Julian Dorey Podcast - [VIDEO] - Ex-Military Spies are Infiltrating Poacher Terror Squads | Ryan Tate & Chaz Cervino • 218

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Ryan Tate is a veteran, conservationist, undercover operator, and on-the-ground commander in Africa. After serving in both Afghanistan and Iraq, Ryan moved to Africa and founded VETPAW to lead the battle against int’l criminal syndicates and foreign governments financing illegal poaching. Chaz Cervino is a businessman, entrepreneur, and consultant. He is former President & Founder of "Today's Business" –– and currently Co-Owns LEAP Brands, a Recruiting and M&A Advisory Company. - DONATE TO VETPAW HERE: https://vetpaw.org/donate/ - CHAZ HIGHLIGHTS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSlgdIL8aBY - RYAN’S PREVIOUS EPISODE: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6X9m62qHeKrLXMFmtrseRj?si=S4LcK13DTiK3sfme-g-B-g  EPISODE LINKS: - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/ - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey  - BUY Guest’s Books & Films IN MY AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952  JULIAN YT CHANNELS: - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips  - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily  - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP  ***TIMESTAMPS*** 00:00 - Ryan Tate, VETPAW Background, Current Animal Extinctions, Veteran Impact 09:10 - PTSD, Marine Corp Release, Military Assitance Post-War 23:40 - Watching Veterans Change through Vetpaw, Emotional Moment Ryan Tate’s Life  35:10 - Returning to Society, African Wildlife, Elephant knocks over Safari Truck 44:10 - Elephant Population Decline and Recovery, Leonardo DiCaprio Documentary, Botswana Military (Elephant Population Explosion) 58:40 - Veteran’s Joining VETPAW & What it Takes, Ryan Tate Addresses Allegations  01:14:11 - VETPAW Almost Cancelled & Ruined, Ryan Tate being Targeted  01:25:24 - Other Animal Conservation Orgs, 1st Undercover Operation 01:35:50 - Psychology of Working Undercover 01:48:04 - Ivory & Elephant Tusks, Elephant vs Rhino Fight 02:02:10 - Migration Patterns of Elephants, Mourning Death, Connections b/w Humans & Rhinos/Elephants 02:16:32 - Tracking Down Confirmed Poaching Terrorists in Africa, Ryan Tate Discovery Episode Interrogating Terrorists 02:28:31 - Working in Africa & Regulations Involved, Paul Rosolie Connection 02:39:31 - Captive Animals Being Reintroduced into Wild, British High Society, K-9s, Dale Comstock 02:54:54 - Chaz Cervino's Background 3:00:23 - VETPAW moving forward CREDITS: - Hosted by Julian D. Dorey - Producer & Intro Editor: Alessi Allaman: https://www.instagram.com/allaman.docyou/ ~ Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier ~ Music via Artlist.io ~ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 218 - Ryan Tate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When was your first undercover mission? 2012. Before the organization's even formed? Yeah. How did that get spun up? I was going into bars and there were specific targets, individuals within the pipeline. Get their phone number.

A lot of times I was the assistant to a rich European or American, and that's how I present myself. And the goal was to get that conversation going. If you can get that hook, because you can get that phone number, but you don't get that text back or that call back. If they actually call you, that's great. Why don't you make them trust you? Dude, it's amazing what you can do

when you just have a beer and a cigarette with somebody and I hate cigarettes, man. So you'd sit in the bar, you have a drink with them, get this information, you try to get to their number. So you have your alcohol, your cigarettes. The third element there is cash. Casually show that you have a ton of cash, which is not hard to do in Tanzania because it's a different currency. Was your heart rate jacked your first time doing this? It was jacked

when I knew that I was going in to do a buy and I was unarmed and I knew that everybody around me was armed. Were you going in to buy like rhino horn? Ivory, ivory. Literally getting picked up in a vehicle that's not mine, drove into an industrial warehouse and went in there. What's up, guys? If you're on Spotify right now, please follow the shows so that you don't miss any future episodes and leave a five-star review. Thank you.

Long time no see. Yeah, what's up, brother? It's only been like five minutes since we were outside talking so we we did if people didn't see it the the last two podcasts i put out ryan here was on with danny hall and those were a fuck ton of fun man that was awesome great suggestion on your part he is the guy's my hero something else his story's insane i mean he's done that man has seen some shit one of the most humble guys you'll ever meet too genuine nicest people but absolutely deadly real honor to have him on yeah for sure it's an honor to be on with him with him and i appreciate

you having me it was also cool having two guys who were doing some badass shit in iraq at the same time on different levels in there. Yeah. Like kind of giving the perspective on that. That was cool. That was like, that felt a little bit historical in a way, like a little bit of an oral history, if you will. So I was pretty proud of that, you know, to be able to like get that on the show.

So you don't want me to happen, bro. It's good shit. You made it happen, dude. Well, we, we, we gonna talk all about what you're doing today, but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our little cohost today, the pride of Wayne, New Jersey. The baddest football player in the history of New Jersey. And I am not exaggerating there. Mr. Chas Savino, aka Chuck Gotti.

Wow. What's cooking, baby? Great to be here with the squad. I mean, this is just the evolution of this podcast. I'm so proud. So proud to be here, have this experience, man. Well, you're one of the reasons it happened. You're one of the guys that gave me a shot and believed in this thing

even before people even knew it was happening. So Chaz was on episode 40 back in the day too, but you've been like an older brother to me, so it's great to actually have you in the new studio now it's coming a little full circle yeah it really has the whole thing's here the vibe is here as soon as you walk in you're just like all right i just want to chill obviously divulge and in some badass stories have a lot of fun you know yeah i mean we got to what was the last time we were all together like november 2022 something like that yeah i think so.

Yeah. So I figured we could, if we're going to shoot the shit on vet poll and all the stuff you're doing, I know you care a lot about it as well, Chaz. Yes, I do. So I figured this was a great one for you to come in on. So we'll show you highlights later. Come on, man. We got to take people on a trip down memory lane. You think I'm kidding.

This was Julian Edelman before Julian Edelman. This dude ran a 4-3. I not kidding we'll get there bill belichick saved his highlights on youtube for sure oh yeah he's got nothing to do these days he's watching old chad servino highlights with a little tear in his eye going what could have been yeah they can't these guys are to keep this going all day. People think you're kidding, but yeah. The guy is an athlete. Deadly serious. You played Syracuse.

Thanks, boys. That's certainly a big deal. What are you, like 5'8", too? Yeah. They list me at 5'11", but yeah. You are an underdog's underdog and a bad motherfucker. Thanks, boys. You should be proud of that.

I still have that badass in me. You're always trying to get that out. It's different to channel that from a sports perspective than you channel that in business. Your wife does a good job. She does. She does. She fills the role now. We love Lauren.

Yes, we do. Anyway, the man of the hour, though, talking about Vet Paul today. The last time we did this was episode 117, which if people want your full backstory, which some things will come up today just naturally, I'd certainly recommend that one. You really laid it on the line there and went through this odyssey of what happened. Truck Month is on at Chevrolet. Get 0% financing for up to 72 months on a 2025 Silverado 1500 Custom Blackout or Custom Trail Boss. With Custom Trail Bosses available, Class Exclusive, Duramax 3-Liter Diesel Engine, and Z71 Off-Road Package with a 2-Inch Factory Suspension Lift,

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Impress even the toughest of critics with freshly prepared Canadian barbecue favorites from Sobeys. But for people who are unfamiliar and who maybe didn't hear the refresher in our last episodes with Danny Hall, what is VetPaw? When did you found it? And what are you guys looking to do with it? Sure. So VetPaw stands for Veterans Empowered to Protect African Wildlife. We are a U.S. and South African-based nonprofit organization, registered 501c3. Our goal and what we do, I shouldn't say our goal, it's flat out what we do, is we empower veterans by utilizing their skills, their war skills, their experiences from anything they did in the military to train, advise, and assist in conservation efforts in Africa, whether that be wildlife protection, the self protection for conservationists, because they have targets on their backs and, and just

community engagement and empowerment with the locals. And so it's, it's, it's a really three-pronged mission. We're helping the people in a way while they help us. We're helping the conservationists while they help us. And we're helping the wildlife, which heals us. And it's pretty awesome. And I want to dovetail that too, for people to get a visual on it. When you talk about protecting mainly like elephants, rhinos, pangolins, lions, and some of the animals that are unfortunately traded for their parts and brutally executed, let's call it what it is. When you're talking about protecting them, this isn't just like some fucking rich dentist game hunters who are coming in illegally hunting something. This is like where foreign governments in some cases and very wealthy people from foreign countries, hint, hint, East Asia usually, are funding terrorists, literal terrorists, be it from ISIS, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab, to come in and kill these guys and occasionally hire some of the locals to come do it with them for pennies or whatever the fuck they they can actually live off do it to go kill these animals in cold blood and decimate their populations and threaten their future on this earth

100 i mean it the people that are doing the poaching yes there are locals that you know from impoverished villages that will do the shooting, but, you know, they're trying to provide for their families. So I do have some empathy for that. I have more empathy for the wildlife that's, you know, being threatened or close to extinction or close to being threatened or vulnerable on the IUCN chart than I do humans at the end of the day, because there's so many, there's, I mean, we're billions of people, you know, you're talking lions are, you know, around 20,000. That's crazy. You're talking giraffes that are, you know, 40,000, you're talking elephants are at 400,000 again, luckily, where it was down to just under 300 000 a few years ago black rhinos

are at 6 000 white rhinos are at 25 000 it's give or take you know these are yeah can we check these numbers just so ryan doesn't please do shit if they're if he's a thousand off or something everybody always has an opinion but um don't get lost on you know what we're really talking about here. Numbers are numbers. We're close in those. But like I said, you know, you can be a poor person that's trying to provide for your family. I'm not over there to tell you that you're doing something wrong. I'm telling you, I'm helping educate you, not as an American, but as a human, period, that these animals are your heritage and they are your future as well. And if we can get that encapsulized in these countries, in this, these local societies, we can actually fix this. Um, but the last thing that I want to do, especially as a white guy,

blonde toe head from Florida is to come tell an African national or whatever the country that they're from that, hey, this is what you need to do. Yeah, right. You have to be conscious, 100%. Yeah. And you laid some of this out last time, but you had from the beginning through your state department contacts because you worked in the state department after leaving the military correct you had direct contact with high level

government officials at several different african governments to where it was a partnership where where you're coming in and they're like here's what we want can you deliver and you're like, here's what we want. Can you deliver? And you're like, yes. A hundred percent. I will tell you the president of Tanzania at the time, President Kikwete, said he wanted his park rangers to operate like US Marines. And that was one of the proudest moments as a Marine. I'm like, hell yeah, let's do it. Guys, if you're still watching this video and you haven't yet hit that subscribe button, please take two seconds and go hit it right now. Thank you. Let's do it.

Because at the time, I was doing this for, it wasn't so much, and I'll be honest with this, it wasn't so much for the veteran impact. That developed in time. Yes, I mean, I realized that there were so many veterans that needed jobs or needed outlets for their skills. But I was so emotionally impacted by what I saw, the poaching scenes and the park rangers dead that, you know, killed by ISIS and the cells of Al Qaeda that are on the continent that I just wanted to go kick some freaking ass and save some animals. For people who didn't see your last episode, can you describe that? Because you were still in America working at the State Department and you saw this crazy documentary that showed what? So I came back from Iraq.

I was tossed back into civilization here in the States. And I will be totally honest. I actually just did a documentary on PTSD and I was very open about it. I was a liability, not just to myself, but society. And the way that I was just released from the Marine Corps, the transition was just, it wasn't okay. I just came back from war and I was expected to be civilized. And I mean,

you can't just go from war and, and just be expected to be a normal human being. You're never normal. I mean, you were out there literally knocking down doors, chasing out as a call. We like, that's so intense.

