Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Cleared Hot Episode 48 - John Dudley and Chad Ward

Episode Date: July 23, 2018

John Dudley and Chard Ward are both return guests.  John is an archer, a hunter, a coach, and as far as I am concerned, a chef.  Chad is a pit master, which I believe stands for chef that uses a barbecue instead of a kitchen top.  Both Chad and John taught at the inaugural Nock 2 Fork event held at Traeger HQ, which I highly recommend attending.  We discussed a wide range of topics from favorite BBQ, to favorite BBQ techniques, archery, and a little leadership.  The most important aspect of this podcast for me is around the 1 hour mark, when John and I are able to finally discuss a concept that we have been working on for a year.  It went live today, and is about all of you, and what we can all do together.  www.freerangeamerican.us 

Oh, here we go. But before we get started, am I the only one that is getting bombarded with Amazon Prime Day ads? Like two to three emails a day, Amazon Prime Day ads? It's ridiculous. I don't need any more excuses or barriers to spending money in my house. Thank you very much, Amazon. All right. I get it.

I can shop for anything I want to. never have to leave my house and with a family of five yet don't worry about it. The shopping cart is constantly full. If anything, I'm pulling stuff out of there to try to reduce the amount of spending. So

let's take it easy with the emails, all right? I'm not having any issues with my shopping cart. But you know what? What about those people who are having a hard time keeping their cart full? Maybe it's a broken axle.

maybe it's a shaky wheel I don't know but I have a solution to offer to them and you're not going to find it on Amazon that's right you still don't have to leave your house

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You're going to pay about five bucks in shipping. In between those two, Amazon and Blue Chew, I mean, come on. You could shop for one and highlight it with shopping on the other. Pick the order that you want to go to with that. And that's all I have to say about that for this episode. Now, as far as the people I'm talking to on this episode, I travel quite a bit for work. And the best part about that travel is the exposure to people that you have on the road.

This particular trip actually brought together two friends. I was in Salt Lake City last week shooting the Total Archery Challenge up at the Snowbird Resort just into the mountains from Salt Lake City. It was my first experience doing anything like that. it was eye-opening to say the least. But in the days before the event, Traeger H.Q. Hosted a, I'm going to call it a culinary school, an association with an event that Dudley had going on

where they got to tour the Hoyt factory, spend essentially half a day shooting at the Easton Center. Hard to describe. I posted some pictures on it on Instagram, but as far as you would want to shoot inside, climate-controlled, far as you would want to shoot outside. Pretty unbelievable facility. and I was there for that as well.

So I got to warm up for the archery challenge. And a part of that was this culinary class that they put on at Trager headquarters. They had three different people I would consider them to be chefs. The third person was done, but he's a chef, and we actually talk about that on the episode. So he and Chad were there together, and what better time to grab the two of them and talk for a bit, which is what we did. So let's start with John Dudley. If you're a fan of the podcast, you're going to have heard me and him conducting many an episode together. He's an archer.

He's a hunter. And like I said, he is a chef for sure. In my opinion, I have no idea what the requirement is to be called that, but I'm going to call him a chef. Now, on the other hand, or not on the other hand, the other side of the table from us when we were having this conversation was Chad Ward, who, again, if you're a fan of the podcast or you've listened to it, I did a stand-alone episode with him. A few months ago when we were out in Oklahoma doing some hog hunting, he is not an archer, but has expressed the desire for that to change. He has taken his crossbow out with Dudley one time and got a hog, with which he then cooked, of course, and he is, how would I describe him?

He is the Yoda of barbecue. He owns a barbecue company called Whiskey Bent Barbecue, and it has sauces and rubs and all sorts of crazy accessories and flare pieces that you could ever want if you're into the barbecue world. He works for Trager, and we are going to refer to Trigger quite a bit in this podcast. Just for clarity, I have no professional relationship with the brand. I'm a huge fan. I'm friends with some people that work there, but I'm talking about it when I talk about it

from a place of just enjoying the product. I don't make a dime from Trigger. I just like how the food tastes when it gets off. Back to Chad, though. So he works for Trigger. He, I don't know the exact capacity, but I know he, I think he might actually run the chef portion. And if I'm wrong with that, Chad, my apologies.

Bottom line is he's an unbelievable knowledge base. He is my number one go-to. He's actually the only go-to for recipes. Shoot him a text and I really don't think I could stump him. We talked about that a little bit in the episode as well. So those are the two guests. We happen to be in the same place. will grab the time together and use it in a useful manner.

And today's episode, we talked about quite a few things. We were kind of winding up the event at the Trager headquarters, getting ready to roll into the archery event. So we talked about barbecue stuff. We talked about archery for a bit. But I would say for me, the most important thing that we talked about is something that Dudley and I have been kicking around between our ears for the last year. It has started over a very basic conversation and it has built into something that I'm actually really proud of.

And I'm really excited to see where it can go. And I'm not going to give it away in the intro because I'm going to let you guys listen to it. We explained what it is that we were what we have created. Yeah, and I'll let the podcast speak for itself. What I will say is this. There's a portion of the podcast where we're talking about this. and I solicit for email to start laying the framework for an event that we want to do. I'm dead serious about email me.

Hit the contact button on the cleared hotpodcast.com. Write me an email in relationship to what we talked about on the podcast. Hit the send button and I'll get back to you because we're going to do it. We've talked to a couple brands. They're all excited to do it. And I think we don't have a choice at this point. I'm too fired up about it to not do it. And I won't say anymore.

So we were varied topics all over the place for about two hours. It was a great time. Great to sit down with both of them. This is episode number 48 coming at you. I'm looking at danger close now. Me and Chad cooked two pound tomahawks the night before you got here, and they were dynamite. We just did a backyard grill with some friends.

We went over to T. Stees' house. and literally fired up his Trigger 22 in the backyard and cooked a pork loin, etched pork loin. Then we did two tomahawk steaks. Then we reinvented a little, well, we kind of made a pretty awesome little asparagus. What all do we have in that? It was the asparagus, and then once it was done, we hit it with some Osceago cheese and then cut up some caramelized pecans.

Chopped up some caramelized pecanes real thin. And then for the, I did a brocolini with smoked crispy bacon that we did. Did a smoke crispy bacon with, um, uh, which mushrooms are we go for? I'm trying to think spider mushrooms or something. Yes, yeah, because we wanted the chitakis. They didn't have any shittos. Yeah. We wanted morels.

Sorry. Yeah, the morels were dehydrated. They look like. Dehydrated. Yeah, they look terrible. Yeah. I'm like, no, that's not. that's not going to happen so we improvise and they were

god dang that was a good meal holy crap well and it doesn't take very long so sitting through the class both you guys put on a separate class yesterday when matt was talking about the brisket what is an hour per pound around that's a general bar park about an hour per pound for beef brisket yeah i mean pack of lunch so you get a you're planning for that but you guys just went to the grocery store and threw down a meal yeah so how could that long cook a 12-hour cook be your favorite. That's ridiculous.

I think it's just because I guess brisket's always been, the thing about my background as a competition barbecue guy, brisket's the toughest category. So I think I've always just kind of held it on a pedestal from what it meant from kind of what I did to not really saying that if you put a beef rib, a tomahawk, and a brisket in front of me and said, what do you want to eat? I'm going to pick the tomahawk, then the beef rib, then the brisket.

I think I like cooking and teaching brisket because it seems like when people are starting in barbecue that's the one they really want to master. And so when you can teach them and walk them through it and they hit you up with that DM or they send you a picture, they're like, dude, I finally did it. It's super fulfilling because I think it is one of the harder cuts to cook. And plus, I mean, I think it's kind of funny when people are like,

I hate brisket, I can't stand it. And I said, you're either vegan or you've never had it cooked right. Yeah. You know, because it is one of those things that just gets, especially in restaurants just gets totally bastardized. Well, it's sitting there for the day. It's not like they're able to say, we're serving brisket at 7 o'clock.

Yep. And if you have a table between 7 and 7.45, you're going to have a good brisket. But if you're there at 3 o'clock having brisket, and then you're having brisket at 9 at night, that's not the same. No. That's two different meals.

Well, and a lot of it's in how places hold it, too. Oh, yeah. You know, we talk about, and while all of us around the table are huge fans of Yeti, holding meat like that makes sense. You know what I mean? Because you're kind of keeping it in that insulated environment, keeping some heat in there, but not cooking it. You're really just kind of keeping it warm and letting those juices redistribute. Well, explain what you mean by holding it, because that was something I learned from you guys,

and most people probably don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, so a lot of people think when you, whatever it is, let's take, for instance, it's a backstrap. when you pull it off you know you've smoked it you've revert you've seared it when you go to pull it off you know you kind of want to pull it off for about five minutes for that size cut and let

the cooking stop because what happens is if you don't let it stop and you wrap it and foil and let it hold or let it rest it's going to keep on cooking are we talking only brisket right now or any meat anything anything like even like something like a pork chopper or tomahawk you want to let it quick cooking

for a couple of minutes so I'm messing that up right now, I can tell you. I literally take my Yeti with me to the trigger and go. Yeah. All right. And literally it's just, you know, when you're out there, you've got the Timberline, put a piece of foil over that cutting board on your hopper and literally just let it sit there. Okay. You know, three, four minutes just to kind of let that cooking process stop and then you can throw it right in the Yeti and kind of let that whole time happen. But that, it depends if you're, if you're pre-planning for that increased cook, like when you're, you're, you know, like, I do mine, I'm pulling mine at like six degrees less than what ideally I would like to be slicing and serving at.

Whereas, you know, so I mean, if I'm pulling, you know, say I'm pulling at a medium rare, but I really like eating in a medium. If I literally am going to wrap that and then rest it in the cooler for that 18 minutes that it takes me to cook vegetables, I've just found for me and my timing on how long it, yeah, if I have, if I have, if, I have vegetables prepped sitting in an iron, you know, sitting either on an iron grate or sitting in bowls. I can literally pull, wrap, zip up, throw those on, literally either turn a little tailgator on that I normally have a cast iron skillet in because those littler grills will actually get hot faster. Well, now you look at the ranger that has the actual cast iron grate built into it. Yeah, then you just literally have a sear top. Yeah.

Because that's what I've been doing, off the grill. vegetables go on when the vegetables are done everything comes out undo the for clarity for anybody who's lost because i have a feeling we've lost some people we're talking about putting the meat into a cooler doesn't have to be a yetty no but into a would you say a small cooler yes is this sponsored by blue chees it is this one it'll be so we're talking a lot of meat you got i mean this particular meat though you want it to be solved so it's not a blue chew moment do not put a blue chew in your Yeti before you put your soft meat in there. Put it in a cooler. That's what we're talking about for the holding.

Yep. And even if you know, you're just getting into it and you don't have a cooler, I always tell people another great place to put it as an unlit oven. Okay. Because, you know, obviously you've got a little bit of insulation in oven, so it'll kind of help keep some of that heat in there. And I mean, if you're about a microwave. I was going to say you can also put it in a microwave that's obviously don't turn it on. Okay.

Yeah. Those are three things you can do. And what you're really trying to do is to boil it down to the basics is if you pull it off and you don't rest it, you don't hold it, and you go and you cut, you're going to notice all this Maya globin that comes out. People call it blood. It's not blood. This is the 21st century. Like, we know how to butcher animals and bleed them out.

All that red that comes out on your cutting board is myaglobin from the actual muscles. So when you see that, that's all your flavor and all your moisture. So the whole reason for holding and resting is stopping the cooking process and then letting those juices redistribute into the grains of the muscles. So when you slice it, you get all that good. It has the same consistency. You find when you open the cooler, though, like it's in that, what do you call it, myoglobin? Yeah.

