, the simple life sounds pretty good sometimes. Yeah. How much of that do you kind of get into? When you're disconnected from your phone, do you find it a positive experience?

Or do you find it gives you a bit of anxiety? No, I love it. I love when we're going. There's, you know, most places or a lot of places I hunt, there is no service. Right. You know, so I just like, I'm trying to think, you know, we were in Colorado this year, and I had three tags. So we were hunting, doing.

big walks, covering lots of country. And I just like being in the mountains walking. Right. I mean, just don't have to be anywhere. Just get the wind in your face. That's it. Then see what you find. You know, I'm looking for, I don't know, I'm always looking for arrowheads.

I'm always looking for sheds or for deadheads or just cool wallows or rubs or you never know. I just like exploring. That's, to me, that's where I'm most at peace. Right. And then if I can kill something, I got my bow there. We're good to go. But, yeah, I don't know.

How about you? What do you think? I find being completely disconnected and in the wilderness is probably, like, outside of spending time with my kids, it's my favorite thing. Like, I don't, I think if I ever, like, you know, follow. off of social media. People know where I'm at. I'll be in the mountains, like, constantly. I used to come back from deployments, and I would do,

it was that, it was like, is the ours is what I called it. And reading, running, river rafting, because I spent a lot of time rowing boats. So it was like just ours. I'd just go up into the mountains. I had a little camper that I'd throw in the back of my Toyota. and I would spend three weeks or a month driving around. Was it by yourself?

Yeah. Really? My dog, yeah. Me and my dog. And I throw my kettlebells in my Olympic bar in the back of the camper. And I still do a lot of fly fishing too. Like I love to fly fish like quiet and solitary things. I truly enjoy them.

How? Yeah, I was just curious when you were saying all that. So where you grew up and I, Idaho. How, how, and now you're, are you CEO of Black Rifle Coffee? Is that right? Yeah, yeah. I'm the CEO founder and, uh, yeah, that's, that's kind of my job, I guess. How does, I mean, how does one go from the small town in Idaho, right? And then you enlisted, were, and did you sign a, you're a green beret, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you sign a contract for that or were you just regular enlisted, then evolved into it? Bass Pro shops.

and Cabellas know that everyone has their season. Deer season, turkey season, duck season. Every animal is a unique challenge, every hunt, a different experience. And I count on my local Cabela store here in Springfield, Oregon to gear me up with all my hunting necessities. And you know, I like to support companies that give back to conservation. Under the leadership of founder John Morris, Bass Pro Shop, and Cabellas are leading North America's largest conservation movement. Together with our partners, they're positively shaping the future of the outdoors through donations, grant writing, and advocacy. Head to their website, bassproshop.com, or cabellas.com, and get geared up for your upcoming hunts. Yeah, I was an infantry guy. I was going to school. I was in what's called the simultaneous

membership program, which is like ROTC and the National Guard. And then between my junior and senior year, I went to Special Forces assessment and selection. so I wouldn't have to go to what's called Advanced Camp and become an officer. Basically, the short of the long is I've always just kind of been a bit controversial and everything I do.

So I had punched some kid that was a senior in ROTC, which is not out of the ordinary for me and my younger. You know, you grew up short, you know, you just learned to like punch people in the face before they like,

before they yeah you just learn how to do it man you just like i'm gonna shit you up before you get a little bit too aggressive yeah you know like i'm 5-7 i'm a good day i weigh 160 pounds right and you know my my parents and my grandfather raised me he was a short guy too he's like take no shit yeah you know like press their button if they're gonna if they're gonna pick on you beat him to the punch. Beat them. Yeah, so to speak. So I kind of a jettison out and went to selection and became a green beret.

I did that for a few years. And then I went over to the CIA for a few years for about 10 years. Between that, I mean, I did about 43 different three to, you know, five-month rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan. and as a contractor, like I said, it's called the direct contractor for the CIA. And I stayed in the guard. I was in S.F. Green Beret doing stuff out of 19th group and kind of did a bunch of stuff, man. I worked in Africa for a while. I worked at the agency. Did it kind of a, what I would say is the paramilitary rounds, I guess.

And it was just interesting. It was interesting things that I wanted to do. I wanted to see different parts of the world. I want to be engaged in different areas of the world. And then when I left, it wasn't hard. I was into coffee. And I kind of, in 1997, I came out to the University of Washington, and I've met this girl in Miami.

anthropology class that worked at a coffee shop. It was a good class. I like anthropology. It was awesome. Yeah. I mean, it was interesting. I always remember when I use the term atlattle, I always remember anthropology

101. And I had this like, kooky professor that was way into hunting with like longbows and primitive, you know, print of a hunting device. And I built with a group of other three or four students, we built an atlattle. And it was awesome. It was such a cool class. Yeah.

But I met this girl, and I wanted to get to know her. She worked at a coffee shop in 1997, and I was like going to the coffee shop all the time, ordering espresso. Was it one of those bikini coffee shops? No, no. She was a good person. She was like throwing them titties out trying to earn a couple bucks, right? Yeah, because a lot of guys spend a lot of money at those coffee shops.

I have. I'm not going to lie. Sometimes it's convenient, man. Yeah. You know, it's on the way to work. You're like, oh, I don't. know they can't pull a shot to save their ass but no beer and titty yeah good combination yeah or not beer coffee and tea coffee yeah and they're still cool i still like them i mean i don't i don't not tell

my wife like oh yuck put on that shirt i'm like take that shirt off throw those things around come on yeah don't be shy yeah i know it works sells it's still cool yeah it's still cool yeah so that so she inspired your love of coffee Yeah, that was the first of it. And then Seattle had this emerging kind of micro small batch roaster, especially coffee scene that was really emerging in the late 90s. And when did Starbucks start? Was it around early 90s?

Same time. Yeah. It was like an offshoot of Starbucks a little bit. They kind of kicked it. It's called first, second, third wave. And so first wave, you could just kind of like pin that at like Folter's Maxwell House. And second wave you could say is like flavor crystals. Yeah.

Remember flavor crystals? God, what were those things called? What was the name of that fucking coffee? Could we? You ban? Yeah, you ban. You see it at your grandpa's house or your uncle's just like the worst. Oh, yeah.

It's terrible. So bad. And, uh, I, So I got into coffee roasting. And I'll tell you exactly the month and date that espresso changed my life. And it was November of 1997 in a cart espresso maker in Capitol Hill in Seattle. And the coffee shop is called Vavace coffee. And it's still there.

He's got three. You might have more now. I was just in Seattle. But it was the single greatest shot of espresso I've ever had my life. and it was life changing. So there's not too many people who are going to say, I know when the date and time. And at that point,

I went and got this book on espresso and I was really into it. And I was going to go be a green beret and then come back to coffee. It's like, I'm going to go do something in coffee. But then these pesky global war on terror things kept happening. And I was like, this sounds pretty interesting. and, you know, I thought it was maybe going to last two or three years. And then I just kept going on and on. And I met my wife who had a coffee shop in Denver, Colorado in 2014.

And I had been roasting coffee and I'd roast thousands and thousands of pounds of coffee. And my wife had had a coffee shop for several years. And I was like, shit, we can put these two things together. Yeah. And there you go, black rifle coffee. On all your deployments you mentioned, what was the most important work you think you did during that time if you had to look back at your career?

What stands out? You know, it's hard to say because there's mixed emotions about it in the context of, you know, we, you know, the invasion of Iraq was important. I think, you know, my feeling about it or you know the the soldiers and the sailors there and the guy that actually fought the wars uh we did our job we did we did a damn good job doing it um you know our politicians continue to eff it up like just like paint by numbers and you know I would say regime change would have worked

if we would have had the political wherewithal to make sure the Iranians didn't come back in from the Shia side, which was, you know, you kind of have main, you know, we'll say the Shia and the Sunni. And we essentially popped a cap on it, pushed out the bath party, and then handed it back to Iranian influence. And I'm just not in the business of, you know, sacrificing, you know, my friends in my time so we can hand shit over to the Iranians. Like it makes me feel really angry.

Yeah. But I think out of all the things that we did, and Iraq and Afghanistan, I think we did a ton of important work. I think it would have been way more relevant if we would have had the political wherewithal and the strategy to implement a long-term pushback against what I would feel is our greatest strategic threats.

China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. And I don't find them in any, I'm not delusional, right? I'm like, they're bad actors, just bad actors. Bad countries doing bad things. They're supporting terrorism. They're doing all kinds of really, really horrible shit all the time. And there has to be a logic. and ethical international presence

to represent American hegemony. People take controversy. That's like a controversial statement because people don't want us to be the police of the world. We have to maintain economic hegemony because if we don't, China's gonna take our place. Right. And I don't wanna live in that world

where China has, international control over what we do from a capitalistic perspective. I just don't. So I do think that it's having a robust military doing the things that we did.

I think there was a lot of the right idea, the wrong follow-through. Like, Saddam was a bad guy. Whoever says he wasn't. He was a piece of shit. Him and his sons were, like, they were really, really unethical,

like to the point of which we wouldn't even recognize it from an ethics perspective. But maybe he was the only guy that could have maintained control out of that country because it's a mess. Right. But I think out of everything, to go back to your point,

I did a lot of work in Afghanistan leading up to the bin Laden raid around asset and information collection, which was really important. I had a couple years there where I was really active in pursuing a lot of bad guys. And I think that was probably the most important work I did.

And then I had the opportunity to go out and train other people for stabilization, region stabilization around counter-poaching in Botswana, which was Northern Africa. northern Botswana and the Okavango Delta, went to the Southeast Asia and the Philippines and trained guys to protect themselves against terrorism. You know, terrorism is a legitimate threat.

We see it. We see it unfolding today. We see how Hamas can destabilize an entire region. We see it. It is something that we should, I think we should be involved in as far as a pushback. It's a really, I mean, it's terrorism is exactly what that is. It's psychological terror.

Yeah. And it puts people into a circumstance of unease where they can't live happy and fulfilling lives. And it doesn't matter if you're in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, wherever you go, if you're being terrorized by lunis, by lunatics. Right.

Your life is, it's not as, it's not as good as what you and I got. It's just not. Right. Yeah, so a lot of people say, well, we shouldn't be involved in wars in Ukraine and, yeah,

and the Hamas situation over there. Right. And so your, your feelings is somebody has to, right? I mean, or somebody has to address the terrorism. Somebody has to address the terrorism. And I,

I have like, very contradicting opinion on some of this stuff so bear with me well i just contradict myself all over the place i don't i doesn't really matter to me anymore because like i'm not a uh uh uh uh international strategic thought leader my point with with the with the ukraine specific endeavor is that there we can't continue to spend american blood and treasure in these countries to the point of which we're putting ourselves into national debt that will jeopardize our sovereignty. We can't because it defeats the purpose. Right.

And if we want to elect a different outcome, you know, I don't necessarily believe, even though I just said regime change could have been good in Iraq, it could have, if you would have executed and the follow through, it would have been correct. Could have been, right? Because we've done it before, and it worked. Japan, I think, is a gleaming example. You know, Germany is a good example, but we haven't had the follow through

in order to do it correctly for decades because I'm going to have the politicians that will execute against it and then implement a long-term economic strategic vision that ultimately uplifts the entire economy. Why do you think that's a, I mean, we're supposedly the most advanced country, the smartest people.