Russian roulette, man. You're kicking a door and you're expecting to get shot in the face. I told myself I wasn't coming home. I really did. And that, man, when I think back to that young age, because this is many years later, like how mature of myself to sit there and say, hey, I'm not coming home. And I know that some of my brothers aren't coming home. And I also knew that, hey, telling myself, like, hey, if one of my brothers here or any man or woman in uniform

has their life threatened, I'm going to step up. I'm going to try to catch that bullet first. I'm going to jump on that grenade. I'm going to do whatever it takes because that's the american way we take care of our own at least it used to be and um you know i came back and i was lost i was it makes me uncomfortable to think about because i can remember it vividly i can remember the emotions the feeling had you thought about it, like right before you came back, you're like on the plane, you come back to the United States.

Had you thought about, you can't know what it's going to be like until you actually get there, but had you thought about like, whoa, this is like, this is going to be a big shift. Nope. Nothing. Nothing. I came back and just started. I was a young guy.

I was college age. All my friends had been at college. I missed my friends. I love my Marine Corps friends, but you just kind of get that FOMO a little bit. Yeah. All my friends are at University of Florida when they're winning all these national championships. Recruiting Chaz Cervino. Yeah. I don't know why I didn't accept early on for a while. of florida when they're winning all these national championships and um recruiting chess servino yeah i don't know why i didn't accept we need you to throw balls to aaron hernandez but you know you watch all that you're sitting in war and you know at the time i think it was

just like my space that was the only thing available oh yeah wow tbt Wow. TBT. Yeah, right? Yeah, that was pretty cool. Damn it. I shouldn't have said that. No, you shouldn't have. You show my age here. What are you, 47? Shut up. I'm not.

Or is it? I'm not 47. 39. No, he's like 34. It's okay. Yeah, they're 34. That's right. Mine is 5'9".

Allegedly. But Rob, just even from that perspective, like when you before you left on the marines like from an understanding of like what your why was of why you want to you know fight for your country and then when you came back not understanding like what was going to be like my my why or who i am and trying to figure that out. But was there any, like, talk about PTSD and like serious situations that you were in. Was there any, was there any signs or ways that they, even government, the Marines could have even provided some sort of psychological help in the way back? And then how, yeah, to go back on the first question. Yeah, no, that's's that's a great question i think and again i i try to practice being open and honest and transparent

because maybe it'll help another veteran that's that's in trouble um i came back and i got sent to a a navy battalion to train their corpsmen to go deploy with infantry units. It's a very, I mean, it's among the most important roles, if not the most important role in the military. I mean, you're treating, you know, it's life or death. This is the person that's going to fix it. I mean, you talk about enemy snipers, guess who they're going to look at first? They're going to try to shoot that medic. And they're going after everybody else.

So medics are badasses. Hence Danny Hall, one of the many things in his bellowing. Yeah. What level was that? Like level four for him? My God. But, you know, I came back and I started training these guys and I was under a Navy command. And I remember going in to, to request for leave, right?

And I just come back from Iraq and I had to go into this Naval administration office. I wasn't going back to Iraq, even though a bunch of their unit was stood up to go to Iraq. And they said, no, you can't, you can't apply for leave. You need to be here for the pre-deployment training. And I said, but I'm not going to Iraq and they said no you can't you can't apply for leave your you need to be here for the pre-deployment training and I said but I'm not going to Iraq doesn't matter you're going to be here for the training and you're probably going and I'm like that was the moment I'm like dude I just lost it you can they do that I mean they could do whatever they want but at the same time

it wasn't true I was getting out of it no like, like, hey, I'm the boss here, right? Okay, at least I thought I was. I was in that mode, like still in Iraq, like, oh, you're not going to tell me what the hell to do. I tell you what to do. I'm the one who knocks. Like, hey, you're going to do what I tell you when I tell you to do it. And so I'm sitting there, and I've just lost it in this office. Well, what I forgot was the CO, a Navy captain, which is equivalent to a

colonel in the Marine Corps, the commanding officer's office is literally right across the hall, doors wide open. And he heard the whole thing came in and I turned around after losing my shit and he's standing right there. Thank God my Marine corps first sergeant was standing there and he grabs me and he's he's a grunt too who happened to be screwed on where he was sent as well and he grabbed me he kind of took me under his wing for a while but he grabbed me by the the my uh my uh what do you call it? Collar? By my collar. Okay. Ripped me into his office, slammed the door, hugged me, and said,

hey, calm down, calm down, you're okay, you're okay. And that is not the side of him that I had ever seen before. He was such a hard-ass. He'd go, hey, you're okay, you're okay. So he knew. He knew. And you could see it in his eyes that he was worried about me. And I mean, I'm getting chills right now because that was the first moment of empathy or compassion that I felt from a leader to that level.

Seeing as he pulled you aside, I would imagine right after that, you then realized like, oh, okay. All right. This this is different something's coming over me I was tripping out okay does that kind of feel like you're a pilot but the plane's below you and your body's the plane and you you know how to fly it but you're not allowed in the cockpit it's an out-of-body experience yeah 100 I'm not a pilot so I can't tell you from that you know what know what I mean. But, yeah, it's an out-of-body experience. It sucks. It's like you literally are looking down on yourself, and you're like, why are you doing that?

Stop, stop, stop. But you can't stop. You can't stop. No, you can't. You're out of control. Yeah. It sucks. How did you – I remember you told – there was a little bit of this but not these

details the last time we talked but what did how did you deal with that at the beginning like in your in the years before you transitioned to being state department protective services which i want to say it was like a couple years there how did you did you go talk with therapists? Was that the big thing for you? Like, or was it more, you know, you're literally getting medical tests for TBIs and stuff like that. Like how did, how did you kind of combat this to try to reintegrate? Sure. So I had gone to the VA and I'll say this, you know, the VA can always do better, but I am very blessed to be a US veteran because I do think that while we can always do better but I am very blessed to be a U.S. veteran because I do think that while we can always do better I do think that we we have the best um access to care

than any other country I could be wrong I don't know but that that's just my perspective that said yeah I went I got tested for TBIs and it was I mean i got tested when i was over there i've been concussed many times right um had my i mean forehead bashed and i mean it been through a bunch and yeah it was it was acknowledged it's in my disabilities they gave me medication and whatnot i just i was like sure i'll take it whatever and i just i didn't take it i didn't believe in it. But it was when I had some episode. I was down visiting my parents, and my mom is a hothead. She's a badass. She's a tiny little thing, blonde and country, and she doesn't sound like me. She sounds like this.

She's got a little bit of an accent. Swing. she sounds like this like she's got a little bit of an accent she told me she said hey get the hell out of this house and you go get help and don't come back until you do and for my mother to say that that means something and uh when she said that i did it and she might try to deny it today but i remember it like it was yesterday that was a very vivid moment i had to be really hard for her too because it's like obviously it had gotten to a point where it's like, whoa, there's nothing even as a mom that I can do about this. So I got to make like a risky decision in that way to put this red line in the sand because then maybe it will make them do something about it. She stepped up and she was being a leader there.

She was being a mother and she did the right thing because I needed help and um so honestly I started I got medicated I'm not a big fan of medications whatever but as a end-all be-all but I needed some help and it helped me get there and um you know I went in and out of therapists here and there but even today uh my I gotta tell you my therapist Emily Mullinaullinax she's in salt lake but she specializes in veterans she's badass i've been with her for five years and even when i'm in africa i zoom in i i don't i mean i skipped it yesterday which she'll probably drill me for um and i pay out of pocket too because because she's not TRICARE in network or out of network. I just believe in it that much. You know, it's, you know, hey, I don't

care who you are. It's worth it. I don't care if health insurance covers it. I'm paying for it. It means that much to me. Well, that's awesome. Yeah. And what I love about you is you have that hero's gene in the sense that you want to make sure everyone else is taken care of before you, which I'll say as a friend, always take care of yourself too. I think sometimes you got to think about that for sure. Like it sounds like you were really thinking about it in this era. Just give my wife ammo right now. I know, but it's important because obviously we're really tight, and I know how much you work and how hard you work and how much time you put in and the stress that goes with the job, which we're going to get into some of the reasons, the bullshit reasons why today too. But I hope you do continue to invest in that for yourself, not just with your therapist.

That's awesome. But, you know, on a day to day taking care of you, because, you know, the beautiful part about that part of me is the story behind it. You know, yes, we all want to go protect these majestic species that are being gunned down by assholes. Everyone can get behind that but the people who are doing it there's something a little cooler about it than if like me and chuck just popped the fucking flight to africa landed with a couple ak's there and went to work it's cool that real badass warriors from the global war on terror from all different ends of the military special forces marines army infantry navy seals you name it international veterans and international veterans who participated in some of those same campaigns that they are the guys who now get to use their abilities that they used to have to use to hunt

men to now prevent men from hunting these animals and in in the process, to dovetail into your point you're making here about some of the natural struggles that come with PTSD with doing high-octane jobs like this for America and for other countries, it's therapeutic for them. And I know that's something you care about a lot for the residents because it gives them an ability in their transition now out of active service to still use those skills in a way that they're passionate about where they don't have to go kill people and stuff. They're there to protect and serve in a whole new light. I think that's such a beautiful thing. Yeah. I mean, it's like I said, I started this for selfish reasons and selfish isn't always a bad thing i feel like you know we have this negative you know connotation with it but i did it because i needed to do it i

needed to go like it it it um it took this this uh thumb out of the dike or whatever in my soul and I needed to go and do this but in time you know I I originally I knew that I needed other veterans I couldn't just do this by myself you know I'm not I'm not Rambo um but I didn't kind of come on a little bit. No, he actually might be. Jesus. Don't even get me started on Danny Hall. Oh, my God. I was all very appropriate there. But, you know, in time, you know, just talking to these veterans and noticing, you know, I didn't talk to them about it, but watching them change. Like I used to walk around when I got out of the Marine Corps until I started vet Paul, I had a black cloud over my head at all times.

You ever, I mean, anybody that's depressed, you know, you have that black cloud, but I could not get rid of it temporarily. It would, it would still be there, but it would just be sitting off the side when I would go volunteer at animal shelters or, you know, I would go help out at homeless shelters. Just volunteering just really helped me, giving back service to others. But it was still there. It was just off to the side. And when I started VetPaw, it started to – I can't say that it totally went away,

but in time it did. I don't have that black cloud. Sometimes it's overcast because I got stressed, but the sun is there. The flowers are a little brighter. And seeing that same transition and evolution with these veterans is, man, it makes me really proud. I have to pinch myself because I'm like, you know, how am I that guy that started?

And it's not just me. I got to give Trevor Little so much respect. He's our director of operations, been with us since 2014. The guy is a legend. Wow. And I can't wait for you guys to meet him. Yeah. Probably in Africa because I can't pull a guy out of the country. He'll go kicking and screaming.

But like seeing him especially, and he's always been a stand-up guy, but he's just always respectful, very kind since the day that I met him. But seeing him now versus when I met him, he's living life, man. He's living life. It's also like – this is the nice aesthetic part about it too. It's fucking beautiful out there. I mean like you get to see the coolest shit every day. You get to wake up around like literally the coolest creatures on the planet who a lot of them also – and we'll talk about this later. Like inherently they know like these guys are protecting them too. Oh, yeah. They're very smart. creatures on the planet who a lot of them also and we'll talk about this later like inherently

they know like these guys are protecting them too yeah they're very smart they know they know who these dudes are so there's like a simpatico thing there like like a weird right they get it right the mental we're not worthy the mental upswing you have to have every day from like a positive thoughts impact of that surrounding is incredible yeah yeah no it's oh god africa once it's in your blood it it's it's there forever my wife says the same thing like when we have two small puppies little toy poodles and she's like we're just not worthy we're not worthy of these dogs i can't imagine when you're out there with elephants little toy poodles oh let's go walk the dogs please now right fucking now i'm gonna get my butt kicked by her i gotta tease it yeah i'm already fucked what did we get 25 minutes in before the first impression

we're in trouble she made it this far yeah i'm sorry anyway let's go with the bang here but i actually got you off of what just just for people's reiteration what was that what was the initial like story we talked about it last time but but when you were like holy shit i got to do this while you're working in the state department so i got the job with the state department it was cool i was wearing your piece driving around vehicles, light sirens with high-profile diplomats. I was like, oh, this is cool. That lasted for like a week or two. And then I'm like, yeah, it's not as cool as the Marine Corps.

