Danny Jones Podcast - #9 - The Real 'Aquaman' - Manny Puig

Episode Date: January 19, 2019

Manny Puig is a legendary wildlife expert, hunter, & fisherman who became widely known for his hands-on approach when dealing with deadly predators such as sharks, rattle snakes, black bears and alligators. He has made frequent appearances on the television shows Jackass and Wildboyz as well as the Animal Planet show Gator Boys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, Manny Pugg. How are you doing, sir? Good. Talking's easy, so we'll talk all you want. So you came all the way here from Fort Lauderdale, from your home in Fort Lauderdale. Yes. Thank you for coming out. We got some amazing tridentes from you, which we'll show later. I enjoy making them. They're probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Very primitive weapon. Definitely a very primitive weapon. Yeah, I'm a very primitive guy. Yeah, I don't know. You know, I'm like old-fashioned in many ways. That's amazing. So for the people out there who may not comprehend completely, tell me who is Manny Pugg? There's no title to what I do. I interact with sharks, alligators, venomous snakes.

Also, I make medieval weapons. I'm an artist. I do the kind of stuff I like doing. And I free dive, a lot of breath hole diving. I've done scuba diving also. I mean, I've been bent nine times. You know, blacked out once. But I spent a lot of time in the water.

I'm more aquatic than land-based, let's put it this way. And when you say you've been bent, you mean you got the bends? That's when you get, is that what you're talking about when you get blood, or bubbles in your bloodstream? Nitrogen in your, yeah, in your blood. You know, we're commercial spearfishing back in the old days, and you do too many dives. That's what happens.

So you go too deep. You don't decompressed enough. You're in a hurry. you get bent. And what happens? People die from out or? You get tremendous pain. One time I got paralyzed.

Where like in your chest, do you get the pain? Shoulders, joints, wherever it hits you, it can kill you. Wherever the bubble gets stuck, or you can give you paralysis. I got a paralyzed arm. I had to go, I started getting my field back, but I went down back on the water to repress the air bubbles. Yeah. Gas bubbles to get them through your system.

I never been to a chamber, but I don't, I really don't, like to dive too much because of that reason. I don't want to get bent anymore. What kind of depths do you have to go to to get bent like that? You can get bent as long as you're deeper than 33 feet. If you're less than 30 feet, you can't get bent, even if you're down there 24 hours. Now, if you're in 40 feet of water, you stay down there 10 hours. Let's say, you come up, you'll be bent.

You know, at 50 feet, you got like 10 minutes, at 60 feet, you got, well, no, I mean, 40 minutes. Okay. That's how long you have to come up for. No, one hour, I think it's been a long time. One hour of 60 feet, 40 minutes to 80 feet, and 20 minutes at 100 feet. So if you stay beyond that, you can't get bent. I mean, you can push the tables and get away with it. We did it a lot. But there's a possibility you don't know when you push a limit and how fast are you breathing. How many? We have computers now to try to help you. Monitor all that. Right. But you can't, that can't happen free diving, right? Yes, I can.

It can happen for a day. If you deep dive very deep and you continuously do it all day long, like if you're spearfishing at 120, 150 feet, you start adding up your bottom time. So at the end of the day, have you done enough drops, you'll come home, you'll be bent. So it happens. That's crazy. I didn't know you could do that free diving. What's deep for you for free diving?

I've done maybe 180, 200 before. I could mark past 165, but I blew an eardrum doing it. And normally deep for me would be like 140 to shoot a fish, 130, 140 around there. I'm just talking going down there. At 110 feet, I stayed 40 seconds on the bottom. I timed myself. I laid on the sand and I'd see how comfortable I was.

So I laid down there for 40 seconds and I swam back off. at 110. So I've done stuff I got. Sometimes, you know, you're struggling with a fish or you don't know how long you go beyond there. You're hand-catching fish. That'll take you down there a long time sometimes. Right.

Because sometimes if you're chasing a fish that you've shot, you kind of like, you forget about, okay, I have 100 feet of water above me. I have to keep that, be mindful of that while I'm chasing this fish. There's a lot of factors come involved. I've held my breath five minutes and 35. seconds before. Is that a record? No,

the people can do more. That's good. That's really good. Yeah, it's really good, but the people they actually, you know, do more. I don't know,

I swam 400 feet underwater too. That's another thing while holding my breath. I've done that. And that's like my tops. I have a hard time equalizing when I'm real deep. So I'm better at that

than I am at deep diving, let's say. I'm limited by my ears. We should have had a swimming pool here and done the contest where you go back and forth. Do you ever make bets with people where you say, I bet you can go back and forth six times?

You got to do like 60. When I blacked out, it was in a swimming pool training. Really? Yeah, back and forth, doing the same thing. You know, hyperventilate, do a few laps, a few laps until when I passed out. I didn't even know how I had passed out. That's a killer.

You have no idea. Right. You're interfering with my training. That was my things, you know. I would say something like that. And no, they were interfering. They were saving me. Right.

You completely passed out, and somebody came in there and saved you. Yeah, well, the people were swimming with. Wow. God. So the first time I ever heard about you and the first time I learned about you, I'm sure like most people, was during the days when you were on jackass and on wild boys. How did you get involved with those guys?

And can you explain to me, walk me through how that whole thing happened? How did you start working with Stivo and all those guys? From their point of view, I heard they saw some videos of me in Animal Planet, levitating an alligator in a swamp. wearing a speedo. So I think it's a speedo is what really It was the speedo, yeah, not the alligator. The speedo. And never mind the alligator.

It's probably that. Yeah, that definitely sold stebo. They thought that was really awesome. They said, who's this sexy guy in the speedo holding the alligator? We need him now. Yeah, so then they told me these jackass guys are looking for you. They want to do something with you.

And people tell them, they're really, really dumb guys. That's the first thing I heard. Yeah, these guys are really bad. They're really dumb, dumb. I'm telling you the dumb. And eventually I ran into them and we, yeah, first day out, Steve will gets ran over by an airboat

and he puts a warm up his nose. Johnny Knoxville wants to get bit by Rattlesink on purpose. And years later, I showed him my hand. Hey, this is why I didn't want you to get bit by Rattlesink. You understand? I told him that. That's from a Rattlesnake? Yes. Oh, my God.

Yeah, I noticed on your Instagram, a lot of your photo, you put your handout to show your finger. It's a signature, Mark, to make sure it's not an imposter. It's the right guy. You know, everybody knows that loss of finger to Rattlesing. Okay, this is, it's me. It's him. It's kind of like a joke like that.

There's no fake Manny. There's no fake Manny Pug. You can't impersonate it. Steve-Otickle took a picture of it first thing when he saw it and sent it to Jeff Germain. He was laughing. Look at this. He took a picture. But I got bit by Rattlesick in high school.

I was 17 years old. Really? Pigmy Rattler. What were you doing? Picking it up the same way that I got bit by Western Diamondback. The same style, repeat of the whole thing with the bigger Rattlesink. And that one, I said, when I looked at myself, I'm thinking I really messed up this time. Where was this at?

Texas. So at 15, you're already like catching animals and doing all that stuff. Yeah, high school levels, hand catching large alligators. By hand, I was picking up venomous snakes. I was doing all that kind of stuff. Spear fishing. What made you want to do this at such a young game? What got you into it?

Was there something that inspired you to do this? I think I saw too many like Tarzan movies, sea hunt. Yeah. You know, Lloyd Bridges, all the jungle gym underwater, fighting with all the alligators, all these different, I saw these different aquatic and, you know, wildlife guys and all that stuff. And that really, you know, got me inspired. Wow.

So what happened when you got bit when you were young? What did you have to do after you got bit? You just had to do to the hospital or what? I ended up in the hospital. My friends started telling me, you better, I think, oh, well, what are we supposed to do? You know, and, you're watching too many movies. And I go, well, it's supposed to get drunk or something like. that and they're like and then the guy the fringe draw looking at me kind of funny like that

I think we better take you to the hospital let's just take you home and when I got to the hospital I was worried about how much it was going to cost yeah and they told me you want to keep that hand you better lay down there and let us get to work on you yeah that's what they told me what do to you to get rid of the venom or before they amputate they they anti-venom is what they did anti-venom and then they were back then they would try to suck the poison out of you with a suction cup. Now, later on, they don't do it anymore. No. They just take it to a hospital and they put you on an antivenom. They hold your arm up high to keep the swelling down. Now, the amount of venom, I grabbed that rattle sink by the neck

and he made a half a turn on me, got both fangs into one finger. And, you know, I held them and I picked them up and I told a producer, it got me. And he goes, no, no, he didn't. It did. So he was like, oh, no, everybody's like froze. And I think a buck medley goes, let's go to the hospital that was the guy was with before many dies let's go like right now so we got in a car we're going about 110 miles an hour all over to the hospital

this was for the recent bite yeah for the last one day I was a diamond back you said Western diamond back about six feet long it was a monster where were you Texas in Texas too yeah it's like I don't really want to pick up any more

venomous snakes after that second one that was just I'm still recuperating 10 years later. What was going through your mind when that happened? Like, what were you thinking? What were you trying to do? Like, were you, did you like tie a... No, I didn't do, didn't tie anything to it.

No tourniquet or anything? I was really, like, bummed out. It's almost like you got on a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. It's just a really, you know, depressing feeling. Yeah. Do you feel like woozy from it? No, I don't feel woozy or anything. I just felt tremendous pain in no time.

It just got, I knew it was, I knew what I was into. I knew it was, it was. going to be horrific. And then it was so bad. I could feel the venom. I was praying the whole way, praying to God the whole way to the hospital. I'm a Christian, so I was praying, you know, God keep me around for a little bit longer. For more time.

Yeah. This is, I felt like I wasn't going to make it. Really? Really? In that sense. Yeah, I went away to hospital. When I got in there, they were taking their time in the hospital, warming up the core fab. That's what they inject to it.

And I said, well, we're going to. I said, you getting warmed up? How long had it been by the time you got to the hospital? About 45 minutes. And I'm like, I need about 55 gallon drum or that stuff you got there. Yeah. This sneak was enormous. I have a ton of venom in me.

And if you guys don't put a lot of that stuff in me, this thing is going to really mess me up. I told them that. And they're all taking their time. Yeah, you're thinking, hurry the hell out. Well, they got to go like this and warm it up with their hands, the core fabric is just kept and like frozen to preserve it. Right. To preserve it.