Why would, why is that, such a problem to follow through and have do they not want to solve it in some ways i don't think so i think you have a well that's that's where i'll get into like contradicting myself in the ukraine which is i don't like russia i'm not like a russia guy i don't really care about it in one way or another uh russians are great they're amazing people i've got an incredible history you know putin meh whatever he's he's a cartel leader he's this this and that there's nothing like redeemable necessarily about some of these people. They're all kind of like ego-driven,

somewhat maniacal and sociopathic, right? They're all kind of built on the same kind of psychological and genetic overlay. I'm just not in the business of spending billions and billions of American dollars if we don't have what I would say is clear, concise, goal-oriented objectives that allow us to withdraw in an organizational effort

where we have clear success criteria. So the American public knows what we're getting into. What kind of bill are we signing up to pay for here? You don't go to a five-star restaurant. It's like check. It seems like. Like if you go to Denny's and they hand you a $10,000 bill, do you think you might be like, what the,

what did I just get here? Yeah. You know, like, so I think, you know, we, as Americans, we have paid too much and too high of a cost. for these wars that we've been in for two decades now. It's too high of a cost. There's too much blood. There's too much treasure that's been pushed into these endeavors.

It's too much. So now if we do have something that we have to do, we don't have the endurance for it as a country. We don't have the appetite. We don't want it. And then you add the military industrial complex into this. which is like lobbying specifically, obviously to implement that basically the transference of wealth

from the American taxpayer into the military industrial complex. That's why I'm such a proponent of special operations. It's a great return on the taxpayer investment. You can go direct to source, you can eliminate the threat, bring the guys home, move on with our life. Large-scale conventional military occupations are super expensive. both in blood and treasure.

Yeah, deadly, yeah. Deadly. And you can't just pull the plug and get out. Yeah. Yeah. Like special forces can go and do your mission, come back. Well, Afghanistan's a great example. I think we had cleared out the Taliban in, you know, October by Christmas,

the Taliban had essentially been pushed out of Afghanistan, something like that. We'll just call it like January. And that was with sub 300 guys driving an entire unconventional guerrilla force out of a country, pushing them back into their caves. You did that with a handful of special operations guys and some Afghans. Well, talk about, talk about an incredible resource for us, be able to implement the elimination of a threat strategically with, you know, 300, 400 guys combination of CIA and special forces.

And then we started, then we started the war of occupation. Now that's where the real money comes in. And that's where the military industrial complex starts licking their chops because they're like, ah, we're going to move tanks now, right? We're to build bases. We're going to move tanks. We're going to build MRAPs. We're going to arm everybody.

That's when the exploitation of the capitalist system moves in. And when I'm saying that, we live in a relatively open society where we can lobby our representatives to spend our money if we build tanks and airplanes. Which is like it's a little bit crazy. Like when you think about it. By the way, I'm not the smartest guy when it comes to this.

So whatever I say is probably half-cooked and a little bit salty based on the fact I've spent the majority of my adult life in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yeah, I think they do a good job. I don't know if we can use it word good, but they do it. They're effective at convincing the public that we need to do this and move in and have an occupation here. And, you know, this is the right thing to do

because America is the beacon of hope, and so we need to be there. So they convince the public that to take pretty much all our money and invest there, weaken our country, financially and militarily, I guess in some ways,

if you move in thousands of guys over there, when, as you pointed out, three or 400 special ops guys are, I mean, so effective. And I was getting, that had me curious. Why are, Why are our special forces guys so good? Why are we that effective?

I mean, do we have the best military, best training, best men? I mean, I think every day that goes by, every day that we don't encourage a warrior class, like a class of what I would say is war fighters within our culture, people that are willing to pick up the sword and fight for us. Hey guys, looking to take your wellness to the next level, Bloaks can help you. They are a modern health optimization service for men that is devoted to your physical, sexual, and mental health.

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Blocks is going to send someone to my house to draw my blood. No appointment was required, and I'm really excited to be partnering with them so I can keep hammering for another day. They're offering you guys 20% off labs. if you use code cam at blokes.co slash cam. It's a time that's ticking away where we won't be. Does you feel like that's like society's changing to where that's not celebrated to be a leader and a warrior?

You feel it. I mean, I think we feel it in the national narrative. You have people every day trying to take our rights away, whether it's the right to bear arms, whether it's a right to hunt, whether it's like they want, you know, you hear it. You hear it with toxic masculinity

or you hear people trying to, to pull apart the men and women that protect our country every day. And they want to sign up to do it. They gladly will do it. And, you know, I mean, you've seen the commercials, right? You've seen like, I remember the CIA commercial, totally released and made me want to vomit.

You know, there's this lady that's talking about how she has like anxiety and depression. She's on like 12 different meds. And she's like, I work for the CIA. I'm like, really? That's great. Good for you. Like, what do you do? Like, drive a forklift?

Like, you shouldn't be doing anything to be fair. Like, not healthy. It's not healthy. You know, it's just like this narrative around it's okay just to be you. well why not just be the better you like work on yourself you know like making everybody else accept you with all your flaws how about just be better just be better yeah like how much time do you spend training right like I mean huge percentage of your adult life you've spent working hard to be passionate about the things that you yeah yeah definitely

yeah every day every day hours of day. I mean, it says it right here. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you and I could roll out of bed, and we could start our day with, you know, a pack of cigarettes and a carton or, you know, a gallon of ice cream. We could. Yeah. But that's weakness. Yeah. It's okay to put out the fact that you want to be strong. Yeah. You want to succeed. Yeah. Like, Jocko says it, discipline equals freedom. Right. And then people get trapped into this, what I think is ultimately a propaganda campaign into saying it's okay to just do whatever impulse

comes into your head and you don't need discipline. And ultimately discipline will, it's the problem. You've heard it. You've heard it. It's disgusting. They turn like being fit into like a white thing. Yeah. You know, they want to make it that that's racist somehow.

Training and working out. It's, you said the propaganda. So are they, is the goal to make a dependent weak society is what you think? I think so. I think that this is my, I don't know, half tinfoil half, but it's actually not because I think our enemies directly gain when we weaken our society and we degrade our warrior class

because we're not and man we've talked about this I've talked about this downrange with guys all the time where we have a pro gun society of hunters and we grew up with these things we're really good with firearms

we are the best in the world with firearms like we can match any tier one organization in the world and go up against them and take their lunch money every day. Because we grew up with these things. We grew up out in the woods. We grew up shooting with our family.

We grew up with these. They're embedded into the culture and the fiber of America. And it also, you know, I just read the statistic, we have four and a half million firearms in the United States. It also prevents people from coming in here saying, yeah, I'm going to take it. over. I don't think so. You know, hey, Red Dawn, that's not going to work out too well in Oregon,

especially Eastern Oregon. It might work out great in Portland, but not in Eastern Oregon. Those ranchers aren't going to really put up with it too long, right? No. It's, yeah, it's crazy. I mean, did you that got me thinking about something else.

Did you notice in all your training and all your experience? Did you notice a difference between rural guys and city guys? as far as how how good they were at the job. Yeah. Yeah, I think rural guys, it lends them, the job in their life lends them to succeed at an easier.

It's much easier for them. You know, like I grew up in a family and all my relatives were like lockers. They were, you know, falling. trees, hook and logs. They were, and they would work. They would get up really early. And I would see them like packing saws, you know, living in the woods.

And they would grind themselves into moon dust. Like, toughest guys I know are loggers. They are. Yeah. And they would live on coffee in Copenhagen. Mm-hmm. And they're just like up and down the mountains all day long. They're living on coffee and Copenhagen.

You know, it was like falling trees. And they're walking on logs in the middle of like on, you know, slanted. downhills doing the craziest shit you could imagine. And then I was thinking, you know, you go to Special Forces and this is going to be like a bunch of crazy guys doing crazy stuff. And you go to selection and like, my uncle works harder than this every day. Like you're giving me three meals a day. I get to sleep.

My dad gets up at 4.30 in the morning. No offense, Jocko. But my dad gets up. He's 76 years old. he's been doing it since he was 18. Like he's not, it's not new for guys. I think it's just we lost contact with it.

So if you grow up in a blue collar family where you watch people work hard, you go into that and you're like, yeah, it's just hard work. It's really hard work. It's hard, dangerous, and exciting work. So now you're going to pay me to jump out of airplanes at night

with night vision goggles and you're going to give me a bunch of guns. What? This is a shit I used to dream about. Sounds pretty sick. That's awesome. What are you kidding me? I mean, and now the older I get or whatever, you know,

like we were talking about it yesterday with a bunch of my buddies. I was like, man, I can't believe that to let us do that. That's crazy. I guess you'd not have let us do that. Yeah. Other than the hardcore, I mean, I know they make you guys miserable to see what you're made of type thing. But as far as a lot of the work, sounds pretty fun. Super fun.

Super fun. Like, I was just fortunate enough to be in that, you know, in that, I guess, track of people where you get to do a bunch of really, really fun stuff, but you have to go through a bunch of bullshit in order to get to the fun stuff. Yeah, yeah. You know, and you got to prove you can be trusted. You got to prove, like, you're not going to quit because it's the biggest problem. It's quiters.

Like, I see this a lot. It's like quitting is a malfunction. in the DNA. Like if you have quitting in your DNA, if there's a thing that you know, like, you know, I'm going to quit, well, that needs to be kind of eliminated from the team, right? It does because you can't have quitters. You can't have guys in the middle of a gunfight deciding they just didn't want to get into this profession. It's like, what? No, man, this ain't the time. Like, you can't do it. And things get nasty. Like, they get really, really hard, like physically. and psychologically, you're terrified.

Anybody who says they're not terrified, they're fucking liars, or they have like a mental problem. You're terrified. Like, so you're doing the hardest physical thing that you've ever done, and you're terrified to the point of sometimes your limbs don't even work.

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as they are offering listeners 10% off when you use code cam, C-A-M at go-ruck.com. See you guys on the mountain. You better not forget that way. If you get through that, and get on the other side and you do that time after time again, it somewhat gets easier.

How did you get through it? Because you had feelings like that. Do you remember just being overwhelmed? And what'd you do? Well, I started working on it before. I started working on just the psychological and stress, the response to basically, sensory level before and I had to continue to work on it all the time.

Mm-hmm. And I would do things intentionally that fucking terrified me. Mm-hmm. Because, like, rock climbing is a really easy one. Mm-hmm. It's, I don't, I'm not, I don't like heights. I'm not, I'm not afraid of heights, but I also, I'm not going to go out and, like, stand on the edge of your roof for,

front right i'm not going to like stand on your on your deck and be like well look at me i'm balancing like i don't like it it's it's just not something i'm into um and i i went out and i started doing a lot of rock climbing because it was terrifying you know when you're placing pro and you're building a route and you're doing all this and you got a guy below you you don't know that's going to hold and if you're doing a multi-pitch climb and you're 100, 200 feet in the air it's terrifying. For me, it's terrifying. So I'd climb all the time.

I don't like it. But I do it all the time because it scared the shit out of me. Out of your comfort zone. I learned to deal with it. Not panic. Not panic. Like, you know, my hands would be shaking. Like, you know, like I had Parkinson's trying to put, you know, pro in to a crack line because I didn't like it. It was terrifying.

And I climbed all the time. Because it was like, if I can do this, then when it counts, when I need it to count, I might be able to control my emotions and not get so terrified. I can't function. I like outdoor sports. So I started whitewater kayaking and climbing and doing a bunch of stuff like that because it's terrifying. Were there guys that you learned from over there on how to deal with it?

that helped you or is it just kind of everybody's on their own just have to process it everybody's kind of on their own i mean training helps it does but you're never really that terrified you and training yeah it's controlled it's controlled like you know you're going to be okay you know you're not you're not putting yourself into a scenario where it's you yeah you know whitewater kayaking I still love it um I would do a whole lot of it because I you know I got kids and a family I like bigger boats but you know running a big river in a really small boat is terrifying I bet and I would go and do stuff like that and I naturally would lend all my recreation so everything around my life inside and outside of my life was completely built around one what are the

the psychological and stress factors that I might encounter. Yeah. How do I control it? And then how do I become fit to be able to accomplish the task and also control my stress? And then the first time you're in a gunfight, you actually don't know what's going on. Like what?