It's not as cool as going and really letting it rain. You were doing it in New York a lot right because you lose susan rice yeah susan rice hillary clinton's details here and there dog yeah we're not going there whoa baby okay um but uh yeah just i just i didn't have that purpose, man. And I realized that early on. And I felt a little selfish in the sense of, or ungrateful, because I had a job at the time. A lot of veterans and a lot of just people in general in our society didn't have jobs. The unemployment rate.

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If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGamingOntario. It was super high. And why would I want to be ungrateful to have this job in a safe place? You know, there are threats, obviously. It's why I had the job. But, you know, hey, I got a job.

I got a roof over my head, food on the table. I always was taught growing up, just be grateful for what you have and i felt a little bad inside that you know i hated my job and i hated my life that went on for by five years four and a half five years and then i I was getting it was a Sunday night and I was supposed to go to LaGuardia Airport to get my armored vehicle checked and cleared by the dogs for Hillary Clinton's detail she's flying in the next morning I had to get up around 3 a.m. and bolt to the office in my government vehicle pick pick up another one and get out there. So I should have been in bed at like 8 o'clock.

And I watched Anthony Bourdain's first show of Parts Unknown, God Rest His Soul. I always say that. I love that guy. He's awesome. He's the best. And it was great. Go figure was on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

which I was always passionate – or not passionate, but intrigued by right studying and um the next show that came up was was on the tusk trust foundation this was on cnn and it was what they were doing with the royal family to protect wildlife and preserve wildlife in africa and i was i had some friends that wanted me to go to africa let's oh let's go do a safari and i'm like no i'm good i've already served like been all over the world i i'm good with my country right now unless it's going back to iraq i would do that at the time you were thinking then oh i would totally go back like even if my country called now and said hey you need to go back sign me up let's go i'll bring my own rifle my own ammo let's go let's do it game time that point oh oh yeah let's get it on but um war is bad i'll say that it's different than what danny said

yes not not really in fairness then he was just like hey that's what gives us jobs i like i said i used to have that bumper sticker give war chance marines need jobs i'll kid you not i did yeah my mom was like take that off your take that off your truck but anyways so i i watch this i start watching this um this feature on cnn and had i known what i was going to see beforehand i I wouldn't have watched it. But thank God that I didn't because it changed my entire life and it's given me purpose. But the first scene that I saw was an elephant laid out on a tar road. In Africa, we call them tar roads, asphalt road.

And there's a land cruiser behind it where,'s say you know you're looking at a picture or a video a film it's where alessi is and the elephant is here right massive elephant the trunk is entirely separate from the body laying where you are chas no face no eyeballs no mouth just flesh brain matter and i want to get sick to my stomach i'm like it's i don't want to say roadkill because it doesn't really do it justice but it's like you can't not look at it the next scene and this is all one two three bang bang bang the next scene is three park rangers laying dead face down in a line. You know what triggered me there was insurgents that we laid out in a line over there. It also triggered the Ramadi Marine snipers that were killed, and they laid them out. They were ambushed when their security infantry guys fell asleep, and they came up, killed them, laid them out.

So now I'm real triggered. Now I'm in war zone. And then the third scene was a video of a white rhino cow, female, mother. Her newborn calf was lost in the bush, and a newborn calf needs milk every day needs its mother's milk or it's not going to survive flat out it will die very quickly and she was missing her entire from her eyes down naval cat cavity into her entire heart you could see in it there's blood there's flesh she is they zeroed in these conservationists are filming while they're waiting for the veterinary team to come and put this

animal down humanely suffering horribly and i was pissed off at first because i'm like why are you guys filming and not not helping this animal but what the hell are they going to do and thank god i'd hug them today i said this yesterday i would hug them today and thank them for having the goal and the the just the discipline to film that because people needed to see that i needed to see that it saved my life but when they they zoomed in on her eyes and she's crying and i'm seeing these tears and she looks confused she looks angry she looks sad she's in pain she's hurting I felt all of that inside and I was tucking it away and that glass jar of emotion and she shattered it that Rhino that Rhino is hands down my hero my She is, I mean, you know, I'm a religious guy. When I go to heaven one day, that rhino better be right next to me because that rhino saved my life. She gave me purpose.

And that was the moment where I realized, hey, I'm crying. I'm mad. I'm angry. I've got snot coming out down my nose. I can't even talk straight straight i'm i'm frantic i don't i'm confused everything she was feeling i realized hey i gotta change my life i gotta do something and that was my priority from that point on for the rest of my life i said hey this is my priority these animals i was put on this planet for a reason my path was was set for me everything happens for a reason doesn't matter your religion doesn't matter if you're spiritual or not hey things happen for a reason all right everything is meant to be perfect even the imperfect right that's right and i i believe that and i stuck with it and um that's when i realized hey i gotta go to africa i just

gotta see what at least second i yep 100 percent now in the in the build-up to that before you didn't know you were gonna see it as you said but in the build-up to that obviously you laid out that there was a point pretty early on in the state department work where you're like all right this it's a job but it's not doing it for me but you know you still worked it i think what two three years something like that five uh two years after i saw that yeah well year and a half okay yeah so in the build-up to that though were you starting like i'm trying to think of like the i don't know if this is the right word but like the malaise of setting back into society you have now been this is like 2011 2012 when you see this doc something like that 2012 okay yep so you've been back in society for five years or so four yeah okay four years so you went through the really early struggles you then started to

take care of yourself with that well don't i mean i'll tell you i was still going through the struggles right i was still getting in fights i was still i mean you know that's when it's a real problem you know you're working for the federal government you can't just be going out being a dumbass like you can't you can't you can't just go out and like so what if somebody you know looks at you wrong or you know tries to step up to you just for lack of more appropriate terms but you know so what blow it off who cares what i'm getting at is like you know how this is different than what i'm going to say but you know how there's like the five stages of grief or whatever it's like denial anger something acceptance and ends with acceptance there it's not like when you get to the acceptance

level of of it it's like you're okay or whatever, you know, you still just lost somebody in your case. You kind of have a similar trajectory with that coming out and you're still dealing with these demons. And what I think is when it seems to me, but correct me if I'm wrong, please. Like when you got it to a point where, yes, you're still having some of these struggles, but it's not like at a 12 like it was at the beginning. Maybe now it's at like a six or something because you've helped yourself out. Perhaps having some more ability to quiet your mind during this era, you are now thinking about meaning more. And maybe, and please again correct me if I'm wrong you're you're wondering what your meaning is at this point because you knew your meaning when you were 18 to 20 21 it was knock on that

fucking door and take whatever is coming on the other side but now you don't have that and when you saw this it's not like this is this is the same kind of war that you did but this is another kind of war where there's innocent victims and you want to go kick some ass to make sure that that doesn't happen yeah is that the was that the like switch where it's like this this this is it this is now why why i'm going to exist period 100 because when i went into the marine corps and and man, I'll tell you, my Marines would, any Marine might fight me for judging between the two. It's a toss-up on my most proud title being the, you know, not just the founder of Batpaw, but just any member of Batpaw,

and being a U.S. Marine. You know, husband is first, but between those two. Throw that one in there. No, I got to. No, I did throw it in there. I'm sure dealing with you is no easy task. Hey, if not for my wife, man, I'd still be a mess. She's a badass, and I love her to death because she's really helped me

to stay on my mental health. But, yeah, it gave me that purpose again. But it was a purpose that was so much different because you go to war you come back from war and for the longest time i was sitting there trying to say like yeah we yeah iraq we should have been there like no it was it was like i i didn't want to i didn't want to take it in vain i didn't want to you know i i didn't want to disrespect my friends that i lost or those that have permanent injuries. I have them, but I still have my arms and legs. I can still move.

I didn't want to disrespect that or take away from that. And so I was in denial about the war. And now I realize, and especially, honestly, the conversations that we've it's it's really helped comfort me in a way that i realized like hey that just because you disagree that doesn't mean that it's in vain but oh no but that said like war is terrible always and so but it's a unfortunately it's it's it's necessary and it may always be. Yeah, there's bad people. Yeah. That's right. They need to be put in their place.

And badass dudes got to go and deal with it. But at the end of the day, like, that wasn't my purpose. But it was for the longest time. It was the only thing that I knew. You know, I always say this though too like we can have there's there's two separate conversations here and we're talking about this with danny but let's reiterate it there's the conversation of the politics behind the motivations of a war and whether or not that was right or wrong and there's the conversation of

the people who are trained to when called upon go there and do their job and do it to the best of their abilities and go into the most dangerous situations that none of us volunteered to go into. Therefore, we have no room to talk with that. And so I always separate, and I always say this on the podcast, and I will say it till I'm blue in the face. I always separate the conversation between like, for God and Halliburton and that whole thing and the guys who went there and did the job and had absolutely nothing to do with the motivations or the backroom political dealings on making a decision to invade this particular country and what they did. There were bad guys there. There were awful guys there. Saddam Hussein was one of the worst people to ever walk this earth.

Whether you agree with the war or not, that fact doesn't change. And the bottom line is so many of our best and brightest, the Yous of the world, the Danny Halls of the world, a bunch of other guys I've had in here, including Sean Ryan, you know, you guys went in there and you did your job and you should be commended for that. And we don't want to live in a world again like Vietnam where guys were spit on when they came back. God. Which was, it wasn't their fucking thought. They went over to a hell there. to live in a world again like vietnam where guys were spit on when they came back god which which was it wasn't their fucking thought they went over to a hell there and they did the best they could

those those always have to be separated yeah my father-in-law uh ron buckhammer he's a marine corps captain ford observer infantry vietnam and i was terrified to meet him when my wife took me to meet him she's my girlfriend at the time but hearing this you know he has a whole powerpoint presentation on his deployment and he showed it to me it's awesome it's such an honor to see i've seen it twice it's like takes two or three hours to show and then of course afterwards he's like all right now your turn i'm like oh shit well i don't know i don't have powerpoint sorry Ron. I didn't bring my PowerPoint. But anyways, just hearing those stories, those guys coming back, it's like, yeah, it's hard for me to complain as a veteran because we've got it so much better than they did. And those guys are heroes to me and to all of us, really.

Total legends. And they handled it with class but you know this is where vet paul is important because it is a way to transition veterans it's a way to calm them down yeah it still can be a dangerous mission not just for the people that you're going after but the wildlife is dangerous the wildlife is arguably, in my opinion, more dangerous than the poachers because they're wild animals. I mean, there was just a woman in Zambia, an elderly woman. I believe she was like 80 years old.

An elephant smashed a safari truck, and she was killed. Yeah, I saw that. Did we have that video, actually? Because it doesn't show her actually getting smashed. But, Alessessi if you can type in elephant knocks over safari truck it just shows the i mean if you piss an animal that size off i mean this you have the largest land mammals in the world out there i mean you've got you've got elephants you know not asian elephants are up there too but african elephants you got white rhinos, black rhinos, hippos, Cape buffalo. Even a giraffe can kill you with a kick.

Right. Yeah, the New York Post one. Do that one. This video is pretty crazy because it happens so fast too. It just comes right over the truck. Alessia, you need to get premium. I know, dude. Give me the hookup.

Like, it seems far away at first. You're watching it. That elephant right there, I'll tell you right now, he's not even running full speed. No, he's not. He could crush right through those trees. He's trotting. Boom.

Yeah, damn. He, like, came over and over and like readied for the squat like all right let's lift this bitch up boom damn gone it's amazing only one person died in that too very scary i've had some scary situations with elephants and you got to respect that species oh yeah always there are so many conservationists that spend so much time around certain elephants like certain herds of elephants and they know the matriarch or this you know these bull elephants that you know this pair because they typically an older bull team up with a younger bull teach it once it's out of the herd the mating herd it's kicked out the older bull will take it

under its wing teach it how to be an elephant essentially but they seem chill whatever and i always see it you know it'll be on foot or in a vehicle chill and no no you're getting complacent and you're going to get somebody killed. And these are trained conservationists and I hate seeing it. You don't respect that animal enough. You just don't. They've also, their population in the beginning of the 1900s was at like 1.2 million in Africa. And it got as low as I want to say like 250, 275,000.