So it was like, man, they should have had a. ready before I got here because we called it in. It happens in Texas so often that they don't care. There were three people in the hospital that they, counting me, that were bit by Rattlesink. Really? No way. Yeah, it's like, it's no big deal over there. That's crazy. The other guy had

a finger. It was all black like mine was getting. And he goes, he had told my friend, oh yeah, I'm probably going to lose that finger. And sure enough, they told me, well, it looks like your finger might make it. I went to back home to Miami. A few weeks later. They let me out after four days. I couldn't even get inside an airplane

to go home. I stayed in Buckmanley's house, laying in a bed there for two weeks. Damn. I could hardly do anything. I couldn't even pick up a cup of coffee with that hand. And the pain was tremendous. Then when I got home, my in-law took me to the hospital, and the doctor said, you've got to stay here. The finger's got to come off.

Oh, man. Okay, let's get it off right now, then. Just the finger was in, like, tremendous pain. It wasn't your whole body. No, well, the hand. Just the hand. The arm. The swelling went all the way of my arm, all the way to like my side of my body. I had swollen everywhere. You know, it was like a balloon.

I mean, tremendously like being puffed up. Right. But when you were on the way to the hospital, when they were driving 100 miles now trying to get you there, like were you just sitting, were you holding your arm up? Did you, were you doing anything specific to try to hopefully like stop the venom from spreading into your body?

They had some frozen chicken. They had picked up a store of her, and I put my hand on the frozen chicken. And I found that later they're not even supposed to do that. Oh. So that was the wrong thing to do also. You're not supposed to get it cold. You're not supposed to do anything, but go to the hospital.

Yeah. That's what they say. Just go there as fast as you can. Go there as fast as you can and, you know, try to relax. I was relaxed. I wasn't freaking out. I wasn't agitated. I was more like bummed out.

Yeah. Right. Okay. You know, I've been through some stuff. I mean, on the outdoor channel, I had that rattlesnick bite. I also got bit by an alligator. In the back, the only time I've been bitten by an alligator in my entire life of messing with alligators.

He snuck up behind me and bit me when I wasn't looking. So he grabbed the wetsuit and peeled off my back. So he was not able to get a good grip on me. So that's, again, the good Lord saved me from that one. There was a 10-footer snuck up from behind in a canal. I was swimming down. I thought my friend, the Indian guy, had hit me with the airboat. Wait a minute.

I heard an airboat. Did he just run me over? What's going on? You're in the boat. What was like 50 yards behind? What? And when the alligator and I could hear it, the airboat coming, He said, the alligator didn't care.

He must just come out of cover and got me from behind. I was too lazy to look behind me. And then I faced him off. I chased him and harassed him, so he wouldn't attack me again. And then I didn't know what was wrong with me. I got in the airboat. I said, well, I'm able to get in the airboat. I peeled a wetsuit back, and I told me know,

I told everybody, what's wrong with my back? Let me know. Yeah. And it wasn't bad at all, 12 scratches. That's it. That's it. I got to go too short and put a bottle of bleach on it. Like right now.

That's what I said. Bleach? Yeah, it kills all the bacteria. Holy shit. That's pretty rough. Not like alcohol, just straight bleach? Straight bleach. A rattlesink, I mean, an alligator can kill you just like a rattle sink with a bacteria in its mouth.

Okay. Oh, really? Even if you survive his bite, he can rot you. He eats dead animals sometimes, not just living things. Right. So, you know, anything I have. Alligators is a very dangerous animal. Okay.

question about it. So if you get bit by an alligator, dump bleach on it, not bleach alcohol. The doctor tell you no. The guys in the woods, the alligator hunters and the crazy people tell you put bleach on it. Okay. Yeah. I trust them. So let's just clear that right away. That's not medical field. Right. This is, you know. FDA approved. No, no, not FDA. This is Woodsmen technology there. I would definitely trust them before the doctors, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I would too. I also got gored by a boar. Gord by a boar. Yeah. Well, something bore with a spear. He cut a tendon in my arm, and he got my leg. I was shooting blood out of my arm like a squirt gun.

Well, he bit me. Yeah, I ended up hand to hand with a boar. And you were hunting him here in Florida? Yes. With a spear. With a spear. It's a great idea and a bad idea at the same time. Boars are very dangerous.

Right. They make me nervous. Do they really? Yeah. Out of all the crocodiles and the sharks. The boars. The boars. If you're hunting a boar,

on foot on the ground with a spear, you're in problem. If you got bay dogs, you're in danger. If you got a catch dog, you're pretty safe. How big do those get? A boar in Florida, I've known other than to be like 500 pounds. Yeah. Normally it's like 150 pounds.

If you get one like 220, you got a really nice one. I know a guy's been doing his entire life. You got one 400 pounder. Do you eat those or no? Yes. You do? Yeah, they're good. Really? Interesting.

You know, you got to take care of it properly and cook it right and everything. But, yeah, it's good meat, really good. Wow. Interesting. Yeah, the conquisators brought him here, Hernando de Soto. Okay. 500 years ago. Wow. And they let them do some Florida.

Really? Yeah. So they've been here ever since. But like your Florida Panther, the Florida mountain lion depends on them. That's his main source of food, not the white-tailed deer in Florida. Right. That's what's increasing their population. by the way, and also the bears eat them sometimes too.

Really? Alligators also eat them. Wow. They in turn, they'll eat, you know, whatever, they'll eat a baby deer, they'll eat gator eggs, you know, everything eats everything. There's tons of them here, though, right? Certain areas is more than others. They like, they favor certain type of terrain, and other areas are heavily hunted.

They're not protected like white-tailed deer and everything else is, so a lot of people are relentlessly hunting them. Some people don't want them on their property. Some people want them on their property. If you like boar hunting and you take people boar hunting, you want them on your property. Right. And if you're a farmer and they're eating up your crops, you don't want them around. Right. Some ranchers complain to tear uproof the grass.

They're uprooted. Okay. Which is what the cows, you know, they need the sod, you know, the grass. Right. At what age were you when you started getting serious in the ocean with like breath holding and doing serious free diving and spear fishing? I learned how to swim at six and I was really interested. So I would put on a mask and look around.

and, you know, shallow water. And as soon as I could, I think it was like 14 when I had my first spear gun. And I started from there, I had a tiny little speargun. I was shooting grunts. Okay. And then, you know, barracudas, more eels, anything that swam, you know, that kind of stuff. Wow. I went from spear guns to commercial spear fishing to pull spears and to hand fishing.

The hand fishing is the most primitive type of fishing. Now I like to fish my tridents. Yeah. But I do enjoy the challenge of catching a fish by hand. By hands. Yeah, fresh water, salt water, wherever I've been. So what happened? You kind of just got so good at using all those other.

You started with a spear gun and worked your way down to a trident or just with your bare hands. You just wanted more of a challenge. You just got so good at it. Yeah, it's more fun. Not that I'm not the best spear fisherman in the world. I'm good enough to make my living at it. But some of these other world champion people, all that, yeah, they're better than me at spearfishing. at hand fishing, I don't know who beats me in hand fishing in that sense.

I mean, I've hand caught many different types of sharks. I've hand caught about probably 40 or 50 different types of fish before by hand. I've done a lot, a lot of hand fishing. It's outsmarting to fish and figure out how you can get your hands on them. It's a challenging. It's fun. I like doing that. So what, walk me through what it takes to go, I mean, what kind of fish do you go handfishing for?

Like, what is like? I mean, I've had caught groupers. snappers, Mako sharks, silky sharks, nurse sharks, lemon sharks, all kinds of tilapia

in freshwater talapia, garfish, catfish. I did a caught catfish by hand, even in Florida. I did in Louisiana. I got a 72-pound

flathead catfish. Wow. What's the technique? You just, I mean, fish are fast? You just got to be super stealth? Every fish has a different technique.

Okay. Like if you're after a red grouper, he'll go in a hole. Right. So you're reaching a hole and you grab him. Oh, okay. That's it. Well, you've got to know how to work him out of the hole and not get a grip on him and everything else

and don't get bit by Mori in the process. I have a hard enough time shooting a grouper in a hole. Well, sometimes you can't shoot him because he's up wedged inside of a hole in an angle. So then you put your speargun down. You're reaching with your hand and catch him. So a lot of guys go, oh, I can't get them. They go home.

No. you just reach in there and you grab him. Make sure you got your glove on, reaching and grab him because it goes in a hole like this and sideways. You can't put your, bend your spear and up in there like that. Right. Just reach your whole arm up in there. You can reach your arm and turn it up in there and grab them. And you grab them by whatever you can grab? Usually the tail first. Okay. You want to get your hands in through his gills.

Okay. Get a grip on his gills to work him out. Sometimes you get a grip on him and you can't get the grouper in your hand out of the hole at the same time. So you got to figure it out. Right. I've also caught, you know, like mutton snapper. mangrove snapper, also when they go on the ledges by hand. And I've caught fish in midwater like gars, hold the light on them at night,

and swim that and grab them. I've caught along those guards like that at night, and regular guards actually in the daytime. I've managed to catch them by hand before. And you'll do that by swimming under the water and get you driving. You go in night with the light, you shine the light on them, or has somebody shine the light when you let go of your light and you ease your hand close to the fish and you're really, really close to them. Of course, you got gloves on in a wetsuit.

Grab his bill as fast as you can. But you got to be close to get him. Mako shark, hand-feed it. When he's eating out of your hand, you reach around and grab it. He's the fastest shark in the world, so you're not going to chase him down. Right. Yeah. You're going to let him...

You can bring him to you. Yeah, let him push up into you. And what do you do with the miko shark once you catch it with your hands? You play, hang out one, and enjoy the catch and let it go. So he takes off. and you just go for the ride? Yeah, yeah, it takes off. If you ride him, he'll sound on you.

If you tackle him, he tries to jump out of the water. Really? So you're up catching air the whole time, so you're able to hold onto him. And then if he's small enough, I can lift him right out of the water. Okay. I was catching and releasing, we were doing video.

If I was in the middle of nowhere and if it was no video, I would probably cut the Mako and ate it. Yeah, oh, really? Yeah, and took it home and trophy, jaws, everything else. So you're either going to get video or meat, one of the two. That's my mentality. You can't make the two. Yeah, I'm a hunter sometimes, you know, especially when there's no camera.

And then when the camera, you know, then you're catching and releasing and just a complete different, you know, when we go out in the water, what are we doing today? Are we going to catch fish and educate people? We're going to catch fish to let go. You know, then you figure out what the game plan is and that's what you do. What do you enjoy more keeping it from meat or? It's got to be the hunting, right? I like the hunting.