What is this? What's going on? Because it's happening too fast. Your mind can't really compute what's going on. Yeah. You don't really understand it until you're like, wait. Okay, this is what we're doing. one now okay and um and it changes it you know there's like it's like a it's like a river almost

you go through a bad part and then you have a calm part and you go through a bad part and it's like so interesting how whitewater kayaking is so similar in different different ways so it's climbing because you might have a really difficult pitch that you're working your ass off on that you know you're going to hit. You're going to get hard if you mess it up. And then you're going to rest. Right. And then you're going to, it's like you go back and forth,

back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then combat, because then it became more of, now I'll get my reps in downrange. And then I started coming back home. And I started really working on stress, inoculation, and how to really, pull through those experiences into training. How do we really build a training scenario

that allows us to really prepare? Because I hadn't seen anything like it in my training. So that became a really primary focus for me was just trying to build something that replicated as close as you could. You can never get it, you can never get it like exact, but to come as close as you could. And I mean, you have to, you have to fucking torture people.

Yeah. It is not a fun, I mean, it kind of is for the instructor. But you have to like. You have to find out what they're capable of to see if you put them in this position. They're going to fold or are they going to perform? You have to.

And it's your job. It's not only your job, it's your duty. It's your ethical responsibility to the force to keep people alive by putting them through the worst shit they've ever seen in their lives. Is, I can imagine that, of course, I've never served. I got so much respect.

off my son has you have i i look up to people who serve just like with so much admiration and a little jealousy in some ways i wish i would have been had my shit together but i didn't so fuck i'm just whatever a loser but no um so but the the team aspect of it because i i would assume it's a lot different if you're going through that with teammates yeah as opposed to if you're in a situation by yourself yeah you know you would did you ever get separated or were you ever on your own on anything like that? You always had other guys there to rely on? Who's had another guy?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, well, training is always kind of individual. You know, it's an individual selection and assessment. And then you're put on a team and then you're, you know, there are places in times when I'm alone, different countries, but there's like a guy a block away or whatever, right? We might be doing something like, you know, surveillance or counter surveillance where we're setting up on a target. And you might be alone for a very short amount of time.

But most of the time it's like twos, right? And I would be out with somebody else. But you're always with somebody else. Yeah. It's so weird. You know, like you're like sleeping, you know, in the same room with other, you know, other guys. Like my entire adult life, like I was just thinking about this. lot where you know I've never I've never really been alone right it's like I'd come home and

be alone for a couple weeks at a time but the rest of my time was like he's in a team room with other dudes all the time you're like sleep in an open base or you know sometimes get your own room a lot of times you would at the agency um be you're with guys all the time and you're the fucking worst. Like, that's the other thing that people understand is like a team room is the most politically

incorrect environment you can spend your time. You're the grossest humans on the planet because you're doing the most politically incorrect act available in our professional work environment. You're going out hunting people.

That's what you're doing. Right. And so you're vile human beings. Like, you're just like, It's like a It's like a kill Tony show all the time And you are crushing people's souls Like that is like your job is to sniff out the weakness in a team room And then turn the entire

The entire like pack on whatever is going to be the weakest thing So if somebody if somebody says something and they show like a glimmer of weakness, the entire group will fold in on it and tear them apart. So it's like... It's like a necessary evil almost, isn't it? It is. Yeah. I mean, because you have to be, I mean, people talk about being tough or being resilient.

It's just like a whole next level to put you guys in that situation. I mean, you have to be made of something special. Do you have to be resilient? You have to be, yeah, I don't know. I mean, yeah, very unique skill set. It's like, you know, somebody was like, I was thick-skinned. And I was making a joke because my buddy, Omar,

he's burnt over like 60% of his body or whatever. And I was calling him tough-skinned instead of thick-skinned. And, you know, like, and we've made just like, I mean, I just got back from my buddy's funeral. And I was with a bunch of guys that I served with. And we picked up instantly. Like, like, as if I hadn't left the team room, but 15 minutes ago, and this might have been 15 years ago.

And instantly, like, my buddy showed up in this, like, platinum 450 diesel. And the first joke out of my mouth was like, how do you tell somebody to the microp penis? I got a fucking platinum 450. And he's like, and he, like, he doubled over laughing. You know, my other buddy is a general. He's a one-star general. And I walked up and I grabbed his ass, like a big handful.

of his ass. And he turned around like he was mad initially because he was like, who in the hell has the audacity to do this? He turned around, he's like, oh, man, that's awesome, you know? And it's the most fun because, and we talk about it all the time.

And all the guys are in different work environments, you know, some work at fire, some work in, you know, police and work in their own businesses or in the medical field. They're all gone. They're like, we miss the most is like being in the team room because the brotherhood no you could you could you could be free you could just say what you wanted to say you could make the worst joke on the planet and people

were like that's awesome good good one you know and people miss that you could be the biggest fuck like on the weekend be the biggest fuck up everybody's still going to love you everybody yeah they're not going to be judging you for oh you got so drunk you I can't believe. It's just like, no. They're actually telling you, like, why didn't you get more drunk? We don't understand. Well, you're still wearing your clothes?

What are you? It's weak. Well, so, as everybody knows or could guess, that's probably the biggest transition back out of the military is how do you replace that? Because you have this brotherhood where, you know, it's, you could rely on each other, obviously, life and death. and most places aren't like that. You're at a job.

Nobody there's going to die for you. I mean, maybe some, but generally no. Generally no. So how do you go from where it's, there's basically no rules. You guys, you'd love each other, you're hard on each other,

but you always have each other's back to like, now this is a regular set of society rules. It's hard. I, you know, it takes, it takes a lot. And I think, you know, I think that's been a huge challenge for a lot of my peer group is they don't, they have a hard time finding where they're going to fit in with another culture that allows them to be them.

And, I mean, that's one of the reasons why, like, I hunt personally. Like it's like I got away from it for years, you know, I was busy. And I came back to it about six years ago because I needed something else. I needed something that was hard. I needed a challenge. I needed to be able to, you know, take something and then pull it back onto my table. I needed something that I could go out and experience camaraderie and, you know, spend time out.

the mountains with people I care about. And I think it's difficult. It's difficult for a lot of guys. I see it. I hear it in their voice. I hear it in what they're talking about. And I think, you know, part of what I do is just like, look at what I do. Don't listen to what I say because like half this should I say is ridiculous.

But just like watch. You know, I started a business. I started a business with my friends from a former soft community. because like I'm not meant for public consumption most of the time like I can't go and work somewhere else like I spent my entire life around a bunch of animals like doing like horrible shit saying horrible shit yeah I got to just build my own thing because you're not going to fit in somebody else's structure yeah I'm not going to do it so it's like I built my own thing I didn't have any money yeah my dad was a locker right like I didn't get it

a fucking check. Like I left, when I left the agency, it was like, I had saved some money, I had a 450 square foot house in the mountains of Colorado, a Toyota,

a Toyota Tacoma, and a, you know, a condo that I bought in Seattle. But dude, I didn't, I didn't come from money. I didn't have anything.

Mm-hmm. I had a coffee roaster in my garage I'd been using recreationally, and I was like, my wife knew how to, you know, serve coffee, which she had a coffee shop.

I knew how to roast coffee. I was like, you know what, I'm going to figure it out. You know why? Because I can't work for anybody else. Got to do it. Hoyt archery has been my bow hunting sponsor since 2005. And personally, I really don't care what bow you shoot, what brand it is. I just hope that you have the same level of confidence in your equipment as I have in mind.

Because I know if I get one opportunity with my Hoyt, it's going to pay off. And I've got to build a culture of people that also allows me, to be me because I can't you know sew my mouth shut and do I can't

it's not possible for me right and so it's like just watch what I did and go you know what I can't conform to you know maybe I can't conform to the corporate culture cool

go start a business you know and I I try really hard to to just kind of emphasize actions speak louder than words and one i don't like the sound of my voice so it's easier for me to like just do shit and figure it out you know and then start some hobbies that you're really passionate about that you find really fulfilling that you can build another team team around

and plug in you know i think i think my biggest passions you know in my life or you know my kids obviously you might and I don't want to say obviously because I know a lot of guys that their kids aren't their passion but it's like I'm super plugged in with them I love it they're awesome they're super cool humans and they like I find it's not my duty right like a lot of fathers will say like you know it's the greatest job I ever have I'm like dude I don't look at it as a job this is like the fuck coolest thing I've ever done my life yeah like I don't find any trepidation whatsoever doing things with my kids. Like I'm super plugged in.

This is what I want to do. And I can be really selfish, be 100% consumed, and never feel guilty that I'm depriving something else. It's like one of the only things in my life that I feel like that. Everything else is like, if I go hunting, I'm like, man, I should be spending time with my kids or I should be doing this. Like I'm kind of divided. But my kids are epic.

And so finding those things you're really passionate about. and I've been trying to push guys more towards like, just try a bunch of shit. You know, MacArthur, Eisenhower, Patton, all these guys were painters. Like, all of them painted. You don't have to just, like,

do whatever else is doing. Like, do your own thing. Go learn the guitar. Go play the drums. Like, I don't know, but find your own thing. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's,

that's great advice. but you've had so much success so you just, you didn't have any, nobody wrote a check, you had a little coffee maker or coffee roaster and now it's black rifles like freaking iconic. So how did that happen?

How did, I mean, you say, watch what I do not what I say because you're unfiltered. Yeah. But how have you done that? Because, you know, I hear what you're saying and yeah, find your passion, You know, that's hard.

It is. You know how many people are like, how'd you know that bow hunting was your passion? People, it's so hard to say, oh yeah, I'm going to find my passion. What the fuck does that mean? You know what I mean? Other than your advice about trying things is good.

I think hunting is a good one for people in the military, it seems like, because it is, it's not similar. And, you know, but it's similar. It is. You got to be dedicated. You got to be, you know, all in, essentially, to be the best. So hunting seems like it's been a good one for a lot of guys.

But yeah, it's like how have you went from this to, I don't even know how many millions black rifles worth, but it's incredible the journey. How? Well, I think number one, like I kill fear. Like fear is a cancer. So if people say, no, this wouldn't work or you can't do this. Fuck them.

Yeah. Like not only like, like, when you have self-doubt and part of this is like, you know, there's part luck, but most of it is just the fact that one, I'm, I'm stubborn and I'm 100% committed. Like a lot of people in, you know, this isn't me degrading people, but it's like they don't have the ability to just endure. This is a grind, man. Like, you know, people look at it when they think. how lucky. And I'm like, I've never in my life

thought about quitting anything I've done. Not one thing. I've never been close. I've never gone to selection and been like, I'm going to quit. Never been like that. Don't even have it in my DNA. Right.

In the last 10 years of this business, it's the only time it's ever in my life like snuck into my head. I'm like, oh, dude. Yeah. feels like you're just getting beat to shit on the ropes just day after day. Just stuff that was out of your control is what you felt like or circumstances. What's been?

Macro, micro, you know, it's like macro, micro economic conditions, you know, people misinterpreting what I say. And I say shit all the time. I'm sitting this podcast that it can be like, well, you can take that snippet and post it somewhere, you know. And everybody doesn't have to agree with me. Like, it's fine. Like, I'm an opinion-based guy.

I'm very binary. People either like me. They don't like me. I'm very black and white. But I've never, in my life, been a quitter. Like, but this 10 years, in the last 10 years, like, it pushed me to places physically and psychologically I'd never been before. Mm-hmm.

You know, four and a half, five hours of sleep. if not less every night, you know, not being able to pay your bills. Like the first two years of this company were like, you know, I couldn't, I sold everything I owned. I didn't have anything left. I could sell. You know, I had brand new kid, brand new wife at home, you know, rental house that I was missing payments on, you know, leveraged on my credit cards, the fucking Hilt.

Yeah. And that was easy. Man, whatever. We'll get it done. We'll figure it out. And then, you know, then you grow, you know, we've 900 employees now. And then you start, you know, we're publicly traded. And you start looking at, you know, stock price.