That's correct. Now, like we said, I think you said 400. I believe we can correct me if I'm wrong here. I think it's even up to like 460 or something like that. So not where it was. We got to get it back. But like we're doing a lot better. But you think about that and how brilliant and intelligent these animals are and how well they communicate. We've played so many

videos on so many podcasts of different things elephants can do the the generational trauma communication that occurs in that species to understand that you know it's one thing if they know you know you and your guys because they see them every day and the same elephants see them like oh okay they protect us but they see humans out there and something ticks the wrong way oh yeah they're like killer okay well let's let's go take care of it that's they're an animal that's that's what they i mean we shit we do it to other humans sometimes too and we go to jail for it but you know there's no jail out there this is what it is no it's it's the truth because we've gone on – we've sent teams into reserves that in the past – we'll work with any reserve that wants to preserve these species. Work with any of them.

I don't get down with the elephant hunting. Personally, I just don't. As the president of VetPol, I don't. I just – it's the whole mentality behind it. It's like, yeah, I'm going to pay all this money to go like i have zero issues with hunting i had none did i eat meat off the grocery store yeah that's the worst thing no this is what i like about you guys you're not like preachy vegans or shit like that you're like real people and you and you you have a dose of reality of of where where things need to be for balance in the ecosystem.

Yeah, I think it's – we're more animal welfare than animal rights. Animal rights is the individual animal. Animal welfare is the grander scheme of all animals, what's best for all species in the ecosystem and you know personally the mentality that goes into hey you know i gotta go stroke my ego and pay a ton of money to shoot an elephant i just i don't get it stupid um having spent time around these animals i just don't get it i you know i try to stay as rational as possible and look at these things without too much emotion. Otherwise, who knows? I'll start something else other than Bat Paul.

I'm too emotional. But these countries, Africa is not what it used to be in the early 1900s. There are fences around a lot of reserves. There are – the human population has exploded. And any time that animals and humans interact it's bad so you put these fences up and now you know you can't keep these and there's no effective proven effective birth control for elephants they've tried some things we've personally been involved with it here and there how can you divulge details on that uh i'm not a veterinarian

um i was just we were assisting and helping in the darting and monitoring the vital signs of the elephants when they started it. But that's a big need. Like if you don't want elephants hunted because these reserves, these reserves do have, I mean, they have huge staffs. It costs a lot of money, not just federal reserves like Kruger, but private reserves like buffalo glue for instance that's our headquarters reserve you know it's it's the only reserve in south africa that's public

public uh land federal government land municipal village land and uh private land of 12 landowners that paul being the 12th hey they have a staff they have a staff. They have a staff. They've reintroduced black rhinos in this region after how many years? And cheetah and all these other species, they're doing amazing things, but they have to, and I speak about all reserves, they have to pay the bills. And without these reserves, people don't have jobs. You're talking about impoverished villages. Oh, you want to sit here as Americans, and we talk about, oh, poor Africans because we're on this freaking pedestal.

But it's like, hey, then don't – you can't get too emotional about the decisions that they have to make to do what's best for their culture. Well, you highlight the point of like when animals and humans are forced to interact in their environments and bad things are going to happen. In that Leonardo DiCaprio documentary, I remember we brought this up last time too, but there's now a new story that's very relevant to this. So I want to bring it up again. But in that Leonardo DiCaprio documentary, Ivory Game, there's one part where people are talking about killing elephants and they're locals where i i understand why they'd say that because what happened was a ton of elephants were coming in and eating all the vegetation these people survive off of and so to the credit of the conservationists on the ground who were on camera communicating with these people the

conservationists also understood hey this isn't like they want to kill elephants because they they hate them it's a necessity of like they need to pay their bills to survive and this animal is threatening it so if we don't do something about it they are going to have to take action and so they didn't treat it like oh they're killing elephants or poaching and that's that's an important distinction and the reason i bring it up is because there was this recent story that sparked some debate, like even in America, because it sounded very odd, out of Germany, where I forget which African government, but Botswana was threatening to send 20,000 elephants to germany i think because of some of these some of the what was it like some of the elephants were interfering with vegetation and stuff so botswana years ago had deployed their military to national parks and um any government-run parks to protect elephants from poaching. They did an incredible job, probably the best on the continent. Hey, our military's not deploying.

We're not in a war. Hey, let's put them to good use. Hey, you don't say, vet poll, right? And their elephant population has since exploded massive. I mean, it's blown up in a few countries, but Botswana, their president, what he has done by deploying that military was such a great decision. Now, that said, Germany came in and banned all elephant trophies from hunts, you know, the heads and the tusks, whatever. Not whatever, but heads and tusks, all the trophies. Like bringing it back to Germany.

Yep, hunters can't do that. And Europe is a huge, huge trophy hunter region. They love to go to Africa and do what they do. So Botswana's retaliation was threatening to send 20,000 elephants to Germany. But I mean – Can we scroll down on this? I just want to read the top of it, Alessi, the actual article. All right.

The president of Botswana has threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany in a dispute over conservation. Earlier this year, Germany's environment ministry suggested that there would be stricter limits on importing trophies from hunting animals. Botswana's president, Magwitzki Masisi, told German media that would only impoverish people in his country. He said elephant numbers had exploded as a result of conservation efforts and hunting elephant helped keep them in check. Germans should live together with the animals in the way that they are trying to tell us trying to tell us to the president told german newspaper build this is no joke okay so the reason i say some of it was sparking debate is because they at the end result is they are talking about oh well you're going to end up however you're doing it you're going to kill some elephants because it's exploding in that country that said seeing as we had a population go down from 1.2 million across an enormous continent by the way an enormous continent 1.2 million is

not a crazy number right aren't there other places that have been depleted where we can redeploy some elephants similarly to what you do with black rhino that vet paul does that's a complex question and i appreciate it i think that if you look at the evolution of the biodiversity and the bio makeup of africa you'll see a huge change like kenya the holding capacity for instance from the 1900s to now of the different wildlife species is drastically lower. Why is that? And I'm going to say something that's pretty controversial. Again, I'm not a hunter.

I am not a hunter. I used to hunt men. That's what I did. I have no interest in hunting. I wasn't a hunter before that either. Understood. When they stopped allowing hunting of all sorts, you started to see the decline in their ecosystem.

Because, let's say, it's just different gestation rates between species. Impala reproduce like rabbits, for God's sakes. Elephants, 24 months for a baby. So it mows down the ecosystem. The plants all affect each other you take down one species of of you know fauna and then or flora you're gonna you're gonna lose another just because they they all balance each other so you're saying a level of it is important to have yeah and so well just these other regions they can't hold this amount of elephants. Now, 400,000, to put it in contrast, is way different than 1.2 million from the early 1900s.

So yes, they can probably move them. It costs money, though. And who's going to pay for that? What country is going to step up and say, hey, we'll pay for the movement of those. We'll pay for the veterinary stuff to move them. Whereas you have hunters coming from Germany. If we're going to be critics, then we've got to step up and pay for it. We have to.

Burger King, man. Burger King. Can't have it your way. Yeah. Yeah, and like you said, it's just hard to fathom killing one of them. I couldn't imagine. I mean, I'm sure you've seen the videos of people doing it. It just looks stupid.

Like, you watch this huge animal coming at them, and it's like – I mean, a fucking blind person can aim at it. The target's so big. Like, what's so impressive about killing it? You shot it. Your target is literally fucking 20 feet large yeah it's not like shooting a deer from you know sniping it from 500 yards away or something you know while it moves quickly yeah you're keeping quiet for two hours yeah and sometimes they shoot it and then it's in pain yeah so i mean from a mindset standpoint it would be

you know it's a from talking about yeah from a mindset standpoint, it would be, you know, it's a from a mindset standpoint, it's more of like from a food or survival standpoint. But from a sport, it just doesn't make a lot of sense in what in where you guys are in where you're at and what you're doing. Like, yeah, there's so much more. Yeah. I think there's other things that you can that you can do granted people might disagree with that in other ways and i could totally disagree with them and and that was yeah it's they're right but no i i just disagree with it you know if you want to go hunt an antelope species or you know and i guess that's me also putting one life you know valuing one life over another but for me it's i don't know

elephants are one of the most intelligent and one of the most emotional species on the planet i just i can't do it there's also a lot of antelope yeah a lot yeah like we have so many there's certain overpopulated yeah yeah but you know listen at the end of the day i'm an american and i'm not a conservationist by trait. I am a conservationist. I didn't go to school for it, but goddamn, you try to take that away from me, good luck. Who's going to try to take that away from you? Oh, Jesus, conservationists, they spit venom left and right. It's crazy.

Love them to death, but their passion is often misdirected. It's very territorial i would say you guys are quite the conservation is minded considering the 11 years of work you put in where was that right that white rhino population when you got there 15 000 something like that yeah what's it at 30 000 now yeah you're welcome yeah it's fucking awesome yeah congrats on that god bless america It's not all from us, but we are a slice of the pie. I do like to think that anybody thinking about poaching, they lose sleep over our veterans at night. And I don't want to get too off the topic,

but from the conservationist standpoint, I mean, obviously the veterans that you're hiring, they're coming in, they have a skill set, and they could use that skill set, which I love that because there's in certain aspects. From early morning workouts that need a boost to late night drives that need vibes, a good playlist can help you make the most out of your everyday. And when it comes to everyday spending, you can count on the PC Insider's World Elite Mastercard to help you earn the most PC optimum points everywhere you shop. With the best playlists, you never miss a good song. With this card, you never miss out on getting the most points on everyday purchases.

The PC Insider's World Elite MasterCard, the card for living unlimited. Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit PCFinancial.ca for details. When you do something, like even sports in my life, I'm never going to be able to play football again. You're like, all right, go out there and play some flag. Not with that attitude. Roll the tape.

But in that respect, they can use that skill set that they've worked so hard on, and they can do that. But the educational piece that you guys bring to the table is also training them on the land because they're coming from other places. And then also the conservation piece and how you said of understanding these animals like you have to understand the psychology of that animal and and is that what you do as part of that paul is also the educational piece dude that's a brilliant topic to to bring up because yeah i mean i so we we don't just let any veteran come i don't care love danny but i'm gonna use danny to make fun of we don't just let any veteran come out. I don't care.

Love Danny, but I'm going to use Danny to make fun of him. I don't care if you're Danny Hall and did two backflips and shot Osama bin Laden in the face and your SEAL team two million. I don't care. It does not mean. He's going to take offense to you calling them SEAL team. We'll deal with it. I will run fast. But anyways, I don't care what you did.

I don't care how badass you were. This is a new world. I don't care what you did. It doesn't mean that you're right for this mission. Hey, guys. If you have a second, please be sure to share this episode around on social media and with your friends, whether it's Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. It doesn't matter. It's all a huge help. It gets new eyeballs on the show and it allows us to grow and survive. So thank you to all of you who have already been doing that. And thank you to all of you who are going to do so now. I need to know that you have passion for the cause. You need this

in your own way. And I need to know that you have a ceiling to learn a high ceiling because there's so much learning and that's coming from me the founder that's right i learn every day i learn not just from my guys not just from being out there but it dude africa you got to be a sponge it ain't your culture it is an ocean away and there are many countries within Africa people just we get this mentality as Americans it's it's Africa it's country no there it's a massive continent so there are so many cultures within it you got to be willing to learn you have to have so much respect and you got to be willing to be humbled because africa will humble you it was cool listening to you and joe ted i on the phone last month talking about it because obviously like he's literally a survivalist

and he's lived in special places like badass motherfucker he's like oh yeah do all these guys they come out there they they think they're gonna they think they're gonna own africa no no no shot you know what it is r. You know what it is. Africa owns you, boy. I'm listening to that. I'm like, okay, this is at least one guy Ryan's not going to have to give that speech to, which is good. Because I know you get some of these guys, these really high-level dudes who just think, you know, we're going to come out there and fuck shit up. And that's not a different world. I mean, you guys have never had to kill anyone either which

is an amazing thing with all these dangerous poachers coming in there we're gonna talk about that in a minute and how this really works but that's that is a that's that's a huge testament to the peacemaking mission that this is which is not necessarily what these guys are always thinking when they're like oh sign me up let's go i tell you what man and it's it we're not we're not bulletproof in that area i mean we we have such a great team on the ground and they've been kicking for a while and every guy that's coming in now it's been great but even with selection courses because we we've had stringent very stringent selection courses they're going for two weeks it's not boot camp we're not treating you like you know you're an 18 year old kid and

breaking you but but we are wearing you out with knowledge and physical fitness shooting you know, you're an 18 year old kid and breaking you, but, but we are wearing you out with knowledge and physical fitness shooting, you know, all your military skills and teaching you new classes. Those courses, we, you know, we, we thought they were great. We thought they would be the end all be all solution to, you know, bad actors that you get out there. Cause yeah, we're veterans, but Hey, we got our 10%, just like every other population of people or dynamic of people but i have literally had to fly to africa just to punt a dude off the continent that just wasn't him being him was not working culture problem oh yeah big time

and it just takes one you fly down there and you take care of that motherfucker. Yeah, no, I'm not. You take care of it. No, he could take down all of that. Yeah, no, 100%. One guy. All that hard work. One guy. And I've seen it in organizations. One guy on a team, one guy in an organization can ruin the best thing that you have going. Oh, yeah.