Yeah. I like to keep it, but the videos is good because you can go. home and look at your hunt over and over again. Right. So it's awesome. Kind of perfect what you're doing and what's the biggest fish you've ever caught my hand?

400 pound Goliath, close to that. A Goliath grouper. Yeah, there's no good video on it. Yeah. I got some pictures of it. What was that like? It was eight people watching

40 feet of water, free diving all day. Yeah. At the end, the fish kept dodging me, dodging me. Finally, he got mad and attacked me. And he bit, he went inside the cave, he bit me twice and shook me violently. Bit you where? I knew what to do. So I was new at doing that kind of stuff.

So I went up for air and I went down and then he swallowed my arm all over to my shoulder. And then I grabbed the whole of his guilt plate and I started backing up with him. So once I able to horse him out of the cave, I could move them up as long as I'd go in circles, spinning all the way back to the surface. We caught them and let them go. I caught six of them by hand. Some of the stuff was seen around on TV and all that. and I remember the federal government asked me. I had a medium.

They asked me not to do it anymore. Really? Well, they've seen your videos in. Yeah. Well, somebody called in. They complained about it and this and that. And then they said, you know, the guy said, hey, you know, you're not allowed to do this. It was an awesome catch, by the way.

Oh, really? Yeah. But you know, he said, you have 50%. You had temporary possession of the fish. And they said it's a no take. Now the state lets you catch them and release them as long as you don't take them out of the water. So it's a little more lenient. The feds may still have the same deal.

I don't know. That's in state waters. I know people catch and release them. I guess they're going to hand catch another one. I don't know. They're so overpopulated. You would think that the federal government would start to change that, right?

Because they're everywhere. They're waiting for the fishermen to get together, have a meeting and decide what to do. The reason hasn't happened because nobody's really set down with them. And now they're, the game of fish basically works for the hunters and fishermen. They're here to preserve the industry. So what do you want to do? How many glas can, you know, the idea is to catch, harvest an amount that doesn't destroy the population.

So I know that's what they want to do. Just like everything else. So the numbers are high, okay, you can harvest. You don't want to fish them where you can't find them anymore. Right, of course. You want to fish them like the tarpent, you know, they're regulated. You can catch them this over abundance of tarpun out there. Snook, they're protected.

There's tons of snook out there. Look at the cold weather that year, how many are killed. What a waste. Wow. Yeah. But, yeah, that's the other, I mean, I'm interested in all that stuff, the numbers. I like conservation as far as numbers are concerned. You know, management, I believe in properly managing, you know, take a certain amount.

When you can, then you don't. Like, certain times, certain types of hunting actually increase the animal population. You know, everything's got to be balanced out. And you've got to, you know, you've got to know what you're doing. Right. Go out there. I like all that stuff. But I like, I've always liked all my adventures.

Yeah. Yeah, there's, I mean, there's a huge controversy over that kind of stuff, like with the quotas and stuff like that and how the federal government controls, all that kind of like stocks. I think the problem is that everybody has a personal agenda. You know, you got to be fair to everybody. And somebody thinks this way, somebody thinks that way. You know, you want to, like certain areas,

some divers have, you know, pet glove grouper, and they feed it, and everybody goes there to take pictures. Okay, maybe that area doesn't need to be opened up. Nobody needs to go in there and kill that fish. Right. And then you have another area where there's plenty of out there. And, you know, people say, okay, you guys got your photography area here. We got a hunting area here.

Right. I think that should be fair. Right, right. You know, there's plenty of water out there, and there's plenty of woods. There's plenty of everything for everybody. There's plenty of alligators out there. Florida, there's plenty of bears. More than every before.

There's plenty of wild boar. There's plenty of deer. plenty of fish. There's a lot of stuff. A lot of areas, we have a lot of glath grouper. You know, certain fish are lower than others.

Sharks are come back tremendously. Yeah. Nobody's really fishing. The ocean is actually extremely dangerous right now to go spear fishing, I would say. More now than ever? More now than ever.

Why is that? Because there's more sharks. More sharks. Why are there so many sharks right now? There's no commercial long landing for him. Oh. So the population, many species are protected. The population is increased, increased.

Yeah. To the point that, you know. Where there's more sharks? Yeah. I mean, you want high adventure, go spearfishing. You can be fighting for your life out there. Right. Yeah, it's great.

You know, you want the real jungle out there. It's there. It's real. It'll get eaten out there. Yeah, we were talking earlier, when we were on the phone earlier, you were telling me about, I was telling you about surfing in New Smyrna, how there's literally black tips everywhere, just paddling out. And like, right when you get off the beach, before you even get out to the sandbar,

they're just hydroplaining through the waves everywhere. I would not do that. You wouldn't do it? No, there's no viz out there. I wouldn't even want to swim in a smirna. It doesn't solve anything for me. The only thing you're going to get out there is you're going to get bit.

I mean, it's like Russian roulette out there. Yeah. You know, okay, yeah, I served through a pack of sharks today. You know, the next day you might get killed in Eden. How often do people get bit by sharks? Florida, New Somerna. New Somerna. New Somerna.

Every week, right? Yeah, yeah, every week. Yeah, that's Shark Attack Capital of the world. Really? In mind, Australia and South Africa or any of that. Oh, man, I didn't even know that. You want to get bit? You want to go on the list of surfers?

Go to New Smyrna. No, I'm cool. Not being on that list. I was at a search shop over there, and I asked you on, who's been bitten by shark here? And you see all the servers in there all raise your hands. Ah, damn, that's crazy.

I didn't even know that. But the thing is the sharks are a lot smaller and they're not as dangerous as other places. Okay. A five-foot block that bites your inner leg, you cut your artery. you're going to die just as fast if a thousand pound tiger beat you. Yeah.

You're going to die either way. So it's still very extremely dangerous. So if your leg's dangling the water, there's a good chance if that thing bites you, it's going to hit an artery. Yeah, it could hit an artery. You could be okay. But it ain't like it's, it's not like a little squirrel bit your son. No, no, it's a bad bite. It can be any shark bite is bad.

Yeah. Any shark. It's got rages in their mouth and they'll cut you up real bad. it's Have you been bit by shark? Four different kinds. What kinds? Mako,

lemon, Caribbean reef, and nurse shark. Which one was the worst? The nurse shark. Really? Where did they bite you at? My inner thigh.

This is my, that artery is talking about by a quarter of an inch and took a piece of meat this big out of my leg. God. The doctor had to cut the skin loose and stretch it over.

He told me you're going to have to get a skin graph on that And it was a three-foot nurse shark What? I jumped off the boat on him He bit latched into my leg and I pulled them off What a stupid move Oh, you pulled it off so right You pulled the meat off

I pulled him away from me And he ripped the whole thing off A nurse shark, they say a six-foot nurse shark As as much jaw pressure As a thousand pound great white God damn I've seen a guy catch one of those Right off the shore here

On Indian Rocks Beach people They're okay but they bite you sometimes people have been bitten and they've gone to hospital where the shark still latched onto him. With the shark. On them, yeah. They go to the hospital with the shark.

Yeah. Another guy rode one and I think bit him in the hand, the arm, held him underwater until he drowned. The shark held him under. The nurse shark, yeah. It's a powerful, difficult nurse shark to hold on to because he twists and turns every which way. Right.

Everybody thinks it's harmless. He doesn't have any teeth. I don't know where his ideas come from. There's probably a zillion people been bit by nurse sharks. But they stay near the bottom, right? They don't swim up. No, they'll come up.

If you're spearfishing, I've had them come up in 40 feet of water and attack me on the surface and trying to take the fish I got. And they're also like near-sighted and like dumb. They'll come up and bite you. I've held my hand in front of them and they lash onto my wetsuit. Ripped it right there. The nurse shark has short teeth. So if your wetsuit is loose, he'll pull away from it.

And you might escape getting injured. Okay. When he bit me in the leg, I didn't have a wetsuit on. Oh, my gosh. Damn. And if the wetsuit is tight, he'll cut through it and get you anyways. But, and it's, again, where he bit you, the infection.

There was a group of divers, I think. They were catching lobsters. One of them pulled a ners shark by the tail. The nirchark takes off and bites another diver ten feet away. It wasn't even the guy that pulled them by the tail. It was just pissed off. Yeah. God damn.

So you, yeah, you got a... And how did you get bit by a maca? It's a tiny little cut on my hand, hand feeding it. A baby? No, it's a big makeo. A big big. Huge one. And Gulf of Mexico.

I was feeding this close. I had a Wahoo head of my hand. And I mean, my hand was literally in his mouth. And I was holding onto it. And he's just pulling me around and dragging me. And finally the teeth were all hanging out. One of them, you know, I was so close. Slice you?

Yeah, I cut my finger. So that was like, I can claim a mecal bite. But it was like, I mean, it took like a little knife. That counts as a make a bite. Yeah, that counts. It's a mechol bite. I mean, you're feeding him by hand. That counts.

Oh, my gosh. I had a Caribbean re-shark bite me in the leg from behind, and it felt like I got hit with a machete in my leg. It was a surprise. That day, I had a knife tied to my calf, which I never do that. I easily wear them on my waist. Yeah. So it happened to be I'm wearing one there that day, and the Caribbean rechark bites him.

He bites the knife side of the calf, the knife is on in my shin bone. So he crunches down. So the bone and the knife protected him from ripping my leg to pieces. I got cut. I had blood shooting out on everything, but nothing like if that knife wouldn't have been there. Yeah, he would have taken your calf. Took my calf off. It's about, you know, five and a half, maybe six foot Caribbean re shark.

It's like a bull shark. Right. So I did a tour. I did a thing. We were shooting like a TV pilot in Nassau. And we did one of the shark dives where they basically take, They take you out, and then there's a couple guys on the boat, and they literally just chum up a ton of sharks behind the boat.