And you start judging, like, whether or not I'm a good person or a bad person. And you start dealing with, you know, the board of directors. And these are all, like, really. crazy complex challenges that you'll encounter when you're looking at you know we have a hundred million dollars in inventory bro 10 years ago I was having a hard time paying my rent

yeah you don't have a that much in inventory that's what you need because that's what the forecast calls for and we're in tens of thousands of convenience stores and it's just the

it's a math problem but man I'll tell you yeah you you can't You can't have a, you can't have a queasy gut looking at $100 million or the inventory going, hey man, you know, suck it up, buttercup, it's time to go. And then when it's time to be profitable, which is like the next, you know, we are high growth, acceptable to lose a little bit of money because low interest rates, high growth, high growth, high growth.

The economy changes. And now it's like, all right, now change your business. Yeah. And all these things have to be done and you have to make them happen in a very, very, you very finite amount of time. And this is why I keep talking to guys about, like, you know, health, right? It's mental health, fitness. When you're grinding yourself into moon dust at, like,

four and a half, five hours of sleep at night, you're rewriting your playbook. You're trying to figure out the problem. You can't go out on Friday night and have a couple beers. You just can't. Right. Because, you know why you're not cognitively functioning enough the next day to make good decisions can't yeah so and then grinding away because i don't believe in that either where it's like

you find something your pat what is that stupid saying it's like a pinter saying so find something you're passionate about you never know work another day in your life i'm so stupid yeah it's like find something you're passionate enough to grind away at for a decade right right yeah and find something you're passionate about that when things are fucking so difficult that you don't feel like you can take another step that you'll be able to dig deep and grab onto that and pull it forward to take the next step. Yeah. That's what it means. It's not like, oh, I'm going to buy a camera and be a photographer and take pictures of the Eiffel Tower. Like, okay, well, if that means you can sell everything and live off dog food to take pictures, that might be enough to get you through, dude. Maybe. Do you think that,

to me, it seems like there's different types of, say, CEOs. Their CEOs, who have come up like through the best schools and education and doing playing the whole game right and then there's guys like you who've just been regular guys who somehow through fate have and now you say you know you're unfiltered you're this or that it's like such a you're not the typical CEO of a again I don't know you got a hundred million dollars you say but you're not you haven't come up this standard route of these polished business guys You know what I mean? So to me, it's like you're a you're a small town guy

military guy who now you have these new set of rules of you're a CEO of this publicly traded company that has to be I mean, yeah, you're built for it. You are but I understand that I mean is there ever times where you're like I just want out of this and I know you have people rely on you should you probably don't want to admit that but No, of course. Like, of course. Yeah. You know, like,

is it the fighter in you that's kept this? Or, or? It's duty. Yeah, it's duty. Your obligation to, to the people. It's, it's also to my peer group.

Like, I, I took the company public, I didn't make, I didn't make hard, when I say it was like, I didn't make money doing that. You know,

I pulled money to capitalize the company. So we could grow the company. But more effectively, what I was just trying to make sure that from a duty, an obligation perspective, that I could go out and inspire an entire generation of GWAT veterans to go start businesses. That's it. And if I'm publicly available for people to just look at what I do and, you know, comb through, you know, my financial reports every quarter and look at, you know, how I've either succeeded or I've failed, at least that's the standard that people can know in 10 years I took a company that was in my garage with no outside capital

and I went to the New York Stock Exchange at the time is a $1.7 billion value in nine and a half years and I'm not the brightest bulb on the team dude I don't know like you got something special but my point in that is like they're smarter, better, more driven men than me in my generation of G-WATs. And if I can do it, they can do it. And if I go and I hunt with, if I start shooting,

like one of the reasons I started shooting archery was it was active form of meditation. And I needed something to break out of my spreadsheets and the things that I was doing from a numbers perspective. So I got a tradbo. I stuffed a bunch of burlap sacks together and I would shoot my trad bow in the back next to the coffee roaster.

And I could just think about something else for 15 minutes, man. Just hit a target. Yeah. And going back to what I said earlier, it's like just look at what I'm doing. Don't necessarily listen to what I say. Because like I said, I'm more driven. I really like, I like numbers.

and I like math. I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily a master of the English language, and I really like management and leadership problems. I think they're really interesting. But I wouldn't say that I'm like awe-inspiring from that circumstance. It's, dude, I did this. Like I lived paycheck to paycheck. I missed my rent payments.

I sold all my shit. The difference is, is I sucked it up. And I got through it. it in the sense of like I pushed through the really fucking hard times I didn't let self self doubt creep in I took fear for a ride because it's scary it scares a shit out of people man and that's way it's like you got to have an iron gut and you have to not only have an iron gut but you have to look back at it and go okay let's get it on yeah well I can do it that's it's been an incredible journey And I do think that your makeup has made it the success it is.

Because I think if you take somebody who maybe, you know, Princeton, Yale, whoever, they wouldn't have had the same fortitude you have to be able to push through all that for the last 10 years and go from. So, I mean, you have this skill set. I mean, you say you're, you know, not the most well-spoken or whatever, but whatever you have was a perfect storm. What's been, you know, you've talked about different challenges. is what's, do you wish you could do things over again, anything? Anything people could learn from?

If you just sometimes you make good decisions, sometimes you don't, but whatever the case, you're going to figure it out. Is that how it's been? Yeah. I try to get perspective on these things, which is when it's really, like when you're really in the pressure,

when you're really in the like the confines of stress and pressure, Like what? Like, give me an example. Like, taking the company public is a good example, and then post public. From the outside end, that seemed like a big celebration.

You're there ringing the fucking bell on the New York truck. I mean, how incredible is that? It's awesome. My daughter did it, actually, my six-year-old. She pressed the button, which can't wait for any college

and have some socialist professor. And she was there. I pushed the button. What? Jesus. You know, it was. It was. It was a big celebration. I think the economy flipped on its head right after. And so you guys,

everybody's buying stock, want to be involved, everything was going great. What was it, at $30 a share or something? Yeah. And a lot of that was pressure on, there's just not what they call, there's not a lot of shares available. So drove up to pressure, you know, and then. So the pressure, does that drive up price then? Yeah, because it's just more, more buy, yeah, supply and demand. And then the economy shifts, interest rates go up, growth stocks are no longer something that people are really spending a lot of time and money in. So then you have to, you really have to concentrate, and we're a young business.

We have to really concentrate on how we're spending capital, where are we spending capital, where are we growing, where the profitability and the channels. We've got to, we've got to, we've got to, We've got to really hone our craft and start posting direct and deliverable results. And, you know, for the previous 10 years in the market, you just had this meteoric arc of these businesses.

And a lot of them, to be fair, they weren't selling anything, right? We have a lot. There's substantive things. You know, we've got the largest coffee subscription in America. We've got, you know, ready to drink that's across convenience stores. and I'm reluctant to keep going on because it'll sound like a commercial.

But, man, when you're staring at, you know, projected, you know, last year we did just over 300 million in gross annual. Well, dude, this was in my garage nine years ago. Yeah, that's incredible. And you're looking at the inventory required to do what you're going to do this year. And my gosh. Yeah.

Like, talk about a mountain you've got to climb. So, you know, you ring the bell, market gets flipped on its head, and now everything costs more. Now everything's just gotten way more challenging with a lot more insight and oversight. So as a private company, there's a lot of things you don't have to do.

Yeah. But I try to be grateful for the challenges and the sense of, I get to be I get to be the guy right like how lucky am I man I get to be the guy that's like just gets the

reward of just getting beat to shit by this stuff because now other people can look at it and go okay like he did it I can do it and I'm not

the point of the entire exercise is to not like it's well beyond me. It's well beyond me at this point. It's to build, you know, my principles of this was to build an incredible business and it was a circle who was

to go from a place of love, which is your family, to go into a business where you're loved, admired, and respected, and then you go back. And it's basically a flywheel of positivity in your life. where you build your ecosystem around people that love you,

that encourage you, that support you, that propel you. And it gets faster and faster and faster. That flywheel effect of positive inertia powers your entire life and allows you to fill up every day around people that will create a direct, lasting, lifetime, positive impact. And ultimately,

what it was for and still is, is to prevent my friends from killing themselves. Like that's straight point blank. So it's that bigger than you mission is what helps you weather the storms that come with this business and going public and every word you say is being critiqued because it's, yeah, I'll deal with this

so I can help these people. Is that your attitude? It's not me, man. Like, I don't take this stuff personal. This is my duty. It's just like standing guard or sitting in a patrol base or going out on patrol or doing anything else. This is my duty.

Like, I don't have a choice. So it is what it is. And I have not only the duty, but I have the opportunity to be the guy. Fucking cool. that is everybody wants to be in your position they might not they want to be the CEO of something successful and to have a greater cost than themselves just like you do ever but everything you've had to overcome you said yourself you're not a quitter and you haven't quit you've proven that and

throughout life and then through the military and now through this and it's uh to me shit it's inspiring It's to hear you talk so honestly about, yeah, you might not say the right things all the time. You might not do the right things, but this is why I'm doing it and I'm okay with it. It's that's standing for something. And I agree that's what we all should do. You had to earn your position right now. Yeah, and that's what, like I see it. I see it in other people.

I see other people doing, you know, inspiring people. you know, and we all catch a certain amount of shit, right? We all catch a little bit of hate. I'm going to see it like I see it on me. And, you know, and I've said this to lots of other people where I'm like, man, people putting positivity in the world is awesome. It's inspiring people to be better. And there's always going to be negative information, negative people.

And what they're doing is they're putting toxic fuel out into the world. I'm not doing that. I don't broker in that bullshit. I'm only in the game of putting fucking positive fuel back in the world. I'm not going to put toxic fuel back in there. I'm not going to. There's too much of it.

Guys like you, guys like Joe, guys like, you know, Gaggins, you know, Jocko and all these guys. You guys are putting positive fuel in the tanks of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people every day. And, man, we need an army of people like that. We need an army of people

that are willing to go out be in the public eye and just accept it for what it is and just go, you know what? I'm putting positive fuel in the world and I don't really give a shit what other people are going to say. Like I don't.

Like I've heard it, you know, and I don't know, I think last year, probably last year I turned the corner with it. You know, it's like, whatever. It's my duty. It is what it is, man. Like, it's my duty and I'm just going to keep doing what I do. Like, and if people don't like it, I don't know, find another coffee drink.

I don't get a shit. Yeah. It's, no, I don't know. What a journey. I just can't even imagine. I mean, but it's been, it's been incredible to watch. And as I said, inspiring for me to see this, this growth and success. And yeah, I know there's been challenges.

You know, I've seen some of the stuff people have said and critiqued. And, you know, anytime, especially. once you go public you know it's fuck everything there's a magnifying glass under every decision and every word you say everything that that would be challenging who's been like a good resource for you i i assume you haven't just navigated this all yourself has anybody helped you on how to deal with it um yeah yeah no i mean it's all new um i don't know i didn't really know anyone from that had been in a public company before um and i think you know my partners you know matt and jared have been really good like you know they've been exceptional partners like you know i talk

to them every day for the most part um you know like matt jared you know logan like we've we've all kind of formed a fire team for a lack of better term and And then I've got some people in the board that have been really good. They've been really, really instrumental. And then outside of that, you know, I think stoicism, I think, you know, as far as like a meditation or a practice, I think that's helped quite a bit. I think listening to or reading different books

and looking at different perspectives, whether it's, you know, shoe dog or one of these guys like fill them bringing him up because of um because of eugene but reading other entrepreneurial um adventures you know their their their success stories their failures it also shows me like there's a lot of other people who've gone through the same stuff yeah it's just it's kind of like rinse wash repeat you know and now i'm getting better at it to the point where I can see the stuff beforehand and go, oh, yeah, I've seen that, you know. So I've relied quite a bit on, on different people. And I think a lot of it's just finding perspective, which is my life's pretty, pretty awesome, man.