It's in that, like, on the foil. Do you then pour that back on top of the cut of meat? Yeah, yeah. What I'll usually do is kind of leave it in the foil. And then once everything's sliced up, kind of take it out of the foil and just kind of run it as drippings over the top. I'm seriously getting hungry again. I know. I know.

I will tell you guys, I'm already planning on our next Oklahoma trip, you know, Torsten gave me a hard time about not cooking enough green vegetables. I'm getting my green vegetable game on point for the next trip. What are you going with? I'm not going to tell you yet, dude. But I'll tell you what, Torsten is not going to get one potato the whole trip. Damn right. I'm into this.

He's going to go all roughage. I think we're going to have a pretty solid, we're going to have some solid crew there for that. I think I was wanting to talk to you because Trigger actually is helping. with that part of my lease payment because they kind of want us to run a couple people through there that really need to get introduced into not only the hunting realm but also just you know people that they think would be great to teach to cook and would enjoy it so i think we're going to do a little military group we should yeah probably get uh brian there and maybe get a couple other slayers there i can think a few people that it would be good for it

Yeah, I know who you're thinking. I said Chantosh just because he keeps whining. Keeps wanting to get put in the batter box. He's just fired up. He literally will get in his car and drive to Texas and go hunt access to deer. I guess the guy calls him. He's like, I invited him here and he turned us down. Oh, he's out then.

That's what I mean. I literally called him Tuesday morning and said, there's a cancellation for the class tonight. Can you be in Salt Lake in nine hours? and he's like, let me get back to you. And he never did. Oh, no call, no show. He's out.

Yep. Okay, so who's next then? I can think of, well, who I would like to get Jocko out there, just because I still want to see him pull a bow in half. I'd like to give him a release that doesn't actually fire, and just so he just pulls it until it separates into pieces. What do you think he would do when we're crawling and he hits, one of those prickly pears right to the sack.

Do you think he's even going to grunt? Probably hit it in farther. That prickly pear is going to wilt. He'd just say good. Let's, I want to see this. Okay. It's funny. I've texted with him back and forth about trying to get him to hunt.

And his pretty, uh, if he does that, his pretty classic responses, you'll understand why I never went to sniper school. So I think he might be. I don't say short on the patient side, but he might be short on the patient side. That's good. That's a good, it's actually a good place for them because they're always moving. And you actually, you're not ever, you're not being patient there. You're always moving. And, you know, you're always pretty much countering, you know, playing the wind, countering,

seeing their movement counter, you know. Trying to keep up with Dudley is three steps to everybody else is one. Yeah. Yeah. I think that'd be a great place. I actually heard you talk. I think, yeah, we were either talking or you were talking. No one else is good about it is how much we can shoot during the middle of the day.

The practice. And then now, since we did the Trigger commercial out there, we actually have multiple grills to where Chad could run a school, and we could have four people all with their own grills. Like doing hands-on, that would be so super cool. Yeah. I think that would complete the circle. I think that would complete the circle for people, though,

Because the hunting is obviously awesome, but the understanding of what you can do after you can actually bring an animal back. Hunting's better. When you start to be able to do, well, I don't want to act like I know what I'm talking about with cooking because I really don't. Last night I felt like a cover band that got asked to go up on stage after Metallica and the chili peppers performed. and everyone's yelling encore and then they just kick this cover band from like the local town out on the stage. That's what I felt like when I started talking

cooking shop after Chad and Matt Pittman did their thing last night. But it really does, one of the things I told everyone, it really does make you want to get an animal just for the purpose of challenging yourself to see how much better you can get on cooking a certain type of thing because there's been things that I've shot

and I've sent him to Chad and I've said dude check this out and he's like holy crap man but then this trip when Chad and I first hooked up the first day he actually told me he goes hey remember when you brought that elk leg last year and I said yeah or the elk ribs

I said yeah and he goes I've got an idea for for a new way to cut ribs that no one's done yet and he goes I've been thinking about it and he goes, I think I can pull it off. So tell us about it. No, no. I wouldn't do it.

No, we won't. I wouldn't tell him. I wouldn't either. But that's the beauty of it is he had never really cooked wild game to the capacity that he does now. But now he's actually trying to change certain elements of his game to be able to tailor to really want to try a completely different meat, completely different sorts. source. I almost wonder if you did a competition where it was like just a fully open category where the judges opened a box and it could be ribs, but it could be a freaking little, you know,

single bite tomahawk slice or, you know, maybe it's pulled pork, but, you know, and then all a sudden they, or like it's a pulled, you know, like a pulled sandwich or something. And then they're like, they eat it and they're like, holy crap, what is that? And you're like, actually, that's neck meat. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, you know, it's funny. I'll go back and tell you the story. about that. So we have that in barbecue competitions right now, and it's called Anything But. And it's an ancillary category. It doesn't go towards Grand Champion or whatever. And it's the Anything But comes from. It can be anything but the four

main categories, brisket, pork, pork ribs, or chicken. So those are kind of neat, but it's interesting. I used to compete in this competition called the World Food Championships. And it was a barbecue competition day one. And if you finish in the top 10, day two, you pretty much had a, they would give you just very broad, like it has to be surf and turf. Oh, yeah. Or this. And so the first year we get it, it's just open.

You can pick whatever you want. Well, one thing to remember about barbecue is you have to, you have to know where that judging window is. Like, I started seeing people do scallops. And I'm like, dude, if your platter's not the first one to get evaluated, they're going to play wall ball ball with that shit when it's done. Because I don't care if you, I don't care if you perfectly took a scalps. I like a scalp. It's been sitting for about two hours.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like chewing on a tennis ball. I want to try to chew it and have it bounce back and forth in my throat. Yeah, that's awesome. So I was not to interrupt you. Where do they source the meat from? Like if it's anything but where are these people who are competing in barbecue getting, if they have a out their ass idea, where do they go?

Does grocery store? Yeah, yeah, grocery store because there is a ruling that says it has to be a USDA certified protein source. So, I mean, obviously, you could You could use wild game That had ran through one of the USDA farms If you wanted to But it's not really a wild game at that point You know what I mean?

So we were 9th after day one And so I said, man, we got to make a really big Really big jump If we want to win So everybody was looking at different cuts to cook And I saw bison tri-tip And I'm like, Do much more rich flavor

obviously more of a challenge to cook because you don't have nearly the fat, nearly the marbling, but hey, going to give it a shot. And so I felt confident because they say you've got to write out this 50-word description and kind of go through your recipe. Literally, I lead with bison tritip. Much more difficult than beef tritip, da-da-da-da. Well, come to find out, they never read the descriptions to the judges. So I remember I ended up talking to a couple judges afterwards after their scores were done.

man whose dish was that? Because what I did is I kind of wanted to represent Florida. Plus I wanted to keep it moist and knowing it was so lean. So I presented three stacks of, you know, just little pieces of tri-tip on a quarter orange. So I knew that that orange would bleed into the back of it and keep it moist, even if it was the fourth or fifth platter to be judged. It's like, man, I had the best beef trit tip of my life. And they were presented on these little oranges.

I was like, I did you get the best bison trite in my life? I was like, did they not read you the description? He's like, nope, they sure did. And I'm like, golly. You know, because what I was wanting was the style and the difficulty points to go along when it's being perfectly cooked.

Yeah, when it's that lean, it's obviously your difficulty level goes up. One of the things going back with the brisket, what I found with brisket is there's so many different, cuts of meat that even if you know how to do it right, your results can vary so much. And that's one of the things for me. That's frustrating and maybe one of the reasons why I don't necessarily favor brisket.

I'll normally always do it if I'm doing a party because there's always people there that want a brisket. But I really like it when I figure out a way to cook a particular thing and then I want to duplicate it. Like, I like the consistency of being able to duplicate it. With that particular cut of meat for me, it just seems like where it came from changes the outcome of that. Whereas with, like, with ribs, you can buy ribs from like 10 places. And sure, sure, you're going to get some that are good and they'll, I mean, they have better marbling.

But you can read it a lot better and get away with a lot more. But with that brisket, if you just get one that's poor, you know, for the, the average person that isn't able to select the proper way, then it's just, at that point, it's just like average to me. Well, and I think,

where's that variation come from? It comes from the grade of the meat, really. So I always tell people there's, there's three grades of beef. Well, actually, there's a couple more, but there's only really three you want to cook.

Actually, really only two you want to cook. So there's what they call no role, and this is all USDA-based. And no role is, it's just not for human consumption. It can be used. for other things, but it didn't get rolled with a grade, so that's what happens at Slaughter.

Talk about it. Yeah, exactly. The next one is, the next one is select, which I always tell people the best example of select is when you drive by Dollar General on Memorial Day or Fourth of July, and they've got a big banner that says $2 bacon-wrapped filets, that's select. And when you look at a piece of select meat, it's all red with no fat in it. I mean, it eats like shoe leather. So you never want to cook that. It's normally one stripe through it, which is silver skin. Yeah, exactly. You could cut it out.

You could cut it and have to get that one little piece of silver skin out. What 80 to 85% of the beef in this country is is choice. And choices is good beef. When it comes to brisket, it's a little tough. You know what I mean? I like to inject my, if I'm cooking a choice grade. and then you get to prime choice you can find

like at Costco or Sam's which is better than what you're going to get to your grocery store well and the other thing about a lot of grocery store brisketes is they trim them down so hard like they take a lot of the bottom fat off and I like to leave as much of that fat up that fat cap on the bottom as possible because that's protection between my heat source and the meat that I care about to help kind of keep it protected and then you've got prime and prime is obviously the high

marbling in the USDA scale. A lot of people will say, well, after prime is Wegu, no, no, it's not. Wegu's a breed. Wegu's not a grade. Explain Wegu. Okay, so Wegu is a, you take the best of our domestic cows we had here in the U.S. And you take Kobe genetics from Japan and you put them together. And that's, so the reason, Wegu and Kobe both have so much more marveling and so much more flage.

is a domestic cow, your herfords, all your beef, beef generating cattle, once they go on a feed lot, they can put on marbling for about 150 to 180 days. After 180 days, you can keep feeding them grain, but they're just going to put on what we call ass fat. You know what I mean? None of it's going to go into. Is that with the duck? I've seen that commercial. None of it can go really into the meat, into the marbling. So people all the time ask you, man, why does Wagyu cost three times more than domestic prime? It's a pretty simple equation because guess what? Waygoo can put on marbling and muscular fat up till 500 days on grain.

Because of the genetics. Because of the genetics. So think about it. If it's on grain two and a half or three times longer. Two and a half times three feed. Yeah. Yeah, it just costs that much to feed it out. Yeah.

There is another category of meat. So, Dudley is looking at me as if I'm going to roll into a blue chew ad, which I'm not. I remember distinctly being in Afghanistan, in the Chow Hall. M.R.E. Okay. No, no, no. In the Chow Hall, every Friday was surf and turf. Or actually, you know what, it could have been Sunday.

I might be speaking a little bit out of school. It was either Friday or Sunday. It was surf and turf, which was breaded shrimp. think because it had a shrimp tail. I guess it could have been stapled on something else. And I almost spat that. And steaks. And I remember walking, and it's funny, all of the people who worked in the, this

particular incident where I witnessed this other grade of steak, all of the, or most of the people who worked in the Chow Hall, there were Kenyans who were flown in. I think it was a Halliburton contract. One of the major multi-billion dollar contracts, they would clean out the porta potty's awesome job. And they would cook. Shitty steaks. Hopefully they'd wash their hands in between.