You had a, now let's, actually, that's a great segue, Chuck. Let's talk about this because early on in vet paul you dealt with this with some fucking person who was there for five minutes yeah that then turned into these ridiculous attacks that even to this day we're talking about it before i mean you get worked up but i do too because i've seen it happen through some of the content we've done in the past just some of the worst people who are probably funded by the people on the other side of this thing you know basically sullying the whole name and the organization and trying to paint it to be something it's not so can you go into what happened there because they tried to label you guys which is hilarious for people

who have literally never killed someone doing this as mercenaries and to this day that article is still out there which is disgusting but what what what even how did this go down because i believe it was just that one person that you were like forced to hire for a minute yeah so i had the president of a country tanzania request he was all about like I said bringing vet Pilate understood the veteran angle and and a poaching was the hot topic and this was an election year as well which any election year in any country gets stuff gets weird he had said hey I need you to bring a female veteran to Africa because we have an initiative to hire more female park rangers.

This was a time where they had been criticized as a country for women's rights. And, you know, listen, I'm here for a mission. I want to do this. And I'm like, you know, well, we don't really have any candidates, but we'll start looking. And they checked in on me here and there so do you find a female veteran yet no no no and they're like well you need to have one like it was made very clear like hey no that's that's a non non-negotiation like you need to have one so the first uh veteran she um got hired by the fbi

you can't she was the only qualified one really. And you can't argue with that either. Good for her. Second one, she doctored her discharge papers. Again, we have those 10% in the military, just like everybody else. We did a background and boom, we saw it. And the third one, you know, she had a little bit of fame from doing tactical modeling and whatnot. Tactical modeling? Yeah, it's a thing, apparently. Yeah.

You can laugh. What is it? You thinking about it? Like what kind of – I'm picturing like a ninja chick in army gear, that kind of thing? Yeah, with a gun and stuff it's crazy what men will the marketing i mean it's just targeting what she had and not my type not my type but listen i say that with all all due respect you know it's still a person at the end of the day um truly diplomatic yeah no no i i mean that though i listen at the end of the

day and i'm pretty brash and rough around the edges but i am a godly man and everybody deserves respect even those that have that fuck you over and even those that um use and abuse you you know that's what you do so uh behind the scenes she did a a uh an interview with an outlet called tactical shit.com which i would never approve is that is that tactical shit is that real yeah i don't know if it still is but we type in tactical shit.com hopefully we don't get like a fucking man we're charging horse we're we're going back. We're going back. Yeah, I don't know. This is the best marketing since, uh, since Spepal. Tactical shit. Tactical shit.

I blip it in close. Nothing. It said page can't display. Yeah. 404. Of course. I feel like that's a risky domain. This is what I got.

Oh, we got something. Oh, there you go. Yeah. So it it's gone it's gone so she gave it she worked with these guys on she did like some vlog thing and we weren't aware of it and um first of all she'd been working for you when she did that she hadn't been to africa yet i hadn't even been to africa so she recorded this we didn't know about it like the only people it was me and oz my buddy's green beret 18 delta medic like danny um we're the only two that were authorized to speak on the company we made that very clear but apparently i made a critical error as a leader somewhere by not drilling that into her head that you don't do that. Like you're not going to speak on behalf of this company. And so she used this idea of going to vet Paul,

this opportunity to tell her social media following, which was somewhat, I mean, it was large at the time, but it was like 15,000 people or something. She told everybody she's going to Africa to do this. So it started garnering support and africa to do this so it started garnering support and they want to do an interview on it and the first question or one of the

questions they asked her was so what are you going to africa to do and here it is you ready kill some bad guys and do some good oh boy it's a diesel mechanic she was a diesel mechanic. She was a diesel mechanic. To say something like that as a diesel mechanic that has never taken a life or been in the position to take a life is so disrespectful to people like Danny Hall and all the other veterans that you've had on this show. And I'll even throw myself in there.

And I didn't know about it until she was in Africa because that's when it aired. And when it did, people that had their own motives and did not like vet Paul exploited the absolute hell out of it. I refused to throw her by the wayside and just toss her because I don't know, just the Marine Corps, I'm all about accountability and I don't want to, I saw that as an error in myself, which I shouldn't have. I really shouldn't have. But at the time, the veteran community was very,

it was a big pissing contest. I'm better than you. No, that guy's not telling the truth. You're a stolen valor, this and that. And for a female veteran, even worse. And, dude, it's a flaw in me. At least at the time, I was overly emotional and too compassionate. And I just didn't, I just, inside of me, I didn't want to leave her out to dry.

I was like, hey, this is my fault. I couldn't have prevented it, but somehow it's my fault. And I didn't want to just leave her to the lions. That's a leadership quality i was about to say that's that's that's you know taking full accountability for something that you know you did let her into the organization or you let her you know behind closed doors but to do something that was totally wildly out of line that was totally untrue it's just yeah and and let me actually slightly defend her for a second and really defend you guys.

It was very stupid, but she said it. It wasn't like there was some story where some cowboy went out there and blew a couple people away completely against orders or whatever. She didn't do it maliciously. Right. She wasn't standing over dead bodies smiling like Abu Gh grave or some shit she said something stupid the fact though that they ran with this in these stories again with people pumping them who don't exactly like you because you know again maybe on the other side of the issue the fact that they ran with it as hard as they did and then labeled you guys from one quote of some chick, mercenaries, with no bodies in sight, nothing that ever said that you're not working completely in partnership with the governments who want you there. No ability for you to put out the clear facts, which I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, you shared all the evidence and

data of what you're doing and who you're working with, with some of these unnamed media outlets, we'll say. And they still didn't publish any type of correction or even, not even correction, added to the record evidence of, hey, by the way, here's some context on what they do. They refused. They said that it would be unethical for them to remove the article, but they'll do another article on us to show the real story. And I'm like, well, that's interesting, because even today it pops up as the number one news story in Google News. Not for long.

Not for long. But it is interesting to see, and a lot of people that have never you know taken a human life and then glorifying that and then for people that have and the and the mental um you know strain or just you know it's it's a serious issue and this is something that you know to throw that out there so loosely like that especially the way she did, and then the amount of longevity and the lasting power it has on Google right now is just ridiculous. spiritual, whatever you want to call it. I try to practice every day in my life. After that article came out, I got bashed by the two most important professional communities in my life. Like I was literally the laughingstock of the veteran community and the conservation community.

I was a dark, dark place for me. And I don't ever want to be the person that contributes to that of somebody else and so i say this because she as a female veteran on a tactical shit.com interview she's probably under a lot of pressure she's probably saying what what she thought she was supposed to say and probably like you know what i mean so so i get it um it was a stupid supposed to say. You know what I mean? So I get it. It was a stupid thing to say. I understand probably why she did it. But yeah, it's those, I mean, the collateral damage with it. I mean, dude, I had quit my job.

I was going through a lot of personal things. I mean, it was a very trying time for me. But you know what? I do, I'll say this. Yeah, I would love for that article to go away because it should. And it's disgusting. The journalist that wrote it had threatened our social media person to the point she was crying, said, oh, you have no idea what's going to happen if I don't hear from Ryan Tate. Meanwhile, I'm about to lose my leg from a spider bite and I'm getting evac back

to... I could literally not... This is before they even had Wi-Fi on planes. And this dude's threatening... I mean, there was an agenda behind it sure and if you go back and look at the people that were interviewed in into it which i shouldn't say because it's just going to get more clicks and boost it back up but i'll say it i i those people are gone one woman i had a a restraining order on she was a cyber stalker no longer has a conservation organization because she's a fraud i'll say that she's a bad person. And the other dude was pissed off. He's a seal that his show got canceled because it was terrible.

And they did a show on a real organization and we got clearance to do it. His show wrecked South African security companies. Everything that they did was illegal. I was living in government housing, driving, driving with government in government vehicles with government drivers. I had clearance, all of my paperwork, everything. I was deputized under their government and had presidential invite.

Show that to this news outlet, and they didn't give a shit. Didn't give a damn. Like you said. Oh, yeah. No, it was a favor. Hey, bro, do this for me. Oh, you're a SEAL. I'll hook you up.

How many people did you have working with the organization at that time? This is late 2015, I think, right? Yeah. So we had six of us in Africa, and then we had all volunteers back in the States running admin. And I got ditched by all the people in the States, too, when that came out. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They ran for cover.

Oh, yeah. They were like, peace out. We're out. Take us off the website. I was literally just- Who were these people? Were they military associates? when that came out oh yeah yeah they ran for cover oh yeah they were like peace out we're out take us off the website it was i was literally just who were these people were they military oh one of them she was working for the state department maria she helped me start the organization and believed in me and it really sucked it really sucks so sad when people got got a scurry off the ship because of how things look but i'll tell you this bro that article now i wear it as a badge of honor because

i'm still fucking here oh yeah i'm in this for the right reasons and there's no doubt about i don't give a shit what it takes i made the sacrifices my veterans are still here our team is still here and nobody can argue with that how did you come out of that because this is early on i mean you had more you actually had a few more people than I thought you did at that time. So like you had some size. Again, there's some things, by the way, today that Ryan can't divulge exact info, like exact places they are at all times. Some places you can talk about, but how many men they have in places, this is for intelligence reasons, because a large part of what veteran, vet paul does is is intelligence but you know how did you as a smaller organization at least at the time come out of that over the next one to two years and continue to build the organization and how did it affect your relationship with the governments who did know the truth you sure well i'll tell you this first i'm gonna jump i'm gonna i'm gonna jump back a little bit okay when

i when i came back to the states i was heartbroken sure i remember my uh my very close friend dean fiaco actually you you guys have met dean um and his now wife yeah great guy he sat down and i remember this this is tough for me he just looked at me he goes what the fuck happened and i explained it to him and you could see he believed in me he's always been one of my closest friends since i met him but you could see it in his eyes just like what the hell dude and then going home and my mother saying is this really worth it and telling her right back without hesitation you damn right it is i gotta double down i gotta i gotta yeah yeah like i i'm as hard-headed as my mother and i know that she would do the same but you know moving forward yeah it sucked we we've dealt i mean i'm still

dealing with it um you know i i'm gonna be doing uh hopefully we'll see uh it's called rhino man it's this feature film that's coming out on um the kruger national park the top ranger there who was assassinated is this the guy who was gunned down in the street no no that's a different that's a different guy yeah he was gunned down at his house what happened with what what happened with the park ranger in south africa so i'm gonna i'm gonna leave it to i mean if you want to google it it's fine um but they they came to his house and and yeah they meaning the poaching networks yeah they've been after he had had a lot of threats for a while and the guy's a hero and for people out there this isn't just like the guys on the ground shooting people you're talking about like the actual like

mafia organization oh yeah yeah that then directs that to happen in this case directed a hit on him yeah yeah he had had a hit on him for a while and he was very concerned but this rhino man film is going to be very cool it's a feature film that's coming out about it and these guys have been working on this for like eight years it's insane who's making it um yeah well google it because i don't want to jack it up um i just got introduced to them recently oh so this wasn't like in concert with you guys it was so we're well we were talking i was talking to them because they started a podcast which is great and you know they're coming at it from a different angle which is awesome instead of a conservation

podcast they're coming at it from you know just uh no side whatever somebody outside of the box perspective and he said hey listen i just i'm glad that i talked to you because i've heard a lot of people have had hesitation about working with you guys you know they're saying no don't don't don't work with that paul because this that and and the only thing when you google or look that they that you can find this negative on us all these years later all these years later and there's still assholes on the ground excuse me there are still conservationists on the ground i mean it's an asshole move like come on are you talking about something in 2015 and we're still there if we were be if we were scumbags we wouldn't be oh yeah yeah and so it's it's not it's not ego for me if it was i would have i would have restarted i mean

if people just like took the time to read your board i mean that's a pretty good start to be like you know i think this is kind of legit i just take the time to look at our interviews not just mine but with the team like you know i'm not making money no most of these conservationists that are doing this they're making bank why do you think people feel the need to sorry you can by the way you can pull this with you and you can pull this up too i forgot to tell you that before that's my bad i know but yeah does you hear that in your headphones way better i can hear you now i know go for it um why do you feel why do you feel that people have a like to target you or in a certain way when you're doing so much good for veteran community, for the – from a conservation standpoint, it just – Yeah, I think that there's – I know that there's several different reasons.