Like, we kind of like talked about the negatives, but I'm like, dude, I have 900 employees. Yeah. Like, you know, I go into the office. and there are people that have worked for me for, you know, nine, ten years, there are people who have worked for me for two weeks. You know, I've got, you know, elkheads hanging around. I've got, you know, a gym and back. I make what I feel is the best coffee in America every day.

Like, you know, I get to, you know, work with all these different cool partners doing amazing things. I'm like, dude, how incredible is this? Could be worse. It's freaking awesome, man. Like, it's so cool. So part of it is just, I get to do this. I mean, to your point, like, there's a bunch of people

that would love to have a CEO in their title and would love to have, you know, 33 coffee shops and, like, you know, go and do all this stuff. So part of it is like paying respect to where I am and doing it going like, this is pretty epic. Yeah. It's not really pretty epic, it's fucking epic. Like, it's amazing.

Yeah, no, I see that, and I agree. I mean, you've been blessed so much. But I was just curious about the whole journey, because you can just focus on one or the other. You can focus on the negative and be like, what the fuck, I got to deal with this, all this shit. Or you can be on, you know, on the other hand, like how blessed you've been. But the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.

But it's like I think your perspective and just having that, just the big picture is, you know, That's where a lot of people, me, anybody, you focus on this one little aspect of it instead of the big picture, but the big picture is you got 900 people that are supporting their families because they work for you.

I mean, that's an impact. Dude, we gave back $3.5 million last year. Three and a half million dollars. To who? To nonprofit, veteran nonprofits. Three and a half million dollars. Like, you know,

Patagonia always says like 1% of sales, right? Or 1% of profit. Well, just so everybody knows, you can pretty much make whatever profit you want to look like. You can say, we made $10. One percent goes back. Dude, we did more, we pushed back more because we did more than 1% on top line, gross revenue.

Patagonia goes to war every day and they're, you know, with their information saying, 1% goes back to conservation. Dude, I did more than that. Top line. back to veteran nonprofits. We've single-handedly been able to fund specific initiatives. And, you know, it's amazing, man.

Mike, I've been able to pay for, you know, an entire continuing education program for elementary, private elementary school kids for the children of guys that have been lost in combat. Like, I've been able to pay for, you know, college and research around burn pits, and things like this, like, dude, this is crazy. Like, three and a half million,

I'm going to give more back next year. It's making an impact. Dude, it's awesome. Like, you know, and not to mention, you know, all the other really cool shit that just happens all the time, you know, like, I get, when hunting with Rogan for a week, like, what?

Like, are you kidding me? Like, this is crazy, man. Yeah, he loves that hunt with you down there to hone. Dude, it's awesome. Yeah. It's like, I went hunting with Steve, For a week in Alaska. When was that?

Two years ago. What did you guys hunt? Blacktail. Oh, really? Dude. On Prince of Wales? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Such a cool hunt. It was horrible. Yeah. What, the weather? Steve is, you know, he's, have you hunted with him? I haven't. He has like a knack for just going in the worst paths ever and just likes to keep grinding. Wants to be miserable.

Dude, he just wants to be miserable, I think. And we're out there for a week and just raining and sleeting and snowing. And we didn't see shit. Really? We didn't see anything until the last day. Joe went with him on that hunt too, and he didn't kill anything. So I don't know if that's his, he enjoys. I think he takes people out to her just to, like, grind him up.

Test them. Yeah, like we did this portage with this canoe. and, you know, we're cruising through and it's, you know, it's like a jungle, you know, it's basically like a jungle. Yeah, it's a big country. Three mile hoardage through nasty jungle with a canoe and, you know, backpacks and all this other crazy shit.

And just to go up and put it in the lake and road across the lake and then do, you know, do, you know, quite a bit of calling. and cruise around and then come back and do it. And then we were like, well, let's take it down the rapids. Like, dude's crazy, a little bit. And then we went from there and then went out to, you know, pulling some shrimping pots. And he's got this tiny little boat.

We're out in the fucking ocean. I'm just like, Steve's a, he's got like a half screw loose. Like he's, because he's so polite and like very professional and he's calm. But man, he can get it done. Like he's a super legit guy But you know growing up or not growing up him You know watching meat eater and you know Watching Steve and you and all these guys on Joe's podcast

And following you guys for years It's just cool man It's like you get to meet people you like look up to and you respect And you're like that guy's fucking doing it like You know watching your videos with how close you're getting to bulls and like how of a surreal interaction

that you have with these wild animals like, dude. Yeah. You know, packing shit out and running,

you know, fucking 100 miles or whatever you're doing. Like, dude, this is epic. Like, what you're doing is epic.

You're doing, you're doing things that are inspiring guys like me all the time. And so we're looking at you going, man, Cam Hay's a hard motherfucker. Like,

I can do that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna try harder. I'm gonna work harder. Well, you've been kicking ass killing bulls with your bow. I know that.

Been on a pretty good run. I mean, this year you got a great bowl. Yeah. Yeah, he's cool. He's a cool bull. Yeah. So would you and Steve,

you said you killed on the last day? Last day. And I killed a black tail. Like, we did, I don't know. We put it in like 80 miles around there, They were just 80 miles just like tromping through the, we did like a full, like semi-multipitch climb and like muck boots.

Did they have ropes going up there? Because I know there's some places like they do have ropes. Yeah, I know. We were just doing a climb. I fell like 10 feet under my backpack. I thought I broke my back and I just landed in like this nice, soft area. I felt like 10 feet off this thing. Like we're climbing in muck boots.

Sounds like it. And last day we killed this thing like 800 yards from wherever we were staying, you know, and Steve's cabin. And we were like walking all around. It was just by chance. We were walking this power line road just hoping, like keeping our fingers crossed. Like, gosh, I hope we get something. I hope we see something.

Dude, we had been working so hard. And we ran into, you know, a couple does. and but nothing, nothing, nothing. And the only one we saw, and it was like maybe, maybe 600 yards from the fishing cabin. Yeah. And it was like on our way back in.

So lucky. Got him killed. Yeah. What's been your best hunting adventure? That brown bear hunt with coal was probably, I mean, you know, two weeks. And Cole's super fun. Yeah.

Yeah. So he's such a good dude. Cole Kramer, who we just had on the podcast, he's a long time guide. So was that on Kodiak? No, it was in the peninsula. Yeah. Yeah.

It was a, um, Chiknik right outside of there. And it was, you know, because I, you go out into the, you know, your,

you know, your, uh, commercial flight, than a little bit bigger plane down to, you know, gravel and then super cops. A smaller plane.

And then you keep getting down, down, down, down, right to your system of entry. It's just beautiful. Two weeks you were there? Yeah. That's a long hunt. It's awesome. Yeah. How many guys were hunting?

It was me, Matt, and Logan. So he had three bear tags. Mm-hmm. And Cole had, it was him and his assistant guide. And then Trevor Thompson, who's a former seal that, yeah. As a former guide, or works. is a guy with Cole too. So we're all up there.

And so Cole's got two weeks and three tags to get it done. Yeah. I don't know how he did it, man. He did it. Yeah. I don't know how he did it. A lot of work, huh? Yeah.

Yeah. Even those hides are heavy. Did you, did you pack, you guys have to pack the hides out? Yeah, we, we, we, well, I think it was on day 10. We'd seen a bunch of bears, but nothing with any, any size, you know, some sows and nothing. with any size and we uh we were we were getting ready to come off the mountain one night

we saw one that was like four and a half ks away and it was big because you know one the range finder wasn't really working that far up but he looked big yeah and he's in kind of a green field out between two mountains and i spotted him uh no cole confirmed it's big bear we'll get up in the morning if you're still here we'll we'll hit the road we'll figure out to get out there then um so got up in the morning still there so we've got you know four and a half ks to move on big boy yeah through that it's tough walking it's good yeah and we're moving right it's you know because we're trying to get up on them as fast as we can we just don't have we don't have the time um so we we're moving as fast as we can.

And so you're at V-O-2 Max like the entire time. Red-line, yeah. You're redlining. You're stripping clothes off. You're sweating your ass off. Sweating your ass off. Yeah.

And then you get down, you know, into the, in below. Now you can't see him. Mm-hmm. So you're trying to get as close as you can. Finally, we get up on this little knob and Cole starts calling. Then he comes. creditor call yeah he's doing like uh cow like you know cow moose and okay and uh calf yeah calf calls and stuff so he starts calling and bringing him in and he's big comes in and's like

that's the first he did nice yeah and uh and there you can have backup shooters so i i set up and i was like hey as soon as i shoot like you guys got to shoot right on top because i was like we we got to get this thing down. Yeah. And I want it, I don't want any. No funny business. No funny business.

Let's get this thing down. Yeah. And so we set up on him. So we, you know, I killed that first bear. Well, then we turned around.

And there's another bear right behind us. Cole's like, turn around. There's another bear right behind you. Oh, man. And he, you know,

made a small cow call. And that was Matt's bear. Yeah. So he's like, Matt, go. Yeah. So Matt turned around

and shot him. So we had two bears on the ground. We'd been out there for 10 days. And then we had two bears on the ground in like 30 seconds. And quite a ways from K. 5Ks or whatever, right?

Yeah. We ended up you know, getting the hides and then packing them out. But we got to a spot about a K-away where we could bring in the cub and load all that stuff up in the cub. So we only had, you know, we ended up getting back probably midnightish,

you know, like, But we had a couple of stream crossings and, you know, a lot of walking basically to get back. And Logan killed a wolf, which is like he's a sniper. And it's funny because he shot him in the face and we just kept making fun of them. The old habits don't know. They die hard, huh? Yeah. Like, geez, man.

Like, take it easy. Yeah, target eliminated. Yeah. Yeah. And then Matt and I left. Two days after, two days after that, I think. Logan stayed for another two or three. I think he might have been there for another three days past where we were at.

I was getting along on my days. I was like, I got to get back. A long hunt. Dude, it's a long hunt. So much fun. And it's a couple days to get out of there. Yeah. It takes a while to get there and get back.

Yeah, because by the time you get into Anchorage and then spend the night in Anchorage and then get back, you know, salt. lake and then it's going to take me a few days to like decompress before i'm like i'm not going to just step back into the office right day day two so uh it's a long hunt i i want to do this next fall my my goal is is to take all of all of september i just take all of september it's like hunt what alcohol all september yeah there you go now we're talking yeah just be gone dude i'm building this expedition vehicle right now. This is like a flatbed, custom flatbed

F350 with a plug-in camper. Gosh, what's it called like a four, I think it's called four-wheel or camper, but it's like it's all basically custom and built out. So I can just go from like start in one state and just go from state to state to state and never unpack.

To me that like when I was growing up, there was this guy here in town, his name is Jim Carter. He's electrician. But anyway, he hunted all of September, right? And he always killed, for Oregon, I always killed a nice six point bowl. And I was just like, how the fuck does this guy do this every year? So I was like, my whole dream, my whole life was,

I want to be able to hunt all of September, just to your point right there. And then it's just like, then you keep working, getting opportunities, things work out. And so, yeah, now that's what I do. Four states. Last year was five states. Five states.

But this year, four states. And it's just like, it's just what I've always dreamed of. Elk hunting all September. Could life get any better? Well, you just retired. You had a job this entire time, dude. Yeah, yeah. I retired a year ago.

So this is your first year that you've had no shit, a real September. You could take off, right? And normally it would be kind of like your situation where, yeah, if I killed early, I'd have to get back to work because, you know, I'm running the cruise. Yeah, you know, I was involved with purchasing.

And so everything, there's always issues that come up. So I'd have to, as soon as I got done, I'd have to go back. But this year, yeah, I mean, I mean, it was, I didn't, I had my podcast done before. So there's still always, you always put pressure on yourself.