I don't know if it was the same crew. Regardless, I remember, you know, it was like, cool, we're going to go stuff ourselves with surf and turf. And I remember walking back, and there was boxes stacked up by the dumpster. And I'm almost positive that it said, grade F steak. Now, that part I haven't been able to confirm because I've literally looked for it on Google,

but what I know for a fact it said on the box was for prison and military use on it. And that is the last time I had servants. So there's a category under no role. And it is prison and military. Surf and turf. Oh, wow. Literally, I saw that. Never again would I touch it.

It ruined me. It has to be really low marbling in at least 18 months freezer. I think they broiled. It was gray. Oh, man. Yeah, it was gray. But it's like, I mean, come on. Probably going to get your head blown off the next day anyway, so you might as well have a certain turn.

If the steak was that bad, I would love to be able to really kind of take, see what that shrimp looked like before the breading went on. Well, it was really flat. The shrimp was super flat. You could have put it in an envelope, which is why I said, it might have just been a tail stapled on some tilapia. I wonder if it was something like a formed serimi with just kind of this fake tail on it. I wonder if it was something like that. That could have been. If it was a hypothesis.

If it was less expensive for them to source that than shrimp, that's what it was. I can't confirm it, but I know enough about how those systems were. work that yes, it's based off of volume and cost per unit. There we go. So yeah, never forget the grade F. It's out there, people. I'm going to have to ask, I know a few people in the beef industry. I'm going to have to see if we can get some clarification on exactly what that is.

Like I said, I can't find pictures of the grade F, but I know for a fact, the other writing was on the box. Love it. Yeah, I didn't. That is hilarious. What is your least favorite thing to cook on the grill? Like if there's one thing you had, you're like, God damn it. What would it be?

Tofu. Ooh. Obviously. Damn. Other than that? Hold on. Why would you cook tofu on the grill anyway? No, people, like, it's a thing.

Like, for people that don't eat meat, they'll kind of reverse sear tofu. Like, smoke it and then sear it off to get the char on it. All right. Okay. I can get behind that. I'm not trying to judge. I'm not getting behind that at all. It's a technique.

It's not a technique I want to do or I care to do. So what else? Okay, so that's number one. Let's go top three things you don't ever want to have in that anything but box. Probably frog legs just because there's not much there. What? Yeah. I've never had them.

I'm disappointed in that. But there's, yeah, there's not much to them, man. I mean. I remember I grew up in the Mississippi Delta, man. Did you eat frog legs? If you couldn't catch a catfish, then you were gigging that night. That's all there was, too. You were ginging.

You were either pulling a water moccasin off your arm or you were gigging frogs. That's, like, if you grew up, if you grew up. What is gig in frogs? Well, they're not allowed to gig anymore. You're not allowed to pierce the skin. Really? What is it, though? What is it?

You got to grab it off. It almost looks like your trident, but it mounts on like a broom handle. and you literally go out, you get in these water moxen-infested creeks that are pretty much like little channels that are on the outsides of the cotton fields, and you would just either wade through them with a flashlight, and when you see two eyeballs,

it's either a water-moxen or a frog. Either way you attack. Take a chance. Yeah, and you gig it. By gig, you mean jab it? Yep, jab it? Okay. And, I mean, we would catch,

dozens and dozens and dozens of bullfrogs and I mean like real bullfrogs with legs like that and they were good I mean there's more meat than what's on a chicken drummy well not a big chicken like a wing drumming yeah more like a like a wing drummy

yeah but it's not completely out it's not the tastiest thing ever and my third would be and I've cooked I don't know I disagree with that too dude were we going to have a chicken and frog leg cook up yes all right let's do it done here's the deal though you need a three-person panel blind taste test. Don't tell them what it is.

Well, it's different. The consistency is different. I would say a frog leg is a mix between... Frog leg is a mix between... Shit and chicken. No. I was going to say it's a mix between alligator, and I was trying to think what else it would...

Alligator and catfish. That's probably a good one because it doesn't have the sweetness, sweetness to me about it. Dude, we're going to do a freaking good frog leg recipe. There's no way it's between shit and chicken. Closer to shit. I've never had one. There's no way in hell I'm eating a frog legs. Damn right, you will.

In France, frog legs are the bomb. I actually would rather starve to death. You'd rather go great-off thing. I'm going to go full hunter on that one and just disappear my calves. Let my body consume my calves. Just clam up, puke yellow. My third one will be a rattlesnake. I've cooked it three or four times.

The problem with it is, there's so many small bones. Bones in it that you can't. But I will tell you, I've cooked python fillets, and they're very good. Really? I would not eat. Well, I wouldn't eat any of the four things you just listed. I literally would rather starve than eat those. What?

I don't know. I don't eat funky stuff, but I would damn sure. a frog leg, a rattlesnake, a python. I'm not exploratory or explorative in my food at all. Or tofu. Would you go with the tofu too? No, you can take that and play ping pong with it or whatever you said. Did I tell you the flatbed story or flatbread story from Afghanistan?

Well, there's probably both of them. I think we got there in a flatbed. Yeah, I'm going to say. I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure you're on a flat bed, but let's hear the flatbed. So I actually enjoyed the taste of the flatbread in Afghanistan because they have, I don't know how you describe it it's an outdoor they put wood into it like i want to say kiln because that's what it's a tandory yeah maybe i'd have to look up what that looks like it's so it's a kiln and

they're building a fire in it and they kind of throw it onto the side yes it's a tandory okay yeah so and um we had one outside our thing in france we've been one remember that many one no we drank a lot in france i think we do that everywhere we go yeah potentially um But we did a lot of traveling around and talking to villages, and they'd always come and they'd bring you food. You're going to get tea that is sweet enough to make you a type 2 diabetic instantly. In Afghanistan? Yep.

It's called KLE's key leader engagements. Surprisingly enough, bullets don't solve all problems. And you actually need to be able to... The goal of what we were trying to do is secure the populace and create a safe haven so they can grow themselves and then defend themselves. So you spend a lot of time talking with the tribal elders. Every time you do that, they're going to probably bring into your room. You're going to serve you tea.

The bread starts coming in. The bread is delicious. I thought it was delicious. And one day, I happened to see how they were making it. And what I saw was the kiln. And right behind the kiln, it was directly behind it. So I couldn't see it because it was blocking my line of sight. was this guy that was just going really short race car tracks,

like back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And I couldn't figure out what he was doing. And I think I had to go outside to take a piss. Whatever it was, I changed where I was looking at it from so I could see what he was doing. And what he was doing was kneading the bread with his feet. Which he probably hadn't washed like a month. And that was the last time I had in the Afghan bread, too.

So I'm out on anything that is exploratory. because most their feet looks like froto from you know frotobagins it's yeah it's bad not a lot of whole not a lot of toenail maintenance out there i never saw a shower in any of the houses i was in i'm just going to leave it let that

i really liked it with nutella but i don't do footbread with nutella i don't do it i don't care if they cook it on the face of the sun i'm not eating footbread with nutella so you think at least one of the guys that did that had athletes foot i don't No. If I would have stamped one of those out for someone, I can guarantee they got 21 days to live. Oh, man.

They'd be like, is this shredded parmesan? No, that's just flaked off my pinky toe and the bunion on the inside of that. I'm like, I'll take ranch dressing and that's it. I don't, I have very narrow standards when it comes to what I'll eat. I just, I'd rather starve. That's a southern thing, though, man, ranch dressing with everything. That's, I'm not into that. Oh, dude, I'm.

I remember when Hidden Valley Ranch first came out and you got that shaker with it and you mix that buttermilk in there and you freaking had to shake it up. That was OG. That was good. That was OG shit. That was actually good. Once it came thick in the bottle, I was like, I'm out. But it had like all the sweeteners in it like it. Yeah, I was out.

But that old shaker, you bring back that Tupperware shaker with the packet and some buttermilk in there. I'm down with that. Not for sure. Yeah, not definitely not in the. the once I had to go to the big salad dressing. The old squeeze dog. Yeah. Nope.

I could now check off that we've talked about salad dressing on the podcast. Have you ever been? No, we're going to go down this road. Have you been to many places just like exploring barbecue barbecue down through the south? I've been to some. Like I've been to Big Bob Gibson's there in Alabama.

It's really good. I'm talking like not known places. Have you ever just gone on a walkabout? Oh, yeah. I mean, that's what I grew up around. There's a place in my hometown called, Jimbo's. It's been around 65 years. You know, it's not going to be on any

barbecue crawl list, but it's still the only place where I'll eat a full spare rib, not a rib that's been cut down into St. Louis-style rib. Yeah. And dude, it's perfectly cooked. Best hush puppies I've ever had in my life. I love those places. One of those places, it's got a, you know,

a metal pot in the middle of the table with a bunch of brine and homemade brine pickles on the table. You know what I mean? Free charge. That sounds legit. Yeah, you know, and it's one of the table. And it's one of those, you remember those old places where they had this kind of long menu. And the lady'd come over and she'd grab it and she'd just put a checkmark with the pencil here, here, here, and here and put it in the window.

It's that kind of place. But like, to me, that's what, I think that's where my love for barbecue came from, was just enjoying that smokiness from Jimbo's. And they cook on an old woodburning oiler pit, O-Y-L-L-E-R out of, I think they're out of Texas. I can't remember exactly where, but just a big pit that you just throw a, whole bunch of one on. And so I kind of grew up on that as my, where my grandpa ate barbecue or my dad ate barbecue.

And so those kind of places, actually, 20 miles over, we got a place called Peebles, which is just this little small shack, man, but you'll have 80-year-old, and they're only open like six months out of the year. And you'll have 80-year-old people standing in a driving rainstorm waiting to get in there. And it's barbecue and a piece of white bread and maybe some baked beans.

and when it's done, it's done. But people, I don't like it, but people think it's really good. What do you like outside of barbecue? I'm assuming you like foods outside of that realm. I'll tell you what, to me, like, because I cook so much barbecue and I smell it all the time, it's probably one of the least things I eat. Yeah, I would agree. Yeah.

What's your go-to? I mean, Peter, I kind of started this keto thing. But before that, pizza, I mean, really, really good. By the way, we're getting right. ready to jack up that keto thing you're on because Annie and I decided on the way up this elevator that we're going to get some pizzas in this room tonight and destroy them.

Keto pizzas though. They're keto pizzas. Oh, good. Yeah. So good. I don't have to eat. I don't have to eat that salad that I got at Harmon's downstairs. Well, you could. You can sprinkle it on top. Otherwise, you can eat as much pizzas you want, and Andy and I'll both hit you in the jejunum. There's many ways to do this.

But no, I think Italian food's really good. I want to get off that topic immediately. But also, I mean, I'll tell you while, I don't know you guys spend some time in France, but I worked for a French software company for about two years, and their passive aggressiveness absolutely drove me up a wall, but their food is second to none. the just the classic way that they cook, the amount of just flavor they can extract from almost anything.

I love French cuisine. And even more than that, though, I kind of like that whole, like, one of the best places I ever ate in France was down there on the French Riviera, but it wasn't a classically French place. This was actually a guy from St. Martin from the French side that had kind of done a Caribbean French fusion. Yeah, that would be pretty dynamite.

Dude, amazing. I'll tell you what. God, do they cook on Hawaii. Yeah, they do. I mean, shout out to Hawaii. Honestly, if I had to pick one place to go where I knew I could just eat really good freaking food, Hawaii would be it. Those places nailed it. I ate at several places.

One of them was just a hotel, and I was, what that? I mean, well, one was the motel. Yeah. Inline. Yeah. Yeah, we ate there too. How good was that grocery store? Oh, man, the grocery store, like, put whole foods a shame. It was ridiculous. It was ridiculous, dude. Did you see that?

Yeah, I did. Yeah, where you were going and grabbing everything. They had, like, the ahie tuna section in the back. You could get these bowls. It was unbelievable. Yeah, the amount of fresh food they had. Yep, the Pokey bowls. Yeah.