One is anybody that works with animals in general, we're emotionally driven people. All right. You got to have, I mean, it's not the only industry. And for the most part, it doesn't matter if I have experience with, you know, domestic animal rescues here in the States, cats, dogs, whatever it goes on there too. has their own opinions everybody thinks like hey i can do it better and they you know it's like high school they they spread gossip or make bullshit up and the other side of it and african conservation wildlife conservation everybody seems to be the one that that wants to say, hey, I did it. I saved the rhino.

I did it. Put my name up there. I'm the king, queen, god, goddess of rhinos. I did it. Give me my peace prize. Give me my Tusk Award. Give me my whatever it is. I don't give a damn.

Who saves it? Save the species. I don't want my – dude dude i am a quiet person i especially now after that stuff in 2015 i just want a quiet life i don't want drama nothing you hey even if i did it you can have it i'll give it to you take it you can champion that put your name on that trophy whatever it is i don't care it's not about that for me it's not about my I've got my military awards man I got my family I'm proud of what I have I just want a simple honestly man I want to live more like the people of Africa man living the simple life I really do and then you know I think the other reason too is we're not traditional conservationists we're not traditional conservationists. We're not conventional conservationists. We bring a skill set that none of them have because we have a problem that conservationists have never seen.

Well, let's talk about that because it's great to be a conservationist, and there's a lot of great work that happens, but the conservationists in the sandbox that you play in are scientists. They're academics. They're people who are trying to do the right thing and save these species and protect them because they study them. They are not people who carry guns. They are not people who know what to do when someone sticks a gun in their face. They are not people who know how to hunt down organizations that are highly funded, extremely powerful, follow no laws in countries that already have, you know, some widespread ability to not follow laws and they are not people who have any understanding of running some sort of intelligence investigation on international syndicates and money that comes

in that includes flowing through terrorist organizations all the way from governments themselves so you guys come in bringing these types of skill sets to be able to get to the source, the root cause, and actually have people who are trained, who know what it's like to have a gun put in their face and to put it in someone else's face, to go take care of business and cut off the snake at its head as opposed to saying, let's spread awareness. And I'm not trying to talk shit on them, yay let's spread awareness about the elephant guess what fucking you know vic mabutu over here who runs this fucking mafia that that wants to kill elephants and sell it to the chinese he's doing it yeah he doesn't care about your fucking sarah mclachlan video and saying oh my god look they're all dying you guys are the ones that can actually stop that and you've done a lot of work you can't do it anymore because now you're recognized but like you've done a lot of undercover work you guys continue to do undercover work where you're literally infiltrating some of these – some of the most dangerous people who will cut your fucking nuts off at any point if a mistake is made or you were made.

You know, that – don't you think we need a lot more of that in this particular space of conservation? Yeah, it's a big debate the militarization of of uh conservation but you know do do i want to see it militarized absolutely not of course not but hey we can sit here and debate whether we want it militarized or not meanwhile you got animals species being decimated so which which do you want again it's it's like we're just we're arguing over the dumbest shit it's just save the species but i mean like what the biggest thing is i know what evil is i've seen it you like these people they think we've got so many american organizations that have seen what we've done you know yeah we do have a big social following it doesn't mean that

you know we have a dollar from every single person that follows us on Instagram. But you all can start. I wish that we did. Let's help us out, baby. I'll tell you what, get on it. Link down below in the description. It goes straight to the mission. Ain't my pocket, I'll tell you that.

I do want to say, though, thank you to all the fans who have really taken up this cause since you were on here. I still get texts about, or comments, I should say, about that, and also some DMs about that from people. And like in all seriousness, I'm very appreciative of it, and I hope we can continue to do that. All my respect.

You see the work these guys are doing. I see this coming to VetPaw and Jungle Keepers from what we've been able to do here, and that is one of my favorite things about this podcast. I think the saddest thing for me, and you know i want to start with talking about some positive stuff in a second because i want to get off this because this is this is an inspirational story about paul and we've got a lot of good stuff going on but the venom that spit from american organizations we've had other veterans try to start their own companies we had this navy guy that didn't make it to our selection started his own thing and then starts going on reddit spreading that article again,

bad-mouthing stuff. He's not even in Africa. He's just – the guy got out of the Navy after like two years or something. Thanks for your service, but don't sit here and try to play Billy Badass when you're not. And then there's an organization out of California that started by a zookeeper or something, which I love zoos, by the way. ACA accredited zoos.

Great. But now they're teaching tactical training in South Africa to rangers and how to kick in doors of homes and take homes and secure. Dude, you're going to get somebody killed. And I found out that they were sitting there. At the end of the day, yeah, if somebody's talking bad about you, I mean, hey, it means you're doing it right, I guess. But, hey, I'm playing the nonprofit world, and I got an organization here. And if your eye's on the prize, which is saving the animals, then you should only be promoting good organizations. Don't say nothing bad about anybody else because ain't nobody competition to me it shouldn't be everyone everyone's supposed to want the same yeah yeah yeah there's one common goal there yeah exactly i don't and if you can do it better than

me dude i'll be your biggest fan ask ask anybody that knows me dude we promote every non good non-profit that we can on our newsletters, social media, whatever. If you're doing good work as a nonprofit for veterans, wildlife, the environment, we're going to promote you. Just because somebody has a dollar to give to me, to Vet Paul, excuse me, doesn't mean they don't have a dollar to give to another organization. So share the love. Right. Right. If you're doing good work, that's what you're being.

Everybody should eat, man. What is this? I do think it's important, though, to go into how this looks on the inside. Because we didn't do a ton of this last time you were here. But first of all, when was your first undercover mission? 2012. Whoa. Like before the organization's even formed. Yeah. How did that get spun up god the state department would have annihilated me the time hey go ahead try now i don't care so what what what

was disabled veteran car that's what i'm gonna pull not all there what's what was what was the details um so we i was going bars, and there were specific targets. I'm a white American, super white American. I mean, look at me. Jesus. Going into bars and finding out, getting information from associates to certain individuals within the pipeline. And so I would go in, get their phone number. A lot of times I was the assistant to a rich European or American,

and that's how I present myself. And I would get that as much information. But the goal was to get that phone number. And once I get that phone number, that WhatsApp or even direct text, and I had a bunch of different phones, SIM cards. We're working all of them, is getting that conversation going. If you can get that hook because you can get that phone number, but you don't get that text back or that call back.

If you can get a call back, that's big time. If they actually call you, that's great. How do you make them trust you dude it's amazing what you can do when you just have a beer and a cigarette with somebody and i hate cigarettes man half the time i had to learn how to not choke when i'm cigars aren't i promise yeah yeah let's keep that shout out shout out lucia oh yeah oh yeah but Oh, yeah. But cigarettes, man, I can't. Couldn't be an actor because I could not smoke cigarettes. But you were still ripping some for the team. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Ripping them. Marlboro Man. Okay. Yeah. So you'd sit in the bar. You'd have a drink with them. You'd get this information.

You'd try to get to their number. Brandy opens the mouth always. Why brandy? It's the Africanrican way baby and so like how quickly into a conversation could you even broach that type of topic i'd say i mean it really depends on the individual the more amateur they are the easier it was the more they open their mouth um how did you know what bars to go into and who to even target i got i had the information from the government already they had already started doing some intelligence and that's what oh wait the african government oh yeah yeah they had already known where they were hanging out so

you were you had you had some commission to be able to go in there yeah the locals yeah yep they gave me the information that i needed they would take like a picture of but most of the time that their their cover was already burned so i mean they're they were really good at picking out who's government who's not really good how did you how did you get that hook up even before the organization formed though with these african governments for them to be like yeah you can go do this so it was in tanzania robert mandy is his name you can google him if you want he's m-a-n-d-y or i e e robert mandy go ahead he is man i feel like I've said the word hero so many times on here But the guy's my hero

He's one of my best friends Robert Mandy holds a Master in Security And Strategic Studies in the Certificate of Prestigious School NDC from the National Security College of Tanzania Mr. Mandy is a lawyer with a strong background In wildlife and organized crime enforcement programs He was the head of the law enforcement unit At The Ngorongoro okay thank you conversation area authority

the through determination of hardworking in the conversation department in in the does that say conversation department yeah yeah yeah conversation tia man this is africa it's supposed to say conservation yeah i was gonna say conservation department africa it's supposed to say conservation yeah i was gonna say conservation department mr mandy was promoted to a principal law enforcement officer responsible for enforcement of laws safety and security of ncaa properties not to be confused with our ncaa natural resources therein mr mandy was then appointed as a public prosecutor for the purpose of wildlife cases on november 11 2013 to date for more than 25 years he has worked as a wildlife law enforcement prosecutor investigator and criminal intelligence analyst what's his story

with this like why did he get so into this space and particularly like as a native does he just feel like it's a it's a part of their their heritage yeah it's a part of him that's cool he loves his country how'd you get connected with him? So the Tanzania ambassador to the United Nations, and damn it, I cannot remember his name now, but at the time, his cousin was the chief conservator of the NCAA, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area Authority, which is separate from, it's its own entity within Tanzania. It's separate from all the other parks which fall under the Tanzanian Ministry for Natural Resources and Tourism.

So the Ministry for Natural Resources and Tourism, we'll just call them the Ministry from here on out, does not have power over the NCAA, and the president assigned the NCAA to start the Wildlife Crimes Task Force with VetPol. And that task force had the ability to go in any of the parks under the ministry. And the NCAA is the oversight or the administration that maintains and oversees the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and the Serengeti Park on the Tanzania side, which falls under the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. Okay. So, I mean, it's, yeah, it's literally like it's supposed to be where Lion King takes place. Whoa. That's so cool. really like it's supposed to be where lion king takes place whoa that's reality it actually now

i think it takes place just outside of nairobi or something but everybody thinks it's serengeti it's it's legendary place well what you know i remember in the ivory game there was a legendary detective in that i can't remember his name but he was really cool because he was just he just spent his life hunting down these networks and trying to stop them. And obviously a guy like this, very, very similar. He's a real deal. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But when you first go in there, like what kind of team is within this that he's working with like is he more of a cowboy and he's got a few guys or does he have like a full infantry if you will of people who are doing different things like you know

whether it be undercover stuff or actual patrol things which are over i guess like what was what was his real setup so he's a total professional really good at what he does, but total cowboy. It did not matter the day, the time. It didn't matter who said no. If he had intel, he's going. And I agreed with that 100%. So I'm like, dude, you and me, we're going to be best friends, whether you like it or not.

So we were. I mean, that's my dude. I mean, I used to stay in his home, eat dinner with his family. Oh, that's cool. Oh, yeah. He is family to me. I would sacrifice my life for that man. That said, he had – what's a good movie to refer to?

He had a gaggle of 20, excuse me, rangers that he was considering for this wildlife crimes task force. We got in there, and it was like, holy shit. Some of them were really good. They had a lot of potential, and others were just like, I'm flagging all kinds of stuff. And so we started doing interviews, good cop, bad cop, just trying to see how they would do under pressure. And we narrowed that down to 10. And then we went. Who's we?