Caribbean resharks. Those are the same sharks? Yeah. And we were in like a tornado of sharks. They were coming up. They were bumping my camera lens. That's extremely dangerous, extremely unsafe. People have been bitten out there doing that,

especially if you're down current of when you get into water in a shark dive, where is down current of the blood? In other words, if your fish is here and the current's going this way, you want to be here. If you're down current of the blood If anybody gets bit, it's going to be the guy who's down there Down the slick Okay

So that's why people get biddle all the time I've heard of many people get bit out there About this Caribbean Re-Sharks And doing those shark dyes and everything Yeah Some people never made it home Some people have been killed You're just out there not in a cage or nothing

No we're surrounded by a tornado of sharks Like they're big sharks There was like some six footers I would never do it all the time They do it all the time Yeah that's crazy You know people want adventure But there's everything

shows up there too. There's bulls. I'm not doing that. Hammerheads show up, tigers show up there, and everything shows up over there. And they, yeah, they could. I could imagine, like, the one thing I was afraid of was that, okay, one bites you, you can get lucky. But if one bites you and there's 30 others right there, wouldn't they all just swarm you and just eat you alive? Well, there's blood everywhere from the food you already got in there. They're already frenzied out. Okay. He may bite you. A bull shark tends to bite again and again and again. Right. Like that. Multiple attacks. He does it, that Caribbean bit me one huge bite. It only takes

one good bite. Right. And a Caribbean bites you, it'll take 10 pounds of meat off your body. You know, that's like your guts can be hanging out there. Anything, it can bite your hand off your leg. It's, all those sharks are extremely dangerous. I got nothing against shark dives, but I always

tell people, yeah, there's nothing safe out there. No. You may not come back. It's dangerous. People say, oh, you're exaggerating. There's no misunderstood anything. Those things are, dangerous fish. When they're hungry, they'll eat people. Unlike everybody, alligators eat people. People, they don't, they do that. They're dangerous animals. So they will finish you off. Like, they'll not only take a bite, but they will actually consume you.

Well, look as SS Indianapolis. They ate, what was, 600 people or something like that? What was that? What was that one? That ship sunk in World War II. Oh, yeah, yeah. I did hear about that. I think there was a bunch of tiger sharks were out there eating everybody in the middle of Pacific. Yeah, they'll eat you. They, yeah, those and also the oceanic blue. Oceanic blue and oceanic white tip. Okay, the blue tips are the white tip.

The blue is cold, cool of water, and then the oceanic white tip is a little warmer, but, you know, they'll go either way. Okay. They criss-cross territory. Okay. And the water's worn, the blues go deeper. Okay. Like, Maikles, yeah, they like cool of water, but they'll come up and feed.

Okay. If actions coming up there, and then they'll go down to their depths. Okay. So those are the ones that basically a ship sinks, people go overboard, those are the ones that are circling you ready to eat. I like open ocean sharks because they come in hungry, more aggressive. If you're going to film or interact them, that's a good candidate. And they're fast. Yeah, they're very, they're more aggressive.

Like coastal sharks have food around them more often than the ocean sharks. Okay. So the ocean sharks are more hungrier and sooner or later they're going to want to make a meal or whatever is there. So how do you deal with those sharks? if they're hungrier and more aggressive, like, what is, like, what do you do to, to interact with them and not get eaten? Well, when I go out there, my idea is to get the sharks to try to eat me and get them as aggressive as possible.

When I was doing the shows and all the stuff, is to turn that into the most horrifying, feeding frenzy you've got to ever imagine. That was the whole idea. And are you not scared when you're doing that? Well, I'm not scared until one and bit me in half, then I probably would be scared at the moment. I actually, I'm enjoying every second of it. You love it, right?

Yeah, I'm enjoying it. Yeah. And then when I feel like I've had enough, it's a lot. enough. I don't want to push. You know and then not push it too far. Yeah, I got 30 hand feed or something. I got, okay, I'm done. Yeah. Done for the day. We got enough action. Let's just get out of here. Yeah, it's fun, but you got to be alert because any, any minute something can go wrong. But yeah, it's not, yeah, if you want to stay safe, don't do what I'm doing, but if you want to see the sharks and you want action, you got to, you know, stir it up out there.

Right. Yeah. That's the whole idea. where you're not going to get, you know, shark attacks and you're not going to see that side of it. Yeah. And if you're spearfishing, when all that's going down in certain areas, you've got every fish in the oceans around you at the same time. So if you're there spearfishing, well, there's just shark feeding. And everything's showing up. It's the best time to hit a fish. It's just insane what's going on out there.

I've been scraping fish for hour after hour, after hour calling in everything is within miles around to come there. Really? Yeah. When sharks think, when you're ripping a fish apart, sharks think you're a shark. eating and nothing attracts a shark more than somebody else eating. And I take the knife like that and he thinks I'm devouring that. And so he wants to get a piece of that action before it runs out. And they go into a competitive mode.

And that's what makes it happen. That's insane. So another thing you were telling me earlier was that you would much prefer to have a shark encounter while you're spearfishing versus if somebody were surfing. If you're a diver, you can defend yourself from a shark A lot better than a surfer or a swimmer. A surfer or a swimmer or a sitting ducks. That's why I don't want to go swimming in New Smyrna. I feel like I've been, you know, all my defenses are gone.

Right. Even if you don't have a spear gun though in your diving, you think you have a better chance? Yeah, if you're diving, yeah, because you can always hit the shark with your hands. You can charge him. If you go out of a shark, swim towards him, you'll frighten him. Really? Yeah, because he thinks you're going to hurt him.

So if you swim away, yeah, because you think you're going to hurt him. from him, he's going to attack you. He thinks your prey trying to get away. So the worst thing you can do from a shark is run like crazy away from him. Then you're going to instigate an attack. Can you pull up that video? Type in Mick Fanning. This is what I was telling you about. The guy Mick Fanning was in the

surf contest in Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa. And he was sitting out there waiting for a wave by himself. And all of a sudden you just see him get pulled under. And yeah, watch this. He's a sitting duck. And you can see the fin come up. I think it was one of the pectoral fins come up. Watch them.

It grabs his leash, like the leash that connects his foot. There he is right there. Yeah, see, he's totally helpless right there. If he was a mask and fins and a stick in his hand, he would have been able to fight that shark. Now watch he starts hauling ass swimming as fast as he can. Yeah, that normally, if it was like a Caribbean re-shark or bull shark or something like that, that would get him attacked.

The Great White may not, but one of those, a bull shark or a Caribbean would have come back out of him and nailed him. Oh, yeah. What kind of shark? That was a great white? The bull has, say, three times the jaw pressure in his bite of a great white. Really? Yeah.

It's a very bad bite. What would you have done in that situation if you were him? I wouldn't have a surfer. You wouldn't have never been in that situation. You wouldn't have been a situation. You don't have much visibility there. I wouldn't have been surfing. Right.

Now, I was going to tell you something before, I forget. If I'm luring in sharks for feeding and scraping meat and drawing, creating a shark feeding frenzy, I'm probably safer doing that than if I am just randomly spearfishing. Okay, you spear group in a hole where your head's under the rock and your feet are hanging out trying to get the group out of the hole,

you're 100% vulnerable. If there's a bull's shark in the area he's going to attack, that's when he's going to get you. So as a shark, if I'm shark diving, I want the sharks to be there. Right, you're expecting them coming.

You're aware of them. Yeah, no, you're aware of them and you can defend yourself because that's all you're looking out for them. That's it. When you're spearfishing, I don't want to see sharks. Yeah, right.

I'm not aware because when you're focusing to get a fish at that moment. That's when the sharks come up. Shark likes a bite when you're not looking at them. Like all predators. Okay. These animals, they're looking for a meal. Now, what makes animals dangerous is how hungry they are. Sometimes sharks are not hungry.

They're not going to bother you. Yeah. The hunger of the animal, what motivates a lion or a tiger, or an alligator or crocodile or shark to eat somebody, it's how hungry is that animal, how desperate. You know, when you're really, really hungry, you're ready to eat anything. Yeah.

I don't like that food. I'd rather have a steak, but I'll eat that rotten hamburger because I'm really hungry. So there's no exception. When a shark is really hungry, he'll make a meal of what's there. People see them trying to eat a log in the ocean. They're so hungry.

Wow. So have you been in a situation where you're having a meal? and a shark charge at you and you charge back at it? Yeah, it's all my life. Yeah. And so what? They just get, they get scared of you charging back at them?

What do you do? You just run face to face to them? We do it all the time. We run them off or they'll steal your fish. Yeah. You know, you run them off or they'll bite you. Don't run from them.

You can leave the area, but you got to watch your back. Remember, he wants a bite when you, you can defend yourself when you see it coming. Same thing with an alligator. Yeah. You can levitate a charging alligator. but the one that bit me, it was an ambush.

I never saw him. I was too lazy to look behind me. But if I would have seen him coming, I've had alligators go after me, and at the last minute, I get low in the water, and I'd grab them by the shin, I tilt the head up, and that disrupts her attack.

It confuses the alligator, and usually do that a couple times. It'll warp the attack. I had one tried to take me down ten times before. I mean, I could have left the water, and then it'll stop. But as long as I was there, he kept coming around. He tried to go in the water at me,

on the surface, different styles of attack, and I was able to block them every single time on the attack by grabbing, you got to make sure you don't put your hand in his mouth when he's coming at you at the last minute. You got to grab that skin down there. I mean, don't go try this on your own. I'm not going unless you're there.

You do this. All of a sudden, your boat broke down and you're swimming and you got attacked in the last resort, it's good to know something like that. Yeah, definitely. Don't, I'm not telling you to go look for these opportunities, you know. It's kind of like, you know,

I took karate lessons. I'm going to go to a bar and pick a fight. Somebody will beat your butt or you might get a shot in the head. Right, right, exactly. Something like that, you know. Is there a video we can see of you levitating an alligator? Sure, that one. The top one?

Yeah, that's probably the largest alligator ever levitated in my life. Wow. How big is this one? I say it's 13 foot plus. I had an alligator expert look at me in the video and everything. I'm talking about them. I was on my way home. We were filming, you know, just whatever you could find fish.

Yeah. anything, you know, trying to do a good, you know, nature show. Right. Is this in Florida? Yes. Yeah. There's a lot of hydrilla in this area.

Okay. The hydrilla, a lot of times the water is clear, but what a hydrilla does is it covers everything. It's like a spongy jungle. Right. And, you know, look, see, alligators and all kinds of animals can disappear into the hydrilla.

Right. And it grows off the bottom? Yeah, it comes out the bottom. That's about 25 feet in the bottom of the canal. Wow. I can't believe how clear it is. Yeah. Hydril, I think, clears water, too.

Okay. Oh, shit. See, he arches his back. So. Oh, that means he's, he's pissed? Well, he's not going the other way. He's coming our direction. Yeah.

So instead of leaving, he's interested. Yeah, he's headed right to us. Oh, fuck. At this time, I was already lost my finger on my left hand. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, my God. He's huge.

I do another. good lift on him too. I really show him well, though. You saw a slow motion. Yeah. What is that thing? Like a thousand pounds? I said a thousand pounds. It's a massive animal. There's a lot of fish

in that area. So now he doesn't want to be messed with. Now he's like, fuck that. I'm going to sleep. No, no. He's not sleeping. He's just going to lay down there. Okay. I go down and pet him and everything and try to budge him. And I can't even... I do a thing where I grab him by the scoots and I lift him off the bottom, gently. And he's so heavy.