Right. It's like people like us probably always have a certain, feel a certain amount of pressure just because there are other goals or whatever. But yeah, it was really nice. And I didn't have to hustle to get anywhere just to the next time. Did you go? did you come back to your house before each hunt or did you like stay on the road were you gone and then gone let me think so i think i came back between each hunt so i i killed and did i tanner or did we go from one

to the other ever oh yeah okay well so in oregon i i had to ended up going i did try oregon twice couldn't get it done the first time had to go to arizona because that's when my home started and then had like three days after Arizona to get it done here in Oregon because I didn't the first time and then killed a bowl of last day of September here okay last day last day of September yeah it was yeah the Oregon was a it was dead Oregon is always my hardest one because these you know you've hunted in Utah it's a great place lots of bulls you're probably gonna get an opportunity. Arizona is incredible. Colorado where I where I hunt is good. Oregon. It's just freaking hard Roosevelt out country. It's always the hardest one of the year. So anytime I can

get a bull killed in Oregon and it's usually my first one. I'm like all right. All the next ones are going to be easy compared to this. So this one, it was my last bowl. It was just kind of kicked my ass. What's the difference between is there any difference between the behavior? of the Roosevelt, the Rocky Mountain? The Tully? Yeah, I have a hunted Tully. I haven't done those. But the Roosevelt, they're generally,

they don't bugle quite as much or you don't hear them as much. And I don't know if it's because of the terrain, because of the timber and the hills and absorbed sound. And like, you get over into eastern Oregon or in that desert or we hunt where the air is crisp, clear,

mountains, you know, sound carries in the mountains. It doesn't carry here on the coast like it does there. So I think they bugle less, but also think you hear it less, you know, just because of the country. Right. But they, you know, we've had them fired up bowls coming in, but it's pretty rare that a Roosevelt comes charging in, just bugle on like, you see some other places. Huh.

That's interesting. Yeah. Are they bigger, are they smaller body or bigger body? Bigger body. Bigger body. Bigger body. So like a big bowl, like say in Utah, Colorado would be like eight to 900 pounds, would be a giant bowl.

Yeah. You know, that bull that we were looking at there, that bowl weighed 1,200 pounds. Seriously? Giant, giant, biggest body dog I've ever seen. What do they eat, like fish? No, no. Yeah. What do they eat?

They're like brown bear. A bunch of leaves, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. They like blackberries. So, I mean, they hit the berries hard when the berries are on. They're glycogens through the roof. They're like packing on the weight.

I have no idea because, you know, normally a human, if you want to put on muscle, you got to eat some protein. Yeah. They're not eating protein. Oh, actually, you know what? This year, acorns. Oh, yeah. Okay.

So there was a shitload of acorns that the elk were just all over. So that would be a good way to put on weight if they're eating a bunch of nuts. You know what I mean? But those bulls, they're the biggest body. Roosevelt, there's a lot of 1,000-pound Roosevelt bowls, but that one was 1,200. He was huge. Can you taste a difference between the, you know,

your Colorado and your Roosevelt? Like, can you taste the difference, or is it? Here's how it goes. Of all the bulls, or the bulls I've killed, Arizona, for whatever reason, is the best eating. Huh. I mean, I can tell if my wife, makes you know cooks up a steak or something i can tell is this arizona because it just tastes that

good right second is Oregon Oregon is so good but yeah i can i can tell and then uton colorado or right below those but still good meat but something about that the Arizona bulls and i don't know why and then Oregon is right there yeah because that especially if it's a they're eating a bunch of blackberries like yeah and okay yeah yeah and i always I like to kill bear too that are eating berries. Obviously, those are good. I killed a bear in Colorado that was on acorns. And that meat's good also.

But not quite as good as if they're just eating berries. Obviously, that's sweet. Yeah. Gives a little bit, a little different flavor. I mean, bear meat's not obviously elk meat, but I still like it. Do you do a bear hunt every year? Like every year, 100%. Yeah, I always kill either, you know, I've killed brown bear or grizzly or black bear in Alberta with the rivets I go up there.

Usually that's nice that's usually like my first hunt if we don't do Lanai. Joe and I have done Lanai a number of times. But I like a bear hunt just to get, okay, let's get in the killing mode. We have killed all winter. Let's make sure we remember how to do this. And so the bear is a good one. You go up there kind of focus on a big move. male.

That's always a good hunt. But yeah, and then I usually always kill one in Colorado too because there's so many bear there. Right. Where at? Is it southern, northern? Trinidad. Oh, yeah. Do you know where that is?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it's down, not too far from New Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it, I'm not sure where, I'm not sure how far from where you're hunting, but. A couple hours.

Is it? Yeah. It's not too far, actually. It might even be less than that. Because that, the same place you're hunting, they have a spot by where I hunt. I hunt. Yeah. They,

what are they calling it? Wedding cake or something like that is what they, because the same owner owns all that stuff. He's an interesting cat. How many brown bears have you? Killed three brown bear. Three brown bears. Like when we're at, Codiak?

No. In the Alaska range. Okay. So where Roy, Roy used to hunt. So we did snow machines for one. I killed one up high coming out. out of the den. So they'll come out.

They usually they'll den up like on kind of steep mountains up there. And they come out in the spring and then kill them up there and they'll come down and try to kill a moose or something. So the bear I killed, my first brown bear, I think it was 2012, had just killed a moose, got on his tracks and killed him. And then I killed two in 2015. That's one of them right there. That's cool.

Oh, yeah. And that was down kind of where the peninsula takes off. There's a bay right there off. Right. And it's that unit 16. A non-resident can kill two brown bear and three black bear. There's so many bear there. And I killed two brown bear.

Seriously? One spot and stock one bait. Have you, do you ever use rifle anymore? No. All archery. Yeah. Used to use rifle every now and again, right? Or have you always, like, been.

Once I switched, I started with the rifle when I was 15. That was my first kill. And then once I, in 1989, I switched to bow, and it's just been bow ever since. What's been your best hunt? You've done a million of them. Like, what are the ones that stick out that are like, that was epic? I mean, I like dangerous game. I just like the intensity of it.

So the big bear or the Cape Buffalo in Tanzania or, I was hunting lion in Tanzania. I didn't end up killing one, but I was, you know, on the ground with, had one at 50 yards, a big male by itself. Wow. That was pretty exciting. I just could never get a good shot on it. I like that. And then aside from the dangerous stuff is always hunting with Roy would be, you know, we'd always have big adventures up there.

So it was cool. Our last hunt, our last year hunting, you know, he fell in 2015. But we killed these two brown bear and I killed a black bear on that hunt too. So I killed three bear in five days. Wow. And then we killed that moose there. That was our last hunt together, that moose back there. Oh, right here?

Yep. Yeah. And that, so that was, he fell a couple, like two weeks after I killed that. So that obviously is a special one. Right. Yeah. But. And then elk, I mean, other than dangerous, it's like you can't beat.

Obviously, you know I like elk just from working around here. It's delicious. It's super fun. It's, well, to me, this, a small town guy, just like, just like you, it's like deer were, yeah, everybody kind of got their buck. You know, did you get your buck this year? But to get a six point bowl. That's, that was it. Like, everybody talked about that guy.

Like, everybody in the town talked about that guy. And that was like, you would have a belt buckle. Yeah. And it had a six point bull silhouette on it. And it's just like, or some guys had an antler horn belt buckle. Oh, yeah. You know, like the base of it. I had one.

Did you? Yeah, my uncle made it for me. But to kill a big bowl, a six point bowl, yeah. Shit, dude, hardly anybody ever did. It's like, you never even hardly saw elk. No. So it was, if you could get a big bowl, that meant something.

And, you know, I killed a, I have the spike here somewhere. I killed my first bowl was a spike. And then finally, you know, by the time I killed a six point, a big six point. Well, for me was that one right there. That was in the Eagle Cap Wilderness. And that was my eighth year of bow hunting, my first six by six. six oh seriously yeah yeah i killed bulls every year right that was the first i killed a six by five roosevelt but then that was my first six by six and that that was like oh shit okay finally did it

that seemed impossible that that must have been like crossing the finish line on a huge race or something like you must have been over the moon yeah i mean it was yeah by myself back there um 43 yards hit him i was sneaking down had spotted them went into this thing he bedded down i thought because he didn't come out he had a herd sunk down there and i was like pretty close i knew i was looking looking looking and i heard an elk get up i heard it's like rocks move and like hooves and i look and i could look under this thing i could range and it was him at 43 and i hit hit a little back but i got his liver and then he went not far and bedded then I heard his antlers hitting the rocks and I'm like oh my god I just killed a big bull and I went over there and he was he was dead and that was never forget

it never forget it's amazing yeah that that's like eight years eight years of bohunting eight years of bowhunting and I could only hunt I didn't have any money then so I just only hunt oregon yeah it was like if I didn't kill a bull in Oregon, I wasn't killing a bull. Right. And when you're so obsessed with something, to not get a bowl was like, I couldn't, you know, I was so obsessed. It just, I had to kill a bull and I did. But it was just like not so obsessed, probably unhealthy.

So, but that was, all my chips were in Oregon. And Oregon's not a great hunting state. Right. But, yeah. Why isn't it, why is it, why is it not a good hunting state? I think, well, I don't know. I don't know if habitat doesn't allow bulls to get giant, but Oregon just in general has been a state managed for opportunity.

Like if you want to hunt elk, you could always buy an elk tag over the counter. Some states, they limit those opportunities and let the bulls get older. Right. When they get older, they get bigger. So on one hand, I was thankful that Oregon managed this opportunity. If you wanted elk hunt, you can always elk hunt.

but you're probably not going to kill an old bull. Right. Because everybody, a lot of people were killing, you know, young bulls before they had a chance to mature. Whereas like Arizona, maybe they only draw a tag every 20 years. The bulls will be older. Gotcha. So it's on one hand, I'm thankful to be here because they got a lot of elk hunting experience. I didn't kill anything giant.

That was a giant for me. But that's an awesome bull. Yeah. It's a good bull. Good wilderness bull. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was huge. But yeah.

How far back in were you? Like 12 miles. Yeah. It was. It's a long way back. So you're by yourself. Get this bull in the ground. And now you're like, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Well, luckily I had, I had three other guys that were about 10 miles away around this big base and they were hunting this other ridge. And we kind of all came in together. We had llamas that packed all our stuff. Oh, cool. I had went in, me and Roy bought llamas together.

Then my buddy Tim had him up at his place. So llamas would help carry the stuff in. So they had a big base camp over there. Then I said, all right, I'll see you guys in a week. Right. And I went to this other drainage that I like to hunt. It's just so hard to get to, no horse trails or anything like that. But that's where I like to go because I always thought that, okay, it's 12 miles back,

but then also this is even harder to get to this front back. Right, right. And so I killed that bull, got them hung up, taken care of, and hiked all the way back. And I found the guys. And I said, hey, could you guys, you know, the llamas, they get tired. So they can't, if you put a bunch of weight on them and go 12 miles the next day, you know, they're only 300 pound animals. So they're tired.

They'll lay down. They won't pack. They'll just lay down. They'll just lay down. And it's like you would, it wouldn't matter what you'd. did they're done right and so i said could you guys could we all pack this bowl out i'll get us a hotel room we'll buy pizza and then pack back in said oh yeah yeah no problem so they come over there and it's freaking it was an ass kicker to get this 12 miles and then i i i had the big the pack trail went 12

miles but i thought well look at the map you know topo maps there was no on x you're using like one over 24,000 like USGS topo maps or something. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I would, I said, if we go here and we just drop straight off, the river's right there. That's only, it's only two miles. If once we get to this edge, so it's probably like six miles total. But I said it's only two miles from the edge to the bottom. Let's just go there. And obviously there's a reason why the trail doesn't go there, right? It was so freaking steep and nasty. And we went down there and it was like, you know, the biggest mistake ever. But we ended up getting this bull out, then came back in.

And the buddy who I was with, he still works over where I had just retired. He's the director now. But he was so, I don't know, I don't know if he was beat up or just like, couldn't imagine if we killed another one and had to do that. We got all the way back in there. And he's like, he goes, yeah, I'm ready to go. I said, you don't want to hunt? He's just like, no, I'm good. I'm good.