Myself and Oz, who is Green Beret, 18 Delta Medic, badass. Savage. One of my best friends. So we narrowed it down to 10. And then we said, hey, we think that there's more potential in the Ranger teams that we've seen the ones that are out patrolling and stuff. Let's go visit some Ranger sites. And we hand selected some from these teams, which kind of sucked because you're taking away from their manpower and their chemistry as

a Ranger team. But we hand selected them, we we shook things up. And we started training them and they were, they were better than we were as locals too which is so much harder to do they were good really good and they just like i don't know we were vibing everybody was vibing we were clicking and it was it was it was a great team and that's like kind of that's like almost that's like the birth of vet paul in a way oh yeah yeah yeah what what so this is this is before you act did you have the name at this's like the birth of vet paul in a way oh yeah yeah yeah what what so this is this is before you act did you have the name at this point like the idea for the name yeah yeah we had the name okay but then it's start what do you say it like that well it's a long acronym especially

when i have to say veterans power to protect african wildlife every time but a lot of people think it's veterinarians so but no it's kind cool. It's kind of badass, Vet Paul. It is now. I like that name. I think it works. Yeah, I love the branding too. Prove it. Get a tattoo.

Prove it. Prove it. I'll make you my first. But one quick thing. Yeah, go ahead. I'd like to go back on the psychology of how to get in with those individuals when they when you said hey they exactly they know who's from the government or not like like say if you were in the states like i don't know you obviously buy a drink you have a smoke you break some chops like what was the

you know if you can get into any details of like conversation, stuff like that. I think that's so interesting to go back because it's so – Cloak and dagger. That's a huge piece in actually finding these culprits. So you have your alcohol, your cigarettes, whatever your poison is. The third element there is cash I actually show that you have a ton of cash which is not hard to do in Tanzania because it's different currency so 100 bucks out of the ATM oh yeah but I think you got to know how to be a good listener people love to talk personally as I've learned as the

president of that Paul and I genuinely enjoy this I like I tell my story so many times I like to ask people questions I like to learn about other people and so it transferred well to me somebody you have to learn that if that's not your thing I want to like you have to genuinely and emotionally like julian yo dude chas tell me about your wife dude you married you yeah you got it oh yeah nice nice cool man that's cool you guys healthy everything going well nice man where'd you grow up dude you got any siblings whatever like just simple stuff like that and then you ping on any which thing that you can relate to and then you tell them a little bit about yourself but then you ping on any which thing that you can relate to. And then you tell them a little bit about yourself. But then you ask them more about their selves.

Find just people love to talk, especially about themselves. Had you done undercover work before this? No. Nothing? No. How'd you get here? I mean, I've taken classes and stuff. So you had done some training with it at least.

Yeah, but. That's not the same. No, I mean, I've taken classes and stuff. So you had done some training with it at least. Yeah, but – That's not the same. No, I mean – Was your heart rate jacked your first time doing this? You know, it was definitely elevated. I wouldn't say it's jacked. I mean, it was jacked when I knew that I was going in to do a bye, and I was unarmed, and I knew that everybody around me was armed.

Where was that? Tanzania. Yeah. When you say a buy, were you going in to buy like Rhino Horn or something? Ivory. Yeah. What is that? Going into a warehouse, literally getting picked up in a vehicle.

That's not mine. Bag? Three dudes in it. No, no bag on my head. Nothing like that. I don't know if I could get down with that um i'm not getting taken but they let me see the whole route and everything and we developed that relationship enough that we drove into a warehouse an industrial warehouse uh it was behind a few other warehouses and went in there closed the door everywhere

it wasn't everywhere no it was behind a bunch of shelves and whatnot and they slid out of the way and there was like a lot of it yeah yeah yeah 100 now what now when you're standing there what do you feel do you feel do you feel like jackpot first because you're like okay we got him and we're gonna be able to act on this or do you feel disgust first because you're like holy fucking shit that's a lot of dead elephants sitting in front of me you feel yeah you feel that but you go numb to that you you i mean i think i learned this from war you can't decompartmentalize it or process it in the moment you have to be always be a professional get the job done and so i i would say it took me a couple days to really recognize the shock of seeing it but in that moment i'm like

fuck yeah dude sell it let's go yeah you're oh this is my guy this is more than i thought like dude dude thank you man my boss is gonna be so happy i'll take it yeah no seriously you got any you got any uh leopard skin while you're at it like yeah it's sad but it's real you know you you gotta sell it man um conservationists in general after i just got done you know saying what i said about them they'll tell you it's not for you know the thing the feint of heart yeah it's just not you you gotta separate your emotions and therapy's a good thing but but you're unarmed all these how many guys are in there with you uh at that point there was nine yeah yeah you were four in the vehicle

four it's just me yeah i was miked up and i'm like god help me oh you were miked up where was the mic in the center of the chair yeah and dude this is the worst part oh they didn't pat you down no it didn't even pat me down if they had p patted me down, I was going down fighting for sure. Yeah, but you're – No. Don't under- And then were your team close? Were they following?

They were – So, and that's the worst part is because for some reason I got to sit in the front seat of the Land Cruiser. It was a Prado. Yeah, that's the Carlo seat. That's where they, you know, fucking whack you from behind. Yeah, so I got to sit in the front seat. But typically, because I had ridden with some of them before and you sit in the back. And I'm sitting in the front seat, which, yeah, when you say it, it makes sense.

But I'm looking and I can see in the rear view. I mean, I'm pinging on the the tail vehicles but they were coming from the other road too they were because we knew it was in that direction and so they staged in the other direction at a vehicle checkpoint where the police would pull off and do license checks and they started rolling and it just everything just synced up and i'm like y'all are about to get destroyed i'm just hearing like no church in a while in the background like and ryan's just like lock the fuck in but you're you're doing here's the thing you know you're about to go do a great thing but you are in the most intense danger doing it and you're keeping your wits

about you not just like checking you know with your regular kind of military recon type of things but you're keeping your wits to to stay in character to get this done that's so in like those stories whenever we hear them on this podcast it's never not impressive to me i can't imagine how hard that is my um again i'm not a fan of war but i will say there's a feeling that you get when you go to war when you're when you become kind of addicted to this feeling right you get an adrenaline rush that doesn't make you want to like punch a wall or like fight something it it's a calming feel that you feel so comfortable with life. And this like anything could happen that it literally, you know, like growing up when you'd hear a certain person talk, it like makes your hair feel like it's standing.

You get that, right? So I'm feeling in this moment when I'm in this, in car I'm a little all right what the hell's gonna happen here they're just gonna execute me you know pulling into this place and shoot me in the head but once I'm in there and out of the vehicle that hair starts standing up and I start getting back in the zone dude I'm just comfortable as hell where I'm at I like stepping over the lines kind of whatever happens in life right now i'm content and i'm happy because you're in your purpose i'm in my where you're supposed to be and let's get it whoa now how'd you get out of there like you did oh just did you just buy it

and say like yeah you want to load that in the truck oh dog it got swarmed by park rangers local police and i freaking decked two dudes oh yeah held them both down and um i by park rangers, local police, and I freaking decked two dudes. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Held them both down, and I let the rangers handcuff them and the local cops because I don't want to be that white American that's doing that. I'm not following any freedom, any of that crap. Right, right, right. They didn't cuff you too, like, to think about it? Oh, hell no.

No, I was blown. They knew it was me. Well, no, it's a good question. No, it's a great question. No, but right off the bat dude that's when i was pretty amped i was like hell yeah suck it like you should have been like are you gonna cuff me come on i'm one of them i'm in on this but dude it was man those guys i remember after they were so amped up and then we just kept going and hitting targets it was great

wait who was it the ranger the wildlife crimes task force it was and that was that was with uh mandy yeah wow so he's like coming in there like good job you did it oh when they see his face they're terrified terrified they're like shit he got us and he's that's a scary face he's the nicest. That's a scary face. He's the nicest guy in the world, greatest personality. But you mess with elephants, rhinos, or any animals, game over. You're going to get that face. That's not a LinkedIn profile picture. No.

This is the last face you see before you meet God. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yep. For people out there, though, who, you know you know this is the no pun intended the 500 pound elephant in the room we haven't talked about this whole time but like we've mentioned poaching we've mentioned people are funding and we've mentioned terrorists are doing that but what are they doing

like a lot of people when i go to talk to them about it they're not aware of this they're not aware of like what elephant i say ivory they're like wait what is that and then i say you know the tusk and they're like oh of course they're not aware that this is like this huge you know illegal delicacy that people are trying to disagree with you i think i think people are aware of it i think they're aware they don't they want to turn their cheek they don't want to know these things they want to live their they people want to live their lives they don't want to turn their cheek. They don't want to know these things. They want to live their, people want to live their lives. They don't want to think about struggle and they want the easiest possible way to live.

And if that's, if that's not in their day to day, then it doesn't affect them in a way. You know what I mean? I guess it depends who you're talking to. Exactly, 100%. Right? Cause like,

you'd be sure, cause you know me. It makes me really happy that you said that. And me too. I'm glad that, I'm glad you're getting a lot of that because I bring this up with people all the time. They're like,

they're doing what? They're they're taking what wait why do they want why do they they'll be like yo why do they want the elephant's horns that's my favorite one i'm like you know but but but they want the rhinos tusks right but we're in the world of literally like you can get you can anything is that you're at your fingertips yeah so if you wanted to know something that's right you. You, you know, and, and I think there's enough, I, in my opinion, I think there's enough awareness on it that people don't want to know these things because they could be super empathetic and, and it could ruin their whole day or their whole week knowing these things, you know, because you're, you get so

involved, emotionally involved and you just can't, just like i can't bring that into my aura into myself because i'm not i'm not going to be well after knowing some of these things same thing myself like i'm like listen to these stories and that rhino and and just a tear coming down like i like i'm getting emotional like that shit's fucking awful you know so not to go not to no 100 i think and i think you're right about some people for sure because it's like we don't have to see it so you know what just i'm sure they'll figure it out right and that's how we go yeah that's that's a fair point but for the people out there listening who don't really know and i'm not blaming people like now they're listening to the podcast this is

this is what we're here to do we're here to awareness so what did they do these people who do this and who's doing it and why with let's start with elephants with elephant tusks and the ivory if you will all ivory is is a status symbol it's to show that i'm rich and to throw on your desk or your mantle whatever um carved up or just plain doesn't matter i've seen it both ways in pictures at least um but yeah no they they carve it up i mean it's beautiful what they do to it i'm not gonna lie it's it's gorgeous it is art but it is disgusting when you think about what it is it's terrible it is literally just to show hey check out what i got dude it's like buying a ferrari except it's a piece of an animal yeah it killed that had to die yeah for you to have it a miserable death too and what and for

the people out there who are like and this is probably gonna this gonna end up being a two-prong type thing so there's two things we gotta address but for people who are like well why did they kill it why don't they just cut off the tusk? What's the answer there? Yeah, you can't cut off an elephant's tusk. It's connected to the brain. It has membranes in it. Even just to chip a tusk, like the tip of the tusk, it is like ripping a molar out of it.

It is a tooth. It's a tooth. It's a tool. They use it to eat with, to break branches, and obviously to defend themselves. And it's important to ask like what they want with the rhinos is the horn which is literally just like your if you hold up your fingernail right now that's what it is it's keratin it's the same exact thing it doesn't actually do anything the people who claim like oh it's some ancient spiritual medicine that's

total bullshit you know it's complete completely wrong and for people uses status symbol obviously that's completely wrong too but when they go to do this to the rhinos they go in and they hack it down beneath the skin to the point that it creates an enormous gash on rips their face open and they're gonna bleed out like when a. Like when a veterinarian gets there, usually they just have to put them down at that point. But hypothetically, the people who do this could, and this is still wrong because it'll ruin the whole population genetically and things like that, people could go in and just saw off without going into the skin and cutting open the rhino.

Like why don't the terrorists, if they're so worried about getting the bad press and having people come after them, if they're going to go do this, why don't they actually just saw off the actual horn and not puncture the skin and do it in a hack job fashion? It's a great question. I get to ask this one a lot.