I can't even budge him. Yeah, I can't even grip them. I can't even grip on him. Yeah, I lost my fins like that. I need to get me a new pair of those. Bodyboard fins. Yeah, I know. There's the same buggy board and fins.

That's what they're called. You don't get them in a dive shop. You got to go to a search shop. Yeah. I found out the best thing to use out there is not those long free diving fins. No, they're the short ones. For maneuvering around alligators and sharks, you want that. Yep.

You want the short ones. I'm not into going deep now. I'm into there messing with the animals, so I don't need the long fin. You have no traction with it. Right. I got to goose him get out of there, because I can't get in front of him.

He's facing the bank, and I don't have any room. And you couldn't pull him out because he's so heavy. You have to stay under his jaw, under his head. You don't want to be directly here, because that's where he's going to jump up and get you. Oh, okay. I like to get below him. Best place to be with an alligator is underneath that gander.

Under. Okay. His eyes are above his head, see? Yep. See how little the eye looks compared to the skull that tells you how big that alligator That thing's a moose. Because what happens is the head will grow the size of the eye. Really?

Yeah, like a little alligator's got an eye that looks like a frog. Yeah, it pops out. It's big. Yeah, tiny little head with two big eyes on it. It looks like a frog. And then when it grows, you know, the eye... Barely see the eye. Yeah, because it's still a big eye, but the head, that's how big he is.

The head is so much bigger. Holy shit, he's darting. Okay, now, yeah. Yeah, he's already freaking out. So he's going to dive into the hydrilla force. He said, I found the wrong human to pass the message. I was just trying to see what was going on over here.

I do fucking many quigs over here. I do one or two lifts on them and then I leave him alone. I don't want to stress him out. If you do you too much that, he's going to come back at you. Okay. And, you know, I'm not, I'm just interacting. I'm not really, you know, hunting the alligator, so I had no need to...

That is a price gator. A gator like that is already bred, though. I saw him, and he's... I think he's over here. It was so big that we saw two different spots. I found where the tail was, and Quetta found where the head was. Really?

So it's a big mound of hydrillas. I've got to go inside the hydrilla now to look for him. Oh, my God. Now watch. When I bring him straight up, I'm going to put them in tonic in mobility. Okay. So you're just going into the plants and trying to find him.

I'm reaching out for him, see? The plants. whatever they're called. Oh my God. That's my left hand right there. Look how big that head is. Holy shit. Now, right, and see how he looks more calm?

Yeah. Right now the head is straight up. This is kicks in tonic immobility. Now he just did the surface. Now he explodes. The minute I took him up and he started tilt his head back, he went off like a stick of dynamite. And I told, I told, Quetta, let's forget it.

We're done. We're done. Yeah. Look at that thing. Oh, my God. That thing's a dinosaur. That's what it looks like. It looks like a dinosaur.

He's running along the bank watching it. Wow. I bet you were safer underwater than you were on the bank, right? I was just thinking about what if this gator gets up on land right there. If they want you, they'll get you underwater above. Alligators hunt on the water. Okay. People don't know that.

They do. They'll sit on the bottom of the mouth open waiting for fish to come nearby and they lash onto. Oh, really? And I also see him chasing a soft-sholt turtle trying to catch it under water. And if Adam attacked me on the water. I've never seen a video. I've been a video of a gator eating underwater before. I mean, you only see, really,

you only really see gators attacking stuff on land. No, they do it underwater, but this is not too many people down there. Right, exactly, because there's not people down there. You got to be down there 24, at night catching the feeding time, but they're eating fish left and right down there. They got to come up to swallow it. They don't swallow underwater because their throat locks down there. They don't want to let water in to a system.

That's so they control or else they can fill up a water and drown. Oh, shit. So they just grab it while they're down there, then they come up to the surface to actually eat it. You want to see the Makles? Yeah, yeah. Okay, go up. This is my best shark day ever.

Your best shark day. I've had good ones. How far offshore is this? About 50 miles. Okay. San Diego. Off San Diego? Yeah, it's in California.

That's where you find a lot of Makos and blues. I mean, it's a magnificent. That thing is huge. Look at the shape of his body and his tail. It's almost like he's not real. Yeah. It looks like such a design, such a cool looking. A fish.

Amazing. And that's just a little one there, right? Yeah, I'm going to catch that one, and then I'm going to catch a big one in that segment. I ride one. I hand feed blues. It was six makles and three blues showed up that day. At first, they were chasing each other off.

The big ones are running off the small ones. And then later on, they got comfortable with each other, and then they started hanging out. Oh, this is the bigger one, right? Oh, my God. No, it's a little one. That's the little one still. Look at its eyes, how big they are.

Yeah. Yeah. At Oceanic Vision. Now, the bigger Makos will eat the blues and the baby Makles also. Really? They'll cannibalize their own kind. Yeah, that's one of the few animals that actually eat each other, right? There's not many, like gators.

Did gators eat other gaiters? That scene when they showed over again, that's when I was ready to catch them. I was going to really catch that macle. What about the gators you said? I was going to say, like, sharks are one of the few predators that cannibalize each other. Is that right? Or do a lot of them. Gators do it.

Gators do it, too. Lions do it. Bears do it. Oh, shit. That thing's like a little torpedo. Yeah. Well, it can jump 20 feet in the air is a world's fastest shark. Yeah.

And it's warm-blooded, too. It's got the ability to warm as blood up. It's warm. Really? It's not cold blood like the other sharks. That's the only shark that's like that? No, I think the other members of his family might be like that, too. the Great White may have that ability.

Oh, okay. There's five mackerel shark members. Macral shark members. Yeah, which is... Pelagic, like, like... Well, in the family, it's Great White, short fin mackle, lungfin mackle, and poor beagle.

Hmm. Oh, my God. So you just caught that by name. And salmon. The salmon shark, the other member. Yeah, I just caught it, yeah. Look at this thing. That's sand fishing. You noodle.

a meco. Well, you can't you can't know him through his mouth. He'll cut your hand off. You got to grab his body. Now, he's not as slippery. If you got gloves on, his skin feels it's like almost like sandpaper, so you get a grip on it. Which is nice. But yeah, you got to grab them. That's nice.

Yeah, you got to grab him like that because that guy right there will knock your fingers right off. You know, if you, yeah, you don't want him to bite you. He can kill you. I released him. He stayed with us the rest of the day. Really? He didn't care. There's a blue. That's a blue.

That's a scary fucking shark right there. Well, they're all scary, but... If you offer them your hand, he'll bite it off you. He'll bite it. He'll take it. If you let them bite you, he will bite you. You can't let them bite you. Are these suits you wearing, are they kind of like bite proof a little bit and stuff?

No, no, they're just regular wetsuits. No, it's the same thing. It's usable when you're surfing. Really? Yeah, you know, yeah, it's a wetsuit. Yeah. Yeah, it's like butter. See, I'm riding that one.

Oh, my God. I can't lie. That would probably be a super cool feeling right there to ride a shark, but I'm still not trying it. I mean, you go there. I'll tell you, go ahead and catch a ride. Yeah, yeah, that would be cool. Yeah, you were saying they sound. If you grab onto them, they'll sound.

Yeah, but you still get a ride. You just, you know, you hold your breath. You let go when you think it's time to get, he'll keep going with you. If you overdo it, he may come back at you. Really? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you put on a tank and stayed on them on the whole time, you may eventually get mad and say enough enough of the elephant and he'll turn around and you.

Now when you catch one Yeah, that could have been a disaster there Getting tangled in that rope and stuff It could have been a disaster there I almost got bit by blue that day Robin Almost got bit by blue that day too The producer

Is this a Mako? Yeah That's freaking terrifying See he didn't take the bait I think this is the one I'm gonna catch him now I think this is the one yeah Yeah I'm gonna hang catch this one

How big is this one? He's pretty big. Watch. See, I got him already. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Jesus. That's crazy.

What the hell? Yeah, he's beating the heck out of me. Yeah. I told the guys, if I hadn't catch him, Meko, he's going to drag me over the ocean, and he's going to, because I'm tilted one side, he's going to end up right back by the boat again. Right. So he's going to take me a huge circle. Quit it when chasing me.

But I said, you wait by the boat, you're going to catch him. You're going to catch him coming right to you. Robin was there waiting for me. I don't know. What he got on footage? See, there's Robin with the camera. Oh, yeah. He's back at the boat.

You still got this thing? I'm going to let him go now, see. Now, again, if I've wanted to keep him, I would have told the guys, get a rope and just put a rope on his tail on the bottom. But, you know, we're not getting meat. We're getting video. Right, right.

Some people want you to release the shark. Some people don't. At this time, I'm there, you know, we're entertaining the public. I'm feeling my personal challenge. Right. But I'm doing a feeling. Look at the size of this one here.

Holy shit. This one here, I'm going to, I'm going to, I try to put him and roll him on his back. Yeah. And I'm going to ride him backwards. I lift his head out of water. I'm going to flip him. He didn't go into tonic mobility, but I did flip him.

A lot of the stuff the producer wrote for me to say, you know, so. Oh, really? Yeah. When I'm out there talking, it's me talking. Yeah. They feed you some stuff. And then he feeds me and he writes stuff in there. Which is okay, you know.

I don't care. What are you going to say else? Gets the people going. But right now, I'm going to tell you what's going on. Right. What do you think might be a right? It's a catch. for different things.

Right. Now, is there any shark that you cannot eat? Cannot eat? Like, cannot, like, it's not good to eat.

The Greenland shark, you have to boil it, they say, in order to eat it because it's poisonous where you boil the heck out of it. You can eat it. It's a weird.

Greenland shark. Greenland shark, yeah, it's cold, cold, cold water shark. There's a blue at it. But overall, I mean, you can eat a hammerhead.

It tastes like lousy. You can eat a bull shark. I've eaten it. It tastes terrible. See, he almost got me there, the bluted. No, here's, no, here's where it happens. No, no, this is the other one. See, I'm going to flip them now.

Okay. That's a big makeo there. And this is where he needs to like paralyzed when you flip them. No, no, no, he didn't go paralyzed. See, he's still swimming, but I got him upside down. That's crazy. Oh, my. It's like, Calvin, you know, let's just.

You're dancing. Yeah, I'm playing with sharks. Wow. It's a lot of fun. Man, you're a psycho. Can you do that stuff with dolphins? It seemed like a lot nice. Fed of mahi-ma-hying.