We have potato salad. They had, like, four different styles of Pokey right off the freaking boat. I'll tell you guys, speaking of Pokey, the, Oh, sorry. If you, no, if you're... Are you speaking with pokey? Pokey. Okay.

The, uh, dang it. If you're, if you're ever in San Diego, a couple of buddies of mine on, uh, Valley Farm market. And they've got, oh, we'll be there. Fresh pokey all the time. We'll be there in two weeks. We'll be there in two weeks. Are you going to come?

Do you want to cook in the parking lot? Yeah, you know me? Cooking in parking lots? I can't say no to that. Well, there we go. Actually, I'm... Just don't take it farther than that. You'll be okay.

Actually, I may, because that's... That's the weekend. Yeah, that weekend's open. And then, yeah, I mean, Boise was Easy Top on the first. And then, or not Bozeman, sorry, Boise. You said Boise. Okay, sorry. On the first was Easy Top.

And then Bozeman teaching classes on the third and fourth. That could actually be a nice little West Coast run. Has there ever been a Michelin star awarded for a barbecue chef? Oh, I don't. Because I get deep. I nerd out on the, I love the cooking documentary. he's on Netflix. Yeah.

And I don't know a lot about the Michelin Stars, but I watch this one. A guy got two Michelin Stars in his first year, which apparently is unheard of. Yes, it's amazing. But it got me thinking, I mean, that's cool. Control, I guess moderately controlled environment. I'm sure some things could go wrong.

But is it possible to get one on a barbecue, like a barbecue chef? I can't answer that. I don't know, but I will tell you, um, guy that I know Tuffy Stone, and cool smoke is actually getting inducted and doing his cook at the James Beard House next week. So I do think while you look at kind of it being elevated more and more barbecue, you know, and I want to say Chris Lilly's cooked at the James Beard House, there's been some really good

barbecue guys cook there. What is the James Beard House? Kind of like a, I don't want to say it this way. It's kind of a little bit of a step below. So, Michelin's more of a worldwide. While I would say more James Beard is very U.S. based, but you've got to be legit as hell to get the invite to cook at the James Beard house. Is there any reason you couldn't get a Michelin Star with the bar?

Do you have to have like a physical? I've never studied it. I couldn't tell you exactly. Because between the two of you, between the two of you, I mean, one of you should at least. You don't it would be fun sometime, and I've been wanting to do this. I like. Anyway. Michelin tires on my RAV-4.

We should immediately upgrade the RAV-4. We should find it. It's Harry's. We should find a cool place somewhere in the country to do like a one-week-in pop-up restaurant. Bullshit. No, not happening. Do we have a fixed menu? Let me tell you what we need.

We need to do an awesome shipmobile. That's a food truck where we tour the U.S. and it's one night, one night only. And we vaporize. Have I showed you a picture of the Do Awesome Shitmobile? No. You haven't seen it? I don't know.

Oh, no. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. Imagine something like that where you just roll up. Have you ever seen a trailer that has that swing armed on the back? Yes, I do remember seeing that. Yeah. That logo behind the trigger is quite solid.

I don't know. I'm not really big into awards. No, but I just think it would be cool. I would love to see people's faces when they get to experience something that's different. Yeah. Imagine being able to just do it. That would actually be super cool. I would say you could pick two weeks and just hit a different place.

I got an idea. I think I want to just go on a kill and spree. And then literally... That's not a new idea. Okay. I was trying to hide it. But wouldn't it be cool to just literally travel the U.S. and just for free, just pull up and just offer people,

can you do it legally? Can you just offer Wild Game if no one's paying for it? If you're just cooking in a parking lot. I think maybe. And you're not charging. What if you just said? What if you just put it on social media? This is where I'm going to be.

Come check it out. You don't charge for it. You're good, right? Maybe you just did like a quick, like one-page consent form that they signed. You hand him the sandwich. That would turn me off to that experience. Really poor. Damn it.

It's not going to work with Chad. He's out. No, no, I mean, I'm, well, how could you make that above board?

I mean, is it because of the fact that it's wild game and doesn't go through the USDA? But if you're not charging for it. If you're not charging and you had a disclaimer, you know, kind of eat at your own risk, wild game, processed and cooked.

I see a lot of people, you've done it before. Or we're just like, hey, I'm coming to this town. Let's just do a meetup. Oh, no, me and Dudley in Austin when I shot my first hog with a crossboat. See, that's the same thing. Why not do that? We did it.

We did it. We did it. We did it. Gold on gone and done it. So you could link it. 10 and a half hours for the time it was dropped to the town we were serving people that night. We did that in Oklahoma too. That was awesome.

Yeah. But what was cool about the, what's it? It's not Austin archery. What's the? No, archery country. Archery country. Like literally, we had, we had, we had, we had, I had other food we were kind of handed out.

But John, how many people stayed? 60, 70 people? Yeah. Just wanting that hog to be done. Till 11 at night when your hog got done. Remember that one kid that grabbed the whole front leg and he ran? And he's walking around. No on it.

He had barbecue sauce from both earlobes all the way around to the front of his mouth. He looked like the Joker. And he had this huge bone. And he's just like freaking face deep. keeping this thing just chowling it down smiling the whole time so what would you think of travel day what have we based it out of cool archery shops so that could be that aspect parking lots parking lots at archery shops then travel day let me do it 10 days on the road let me do it on military bases dude let's ditch that freaking if do awesome shitmobile is allowed on military no right outside

actually i can get on i have a retired id See? I'd rather cook for troops. I would too. No offense to everyone else who's not, but that would be cool. I can get behind that as well. That's the play. Okay.

I like that. Yep. Yep. If you're listening to this in the military, send recommendations, and we'll see if we can put together a map. It'd be fun to do a tour, dude. I think we should do a 10-day tour, so that would be five bases with a day to drive in between them.

Yeah. That'd be awesome. That'd be great. Yeah, we can do two weeks easy. If you're in the military and you're listening to this, send me an email. Go to the cleared hot podcast.com. Hit contact and let me know where you are. And we're going to have to pick five that we can at least chain together.

Done. San Diego and Boston are not going to work. I'll give up archery commitments for that in a heartbeat. Okay. Yep. Pretty sure Tray Girl allow me and taking time to do it with you guys. Yep. I've got one on the back of the dual.

You're going to hear a bald eagle in the distance. That's how you know it's close. We need to do that. Instead of the trucker air horn, it needs to just be a screaming eagle. Do they make one? An air eagle horn? Again, if you're listening to this and you make air eagle horns, we need one.

That would actually be really, really cool. And I bet you we would have enough either active or retired people to stack hunting camps forever. Just in the interest alone. Let's do it. I'm doing it. Okay. I'm whacking.

Well, I'm thinking of what I'm going to whack. I'm going to whack some buffalo. I'm going to whack some buffalo. I love cooking buffalo. You do? But does that geographically pin us to a certain area of the country? Like we're, we can't harvest it, cool it down on Yetis, and take it where we need to go. We don't have to do it fresh.

We can butcher that sucker up. Because a lot of that wild game, too, is better after. Yeah, it is. So fortunately, Sloan from Yety is. all fired up to deck out the DAS. Yeah. Hashtag. It's no big deal.

A couple two tens on the back. Rolling with, uh, we need, uh, we need the pull behind Trigger, though. If we're going to get a full buffalo cage. We'll do the, what we'll do is we'll do the, the big insulated barbecue 200. How big is it? And we'll hang the whole thing. So we'll take all the racks out. I'll leave the very, very top rack in and we can put like six hooks into the carcuit.

and just have it hang down in the whole cook cavity. I am not following a single thing that he said. So, no, think about it. So you've got this big box cooker, right? How big is it? It's the size of this right here. That'll fit in the back of the trailer because it's a toy hauler. Wait, wait, did you, um, did you walk out on the deck at HQ?

It was cooking? All right, so when you, when you walk, we're not done. I know. When you walked out where we had all those triggers, right in that corner, that big box that was right there? That big box smoker? I think there was a big curtain separating that. Oh, no, no.

I'm at the other side, like actually where the culinary kitchen is. No. Okay. Then we have one there. We had to crane it up onto the second floor. It's kind of cool. But depending on the height of... It's pretty tall.

When did I come and do the takeover at Trager last year? Chad, do you remember when that was? Was that summer? I don't, but that's the first time we had anybody ride. a bull Trigger. And boy, did we take that next level last night. Yep. Yeah, but no, what I was talking about is.

So if anybody wants to go look at it, just go to Triggergirls.com. When you go to Smokers, you can see it's called the Com 200. Oh, this is right. You actually sell it? Yeah, and so it's just a big box like this. And so you would take all the racks out of it, leave the top rack in so you could use what we call meat hooks.

That's Chad's first hog. You ever see that thing? It looks like a kitten. No. It was shot perfectly to fit in the grill hole. Exactly. With loudmouthed shorts on. There you go.

Yeah. He cooked that sucker hole. That's it. Right there. Oh, nice. We ate that thing about midnight and just, it was awesome. So we have to plan and figure out how we're going to stock the eddies, though, and then hit on the road. Yep.

Oh, dude. Don't even sweat that. That's a minor detail. The major detail is locations. how much meat do you really want? Well, you know, it's funny when you guys were bringing up military bases. I was just out in San Diego. And really, like, huge support of the brand at Trigger.

Girl by name of Elise, her husband's been in the military 21 years or so. And he works on all the choppers there in San Diego. And I went in a day early for one of our events. And he's like, dude, come on in, man. I'll show you all the heli. and we can walk through them, and it was a super cool experience. Marine Corps guy or Navy guy?

Navy guy. So you were on North Island? Yeah, North Island. And so as we're walking out, I see these just broke down ass propane grills, and he's like, man, I was like, what do you do with those? He's like, well, we try to barbecue for the unit, you know, once a week, and I'm like,

F grade. Bullshit. Like, you guys go kick those things over. I'm going to send you two pro-34s. You know what I mean? Like, you know, it's like. Yeah. You know, it's like, man, we get opportunities like that.

Especially if it's something where they're, you know, a command unit is doing a once a week barbecue and you're cooking on something that's just crap. I mean, we love to be able to help out at Trigger and do that kind of stuff. The military is very good at a few things in the full spectrum of the military life. Because you'll see that at, those are like huge maintenance hangers. And we used to have, even at the SEAL teams we'd have. Amazing.

I mean, just, yeah. They're crazy. But all of the money is dedicated towards keeping the helicopters flying. Yeah. think at the SEAL teams we have we would have weber's i don't actually know who pays for them because i don't i actually don't think there's money in the budget if it would it would fall under a category called mwr morale welfare and recreation to me he made it sound like they had all like came together like three years ago and all put like that they might have passed the hat yeah

past the hat yeah this is that grill so this is a time lapse i did of how much bacon you can put in that grill he's talking about. Oh my God. Watch this. And there's was that bacon or jerky they were putting in that? Six wraps.

That was the bacon. Oh yeah. I would say four foot by six foot and four racks of that. So hundreds of pieces of baked. So think about that. We pull all those racks out of there. And we literally hang in.

And put hooks from the top and we hang the entire buffalo corcus. The entire buffalo rib cage, the whole thing in there to where people could literally come out with one rib that was three and a half foot long. Where do you hunt?

Buffalo, though. Where do we get attacked? Oh, we're going. Home on the range. We're going to South Dakota. SD? Yep. I've got a reservation there. I have hashtag pictures from there all the time, even though I've never been. People believe me.

I know. I love your Florida picture when people are like, well, I'm not sure that's Florida. If you only anybody to come cooking South Dakota, I would love to because that's one of three states I haven't cooked in in the United States. Do you want to cook there in September? I think we can make that happen. Is that when you're going to be out there? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's open.