So the other guy stayed and hunted, but I think they were so beat up. They didn't kill anything. But just that one packout just ruined, pretty much ruined all of us. It was freaking hard. It was hard. So anyway, that was the story on that pole.

What kind of weight does a llama? How much can you load up on that? We'd put, you know, 60 pounds would be pretty heavy. But we had four, so that's 240 pounds a year. Okay. That's not on your back. Yeah. So that helps.

Yeah. And the first bowl I killed back there in 94, I killed a spike, and we packed it out with the llamas. Me and Roy did. Right. So that one worked. So they're good. I mean, they're, and they won't, you know, a horse can step on your foot, kick you in the head. Right.

Do all this stuff. A llama can't really hurt you. So they're good. They're just not quite as hardy as, you know, a horse you can put on a hundred and they're fine. So a llama has its limitations, but it allowed us to get camp back there for 10 days. Right.

Yeah. Well, do you still use pack animals at all? Do you still, you don't have the llamas anymore? I don't. No, no, no. No. You know, just depends on the hunt. I mean, I've had hunts where we'll pack in with horses. Right. Or if you kill something, then you have horses available.

Right. Even where I hunt in Colorado, there's places where we've used horses to pack out the bulls that I've killed. Yeah. Yeah. I've really, I've tried to think about the pack goats and llamas and things like that because I really enjoy thinking about long range logistic support for like a high adventure stuff. So I have another company, which is Idaho River Adventures with a partner of mine. We do middle fork of the salmon, which is in the Frank Church wilderness,

which is the most remote low-dice area in the lower 48. And I want to take this like epic trick. rip through there because it's, it's, it's, like, iconic piece of America. Yeah. And, but I want to be able, like, pack in, pack out with, like, goats or llamas or something. I'm not a huge horse fan. Like, I like, I like, I like, in general, like, to pet them and feed them carrots and stuff. Once I get on their back, I'm like, I don't know.

This machine's going to do whatever wants to do at the end of the day. Like, I get a little bit, like, well, I'd rather just walk, you know? And they can feel that, too. Yeah. You know what I mean? they can feel if they're in control or you're in control. And some horses take advantage of it. So you have any trepidation and you're on a horse, they know.

That's why if some people, if they don't have control or horse, it's just like, that horse isn't going to do anything for you. I always feel like I need to have a gun out, like pointed at their head. Like, this is like a hostage situation, you know, like, hey, man, you're going to do what I ask you to do. But I don't feel like that's ethical enough. Yeah. You know, I'm like, I'll just walk.

I'm good. Horses, you know, the Frank Church, Frank Church is legendary country also, but so is the thoroughfare in Wyoming. Oh, okay. I haven't heard of it. Thoroughfare. That's the largest, I don't know about who's the remote, but it's, they say, I think I've read that it's the largest, maybe Frank Church's most remote. I don't know, but anyway, they're both huge pieces of country, right? So I killed a bull in the thoroughfare, and it was a 28-mile horseback ride in.

28 miles. That my ass was disintegrated. But 28 miles. Yeah. Horsepack in before you start hunting. Then you start hunting. Okay. And then there's wolves and grizzlies and everything in there.

So the bulls were really quiet. I mean. They got used to if they bugle, the wolves will come. Yeah, yeah. So they were quiet, but I killed a big six by six. It was, I think they'd been hunting that camp, had been hunting for five years, and they never had a bow kill.

So killed this, had to make this long shot on this big bull. And also where they hunt there is like on the line of the Yellowstone Park. Right. And if you hit a bowl and it goes over the line into the park, you can't go get it. So it was like, I was about, I would say three quarters a mile above the park line,

but it's like that was weighing on me because you make a poor shot on a bull. It can easily go. And then, you know, it's wasted because you can't go get it. But luckily made a good shot. But anyway, the bowl only went 40 yards and piled up and there's a big wilderness six by six. But that was 10 miles from the camp that we were at and that was 28 miles in.

So it was super remote. But I got to check that out. The thoroughfare. The thoroughfare. So, okay, I'm just trying to put it into perspective to where Yellowstone is. And then how? We went through Cody, then off the South Fork, off the South, you cross the South Fork to get up in there.

Okay. Have you done Bob Marshall? I haven't. No, that's another, that's another historic one and famous. I love those big wild I mean it's my favorite yeah that's what the eagle cap is it's Oregon's largest it's 356,000 acres so 30 miles by 60 miles and to me that was such a big allure to get I want to get me and Roy looked at the map and we're like okay we're the furthest from anywhere it's like right there yeah and that's where we just wanted to get as far away from

anybody's we could so for Oregon that was it but when you talk Frank Church or thoroughfare or maybe Bob Marshall, wild, wild country, which, who knows what's going to happen? That's what's so great about it. And nobody sees it, man. Like, I did the same thing when I was in Idaho. I had pulled the maps and then look at,

you know, there's lots of different areas. Like I grew up in the Clearwater National Forest, which is on the north side of the Clearwater River. But then you have the Frank Church, which is just south, and you've got locksaw and the Clearwater Valley's like really iconically cool places. And I'd always try to figure out like, okay, where's the, where's the most remote place? Right.

And I did this trip one year. I did 100 mile trip where I was just fly fishing through, uh, from Atlanta to Stanley, Idaho. But it's like a hundred mile lake to lake to lake, you know, and just fly fish my way through. And I had such a great time. Like it was like, nobody out there. Nobody's on the trail. Like once you're back there, nobody is out there. Right.

Like all the Looky Lou vacationer, like a gorp crowd, they're not out there. And by the way, use a trail. You don't use a trail. You just kind of like look at your map and figure it out. Like it's interesting that people, it's actually a positive here, which is once you get five miles in, it's not a lot of people back there. No. It's awesome.

And that's what people talk about being overcrowded And they're running into hunters all the time I still know where I killed that bull I know a guide who guides back in there Because they have sheep hunts back in there Right and he says sending me pictures of giant bulls And he's like could you come back here and kill There's nobody back there he's like yeah nobody's at the trailhead

You know a 350 bull running around no But you talk about everybody talks about oh there's it's over overcrowded. There's too many bow hunters and, you know, these guys ruined it. These guys ruined it. Now they're hunting, you know, the best places that I'm to deal with it.

It's like, I don't know, there's still some pretty good hunting way back that people don't want to work for. They don't want to work for it. And now I've seen more impact in Idaho from wolves than I ever did from archery or increased hunters. Like they decimated the elk population in Idaho.

Like some estimates, I think they cut it down by 70%. Yeah. So, sure, you could say that it's an increased population of hunters, but ultimately some of these states have continued to increase their wolf population and they've eliminated huge percentages of their population of elk. And oh, by the way, they're also not getting... Yeah, the resource. Yeah.

And Colorado's doing that now too. Oh, dude. California is doing it. it wolves yeah we saw them they're in uh just outside of uh burbank there's a conservation area just next to tejone and there's one of the guys has a video of a black wolf out in the middle of nowhere and we're like guys i i don't think that's a good idea yeah like i just don't think it's a good idea i know because the hunting money from tags and licenses pays for most conservation and habitat restoration.

And like they need the hunter's money. Yeah. And now you're letting wolves do the killing. So you're going to cut back the resource from the hunters. It's like, what kind of plan is that? I don't think they have a plan. I just, I think they have a very emotional, you know, they've got a very emotional and, I would say,

somewhat illogical perspective when it comes to, you know, reintroduction of non-native predators because that's really what it is. you know, even the wolves that we reintroduced in Idaho. They're non-native to Idaho. They're a different type of wolf. So they're not, I don't think they're thinking about the long-term effects. I think what they're thinking about is like,

these are beautiful house dogs. And, you know, they're just like, you know, biscuit in my backyard, but they're just more beautiful and mystique, you know, the mystery of them. And I think there's also a slight bent in anti- to this. I think reintroduction to predators,

the increased population of Cougars, the increased population of wolves, I think there's a certain section that they're saying, well, if there's no more game and if the predators are doing most of the hunting, then why do you guys need guns? Guns. I think

there's a section of that too. I think that is a goal of some people. Just to eliminate the need for hunter. So yeah, I mean, if we don't, you know, come together on this and, you know, hunters love bickering back and forth and, you know, there's egos involved. And so a lot of jealousy and things like that makes it a challenge to work together sometimes. But, man, we better, we better figure it out. That's an interesting point because I see it in the hunting community.

I see it in the gun community. I see it in a lot of these things where I'm like, guys, we, we're. we got bigger fish to fry than figuring out this thing over here. Like, I mean, you feel it, I feel it. I think everybody feels it. Like the anti-hunting community is growing and they're becoming even more vocal. I mean, they want to shut down, you know,

our hunting and archery programs and education and schools. They want to shut, they want to shut us down. And if we don't kind of, to your point, get our shit together. Yeah. And I get it. I mean, the people, you know, the groups you mentioned, those people that do that are usually confident people,

capable people. And usually people like that do have egos, you know. And so I, and it's a competitive, men are competitive, especially men who want to hunt, shoot. And so I get it. I mean, life is competition. I understand all that. But man, it's a critical time.

now. It's a critical time. You know, I took my wife out for the first time the last couple years, all cunning. And even beforehand, some of, I would say, her friends, some of our friends are like, we just can't, I wouldn't say they can't,

but why do you want to do that to these beautiful animals? You know, is you hurting them or something? You're like, let me show you a picture of an antler stuck through the eye of one of these bull elk that have been fighting. Yeah. Or like the pieces of, you know, antler that have been broken off or, you know, name the actual like fight from, you know, bull, bull, rut perspective. Like, this is food. I eat it. Yeah. I'm a carnivore. I'm not a hypocrite. It's what I like to tell people. Like, just because I choose to kill my own food or the,

or a good portion of my meat. And I, I take on the responsibility of seeing the animal that I kill versus going through the in-and-out drive-through. Yeah. Like I feel that it's a more responsible way to be a carnivore. That's my own two cents. But people don't look at it that way. I mean, I don't, you know, back when I was a kid,

I didn't care. I would kill deer and kill elk. I wouldn't think about anything. But now, I mean, I don't like killing. I don't like actually watching the animal die. I mean, it's not my favorite thing to do, but it is our responsibility. It is what we do.

If we're going to eat meat, somebody has to kill it. I'm not going to pay somebody else to do it for me. So that means I need to do it. My family, I don't expect them to go do it. I don't want them to pay somebody else to do it, so I'll do it for them. And that's what we eat. It doesn't mean that I enjoy killing,

but I take that responsibility on. It's blood on my hands. That's the way it works. And I don't think, I think a lot of people eat meat. And like even if you, you know where I, Elkhut here in Oregon, they have cattle there. And right now it's like they call roundup.

So they get the, you know, they get the cows and the calves all rounded up. And they have to wean them. So they have to pull the calves off the cows. That's pretty traumatic. These cows are bellering. The calves are, it's like, if anybody saw that,

they'd be like, that's terrible. Yeah. They're taking that baby from us mother. Yeah. That happens. And then in 18 months, that calf is going to be slaughtered. And it's dead. And that's what you're eating.

And so an 18 month old animal is killed for you to have a hamburger that was ripped away from its mother. And on the flip side, I'm killing a bull that's 10 years old. It's been wild as its entire life that's lived the best life. You know, it's been a challenge out there for it. But it's been wild and free. And it dies by a perfectly placed arrow. to me, that's the most ethical way to do it. You know, I'm not, I'm not hiding behind anything.