No, you don't... Dolphins in captivity are mean, smart, and mean, it's just like killer whales. They end up killing somebody. You swam with killer whales, right? Yes. Probably the most dangerous thing out there. Killer whales kill...

Most dangerous animal in the ocean. Yeah, yeah. They kill great white sharks, probably in the planet. They kill blue whales. They gang up on them and kill them. They kill other whales. They kill everything they lose out there. And they've killed...

Oh, we don't know if they killed anybody. Yeah, because the people got killed. Went around to tell you what happened. Right. They killed three trainers over at SeaWorld. At SeaWorld. Yeah. So it is a dangerous animal.

You know, none of the other pets out there have done that. Okay, so it was a wild-caught killer whale, and they killed three trainers eventually. And they were playing with them, too, or at least one of them. One of them was, like, toying with the guy before he killed him. Yeah. They'll toy with their food supply out there. They call him killer whales for a reason. Right, no shit.

It's not a misunderstood animal. Free will he got them all looking happy and nice and friendly and stuff. Yeah, that was fake advertising. It kills bottom of those dolphins. They torture animals. They're just, they're horrific animals. I mean, they're cool. They live out there.

They're part of nature and all that. So you thought, why not jump in the water with them? Well, we're doing, um, with the jackass wild boys. Yeah. And, you know, you got to do the adventure. You got to step it up. Right. So, okay, we're coming up with ideas.

And sometimes things just got better and better. And that's the first time you probably did that, right? Yes, that's the first time I love. I've ever seen a wild killer whale. Are you nervous going into that? Because you never did it before. You've never seen it before. A little bit.

I was anxious to get in. I felt like... But you wanted to do it, right? Well, I want to do it. I want to, you know, okay, let's get some action. I'm to a point. When I'm, like, getting to a point, okay, I'm tired of waiting around. Let's get into it.

When I'm going to do something, okay, you get that feeling, you get fired up. Yeah. It's just like a... Yeah, it's just like a guy who's going to do something else. You know, people do the same thing. He's going to jump something on a motorcycle. Which I wouldn't do... That's what I was thinking.

Yeah, I would rather some of the killer oil. Yeah, they got adrenaline junkies or jumping off an airplane without a parachute, things like that. You know, okay, I don't want to wait around. Let's get with it. So I saw the killer whales. Let me get in. Okay, this is good. Let's get everybody in there, you know, and start filming.

And so you get out there with them and what is that like? You guys ride out, you find them finally and you just jump in with them? Yeah, you're right around with a boat that is specializes on whale watching. In Alaska? Yeah. They take tourists and watch whales. You're not supposed to go up to them. So I told the guy, okay, they're headed that way, drop me off in their path.

Okay, so they dropped you off in front of them. Yeah, so we don't harass the whales. And then the whales come to you, and then it was okay. So what the hell happened when you had a school of killer whales coming at you? Two of them came by, had a really good close look at me. And that was in the water. I could only see like six feet max. Really?

It was green. That's probably the worst part about it. Green and dark, dark, dark. green. And this is just you or you're with Steveo and Chris then? Camera guy, Steveo. Steveo didn't get in. Chris. Chris got it in? Yeah, I got him in

with the grizzlies and I got him in with the killer wheels. Steveo wouldn't do it. No, Steve was in a bare outfit, the other one. Stevele is he likes, he'd rather set himself on fire than mess like with a tiger or lions. Right, yeah. You know what I mean? He doesn't, he's not dangerous animals is not his thing. But if he's going to jump off a cliff,

blow himself up a dynamite or hurt himself severely. Shoot a rocket out of his ass. Yeah, or eat an omelet made out of vomit or something like that. Yeah, he's down with that. Yeah. But he'll do the animals. I've done a lot of animal stuff for them. I put him on a surfboard and had sharks swarming around him

and the sharks were attacking the surfboard, biting on and pulling on it. So we're going to see if surfers get attacked in mid-ocean. I mean, a stupid thing to do. So the way to make it happen, we tied a bunch of fish of surfboard and put them out there and let him float out there. So, of course, the water's boiling around him with sharks feeding. It's like 25 sharks in the water. All feeding on a surfboard and these duskies come in about eight of them giants one of them grab the whole all of fish and surfboard and see what was a monster coming see what jumps off

the surfboard and the shark dragged the surfboard under oh man god i mean the whole surfport sunk and talking about you know probably 800 pound dusky did those guys ever take any bad injuries from any of that stuff they do their the idea for me was something to get injured but not too too bad right but you kind of want them to get bit once in a while or something by certain things I don't want to miss any body parts. I don't want him missing body parts. I wouldn't let Johnny Naisal get bit by rattlesnake, even though he really wanted to. Yeah.

Things I got, I don't, you know, the idea is to get some, like when he got bit by the anaconda, okay, he can handle that. Yeah. He wanted to get bit by a rattlesnake? Yeah. An eastern diamond back. What the thing? You were like, no way.

No, I might have killed him or amputated his arm. Right. He needs his arm. Yeah. And then, but with the anaconda, I knew he wasn't going to complain about it. He didn't mind the pain. Okay, I'm 14 for anaconda. And so he got bit by an anaconda?

Yeah. Johnny Knoxville is? Six times. They used three in the video. Where? Where do you get bit? In the arm. In the arm?

I think I saw that video. Yeah, it's on the Jackass 2. Yeah, Jackass 2. The ball pin, whatever. Yeah, yep. The two anacondas are hiding under the balloons, you know, and they went in there to play with them. God damn.

It was a huge anaconda, yeah. Out of all the deadly man-eating predators in this world, which one is your absolute favorite, would you say? could you pick one? I don't know. You know, it's, it all depends. It's hard to say that. There's a lot of cool, like, people say,

what's the most dangerous thing? I don't know. What's the cool? It's all good. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of cool. Yeah, like the big fish. I like, like, like I told you,

when it goes, uh, a dive trip for me right now, I like to go spear some mullet. Some, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Is there any animal you don't mess with? Is there one that you're like, I'm not doing. I wouldn't even touch that. Funnel spider, Brazilian walking spider. I don't like the spider. I don't want nothing to do.

Spiders. Yeah, screw that. Right, it's probably hard to defend yourself from a spider. Yeah, no, I don't like it because you're sleeping and they bite you in bed. Like brown recluse? Yeah. Okay, there's a brown recluse in the room. I don't want to go to sleep there because you're sleeping and I bite you.

I mean, I like things that I can see or interact with. Maybe if spiders were like 10 feet tall and like out. Then you'd wrestle one. They're creepy. Yeah, they are. I don't like most of the people like me don't like spiders I'm not the only one Yeah

I don't like spiders Not notch animal Wranglers and all that Yeah None of them like spiders And you were you were telling me also About your experience with Outswimming bears in the water

You said that you had to Get away from a bear No not get away, go at them If I have to get away from them I can If I have fins on I can't I can't swim a bear Without fins a bear will swim fast than me.

That's insane. That's unbelievable to think a bear could swim faster than a human. Yeah, they're fast. I mean, I didn't go to the Olympics and I tell you Weissmuller or whatever it's swimming. But with fins, yeah, with fins I can definitely power away, no problem.

And how did you end up in the water next to a bear? How did that happen? I volunteered. I got in. He was looking for the bear. I swam with grizzlies and I swam with black bears. Wow.

I never did. get to swim of the polar bear. I don't know if I want to go out there and freeze out there either. I mean, like a friend of mine told me, you go out there, you catch a pneumonia, you're in the middle of that country out there, yeah, you're done. I mean, I had a, when I was in Alaska, I had a good wetsuit. I was comfortable in it. With a good wetsuit, you can take it.

Right. But, yes, I don't know how far. But it's, yeah, I've done some, I mean, a lifetime of that stuff. I've focused a lot of my artwork right now. Okay. Yeah. I need my hands to do. artwork. Right. Yeah. So you're not trying to lose them anymore. You have not, you got nine fingers

left. Yeah, I don't, I don't want to lose it anymore. I got a lot of work. Yeah. You know, to do a lot of artwork. Yeah. And your, your, your, your tridents that you've been doing, that's, that's very similar to all. I mean, they are pieces of art. Yeah, they are. Yeah. Yeah, I like, I like tritons. I like spears. Yeah. I also make, uh, bronze statues of, like, like, alligators, uh, sharks. I made a Goliath group brother of bruns. I've done stuff like that. Yeah. And I've, I do authentic looking pieces and bronze. I like doing that. I do a little bit of wood carving also.

But I do like making my knives, you know, my jewelry, my own special line of jewelry. Yeah. Weapons. I make my necklaces. I wear them all the time. It's like the one you have on your neck on your, uh, yeah, this is a fish skeleton hand carved.

That thing's so cool. Super cool. Yeah, I wear stuff like this. So what do you get a big block of steel? This is done from a half inch thick plate of steel. and then I cut it open like this and I just I cut it with a grinder

like if it was wood basically Right With a metal cutting grinder Yeah let's bring the Trident over here Looks like the Trident Yeah Yeah This is what you fish with now

Yeah I fish with this This is an aquatic weapon so you I put a fish in here Because this is for a fish hunter So this is like you know Pirates have the skulls of people I don't want human skulls

They put a fish skeleton. Right. And this is a nautical piece of equipment. It represents, you know, underwater hunting. Is that why the, why the, uh, it's a classic. I love classics. Yeah. I love classics.

Is there, is there a reason for the three, the three prong design like that? Or is that sort of just like for, for novelty, kind of just like Poseidon or Zeus would have something like that? It's designed for catching fish, but it has a novelty. It's a classic. Right. Now, if you have one point, you throw out a fish, you might miss. If you've got three points, it's more likely you're going to get it. Okay.

You have a better chance of hitting it. And then I have a story about that also. And then what happens, you've got three of them gripping on it, so holds a fish better. So it's designed to get a better grip on the fish. It's a fishing weapon. Okay. It's not used, not really for people. Gladiators use them on each other.

Yeah. That's insane. They went in arena, they were sticking each other with tridents, which is not cool. Now, I've probably the first one I'm using for boar hunting Because I get missing a lot of my shots Throwing a single point spear at a bore Okay But the Trident is more accurate and it's got more of a spread

So it's basically a shotgun versus a rifle So you're throwing close Okay And you can't aim it like a rifle Right So when I have a big Triton spread out like this Throwing at a bore You have more of a spread going at them

Right So if you're a little off you're still going to get them Okay And then when you get them He can't run as well with them because it traps his... Heavy. It traps the arm against the rib cage.