Yep. Yep. We got to do it. I'd say 10 days. Five bases, 10 days. When should we do it? Next spring? Honestly, I think it's going to depend on people reaching out and suggesting places, and I think we should hit all four branches.

Yep. So to do that, to hit a Navy one, we're going to have to probably start coastal. Okay. And then Marine Corps base will probably be coastal as well. Air Force and Army, we can hit a little bit more inland. I mean, honestly, we could do it all four in California. We could just do it coast to coast. What's the big deal?

Why not do it? I've never done it. I've done that drive many times. We need to end up on Fort Bragg just because that's where I was born. Okay, done. Done? Yeah. Okay.

We need to end up on Bragg. We're going to start in Coronado, though, because that's where I started my journey. So, Coronado at Fort Bragg. That is dynamite. You know where we're going to barbecue on the goddamn Buds O'Course. And I'm going to go find and dig out a blue t-shirt and just haze the. shit out of people. I need a megaphone,

a pair of polished jungle boots, green shorts, blue shirts, so on. That would be killer. San Diego to for Bragg. We could hit Colorado Springs. That's where the Air Force Academy is. That's in route. Oh, awesome. Yeah, we've got some good friends there. I'm trying to think of other stuff

that's on Camp Pendleton is just north of San Diego. Obviously, that's a massive Marine Corps base. And that's a, well, depending on traffic, could be a couple hours. We should let Brian pick the Marine base. Okay. Well, no, he's out. He didn't get back to him. Oh, yeah, that's right. So as far as I'm concerned, he's from the Air Force. Man, did you get screwed? I better make sure he didn't reply.

If this was live, he'd be, he'd be. Oh, yeah. Okay, so, but I think Colorado Springs would be an awesome one. What else could we hit along the way? Start in Coronado. See? Right here. Yep. I told him, dude. I have a VIP slot. my trigger school. It's free to you, obviously. Oh, shit.

That would be amazing. Let me dig and get back to you. Meanwhile, he just sends me a bear pick and never gets back to me. Yeah, okay. He's going to have to earn his way back into the circle. It's possible he could have input. Well, so if we go, if we hit Colorado Springs, though, east of that, I don't know of any bases, really, between that and Fort Bragg.

although I never traveled any other than coastal because of being in the Navy but if we hit San Diego we can hit Navy Marine travel East Air Force and then we just haul ass through Bragg and that's Army that's all four right there that'd be the ticket yep and we well honestly we got to add Coast Guard too okay Alaska sure that's right on the way between college and strange that's as the crow flies right on the back just when you think you have a good idea. Yeah, well, that's coastal again too.

I know a guy who was in the Coast Guard. I'll ask him, but it's... Oh, no, we got to go to Florida. My man, Ryan Bronco. Is he a Coast Guard? Yeah, I believe so. Well, now we've taken this thing from San Diego to Florida.

He's Navy. But I know he's down in there. Nashville. Or, sorry, Jacksonville. If it's Navy. Here's the deal, though. That's what to do awesome shitmobile is designed for it. It's a mobile podcast studio. There's four queen-sized beds in that thing.

It's a toy hauler so we could probably fit 15 massive Yetis. We could probably honestly fit five or six Timberline, what are they, 1300s? 1,300, yeah. Cargo strap, all that stuff down and just roll. We got to do it coast to coast. Well, when that's done, then maybe the do awesome shipmobile, we should do a quick barbecue contest where you head back. Ooh, what the hell? That sounds really cool. wrap up that tour than just Here's the deal. I don't want any frog legs in that competition. No, there won't be. I guarantee.

I mean, I'm going to commit right now to doing that, are you in? Heck, yeah, man. Okay. Heck yeah, man. I think we just laid out the course, too. So I need to know from somebody listening at Coast Guard Base in Florida, that would be a good place. We could do the competition maybe right outside of it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And archery shops along the way.

Yeah, he's going to be pissed. archery shops along the way to do some meat and greets and pull out some timber lines and cook do some more quick quaker cook type stuff that'd be awesome

where are we going to end up with the final cookoff at whiskey bent BBQ HQ or man we don't have that big a parking lot but we could find

somewhere to do it around that central Florida area what if we go to hoppies oh hoppies would be awesome that'd be awesome that would be awesome let's do this at 10 days hoppies got the land

yeah but it would be right in the middle of turkey season. We've got some logistics to work out. It's going to take us 14 days. I think otherwise we'll be crushed. Yeah, but that would be my, that would be all of my give-back time wrapped into one big package.

I'm totally cool with that. And do you imagine the content? Oh, my gosh. No, there probably wouldn't be any good stuff. No, I'm just, I mean, it would be so much fun. God, I'd just love to, I'd just love to hang out with people that want to smile and cool stuff. And speaking of that, and I'm not trying to create an awkward subway, but...

Continue, this sounds good. Isn't that what, like, the last two days? This is just going to be the first FRA tour is what this is going to be. What's FRA? I see how you baited me into this. You actually opened with it, so why don't you explain what that is? Because by the time this comes out, it'll be live. And here's the cool thing.

I've seen a hat, I've seen a shirt, and I heard 15 seconds about it. this. So I'm going to be like a really great listener. Are you doing this now? Wanted to hear this. Awesome. Yes, please do. All right.

Well, we need to, I think you got to say where this originated. Tell the story of where it started. Where it started. So in August of 2017, we met for the second time. First time doesn't count. Yep. Because that was time traveling. Me too.

Where was that first meeting with the time travel? Vegas. Yeah, I woke up... Oh, was that a... I don't know, I woke up across the room from Lee Ferreigno in a... Someone's sweet with the snooker table and an ice sculpture of natty lights

with a bunch of those shrimp tails. That'll happen once in a lifetime, if you're lucky. Once in a lifetime chance. That's when it happened. So we met at dinner with Joe. Okay. Apparently, I decimated under... Armour's budget at a dinner. I didn't realize that it happened. Really? I had met Joe earlier that

he was having breakfast. I didn't I was out at the shot show and I saw him post something from there. I was like oh hey dude what's up you here he's like yeah we're having breakfast I'm like cool I'm swing by and say hi talked to him for like five minutes he's like hey come to dinner I was like in my head I'm like awesome for you to offer there's no way that I'll hear from you again because you're probably a busy person around dinner time he's like what's up dude we're going to dinner. I was throwing craps on a serious heater at Caesars.

Actually, no, it was the Venetian. It was wherever Joe was staying, because he walked by me as I was throwing dice. He was like, dude, let's go. So we go to dinner. Apparently at the table, I had to meet Remy Warren twice, too. Because he was at the table, too. I don't even remember the UA

guys that were there, but I remember I was like, Joe, you haven't been in your podcast, dude, at least let me buy you a drink. And he said, what would you, what would you drink if it was just you here? And I said I would do patron silver shaking over ice with an orange wedge. So we had a few. Apparently Dudley came in later in the evening. But that was where the Shane Dorian video comes from was from that night.

Yep. So later on, I'm shooting in my backyard and I was going through D loops. And I was asking Joe, I was like, hey, does your silverback do this to your D loop? He's like, no. but here's Dudley's contact information so I hit him up over text I think you were driving

to Minneapolis to fly to Switzerland I can find that sounds like some Dudley shit right there he's like hey take it I was like I was like hey Joe gave your number just wanted to know if I'm doing

something wrong whatever it is he went to Switzerland I was going to Madison for the CrossFit games in 2017 he's like hey swing by afterwards so I left the CrossFit game showed up at his house.

And Sharon was sitting there designing the... So literally, you met this guy at one dinner. Yep. And talked to him on the phone a couple of times. And you said, hey, when you're done there, you're sling by the house. We texted. It's 2018. You don't talk. Yeah.

Talked and text. Sorry, I didn't mean to... But I would just... Yeah. So I show up to his house. I just think that's cool as hell that Dudley'd be like, yeah, come on by, dude. You know?

He's a very generous person. He is. So I show up to his house. the first night we just hung out and chilled on the back deck. Not one drink. I think it was a dual test. It was a cash. We hung out the next day we started shooting

and Sharon was working on the design for that knock-on evolution shirt, which starts with just an ape, right? Yeah. And it eventually ends up with a guy with the compound bow. People have no context or sense of humor because they got ridiculously pissed at the shirt. Like they thought it was some subtle meaning

other than just the evolution of bows. Evolution of weaponry. Yes, but I digress. I was just shocked at the comments that I saw. I actually think I made a post. I'm offended at the people who are offended at the shirt because it's so ridiculous. But we were shooting and just kind of walking back and forth on his grass.

And I said to him, I'm like, dude, you need to make a knock on shirt that says, Free Range American. And he's sitting there and just was thinking, or we just kept walking. We were pulling arrows. and then we walked back to, I think we were shooting 100 yards on the elk. And when we got back to the shooting line, he was just quiet for a second.

He was like, you know what, that's not a shirt. That's a brand. And so that's where the idea started. And it didn't go anywhere for a long time. Six months, eight months, something like that, I think, until we wrapped our head around it. Well, we actually hit it. The cookie was in your first hat. Correct.

Yeah. Or the Easter egg. Yeah. It's been in that hat. The Easter egg was in. was in Andy's first hat. Yep. And if you like,

because it's been a continual conversation every time we see each other, we come up with something else that represents a free-ranging American. Like you are 100%. What you do in your lifestyle, a lifer in the barbecue world, you're literally free-ranging American.

Go anywhere to do it. You're exercising your freedom to cook awesome shit. Yeah. Which is the... Which is frog legs, I guess. No, it's not frog legs. Or to so.

God, damn. Don't go down the... Five-od. So at its essence, to me, what it means is I often hear people or read people

and hear them in my head complaining about or bitching about freedoms or lack thereof from the safety of wherever it may be. Maybe it's an office space. Whatever it might be.

People talk a lot about freedom. Their parents' basement. Maybe. Whatever it might be. But what I would like to see more of is people exercising their freedoms instead of talking about it. Because to me, if you don't exercise them, they have no value. Which is what free-range American stands for.

It stands for put your phone down, close your computer, and go outside. And it's not a motto. It's a fucking mission statement. Go do awesome shit. That's our mission statement. That is our mission statement. That is our mission. Go do awesome shit.

And I like it because you do professional barbecue. You're off doing awesome stuff. You're traveling around. People don't even realize how lucky we are to be able to seamlessly travel wherever we want to. Do what we love. Wherever we want to essentially North America. So you're a barbecue guy, awesome. I know some very cool.

people in, I don't like the term extreme sports, but we'll just we'll use that term. Maybe it's a motorcycle person. Maybe it's a rock climber. Maybe it's a parachute guy. Maybe it's a base jumper. Maybe it's a big wave surfer. Maybe it's a paddleboarder. They're all free-ranging because they're making decisions

for themselves. They're setting boundaries for themselves and they're exercising the freedoms that I think most people take for granted. They're outdoing awesome shit. And that's free range America. That's so cool. and by the time people hear this podcast, it'll be live.

We've been talking about it for a year. And I think we finally wrapped our head around the concept. And it's going to be based around, I don't think you'll ever see a picture of Dudley or I. It'll be based around the people. Well, we're represent. We're free-ranging Americans, but the brand is the community. Celebrating the people that truly go.

It's the community. There's no boundary to it. There's no boundary to it. Yeah. And of course. Did that farmer. That farmer that's been ten in his land for 50 years. Oh, hell, yeah.

You know what I mean? That's about as pure as it gets. The guy walking the Appalachian Trail with a backpack on. The whatever, I mean, I don't mean to put like working in an office as like a pejorative. Right. That could be a means to an end's too, but don't sit there and talk about how free you are. If your only existences from your house to your office, go outside and live and experience. experience the things that we have.