I'm not, nobody else is killing it for me. I'm doing it. It's hard. But yeah, the alternative is pay somebody else to do it and it has to go through this whole, you know, it's cattle industry, which that's fine. I, you know, I'm in support of it, but it's not without, you know,

there are some hard parts to it also. Right. If you're going to eat meat. And then even if you're not eating meat, there's still animals dying for your existence. So nobody gets out of here free without causing death. No, nobody gets out of it, I think, from the hypocritical perspective,

I think even as a vegetarian or a vegan, to be anti-hunting based on an emotional, like a, this is mean or whatever it might be. It's guys like, I don't know if you've driven down Main Street in America, but if you look over to your left and right, you're going to see Wendy's, you're going to see Arby's, you're going to see McDonald's. Yeah.

To your point, it's a much more ethical way, and it's one of the most, it's a loud community of people that want to take our ability to hunt away. And to be that loud, it also means that they have to have a lot of meat eaters within that crowd, because they're not all living by what I would say,

the ethics and logic in which they're promoting for us. I don't think they quite understand it. You know, they are. They're amazing. They're beautiful animals. Like when you're, when you have the opportunity, and I mean, obviously you have,

but it's just like this, this year I had some incredible experiences. Like the hunting has provided me with animals that most people don't have. I sat in the middle of this herd in Utah. the wind was just right. I was in the middle. It was like kind of, it was like off,

but they were around me. The wind was just perfect. Yeah. And there's a cow, and cow calf, like cow, cow, cow, cow there's cows all around. There's a couple satellite bulls and a couple spikes, and one was like raking a tree. And there's cow calf, like quite literally eight yards from me.

And it's bowl, satellite bulls are kind of moving around doing their thing. oak stuff, you know, like random stuff, like scraping on trees, like doing stuff. And I'm like, that's awesome. I just sat there for two hours because wind's perfect. I was waiting for this one bowl that was a bigger, the bigger bowl out of those. And I was waiting for him. And I was like, I'm just going to wait them out. Because if I move left or right by like six inches, wind's fucking perfect.

I'm in a great spot. I had two little trees that were right in front of me. I could see these other satellite bulls moving around all within about. 40 yards. I'm like, if I just wait here, you know, big boy's going to present himself. Yeah. So I just got to literally lay in the grass in the sun. Well, these elk for two hours as they were doing elk stuff, just watching them. Wild elk. Dude. How special is that? It's almost spiritual when you think about it. It was amazing. I enjoyed every minute of that experience. Every minute, like, I don't want this to end.

I actually don't even care if he presents himself right now, I don't care. In the second the wind changed, they blew out of there like they got struck by lightning. Yeah. But I got two hours with those guys. Yeah. That's a unique experience.

That's people, I mean, so we're not just obsessed with killing. To your point, well, that story, nothing died there, but you were just, you were enriched by the experience of being around a wild animal for that long.

I'm watching it interact and communicate with each other. It's, you know, and then when a death does happen and you have killed, to me, there's nothing more as pure than having that weight on my back, packing my kill out of the mountains. It's like, that just feels like that's what it means to be a human. That's how you survive. Right. You know, that feels, that just feels right to me.

that's what we're supposed to be doing. You know, everything else, we, you know, you go through McDonald's and, you know, they say the average American throws away 40% of their food. Right. And the garbage. So that includes these lives of these cows or these chickens or whatever else.

So 40% of their existence is going in the garbage. And whereas hunters, we value that meat as if it were gold. So we're the opposite end of that spectrum where every ounce is cherished. And it's like to me that seems so easy to distinguish the difference and to embrace the hunting aspect as opposed to the consumer aspect. But I think it's just a matter of getting that message out and just explain ourselves better. Right. Yeah, my cousin, we're six months apart.

He's a, he was a professor at the University of Montana for a number of years. does still does a ton of hunting and uses my grandfather's rifle from World War II to kill a cow every year or whatever but you know you remember those moments when

you know I was over at his house and he's like pulls you know pulls up and out of the fridge he's like oh you want some you want some backstrap and you know folds out the white paper the butcher paper, you know, he spent the time butchering.

Yeah. He didn't. He shot it. He packed it. He butchered it. He wrapped it. Pulled it out of the refrigerator. And, you know, we ate as a family, something that, you know, he took in a very special

and meaningful place. The same spot my grandfather shot elk, not the exact one, but, you know, the region, right? The same spot that my great-grandfather's, like, they killed cows. They killed bulls. killed deer. It's like it's not only tradition but it's also not what I think a lot of anti-hunters think it is because it's a more ethical way to be a carnivore. It is. I firmly believe it is. Yeah. So do I. I mean just as Tanner and his buddy Brock killed a buck yesterday had tenderloins this morning for breakfast. Nice. This is like those meals are you know they'll never forget.

get that breakfast, right? And so how often do you buy a hamburger? Do you think about that moment that for, you know, it's like, oh, I wonder what tag number this cow had in his ear? You know what I mean? It's like, no, there's no, it doesn't mean anything. Doesn't mean anything. My grandfather shot a moose brought it home from Alaska

when I was like five, probably, probably five. I can still smell it. Remember it. I can still smell it because he opened up the moose. We had, you know, two eggs over easy and moose sausage that my grandfather, you know, brought back from Alaska. And I can still, like, feel their kitchen and smell, you know, smell things that we're cooking that day.

It was five years old. Yeah. You want me to recount a fucking McDonald's cheeseburger? You know what I mean? No, I know. It doesn't make any. Does you resonate? No.

And it, you know, that's life. That's what that's a meaningful life is having killing, processing, cooking, eating, that wild animal. That's how it's meant to be. Everything else is like some watered down version of that. Yeah. But that's how it's supposed to be. And so that's when it, when we do it, it feels right.

It feels like, okay. okay, this is, that's what when people hunt and they, it feels familiar from the get go. Right. It feels like, man, this feels, I don't know why this feels familiar, but this feels feels, feels like I'm supposed to be doing this because we are. Yeah.

You know, and it's, it's that, you know, you wish you could share that with everybody, that feeling. Of course, not everybody's going to hunt because of whatever else. But just to be able to try to explain that and maybe people listening to this and maybe who don't hunt would be like, oh man, that makes a lot of sense. that's our job as hunters to explain the tradition correctly and why it's so powerful. And it's just, I don't know, I feel personally lucky.

I know you probably feel lucky too to come from some small town redneck existence where, no, this is just what we do. This is, you know, so now there's people who want, maybe from the outside in looking at it. And maybe they grew up in the city and they thought they were blessed by all these opportunities of the brink.

of the bright lights and the art and this and that. I'm just as blessed to be from a small logging town as anybody who grew up in New York or any faraway place that's a tourist attraction type thing. I mean, nobody's making a vacation and go to Marquille, Oregon, but thank God I'm from there. Dude, I think about that and I say that a lot where people talk about what wasn't born,

privileged, right? Where I wasn't born with his silver spoon in my mouth or I wasn't born privileged. Actually, I was. Like, my parents weren't wealthy. None of my, like, nobody was. But, like, my entire family, for the most part, everybody, man,

they were positive. They were a family. Like, I spent time with my cousins, my aunts, my uncles. We grew up in a really, really small town, in the middle of nowhere. We spent time together as a family. We encouraged each other.

That's pretty rare. We fucking loved each other. That's pretty lucky. Yeah. Yeah, dude. So I've changed it because I used to talk about or hear people say, well, I didn't have, you know, wealth or privilege. And I was like, actually, I had something way more important than that.

Yeah. I had a dad that got up every day at 4.30 in the morning and went to work, like working in the woods. I never saw him inebriated my life. Never, never saw him inebriated. I saw him. He came to every one of my baseball games. He came to my basic training graduation, special forces graduation.

He showed up every fucking week. Yeah, you're lucky. And so that's what I got, man. I actually got something better. That's a true silver spoon right there. Yeah, man, I got it. It's better than the silver spoon, you know? And it's like, I got hugs.

Yeah. I got people high-fiving me and telling me jokes when I was a kid. I didn't get like people punching me in the mouth, so I feel good. And I actually feel because of that, like I've been way luckier to have been inspired and raised by a bunch of real people. You know, like I was sitting in a bar last night

with my buddies in Maple Valley. And there's dudes I knew from the Army, you know, like we were just hanging out. out. I was like, this is great, man. This is like, this is like, not every day, but this is like, this is life and these are people are real. They're just like the people I grew up with. You know, they're not some boardroom and, you know, New York. And I've never been comfortable with that to begin with. Like, I'm not comfortable with that stuff. Like, I used to kick people out of my offices if they were wearing, like, um, expensive dress shoes, dress shoes and shirts. And if they

If they were, like I kicked a guy out of my office, a finance guy because he was wearing fucking gold cufflinks and it was a crazy watch. I was like, you got to get out of here, man. You're never going to fit in here, dude. Like, we got calluses on our hands here, even though we're like doing this. It might be from barbells. But yeah, super fortunate to have grown up where I grew up. Wow. I think that's why you have the perspective you have even given all these, this turbulence, you know, the blessings and the challenges. It's like that. That, your upbringing, that being around positive people, feeling that care and love, that's what's made you have the perspective. You have to be able to, hey, we're going to get through this. It's going to

be okay. I'm going to deal with this. This is, I just weights on my shoulders, but I'm built for it. I mean, that's, it's, it's the whole journey who's prepared you for this. I think so. Yeah, I mean, I still talk to everybody. That's the other thing. Like, I still talk to my like, cousin who's a diesel mechanic out in Port Orchard. I still talk to my other cousin who's a, you know, PhD in genetics in Missoula. I still I still talk to everybody, man.

Yeah. And they still they don't treat me any different, which is great. Because I would have it no other way. I was telling Joe this the other day. I was like, I stopped at a convenience store in Lewiston, Idaho, and I was pumping gas. And I heard from across the way in the convenience store,

or at least some dude yelling, what's up, douchebag? Like, you know, something crazy, right? You know, like, he's like, comes yelling across the parking lot. And I was like, this dude that I went to high school with, I was like really good funny with. He's like, what are you doing, man? You're trolling for dudes or, you know, something right.

It just starts instantly making fun of me. And I was like, God, this is so great. Yeah. I'm so glad I can come home. And people are like, man, you're, you're, Dork. Yeah. You're fair.

Yeah, that's fair. I am. What a journey. Well, man, Evan, thank you for coming to my little studio here. And I know you've done a lot of podcast. You got a lot of things to do. So it means a lot that you'd come here and hang out with me. Thank you.

Dude, I love it. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it, Kim. I appreciate everything you do out there for everybody in the archery community, for, you know, inspiring a ton of guys, man. Like, you're very inspiring for a bunch of people, specifically in the veteran community, guys that, you know, I'm not speaking for everybody.

But what you're doing is important, man. And I honestly can't thank you enough for having me up. Oh, and I'm thankful Black Rifle Coffee is part of this too. I mean, you're helping make this possible, and it means a lot. So we keep doing good work. Awesome. All right. Thank you.

One of my favorite packages that I get on a monthly basis is a Black Rifle Coffee Club exclusive coffee roast. The only way you can get it is if you subscribe to the coffee club. This month's coffee is a dark roast called Gothic Serpent. The exclusive coffee subscription gives you nothing but the best. It's a coffee of the month club where you get premium roast from the best farms worldwide. Black Rifle Coffee is America's Coffee. It's veteran owned and operated. They support hunting and conservation and give back.

immensely to the veteran community. They're offering followers of the podcast 20% off on your first purchase to the coffee club or order on their site using code Keep Hammering to get America's coffee today. Mountops has been my go-to supplements for the past seven years. My exclusive keep-hammering line of products offers a blended protein powder, BCAs, and a pre-workout that I take every day. I also use their greens, reds, and they actually have a new hydration product called Hydroids. that I use before every run. Mountain Ops has been a great partner over the years, and I especially love all they do to give back to the community.

Every purchase made on the Mountain Ops website gives back to a family in need. They also give away a ton of different hunting opportunities. They even gave away an elk hunt and a deer hunt at one of my most cherished hunting spots in Utah. If you listen to the podcast, you also get 20% off by using code cam, that's CAM, at www. mountain ops.com.