When you spear a bore with a single point, he runs so fast he could be on you real quick and put you in the hospital in about two seconds. So what I would do, I throw a trident at him, and then I use another spear to kill him. To finish him. To finish him. Yeah, the whole thing's over real quick.

Okay. But he's not going to get away. When you hit him a triton, he'll turn around and he's coming at you. I thought you had to be close to an animal to kill it with a bow and arrow, but for this, you have to be extremely... Like, you got to be like, how close?

10 to 12 feet away. So that's another reason. It's so dangerous. You don't have that much time. No. I hit one charging at me, and he hit me here. And both of my feet were flying in the air. He would hit me here.

He would have killed me. With the butt of my spear, he hit me. And, yeah, caught my shoulder. I tried to catch him. I remember the last thing I saw, he was running at me full blasts. It better throw now. So I throw, he's coming at me about 30 miles an hour, I imagine. I hit him.

It hits him, and the spear stuck in him. So he's running like a, all. all turning like a unicorn. Yeah, coming at you. So I try to catch the butt to keep on in. I missed it. And both of my feet went flying. And everybody was throwing spears and panic.

Really? Yeah. Nobody had a gun or anything? No. I don't want them with a gun there because in the commotion, I got nothing against guns. Guns are great. But in the situation like that,

somebody gets excited. Bullets are just starting everywhere. Yeah. You don't know where they're coming from. Yeah, it's this chaos. Right. You know, now we're all shooting this way like that. You know, a lot of times of it's in a certain

situation, yeah, it's good to have a gun always. But one time a bore attacked a Queti and Robin pulled a handgun out and bah, paw, pow, pow, and fired it, you know, try to keep the hog off him. I'm thinking somebody's going to get...

Everybody was packing a handgun out there, you know, and somebody's going to get hit. Yeah. Another guy got attacked by Boar, he pulled out of his 45. The bore, and he shot out of the board. He scraped off the board's head. The board knocked him down, gun and all,

It was a disaster. And later on I found out, the bull had glanced off the boar's head. So the boar got up and I told everybody, get him. They got them with spears. No way. Yeah, we took some people out hunting

and, yeah, it was chaotic. I've seen that happen before. Jeez. So I'd rather, you know, if you're up in a tree stand waiting for the boar with a gun, fine.

But when you're in that kind of commotion, people like that, you have a handgun, yeah, you're maybe by yourself. Yeah. But when there's somebody running on the other side, it, you know, the nerves, everybody's, you know,

it's a war zone. Everybody's nerds are, the boars are dangerous just all get out. Yeah. People want that danger. So everybody's nerves are shot, you know. Oh my gosh. I can't, I couldn't believe that. Yeah, I've never been. And these things are like, that thing's heavy. This seems like 12 pounds?

No, the big one, the other one is 12 pounds. This one's like five, six. I'm not sure. I haven't weighed these. It's still heavy. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's, you want a good weight and strength. I like everything. Everything I make is exaggerated. My knives are three-eighths of an inch thick. Yeah, I was looking to some of your knives.

I was like, those are, Cool knives, but I'm like, that's a big-ass night. Everything I make is industrial strength, exaggerated. Yeah. My tritans are 10 times stronger than it need to be. Yeah. Everything I make is... And that thing's sharp as hell, too.

It might not look at it like on camera, but I just touched that. It's razor sharp. Razor sharp. My hunting spears, yeah, they're thick, heavy-duty metal, too. They're indestructible. Wow. Undestructible. How long does it take you to make one of those?

About three days if I'm at it. Three straight days, yeah. Yeah. Especially the bigger one is I got to grind that much more steel. You know, like this has to be, you know, I got to sand the wood down. Right. I got to do the carving, coding. It's not necessarily, I got to have a functional trite and quicker.

Right, right, right. You can use right away, but if you want to deck out. I like to decorate this stuff. Sure. Yeah. Is this something you've been doing your whole life too, or is there something new you just got into? I've always been an artist. Yeah.

But I haven't actually made art. This much. I started getting to weapons in the last. to, I don't know, 15 years or so. I started making nice probably before that. Yeah. And a little by little I started making it. By the time I was doing the outdoor channel,

I had a spear in my hand in every show. Right. So I was already headed that way. Now you're known as the real-life Tarzan. Aquaman, you are the real-life Aquaman. He can't, he has that in a new movie, doesn't it? I'm not an actor. You're the right.

That's what I'm saying. You're the real Aquaman. In the movie, you can do things that you couldn't do in the ocean. You can elaborate more. So, you know, you get to do the aquamine, you get a real actor. Yeah. Now, for lately, you said you've been spearing fish in Lake Okeechobe, or in the rivers? Tulapia.

Okay. I love the fact that tilapas are everywhere. It's just great. I like invasive species. Yeah. Because you can hunt them. Yeah, right, right. Nobody gets upset about it.

Yeah. Tilapis are great. The alligators are eating them. They're getting healthy on them. Okay. They're good for people to eat. It's one of the best things that are happening in front. Florida.

Really? Oh, yeah. My opinion. People may not agree with me, but that's just my opinion. Right. Of course. You like the boar hogs out there. Some people, oh, they're terrible.

The end of the world is coming. You know, you see those shows. The boars are killing everything. No, the boars, yeah, we got more Florida Panthers, which is great. They're endangered. They're not endangered anymore, thanks to the boars. That's their food supply. And a lot of the, and people, hunters.

A lot of kids in Central Florida are out hunting boar instead of doing drugs. Yeah. That keeps them busy. Don't take the boars away. from them, are you going to get a drug epidemic or something? Right. You can't go anywhere throughout all the country. Every guy, they know they hunt hogs.

That's what they do. It's the most popular thing. That's what they do. Like in Oklahoma, everybody goes noodling. In Florida, one hog hunting, I got the best dogs around. That's what they, everybody, everybody's like that. Wow. Yeah, it keeps everybody busy at night.

Yeah. Instead of being in a bar drinking, whatever, they're out chasing hogs, which is great. And for my first time hunting hogs, do you recommend I do? end, I do it with a trident? It depends what kind of hunt you want to do. I mean, if you want to go, you want to hunt with a gun, with a bone arrow, a crossbow, or you want to go with a spear. You can throw a triton from a tree stand if you don't want to put yourself in severe danger.

Like a guide, go find him later. Right. Oh, you got to go find him. Have the guide go. Have the guide go out. The guide follow him up, yeah. He knows he's more experienced. Yeah, you can throw a trident, but most of the people, they shoot a crossbow, bone arrow.

Okay. Rifle. If you have dogs, you can use a spear. When the dogs grab, you can spear. That's another way you can do it. Okay. That's a single point. If not you, if you want to throw, I tell you get in a tree, you miss, nothing happens.

Okay. Bors runs off. Right. I think I want to try, I want to take my new trident. You can, that'll work. Yeah, you can do that. You can get a real low tree stand. You don't have to be high.

Okay. And put food right under you. And don't move until he's not looking directly on you and then slam him. Wow. And like I said, just one hand. Yeah. Okay.

That's where I do it. Wow. Do we talk about red tide on this? Was that before we started recording? Red tide. No, we didn't talk about it about it. So in Okachobi, there's been so much hype this year about the red tide. It's algae.

It happens every year. It's been going out since the 40s. Yeah. Well, the red tide was recorded in 1840 in the ocean. Right. But when you have a hot summer, you get algae blooms. When it gets cold, the algae dies. Right.

So some winters are colder, some are warmer. I mean, the world's been warming since the last ice age. We had first, 1,000 years ago, it was very hot on the planet. We had a global warming. And then we had a mini ice age, 17, 1800s. And that's why everybody was out hunting beaver furs. Animal furs are worth more than gold, seven times more than gold was. Nobody's looking for gold.

Everybody's looking for fur. Back then. That's why, yeah, New Orleans, yeah, they were buying furs from the Indians. They were trapping furs and shipping furs all the way down. the Mississippi and into Europe where the market was referred, it was very cold. I think I've heard before what happens with a very warm planet, you get more vegetation. Yeah. You get more crops.

Right. When you get a cold, cold ice age, the world is less productive. I like cold weather myself, but there's more food and warmer weather. When you have a cooling planet, the planet starts to get in many ice age, then places or crops are growing. They're not going to be grown anymore. But yet when it warms, let's say if you can grow corn here, then you can go further north and grow corn there because the winding of the belt.

Right. I think the world's always changed temperatures back and forth. Yeah. And I could get in huge arguments, I guess, a lot of people. A lot of people. You know, but it's, look, they can scientists, they can say what they want. You know, all I know is this is from their,

not my database, their own database. A thousand years ago, the world was warmer than it is right now. Right. And they got cold and it's been warming back and forth a little bit since then. Right. So what happens is, yeah, you've got more grasslands

and more rainforests or spreading. The plants drink the carbon dioxide. Right. And it produced oxygen. So it goes... Like Europe, they cut down all the trees. Now Europe is completely covered in forest again. Things like that happen.

Yeah. While we got more bears in the United States than we've ever had. We got more mountain lions than we've ever had. We got more coyotes than we've ever had. We got more deer than we've ever had. We got less bison because we have cattle replaced and we got fencing everywhere. But overall, we manage our wildlife.

Other parts of the world, some of these animals are getting wiped out, not here. Like in other parts of the world, long landing has decimated the shark population. But in the U.S. waters, we've got a high shark population. Yeah. Now the blue shark, which travels across the Pacific, then if you go to California, you see, used to see a lot of blues and less makos. Now you see a lot of makos and less blue. Right.

I think on the other side of the Pacific, they may have decimated the blue shark population because they travel across. So that could have been the problem. But in the U.S., we basically, I mean, in Canada and all that, we've got tremendous game population. Very well, on land especially, very well managed. Lachrona bass, every puddle has them.

You know, it's just, it's a popular fish. Whatever is important economically, you see a lot of. Yeah. Deer. Deer everywhere, because they're economically. important. Alligators everywhere are economically important. Yeah, everything that is worse something, it's protected.

You were telling me before, I think it was in the keys you were saying, when there was a big red tide bloom that you guys got a ton of cobia or something? Yeah, the cobia and the sharks, everything was swarming inshore. Just swarms a fish ahead of the red tide. It doesn't come in out of the Gulf and the Atlantic. The red tide is usually hidden the Gulf. It might be in nature's way. The golf is so productive. Right.

The waters in the Gulf of Mexico are so rich. Right. Well, the red tide is a biological, you know. Like a cleanser or something? Yeah, no. It may be the red tide kills a lot of the fish population because there's such a high density of fish in the Gulf. Right.