The only unique thing I will say that I think comes from my military careers that I've seen some places where freedom is very absent. And it gives me appreciation for what we have. As have I. Yeah. If you get outside and you go through three passports. Yeah, you've hunted in some places. Yeah.

Well, I traveled the world as a shooter. Yeah. I traveled the teams. I'm through three passports outside of the military. Mine too. I've been to. Really? I'm on my third.

I've been to Kenya. I thought I had done something. I went to Kenya and watched people where their sole existence is to get water for the day. I watched a woman walk to a clinic in, I didn't watch her give birth, and she put her baby in a wheelbarrel and then walked home later that day. Shit's different. Yeah. And there's people who are thinking about survival,

and then there's people who are pitching tents at the Apple store seven days before the new iPhone, complaining about oppression and a lack of freedom. And I understand it But here's the deal I understand it to a degree Because your the lens you view the world through is going to be colored through what you have seen in your life And if you haven't been to a place where freedom is literally non-existent the freedoms that you have I can understand

How people can lose side of it I don't want them to and I don't appreciate the fact that they do but I get how it happens So I think Hopefully this lights of spark under people's ass. And they go and try to find some deeper appreciation for what we have. So where do you guys think you're going with it? I mean, obviously, it's going to be.

Listen, it's going to be social. It's going to be apparel. But I mean, are we looking at like free range American experiences? Obviously, where we're going to the first mission. We just nailed it. Yes, there will be free range American experiences. But, I mean, you think about like being able to connect all those different walks of life. You know what I mean?

but all with that same spirit. How about a pin in the ground where there is that person who's in the office? And they're like, okay, I like what you guys are saying, but I don't know where to start. Okay, cool. Come out, come out and do a meetup. I think that's, I don't know what it'll look like. Right. Right. We have, like I said, we've been talking about this for almost a year.

And at this point, we have a website, which is freerangeamerican. And we have some good friends that we're going to have to rely on helping this go. Because in the end, you and I are both. busy doing what we're doing. I mean, I want to be part of this because that's what I feel like I am. But I don't want to say it's mine. And I told Annie from the get-go, I said the only way that I would entertain this is if every bit of the creation and origin of this brand is based on what every free-ranging American does to create it.

So our Instagram page is nothing except. taken by us it's going to be u gc every user generated content every single like our web banners our galleries they're all going to be based on people that actually get our first hats and shirts and send us pictures where we're like holy shit i didn't even know this existed yep this guy's freaking you know rock climbing here what free ranging yeah you know there's people i meet every day where I'm like, is that a thing? And I'm that guy too. Honestly, with archery, with what I've done with archery,

I get weird when people say, what do you do? Because I'm like, okay, here we go. This guy's, this guy. I've heard you call yourself a professional outdoors. Well, that was just to, because I don't like being categorized as just a hunter, because I feel like there's way more to that. I agree.

I mean, I like hunting. I love hunting. But I also, I love being, challenged by the outdoors. That's what I love. It's not the hunting is an aspect of my lifestyle. Let's go back to what you guys did in France. Yeah.

While you were hunting, you were truly being outdoorsmen. Those were not insignificant hikes you guys were making. I mean, some of us more than others. Hunters was not an outdoorsman. He was outdoors. But, but I mean, I totally get where you're coming from. But so to answer the question about experiences, all I can say is that a very broad level, yes.

I don't think we flesh that out at all. But I would like nothing more than to have a gathering of people with like-minded beliefs and pursuits and interests and want to learn. And the question I get the most often is where do I start? And it's generally around archery. And I'm like, hey, I'm not the right person to ask. Go this direction. Well, what if that person was there and we bring in specialists from all these different areas with knowledge and

experience outdoors and we can have people come and learn and then we go do awesome shit outdoors and we send it back out into the wild well and the other part i think is the different types of being free range that's my favorite is a as a guy that is i love this as a guy that's my favorite i shot the course in that today did you really what is what you see this is my favorite one it just says do awesome shit under the eagle baby can we get that in the four XL when you guys do that? Yes. No, you can work your way into a 3XL and you can have one.

Hey, no. I'll tell you what, I will. That's my favorite one, the blue one. No, that red one. The blue one, you wore in the new Killcliffe commercial. That's a good one. Blue one's solid. That is solid.

Freedom. But I don't know if Barclose, I'm actually wearing that the day we shoot. Which one? Do awesome shirt? No, the red, the flag one. I'm going to wear the, I was going to do that, too, the land of the free. Should we go? Should we go double door?

Twentzies? Twentzies? Yes. But I also think when you talk about that, you talk about these experiences like, so I grew up in Florida. So free range to us was saltwater flats fishing, deep sea fishing. Dude, there's no boundaries. But, you know, I start spending time in Salt Lake City two years ago when I come out here and become an employee at Trigger. And I start getting around these very active people that talk about hiking in the mountains.

And that's something I had never. And literally we had an executive offsite earlier this week. over here at one of the state parks. I'm sitting there. I was just going to bring that up. I'm sitting there in this pavilion, and I'm looking across the lake, the mountains,

and I'm like, I don't know that I've ever seen anything that's beautiful. You know what I mean? Like, this is, I mean, so it doesn't mean that you,

you just have to be free range in your area. See the rest of the country. I think that's a pity, man, that there's people like, I mean, and you get around,

but think of the people that have never left 10 blocks. Yeah. They've never seen that. but I was actually going to say, you know, you look at some of the people that are working there. And me, Sharon, and Harry went out with Denny on his boat and then four of the girls from the office at Trigger. And I went out there and, you know, Denny made it a mission to chuck me off an inner tube off the back of his boat. And then after all that, you know, they ended up getting out the wake bag.

and then they got the surfboards out. And one of the guys that was there, I don't know his name, but dude, he just like launches off the back of the boat and freaking just starts surfing. Surfing in the wake. And I had never seen that. Honestly, I've never seen that. Really? I grew up on a river and I grew up kneeboarding was cool then, which I still kneeboard and I love it. Big thing up by where I live is the wake surfing.

Yeah. Well, this dude was just doing it. And Sharon and I were sitting there going, this looks freaking awesome. Yep. And then next thing you know, the girls from, from Trager just freaking jump out of the back, laying backwards in the water, just kick up on the thing, pull themselves in. And they were, I was just in disbelief. I'm like, these gals are rock stars just freaking surfing off the back of a boat on like out here in the middle of this awesome lake.

Yeah. And right there, that's the perfect thing. That's the perfect thing. there. I mean, that's my favorite part about the brand is that it's, I don't care what you do, just do something. It's broad. It's not.

Do something. It's fun. It's not exclusive. Exercise your freedom. Yeah. Exercise your freedom. It's not exclusive. It's inclusive.

I don't care if you're doing backflips on a motorcycle or you're on a one-wheel scapeward ripping through. Just, I think, I don't know, hopefully. Or just making really long hikes to jump off a shit for really, really quick. It doesn't even matter. It doesn't even matter. Because you know what? You can go do awesome. It does, I, I know 5% of the awesome stuff to do and everybody else can fill in the blanks.

See, that's what I think. I want to be, I want to be taken away by what other people are doing. What other people show that I never knew existed. Like people that say, I never knew about archery was even interested until I heard you and Joe Rogan. I want, I want to see these things where I just look at this. And I'm like, holy cow, are people really doing that? Well, and you said something just here a second ago that made me realize earlier in this conversation when you said, I don't like the term extreme sports. It makes it sound scary, right?

Extreme, you're doing crazy stuff. I just don't like that negative connotation associated with it. But it gets back to that. Get outside and do something. I mean, if you think it's something cool to do and it seems a little dangerous, frigging do it. Try it. You know what I mean? Like, if that's what you think.

I'll think it through first. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, who knows where it's going to go. Right. To me, I love it. We've showed it to a couple people behind the scenes. They seem to be very supportive of it. The back of that trailer, right?

The do awesome shit, we'll be able to front in the back has the huge free-range American logo, which is why I've been very selective of, very selective of the pictures that I've chosen to put up. But I think it's time. I think Delhi would agree. The time is now. We're ready. Yeah, let's do it.

I mean, nah, that's super cool. No, that's awesome. What else you want to add? Hunting season around the corner. What should people be doing right now?

Right now? Yeah. Well, you definitely need to be prepping. Yeah. I mean, it's always nice when you're ready when the time comes. If you're,

anytime you procrastinate, negative things are going to happen. And so I would definitely, definitely say get out there and start shooting. I mean, we are right now. We're out here at the Total Archery Challenge, just challenging ourselves, you know, pushing the envelope a little bit, learning a few things. I took shots today I've never taken, ever, angles I've never seen. Yep.

It was quite interesting. I saw a variety of archery techniques. Some of them you might have had critiques for. Some of them you may not. Yeah, so what you're saying, Andy, is you enjoy getting to shoot it without John over your shoulder. I would shoot the same if he was there. I don't, I mean, I think I set realistic expectations for myself as to where I'm at. I mean, I'm a year into this, and I take it as I'm a year into it.

So I'm like, I'll listen to whoever bounce it off a good sounding board and, yeah, just do me. Well, I'm going to tell you what I've, and I told John this the other day, I said, I think 2019 is the year that I want to take up. archery. You already shot a pig? Yeah, with a crossbow. That's archery, right? Yeah, but. Does it not count as archery?

To me. So a subject. I can tell you. And kind of the way John and I talked about it was like, barbecue used to be my hobby. It's not anymore. That's my. Now it's his job.

I still love it, but it's also my job on a couple different levels. So when you say take up archery, are you talking to shooting or you want to hunt? Uh-oh. I mean, hanging out with you guys. He's already got the attic. because he so what do you want to hunt um you know i i would i would like to kind of start

i would i would really like to start being able you know i would start more with like the hogs and those type of things and kind of work but i mean goals obviously an elk i mean that's that's the yeah to me that would be the crim to the crumb to the cram but you're gonna have to work for that my man oh i i know and i'm i'm willing to that could be good yeah that's what i'm saying that's a good goal yeah that's amazing like that's your long term i'll just tell you but exactly but work your way there You know what I mean? But I think it would be great. Literally there's an archery spot about a mile and a half from my house.

And actually, when I come to Salt Lake, there's one right across the street. Yeah, right. Yeah, you can go back and forth. I just think it would be one of those great things to where you have these such long days that are just barbecue focused. Even if during lunch, like Yalmar does, like Tyler does sometimes, just break out during lunch, take your bow down. And, you know, and to be able to have, you know, someone like John that says, dude, if you decide to do that, like, I'll help. you out however i can like that's called cheating no that's what people accuse me of cheating and i say yeah you're right yes you're correct and i kind of look back and go all right john i haven't

counted the amount of text messages that i've gave you cooking advice but if you'll do the same for me in our tree like why wouldn't i why wouldn't i do that you know what i mean yeah i'm in the i'm in the hole on that one too i know quite a bit on the cooking side you know for for me guys that is that is one of the funest things and it's like i said on your the first time we did the podcast you was, man, if you DM me with a question, and I've had so many people say, man, I heard you for her first time on cleared hot. And then I went back to- You got a good response from it? I got a great response.

Yeah. And, hey, I don't have a Trigger, but I'd love for you to answer this question. It's like, yeah, I work for Trigger. I love cooking on Trigger, but I'm a barbecue guy. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to support you. We're going to take care of you. And when you get to the point that you're ready for a Trigger, that's what you're going to buy.

you know what I mean and you're going to enjoy cooking on it um but it's been really cool and I love being able to be part of these podcasts that cross industries right it's one thing to go on a barbecue podcast and talk barbecue or like I have my own but it's really fun to see how energetic outdoors people military folks are just about cooking really good barbecue well let me help you on the fitness side I know Dudley is the one-stop shop for archery but I actually was, I was pretty deep in the fitness world for a long time. I think it probably retained 15% of the knowledge that I had, but the, I mean, the people that I was around, like next week, I'm going to go talk with a guy.