The Gulf is rich in the Atlantic because all these rivers into into the Gulf. Yeah. The estuaries are the richest place on Earth. All the nutrients are washed in there, and that in turn allows for tremendous marine life to develop. Right. And that's why, like in Louisiana, for example, mouth of Mississippi, all that area, there's so much fish over there

that don't know what to do with. Right. Because that area is very rich. Now, if you're in a coral atoll in the middle of the ocean, it cannot sustain a heavy-duty fishing pressure because it's limited because it doesn't have all the runoffs in the rivers to feed the source. You can fish a golf in Mexico commercially until you die,

and it's still full of fish. You do it in some little island somewhere, you wipe it out in no time. Right. how do you feel about I forget where is it the Maldives or is it I can't remember where it is

but they're doing like a lot of big shark culling a lot of sharks you know what I mean where they kill off where there's so many like they think there's like overpopulation of sharks where they're people getting bit a lot where they're just culling them like killing them

like in the masses I don't know about it but I know that's happened before and when you have too much of something and human lives are being killed then you know you do something about it. Right. You don't have to exterminate anything to the last one, but you can reduce populations. I think in Hawaii, they would have a bunch of shark attacks. They will go out and kill 50, 40 sharks. Right, right. And then there would be no shark attacks for the next 10 years.

And when a population would come back, it would happen all over again. It was in cycles. So they kill some enough to make it less likely to get attacked, but enough to reproduce her numbers back again. Right. That's all things are. Predators will also wipe out their food supply. Who? What? Predators will wipe out their food supply.

Okay. And eventually when there's no food, they, they die out. Right. Starvation. Then when they're not

around, their food supply multiplies. Right. And then the few of them that survived, they will multiply because they got a huge food supply.

I think it was in Russia. They cut down the trees and the grass grew and the stag population exploded, a deer stag. Yeah.

So then what happened in the wolf population went up to 200,000 overnight because that was, there was that much food out there, so they'll reproduce. So animals reproduce according to how much food. Like, you could protect the panthers all you want.

If there's no hogs at them for it to eat, you're not going to get any. Right. But when the hog population explodes, they'll explode afterwards. And if you don't manage them, everything will be up in cycles. Right. It's all about the balance. What we do, we keep it in balance. If you let nature take its course as an up and down cycle, it takes out of so many years

where to bounce back, back and forth. The polar bear population, it's at 25,000. When I was a kid, it was 8,000. So they're killing about a million and a half rid-neck seals a year. The Arctic cannot sustain that kind of predation by polar bears. So sooner or later, polar bears are going to kill each other. You're going to open season on them,

or they're going to wipe each other out. There's too many polar bears? Yeah, there's not enough food to supply them all. So people all look at their, yeah, they're attacking walruses. They go, as a global warming, how about there's not enough seals run from the eastby? They've killed them all. Right.

So that's my take on it. Yeah. Nobody else is saying that. Nobody is, nobody, Cousteau did a study. When I was a kid, it was 8,000 polar bears. Now it's 25,000.

It's going to drop probably dramatically in the future if they don't call the population out. Right. I'm not going to hunt polar, I have no self-interest in it. Right.

I'm nothing to gain from it. I'm using my common sense over the years watching what happens. Yeah. Polo bears. I'm not in the polar bear hunting business. Right. I don't know if I want to go out there

that cold. Right. I'm 65 years old now. I don't know if I want to jump in that. ice out there right now, the truth. But that's what's, you know, that's what's going to happen. That's what I calculate and people

say whatever, but you have to manage everything. We have, I mean, we have good biologists here. There's good people who study this and know how to keep track of everything. Ideas have enough out there for recreational use and everything else. Right. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people that just get

upset. Like a lot of people will see something. They'll read an article about, like a call on sharks and people will, like, throw throw their hands up and be like... Yeah, they get mad. I don't know what the situation there is about the calling sharks. I know what happened in an island in Indonesia,

the tiger sharks wiping out everybody. Yeah, I think that's where it was, Indonesia. And it was in the... It happened in the 60s. They wiped them out. Reunion, reunion? Is that sound right? Well, everybody's missing arms and legs

as tiger sharks. And next you know, the beach was covered in the tiger sharks. I saw the video. Yeah. The villagers, it was the Hindus, I think. Went out and caught all these sharks. They would take the bodies also

and throw them in the ocean. Aim your mic a little bit. They were burning all the bodies and throwing them in the ocean. And the sharks were eating the dead ones and the live ones. It was tiger sharks. They'll feed on dead meat.

So there was a lot of tiger shark in the area and people kept throwing bodies into the sea over there. So the tiger sharks started eating. They all just came there. Well, yeah, there was tons of tiger sharks eating people. And they called the shark population. To me, wildlife is great, but human life is more important. Right.

You know, I'm not going to sacrifice humans for one species out there. I mean, you know, I think people, I love wild animals, love animals and everything, but people are more important. Yeah. They're, you know, God's image. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. I was wondering, like, do you ever, is there any times, like, you feel bad for killing any animals or certain animals, or is there certain animals you wouldn't kill or hunt? Like, sometimes you see people that go out and, like, hunt elephants and giraffes and stuff, you know what I mean? I'm not going to judge anybody on what they hunt. I know the, I'm not going to kill an elephant. too big. What am I going to do with it?

Right. But in Africa, the people eat the elephant meat. The hunter pays $150,000, $100,000 to shoot the elephant. That money goes to protect, goes to the rangers to keep the poachers out and they protect the wildlife. So they lose one elephant and they save a few thousand. Okay. So, yeah.

Right, so that's a different way of looking at it because most people will just see the picture and cause a big problem over. Well, because people are emotional. I was like, when I was growing up, I said, oh, my God, they're destroying the planet, destroying the forest. I was always freaking out of all of something. the more I learned about it, the more I started saying, you know, well, all the guys are farm over there is ruining the forest. No, the deer are coming out of the forest to eat the farm, to eat the crops.

So it's helping the deer population. So I found out, instead of the far, far wilderness, all the animals are living near the farm because people produce food for wildlife. Right. They like to raid our food stops or food supply. So it's not always what you think it is. Right. Of course not. That's what I found out.

I mean, it took me a long time to learn all this stuff. Yeah. That's a good insight on it. You got to listen to logic, have an open mind and open ears, and hear everybody, listen to everybody, and look at all the paperwork, look at all the research, look at all data. Right. And look at everything. That's what you need to do and check to see what's going out there. Yeah, I got nothing against the elephant hunters.

I got something against, like, say, massive slaughter of elephants for ivory because there's no control. There's no control. Nobody is saying, well, we're going to kill 15 elephants, no. They're going to kill everything they see. Everything they find, yeah. that's not, you know, if you kill one, something's got to reproduce to replace that one. You have to replace what you remove,

and you've got to give that time, so you've got to have the time, but if you're getting a lot of money from these big game hunters putting into the system, right, into the system, probably a ton of money. Listen, no game board is going to work for free out there. You've got to pay them well.

He's risking his life to protect all the animals in that forest, so, yeah, that's what the whole idea, the hunting sustains. Right. You know, and they're very selective. They're not going to kill that baby. the elephant, they're going to kill that old bull over there, and they're going to kill that old lion before it dies.

The lion dies, the buzzers will eat it as $50,000. The buzzers eight. If they shoot them a year before another lion kills them, which they will, they kill each other. If they shoot them, then the management area makes $50,000. Right. For their economy, it goes into their economy. It sustains the economy.

It sustains their economy. So these places like Zimbabwe and place like that, that's the only economy they have. Yeah. So they run out of wild animals because they don't manage them, right? They're out of business. So they're going to make sure. So they're not looking to do that, to wipe them all out.

Yeah, if you're in the industry of hunting, you're not going to wipe out. Right. What you're hunting. You've got to manage it. You've got to be responsible. You've seen a rancher go out there and mishinked down all those cows? Right. What?

A rancher shoot down all those cows in one day? No. I never see. Oh, he harvests a certain amount every year. Right. That's what I'm trying to say. Okay. Yeah.

It's that concept. Yep. Do you ever have people come after you who are like animal rights activists who don't understand it and be like man he mistreats these sharks or these animals he's not very much i've had a few people well just people who are like very against killing animals and everybody's got an opinion about something oh you wrote a shark it might have bothered the shark when i was catching the glathe groupers some people bothered about that it was hurting the the fish you know there's always i never really i get along with everybody yeah you know i've even one time i had people contact me when the shark

finning was out of control and the people were killing the sharks he was after the movie jaws and the new Samirna attacks, everybody's, and they were freaking out. I said, well, you know, Ed, you got to have some kind of regulation on this and all that stuff. I told those people, you should work with conservation. It's not just emotional stuff. That's what I told them a long time. But, yeah, I've been in contact with people.

I never really had much of a problem like that. Yeah. I tend to get along. And also, I know people emotional. I explain things. Right. And, you know, I've been to a meeting where a spearfish remember fighting shark feeders back and forth.

That's all guys. Really? Don't bring the feds. Yeah. I saw they ban shark diving in the state waters. The guys are trying to ban spearfishing, and the spearfishing say, we're getting attacked by sharks.

You guys are you guys are you guys big enough for everybody? Don't get the feds involved. Are you all going to be out of business real soon? That's what I told them. Try to get along. You know, guys get along. The oceans are big enough for everybody.

Get along out there. But they did whatever they wanted. Right. I said, I do both. I spearfish and I do shark dives. Right. So you can see both sides. Now I'm just doing artwork.

But back then, that's what mainly I was doing that. That's awesome. Like what kind of people are using these? Are you doing a lot of charters with these? These are sold to collectors. They're sold to hunters. They're sold to, you know, divers, just people that want them. People that go fish from them.

I sell knives. I sell axes. Most of the stuff, people like just cool stuff to have. But like this right here is used for tilapia. Okay. And that, yeah, that is used a lot. Okay. Where can they get these at?

They contact you directly at the website? Instagram. Instagram? Yeah, come back on Instagram. Many Pug. I'll put a graphic up of Manny's Instagram. That's all right. Yeah, check out all the stuff I got in there.

I got hook necklaces. I got jewelry, knives, axes, spears, and I do custom work too. Awesome. Depending on what you want done. And I got two brand new, I got two brand new tridence. I got one for fishing. And I got one that we're going to use is the backdrop for our new set for the podcast. So from now on.

We're going to have a giant Mani Pug Frick trident in the background of our podcast. Thank you. It's an honor. I appreciate you, I appreciate you coming out.