I don't even know. He's not a nutritionist. He's a, he's a Yoda of knowledge when it comes to nutrition. So I have access to those people and an understanding of the methodology behind it. Uh, I think you'd be good. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love it.

You know, I've really tried hard here the last 18 months. beginning of last year, me and Dudley talked, and I've dropped 92 pounds in 18 months. And I wanted to do it in a very kind of just... Well, you should. You know, done fad diets before where you drop a ton of weight and then you gain that back plus 10 pounds. You change a lifestyle. You don't change. Yeah.

Exactly. That's been good. But now I kind of want to this next 12 months, I really want to ratchet it up and try to get down that other 100, 120 that I want to. That's a lot in 12 months. I'll say that out of the gate. That's fine, though. 18 months, 24 months. Put a plan together to do it.

But once again, I want to do it in a sustainable fashion. You need momentum and then sustainability. Agreed. That's completely agree. I always say momentum gets you going. Yeah. You know, commitment keeps you going. Completely.

But if you, yeah, I mean, all, like I said, I'm in the hole. I'm in the OU column for when it comes to cooking advice. So, yeah, when it comes to fitness advice, at least I can, I don't have the answer. I can point you in the right direction. Right. He picked a cool. he picked a very cool R&R. You know, years ago, I was so burned out with shooting on all the tours.

It was just the same towns, the same flights, the same people, the same courses. And I mean, and I like the people, so I don't want to be inconsiderate. It was the repetitive nature. But it was just repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive, repetitive. And I'm like, man, I like, I got to do, I love this, but I just need a different version of this. But I ended up shooting the Arnold

Classic. I've been there. On the fitness side. I was there running the CrossFit. It wasn't a CrossFit experience. It was a cross. I don't know what to call it, but we had a massive wing. Arnold came over, shook his hand.

When was it? These women are very strong. I was like, okay. First off, all I know you as is The Terminator or the dude from Predator, so pretty awesome to meet you. You're a big deal. I'm going to keep my shit together real fast. I was there.

God, what year was that? 2012, maybe? 2013. He relate to the ballgame. With just about everything in my life, yes. I didn't listen to a podcast until after I had been on Joe's. That was a mistake. I would have changed some answers.

Maybe the verbiage. The answer would have been the same. I maybe. would have rounded some corners. Well, so in 2005, Arnold decided to bring archery into the Arnold classic. I definitely was not there then. Yeah, mainly, but, yeah, I know you weren't. You were doing cooler things.

Other things. Not really. I was just doing other things, yeah. Yeah, well. So they invited a limited number of, you know, top pros and top men, pros and top women. pros to shoot this archery event and Arnold really liked it because Arnold shot archery in the 70s as his R&R. So that was that was his break from bodybuilding. Him and Frank Zane both shot together. So Frank actually reached out to me and asked if he could get some lessons before this

thing because Frank and Arnold were supposed to have like this reunion of a head to head. during our intermission. What type of archery were they doing? Like recur? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

And so I worked with Frank and I said, well, I'll work with you, but I said, I would really like to get some fitness, you know, direction too. So we ended up trading fitness instruction for archery instruction, which is when I would be in San Diego would be because I'd go out to Frank's house. Okay. and um well frank frank beat arnold i've won the arnold two years in a row and arnold ended up saying what do we need to do to make this bigger and i told him i said if you want to make it bigger don't mess with the pros because there's only so many pros

so what you need to do is you need to look beyond that so i ended up talking them into making the national archery and the school program, the state championship, the Ohio State Championship, at the Arnold Classic. Because I said, then you get kids, then you get parents.

The numbers are going to be tenfold. What it is if you bring in 50 of the best archers. Like, don't bring in 50 of the world. Nobody's going to travel with them. Yeah, no one's coming with them. Such a full venue to do it too.

Yeah. So they ended up making the Ohio State high school, you know, the NASP, program. They ended up making the championship at the Arnold Classic there, which was really cool. So they only had two years where pros actually shot, and those were the two years that I shot it, and ended up becoming really good friends with them. And it was amazing. After working with Frank for, and some people have told me the same about when I work with them as a coach, too. But when I

worked with Frank for two days. I told him, I said, I feel like I've wasted 15 years of fitness in my life. Yeah. Because he just, he like, he's been through years of all the bullshit and the fads and everything else and just got down to the nut and bolts of this is what works for people, you know, and if you're willing to grind, you're willing to do this and you're willing to be committed and have your goals, then this is what's going to work better. And I always felt because archery became a job, fitness for me was my break. Your release? That was my release.

And honestly, because I had six years of where my hunting was on television, my hunting became a job, which was unfortunate. And it's a big reason why I don't do it anymore. You know, I still film all my hunts, but I'm not filming them for the purpose of TV. What do you do with all? I'm just, I have them all. Yeah. Yeah, I have them all.

I mean, at some point I'll put them out there, but I'll put them out there when I want to. Yeah. And that's the difference. But every, my fitness is like, that is my R&R. There's times where, like, I have my best ideas, I feel like, when I'm outside of my job my job's archery yeah but when i'm outside of that and i'm you know and i'm grinding like sometimes i'll be in the middle of a workout and i'll shoot you a text and say i'll just spit something out there because i don't want to lose the idea yep but i normally get like my mind is clear

when i'm doing something that's not related to my work yeah work is archery yeah and i'll tell you something too i and i know this is old school now that we got smartphones but i always carry around I left it in my room downstairs just because you guys said come on up. But I always carry a small notebook around with me. Yeah, that's smart. And literally when I go to bed, I put it next to me on the nightstand. Because there may be something where you're not falling asleep and something hits you and you just want to scribe it down.

And you might not do a damn thing with it for two, three months. But you go back and I make sure every Monday I read through everything that's in that small notebook. So I kept notes the whole time I was in the military. And it wasn't until after I was out of the military that people started hitting me up for public speaking. I spent probably a third of my year doing that. And everything that I talk about are things that I just took notes about. Like, hey, saw this today and somebody else, dot, dot, dot, don't ever be that guy. Yeah, that's good.

Saw this today. Always try to be that guy. Great example of leadership. this guy is a douchebag name is underneath that yep there's a couple of those in there you learn by example sometimes this guy as a douchebag had my name under it right because i've made more mistakes than any human beings face the goddamn planet my some of mine are more catastrophic than most um that's okay though it's neither here nor there but i i do the same thing i took i have a stack of like five notebooks from my military career of just stuff that when companies hit me up and say hey can you

talk to us about leadership, yes, I can. And it's all comes from the examples, both good and bad, that I took the time to write down because in that moment... Which is why that's the perfect motto for you, too. Yeah. Yeah. The being example literally is like been the pinnacle of who you are. Yeah. On both sides, right? And what I like about that is, I mean, everybody wants to sit there and talk about their successes. And I don't. I don't either. Because that, Mostly because I don't have many. I don't weird it out by that. That's what people want to hear,

but I love being able to sit when I'm teaching people barbecue and say, the only reason I can teach you this, because let me tell you about the three times I screwed it up so bad. Exactly. That it made me change the way I do it. And those are the things you learn from. I found in taking those notes, it was really hard for me to write down examples of phenomenal leadership.

because I couldn't put a finger. I'm like, God damn it. How did that guy do that? Now, the opposite side of that coin, catastrophic leadership, is like, oh, I know what that is? You can see that from a mile away. So those examples are really easy. Like, wow, your ego is massive.

Right? Like, that's bad. Yeah. But when a really good leader or somebody who understands teamwork, they just get people, they can elicit from people, amazing performance. Like, God damn it. How did you do that?

It took me years to be able to sit back and look and then like, okay, I know how that person is doing that. Yeah. The failures, though, they're easy. But there's a lot of learning that comes from that. You have to be able to juxtapose both. But for me, it was hard to figure out how people were doing it right and very easy

for me to figure out how they were doing it wrong. It's almost like when you see people doing it right, you just have to write down the adjectives and the characteristics that are making it right. And it takes a little time to process. and go back and think about the moment. Think about what you wrote down and go, okay, I'm starting to see how it came together.

And I also say leadership. If you just have this one way of leading, you're not listening to the people you're leading. Because this person needs a different approach. This person needs a little bit different approach. You know what I mean? Like it's a, it's something where you can have these leadership qualities,

but you've got to know that you need to take this out of your toolkit to motivate this person. This out of your tool. I mean, and I was fortunate to get to not do it like you did on a military level, but to do it in a turnaround and startup kind of business operations to where you're going. Do you know what the difference is between business leadership and military leadership? Tell me. Nothing.

Nothing. It's the environment that they are overlaid into. The reason people want me to come to their company is to talk to them is because they think that we have some special sauce. And when I'm quoting them, I say, I have a special sauce. I'm going to give it to you. I actually don't. I'm very open and honest about it.

There's no unique definition for leadership inside of the SEAL teams. I say there's two, actually, when I'm speaking, I'll give examples. I'm like, listen, there's two types of leadership. You ready for this?

Good and good. I haven't even heard this. Yeah. I haven't even heard it. But this is true as it gets. Good, also known as effective and bad, also known as ineffective. Yeah.

That works in the SEALs. teams. That works in barbecue. That works in tech. People will hit me up all the time from companies. Do you think you could come to our organization and talk about used car sales leadership? Okay. Yes, I can. Yeah. I'm a big fit in the Ford tempo. Yeah. But here's the deal. And then I get up there and I say there's two types of leadership. Good, effective, bad, ineffective, and any other qualifying factor on top of that is known as an excuse. Yep. That's it. Like, there's nothing unique.

To be a leader, you have to be a follower. You have to listen to your people. You have to get out of the way of your ego. You can't be egoless. I haven't met that person yet. There's a lot of people who say that they aren't. They're called liars. But it's managing your ego.

You have to establish a relationship with your people. And depending on the environment, you are in. It can be close. It can be far. but that it's not unique. People think the SEAL teams have a unique definition of teamwork. We don't. It's a group of people working together towards the common goal.

That's it. We have a different way that we teach it and a different way that we train it, and I'll talk about that, but everybody knows the same stuff. I just have it from a different lens and a different perspective. Well, I think the other thing people don't think about

when it comes to leadership is morale. Like, what are you doing to keep that, that those group of people that you're trying to lead, what are you doing to keep morale up to, you know what I mean? I mean, because if you have people that come in there at 8 o'clock in the morning every day, it's the worst part of my day. Those circumstances you have to read, because there's a big difference in those. Now we're getting into intellectual property.

I'm going to have to charge you for the answer to this. Can I say something before you dive into that, though? Well, honestly, that's a podcast in and of itself. But yeah, go ahead. What I was going to say is what I found the best leaders, it's often really hard to get them to admit why they're good at being a leader. They may not know why. Well, I think they do, but I think really people that are humble and have very clear direction, they often have a very hard time bragging about that. the people that I've learned the most about,

I've had to pry to get it out of them. And it's, but they also, they're great leaders and they're great examples. But, you know, you, it's almost infectious because you want,

they're so good at it that you want to, like, dig it out of them. You're like, dude, why don't you talk about this? Why don't you talk about when you did that?

Why don't you tell people that, you know, this is why you're telling them to do it. They would respect you so much if you did. Yeah, they'd respect you so much more if you did. And they're just like, no, that's of no importance. And I don't think a lot of the people that I'm thinking of that have been that way, at least in my life, in different realms, none of them have said that because I think they all genuinely just are that way as a person. They haven't said it that way because they felt like that would get the reaction that they wanted. I think that's a genuine 100% personality trait. I would agree.

It can be taught to a degree. I mean, everybody brings a certain level to the table. Yeah, yeah. The best naturally. Humility can come with age. It can. I mean, I feel like. Inexperience a lot of the time.

Yeah. But what I would say about the experience, the experience that humility comes with is getting kicked in the ball. not winning every day. Yes. That's where the humility comes from. And you've got to lose sometimes to become a winner. You know what I mean? You have to lose a lot of times.

To really be a winner, you've got to lose a lot. Yeah. No, that's a very, very important aspect of life. Yep. You have to learn how to win. Losing is very easily attained. Learning to win is the hardest part about being a winner. That is very clear.

And when people talk to me about, you know, they talk to me about, at least for my realm, which is archery, which to some of these listeners may be pretty boring. But I've lost a hundred times more than I've ever won. A hundred times. But I wanted to figure out how to win. Yep. So I kept going. So, I mean, when people say, well, dude, you should just go and you win every tournament.

No, there's probably 10 people that wanted as much as me. So even at that, I'm going to win one of 10. Yes. But I'm okay. If you're okay with that, for most people, if your personality is being able to accept that. A 100 back average. Yeah, then you're going to grind. I mean, if you're willing to grind at that and just say, you know,

I'm going to go out there and judge myself based on, you know, my task. At least for me, I've always been task driven, not, you know, ego driven. So I feel like I feel like I'm able to come out of things with a positive asset more than a negative asset, even if the outcome to some would be negative, if that makes sense. It does. Well, unfortunately, what I see, again, from the cheap seats, we as a society seem to be teaching people

that loss should be avoided at all costs. Like, don't ever lose. Don't lose. Like, if you lose once, you're a loser. And to me, like I was saying before, the loss is, the understanding loss is a critical component to tap onto what DLDDD is saying,

to understanding victory. Yeah. And it's okay, like the most motivating things in my life are the ones where I fall. short of what I know that I can do because that fire is so hot in me not to repeat that. And if I was taught from an early age, well, no, it's okay. That feeling's okay.

Just accepted. I wouldn't be the person that I am today. You would not be the person I am today. You would have rang a bell. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean, honestly.

Yeah. When people ask, and that should be important because when people ask you, which I know, I've seen people that have just came up to you and asked you, you know, what, What do I need to do to be prepared for buds? Well, if you've got a participation, if you have a participation award, you're not, yeah. You're out. Ding. So I've got to tell a quick story about that.

You should wipe your butt with that thing. Meanwhile, I've got to take a whiz. I'll be back. Three years ago, my niece is in a kids queue competition. And it's. That's short for barbecue, right? Well, it's for kids. It's like she's seven.

I was making kids, making sure kids queue is short for barbecue. Yeah, it is. All right. So seven, eight year olds, whatever. Well, it's chicken and steak. And she doesn't finish in the top ten. Hold on. There's seriously a barbecue for kids.

For kids. Yeah. All right. And so she comes back to the trailer and I said, well, where'd you finish? I said, you walked it. Because they do the awards for kids queue, like in the middle of our turn-ins. Yep. So I didn't get to go out there and watch it.

and she comes back with this little shitty trophy. And I said, there's no place on this. What happened? She was, well, they just gave it to me for, and I said, Addison, you're going to take that trophy, and you're going to walk it right back over there. And her eyes kind of welled up, and I went, we don't just pay entry fees and get trophies.

Yeah. We earn them. Well, guess what she's done in the last two years? Grand champion, reserve grand champion, one and two. It's a tough lesson to learn. Again, I'm not smart enough to say what is good for the future and what is bad or the right or the wrong way. Participation trophies are bad. I feel that they are inside.

I'm not going to make a blanket statement that they are. I think that I do agree with you, but it sets a bad precedent for the rest of your life. Yeah. Because I can't think of any environment outside of a control to contain. Like business is not controlled and contained. there's variables. Yes. And there's not...

Outside of our control. And there's no participation trophy there. Especially if your business involves something outside of the borders of the U.S. If you go into a competition with a business outside of the borders of the U.S. and your philosophy is built on participation trophies... That's prison rules. The only advice... No offense.

Step one. Brace for impact. Step two. Cover your nuts. Take a reverse grip on your ankles. But I... I don't believe it's right. I don't think it's good.

Like so, God, here's a good story for my own life. My sons. I told them that if they achieved a certain grade level in their school year this last year, that we were going to buy them a desktop computer because they wanted to play games. Wait a minute.

You've already bought one of Bo. I haven't yet. I'm going to because that's what he wants for his birthday. I'm so proud. No, you said because his grades are so good. And my middle son, his grades are phenomenal. But for both of my oldest son specifically, he wanted to get a desktop computer to play video games on it.

And he fell short by not a large margin. And inside of me as a human being as a dad, all I wanted to do is to go to the store and buy him the computer. And I would literally lay it in bed at night because what I didn't want to do is go back on what I had told him. I had said, here's the deal that I'll make with you. If you meet this deal, you will get, fill in the blank, and he fell short.

But I just wanted to bridge that gap and be the dad. I'm like, hey, I'm so proud of you. I'm going to buy this for you. And in the end, we didn't. And it hurt, and it sucked. Yep. And he learned from it. Yes.

And I think he'll be better because of the fact that he didn't get it. No, he won't. But what value would it? Like 20 years. You never bought me that computer. But you know what, though? Hey, 300 hours and 300 hours of therapy later. Yeah.

What value would it have if I said you need to get to use an arbitrary number. You have to get a five to get this. But you came in and a four, so I bought it anyway. That, to me, moves the needle backwards. Yeah, then he knows he only needs a four. So next time you say three, he needs a two. Next time he's like, but dad, I got a three and a half. And then I already have the habitual pattern of I'll give it to you.

Yeah, you're right. So it sucks and it hurts. and I wanted to buy it for him, and he was crushed. And it's, but I, but I held that because. He did the right thing. Because fuck participation trophies. Yeah. But even doing that further in business.

That should be a shirt. Yeah. I agree. The next shirt after that is, here's your participation trophy. First fucking loser. It's an eagle. It's an eagle.

Yeah. Yeah. But to take that kind of concept even further is, you know, when, you know, I always said in business, Look, if... We did not have those as a kid. I still won't even get them.

I do not get it. But if you show up, you get one. Just like you talked about with your boys, you were going to set precedent. And once you set that precedent and you say, oh, you kind of just under-delivered. Or you kind of colored outside the lines. In all honesty, I almost did it. Because I, like, he was tearing up. I'm like, God.

And I'm not an autonomous robot. I think I do a good job of keeping my shit together. but I'm not, and there's a lot of things that can pull on my heartstrings. Most of the time I don't. Tell myself that I do. Just let me lie to myself. I'm breaking you down, bitch. But I almost did it.

But what let me roll over and go to sleep was, if I do that, what impact will that have on the rest of his life? And I will not do that to him. You either meet it, or you don't. And I'll teach you that lesson right now, so you don't learn it when you're 40, wearing salmon skinny jeans. Poor Preston. Oh, did you say poor?

Oh, man. Preston made those salmon-colored skinny jeans look good. Perry top-siders. They're skinny shorts, actually. It's unacceptable. I just came up with a new, a new motto. Because this is true. I was thinking, I was actually thinking,

when I played sports, did I get, Did I get a participation trophy? No. They gave out MVP. No, let me tell you. Let me tell you. League champs. When I was 10, this is hilarious.

When I was 10, I was overweight. I was too fat. And when you got put on football teams, it was according to weight. So I had, you were the left guard? So when I was 10, I had to play center on the 13-year-old team because I was 30 pounds. overweight. So, and I can tell you that those years of playing a football overweight, my participation trophy, like what they gave me for being part of that team was athletes' foot.

Yeah. Strong. Yeah. Like, that's my participation. It's tough to put a bow on that gift. Yeah. I mean, I literally, I literally was giving nothing but an ass beating by three year older and me people.

I played water polo in baseball at public high school. I remember them giving out MVP, most improved, and what would the third one be? Well, like, to me, it was always like league champs. But of a team of 20. Yeah. A team of, we had like a team dinner then.

MVP, most improved. You recognize the top 10, 15%. It actually might have been MVP and most improved. You know what everybody else did? Nothing. Yeah. They were just part of their team. They wanted to be MVP next year.

That's what they wanted. Yeah. There was not like, I want to get recognized. I got to do this to do it. Andy got MVP of, was it skin flute in 87? First chair. Philharmonic Orchestra.

I can rip it. See, first chair or nothing, dude. Second place, the first loser. Well, and it's kind of, to wrap that up, like, I get so upset on like, and I don't compete nearly as much now because, in barbecue, because of just all the other obligations. Well, you have a job now. But when I see people on Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning on social media post,

well, we didn't so well do so well, but we had a great time. And I'm like, if you want to have a great time, spend a third of the money, throw a kegher in your backyard, cook some barbecue. For everyone on your block. It's going to be a pretty damn good time. But don't, I mean, like, like when I post, if we don't do well, I'll go, hey, I didn't have a good cook today. I missed this, this, and this mark. And, hey, we're back in three weeks and we're going to get after them.

You have to hold yourself accountable. I mean, we had a good time. Yeah, accountability is. Or the fact where people want to blame the judges. Oh, the judges were totally off today. Gosh, dude, stop. Here's, so next. I'll go back to.

Left swipe. We'll go back to the intellectual. We'll go back to the intellectual property of talking about leadership. Hey, real quick. real quick guys bonus coverage bonus coverage he's going into the IP oh yeah okay so talking about leadership

almost every time that I talk at a company a hand will come up and like what do you think about millennials and here's here's what I respond leadership is giving this away is not a bottom up problem it is a top down problem so if you have a leadership problem

in your organization here's the solution and here's the best way to find the problem with it. Go to the bathroom, turn the lights on, and look in the mirror. It's not bottom up. It's top down. Don't blame the judges. And I bring that back to what you're saying. It's not the judges. It's not the grill.

If you have a leadership issue, don't talk to me about your millennial fill in the blank. Talk to me about what you're doing as a person in the leadership position. Because it doesn't matter where your people come from. Your job is to bridge the gap. That's it, ladies and gentlemen. That's all you get for this week. But what I'll say is that that conversation went on for probably another hour, and the wheels came off 20 or so minutes after I trimmed that off.

So in the interest of not driving anybody crazy, I trimmed back end of the podcast. And I'm sure we can recover all of those topics again that I cut because I'll be with Chad and Dudley many times in the future. I'll actually going to be with them in five days. So I digress. Free range American. I love the idea. I love the concept. I love what it stands for.

I love what it means. And I love the statement of the brand. It's not even a motto. It's a mission statement. Go do awesome shit. That's it. Do awesome shit. It's all you need to remember.

That's all we want people to do. Document it. Send us. Send us pictures of using the stuff doing whatever it is that you consider to be free range. That's the beauty of the brand. I don't care what you do. You could be a barbecue person.

You could be a base jumper. You could fly hot air balloons, paragliders, airplanes, ride horses, ride skateboards. It doesn't matter to me. Freerangeamerican. Dot US. Get on there. Get involved. Let's build it into something cool.

And before I forget, let's remember that today's episode is bought to you by bluechew.com. The first chewable, not pill, with the same active ingredients as Viagra and Cialis, get your first shipment free when you use the promo code hot, H-O-T, upper or lowercase. You can pay five bucks for shipping plus or minus a few dollars, bluechew.com promo code hot. Let's keep that cart full. See you next week.