So if you are a poacher, you want to be quick. You can hack, I've literally watched video footage, unfortunately, of poachers hacking a horn off in 45 seconds. Boom, boom, boom, and they're gone. In order to properly remove the horn, you need an entire team of people to help. You've got to dart that animal with a veterinarian. You have to have an entire team to make sure that that animal, that rhino, lays down the proper way so that it's not cutting circulation off to its limbs because that's bad. I mean, it can lose a limb or die. You have to ensure that the animal's temperature, body temperature, stays at a certain level.'s temperature, body temperature stays at a certain

level. And it has to be done at a certain type of day. If it goes above a certain degrees, you know, 75 degrees, you really shouldn't be doing it. Um, because that animal will overheat and you're going to have serious problems. Um, and it takes a while, a drug to put it down. Once it's down to saw through that thing and to know where to saw it off, because you can go too short. I've seen it happen. The animal was okay when it did happen. To cut through it takes a good 10 minutes. And then you have to give it the antidote so that it wakes up.

What do you call it? The reversal drug. Right. Excuse me, not antidote. The reversal drug, excuse me, not antidote, the reversal drug. So that way all of its vitals and its bodily functions come back in the most healthy way possible. And you don't want to do that. We want to dart rhinos as least amount as possible.

And, you know, oftentimes it takes a helicopter to find them, and you've got to dart them from the helicopter or a vehicle, whatnot. It can grow back. It will grow back. It takes about two years to get a substantial size back on it. But what you're doing, as you had just mentioned, Julian, is you're affecting the mating patterns. So now you're starting to affect the genetics of the animals. And why is that?

What do they use the horn for? Well, obviously, if they don't have the horn, they're not going to get laid, you know? Right. Bingo. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that dominant bull is no longer as dominant.

Yeah, he's got his weight, but that horn, I mean, rhinos can kill each other with that horn. That horn will go right through another one's torso. I mean, it's gnarly. It's bad. Especially black rhinos. They are, are i mean white rhinos are bigger and they get into some nasty fights but black rhinos can mess each other up you ever seen a video of the out the it was pretty recent i think of the elephant fighting the rhino yeah can we pull out policy the was wild we had a video of uh an elephant showing up elephant beats

up rhino it made uh i forget whatever the show was but it's like a daily tv show like some viral clips or something on one of the major networks and we were putting supplemental feed out for the rhinos because it was drought going on and an elephant came out of nowhere it was two massive rhinos he was like get the hell out of my face this is mine now there it is staring him down it's like backing him up like like you hear like the western music that that is a serious rhino too tries it with the horn can't even get it up there that's how big that fucking elephant is it's not even like a huge tusker either you see his third leg there yeah no he's he's his fifth leg excuse me his fifth leg oh done ah poor guy you hate to see that

where's the ufc ref coming in going no mas he's not gonna kill him here is he no no he just i think he did gore him and then he and then he ran away so he's got a little blood down there he goes yeah yeah that is some uh some national geographic shit right there yeah everybody thinks everybody thinks animals get along no elephants just like i'll stay right here it's not disney fuck you g is that some of the blood on that i think so yeah geez wow and this was the other thing you know it's bringing it back to elephants for a second with the with the tusks we've seen genetic changes on the continent over the past hundred years because the ones with the tusks are obviously the ones

who are targeted to the point that as they decrease the population as poachers were really breaking through for like 30 40 years there especially we are seeing fewer and fewer african elephants born with tusks because it's it is is being threatened in the gene pool as as a survival instinct against the poaching and genetically because like so many of them are being killed that now the you know you think of that image of of the african elephant the real king of the jungle i'll do respect the lions like you're thinking of those fucking tusks like it's it's a part of who they are and now now when they don't have them, forget all the behaviors you already even laid out that they use it for. It's going to change them as a species.

They're not going to have the same, you know, there's still a big powerful animal, but it's not the same thing. We are so close. And I don't even know if it'll come back to losing the big tusker bloodlines. I mean, you're talking about tusks that are bigger than this table i mean they are they are the size of this this curtain behind you whoa they are massive because you got to remember that tusk goes up in just because the you can't see it anymore the skin's there it goes way up it's it's it's got membranes and it's connected to the the brain i mean it's part of their body so it's it's it's way bigger than what you see in those that that tusker bloodline that king of the jungle that you mentioned the real king of the jungle is that that uh that bloodline

is pretty much gone what does it just feel like when you've when you've had to pick one out in some of those rooms when some of these guys have it? Yeah, it's an emotional feeling. So I'd say it feels emotional to start. The physicality of it. I mean, they can be heavy. Depends, too. Some of them are hollow to a certain point, and then they're filled the rest of the way.

But pretty smooth, I would say. too some of them are hollow to a certain point and then they're filled the rest of the way but um pretty smooth i would say um a lot of the ones that i picked up still have dirt on them which is sad they still have you know some of them can even have leaves or tree bark stuck to them still i've been in rooms four times the size of this of confiscated ivory wall to wall floor to ceiling i got pictures of it i'll have to show you are some of the biggest tuskers though that we have out there in some of these countries are there like in particularly them because obviously they're rarer and rarer now. Are there extra precautions that are in place for them specifically? Like are there groups, not just you guys, obviously you guys are one group, but are

there groups that are kind of around them all the time and also using tracking materials where they're never a certain distance away from them so they could have closing speed if there were enemy combatants entering the area for some reason? That's a great question. South Africa, there are a lot of private reserves and some federal reserves that have imported through the game trade, which is a big industry in Africa. They've imported younger bull and cows, elephants, from those bloodlines into the country. So eventually they might become, hopefully they will grow into that.

We'll see. But I would say KWS Canyon Wildlife Services and Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. Yeah. Pinnacle of conservation. I mean, they are so badass. Yeah. What's the story with Sheldrick? They're such an amazing organization.

Dude, Daphne Sheldrick um god rest her soul uh total legend man their family just dedicated their entire life to um fostering orphaned elephants yeah and raising them so cool instagram so much respect for them i mean total icons in conservation and for the right reasons do they have people like you as well working with them? They have an amazing security team. They have an incredible veterinary staff. They have helicopters. You know, fortunately in Kenya, they deal with a lot of drought. And so, you know, the elephants know where to be to get that supplemental feed or water. But at the same time, they can cross over into Tanzania at any point. Luckily, you know, you do.

Hopefully they cross into the Ngorongoro because the Ngorongoro is, their security team is epic. You keep forgetting that elephants don't have borders. They do not. You know, even if there's a fence around the reserve i'll need your identification cross here please it's nuts man i'll be driving down the road like in tanzania or kenya and in the middle of the night and boom here goes elephants crossing right across the border dude i'm sitting at a pizza restaurant in tanzania on the street they have

those pizza yeah is that any good uh it was good for africa same place that same place that like is it better than florida is it better than florida it's like don't well i come from a pizza family so i know it does i know it does but it's the same place that jane goodall used to hang out apparently so i'm like all right well now if it's good enough for her it's my spot so but anyways i'm sitting there and and i look up and here's elephants literally from here to the wall crossing through the restaurant to get to the other side and they're just gonna go raid farms oh hey props yeah it was the coolest thing it's great like nobody's gonna believe this like yeah that's a lot to keep track of that like i i always forget

the simple shit like that because we just look at the map like they're here they're here they're here but they could they could fucking move from there to there themselves oh yeah and just decide yeah but how like how from a behavioral standpoint how territorial driven are elephants meaning an elephant is born into a herd of elephants maybe i'm'm going to make up a number right now, maybe it's 30 of them, something like that, and they're located 50 miles inside the Tanzanian border. How much do we see patterns where those herds stay in a certain area for their existence versus just randomly, you know, make a 300-mile trek to some other country?

That's another good question. It has to do with the weather patterns. You know, drought is a freak thing. A lot of times, you know, it can become annually, and it shifts. So they're going to migrate with the rains. They're going to migrate to the rains they're going to migrate to water sources even if there's water source there there may not be food there yet so they're always going to move but they always know where they're born they really do i mean it's freakish

it's you know i i kind of hate saying that it's freakish because like we're humans so we think everything is abnormal for another species to at the end of the day we're just animals too um but they're so incredibly smart and their memory is insane absolutely nuts um they remember everything they do mourn their death they absolutely do oh yeah we can we pull up the video again elephants morning elephants in morning and anybody yeah every now and then you get some like some like pioneer conservationist or crusader that's like yeah that's not i debunked that bs yeah bullshit there's millions of videos don't be that guy i shouldn't say millions but there's a lot of videos that show it yeah this one right here from National Geographic. Let's hit this.

That'll be over in 10 seconds, apparently. I got to give you my logout. I keep saying that. Yeah, but do you have the other one? That's not the account I watch on, although it should have it on all of them. Yeah. That's bizarre. Oh, you know what? They may be computer-centric now.

They're really hitting people. All right, so right here, if you're looking on the screen, you can see that there's a carcass. This herd has found it. And they all take turns basically like having their own moment of mourning over the body. And you can – here's the other thing about elephants that's amazing. You can see their emotion more than many other animals. You can, they're, they wear their emotion on their face and their

eyes. It's so powerful in their movements, right? Like how, how quickly are they moving with their legs? What, what's the, what's their posture? Like I love watching videos late at night of elephants and almost like seeing them talk without talking. But you see them. Like it's so clear right here. And there's another video that we show. Can you pull this one up, Alessi, of the mother who has to make the decision about her baby elephant? I don't know if I can watch this one. This one is really tough.

Just type in mother elephant baby dies. But, you know, again, to your point about the documentarians who captured that footage of the rhino dying, it's important people see this. I don't think I'll watch this one. I'll just pipe out for this. Okay. I'm serious. Stuff tears me up. All right.

Well, we're not going to put it on. I mean, if you think people are going to see it. you know no no no we we've played it we've played on other episodes i think i i think i i played it with lou ferrante who was by the way so passionate about this stuff yeah he's a good guy yeah really good dude but he was he's done some content over in africa looking at this and he's like blown away i'm stoked to get him out with us but he what a character too oh my god but you know you see things like that and people you can go watch that video on your own since we're not going to show right now but you know they're they're there's a human feeling you get when you watch it they're just special it's a not worthy feeling yeah yeah i Yeah. I think photography is a big passion of mine.

It's my favorite hobby. And I love to just zoom in on the eyes of animals, but especially elephants. They're all unique in their own way. Yeah. Super special species and total gift to our planet. When you were over in africa doing work what's i would imagine there's certain herds of elephants that you have a pretty good relationship with yes i would say specific members of our team more than myself now

because I'm not over there as much. I've got to keep things moving and spread awareness, do things like this. But even rhinos, you know, the guys, it's your voice. The elephants know your voice or they there's it's your voice the elephants know your voice and or they they know our team's vehicles they know what they look like how they drive the sound of them like you know before the guys will start start the vehicle if they're sitting there and watching elephants or rhinos you know they're all the vehicles are stick shifts they're manual and the guys will push the

clutch in and move the stick shift around between the gears so that the animal can hear that and know that we're getting ready to start the vehicle and not startle them and so just simple things like that and how the team drives they know that hey this is somebody that's supposed to be on this reserve they know that vehicle versus somebody that's just a guest on the reserve or a worker that was paid to be there and they don't like those vehicles i mean every now and then though you get a pissed off bull elephant or a female it's just like hey you know what not today all right get out of my face but but now it's it's it really is a privilege and i'm so happy that every one of our veterans just sees it as a privilege and a blessing to be able to do what we do.

It's just – it's like not even real. Like I still – I can't even look back at all the things that we've accomplished and really absorb it because it's like I get to live this life. I mean, yeah, it's stressful. We just talked about a bunch of BS that I've had to go through. But I'd go through all of it again if I had to. Because this is so, I mean, it's incredible. It's your purpose, man. Anything worth doing like you have and the accomplishments that you've made, it's going to be hard.

If it wasn't hard, you wouldn't feel that type that's right amen of um you know some of the genuine emotion of of of how you know how much of an impact you're making some of the reasons though that it's hard or annoying yes right like it should be hard because the job itself is hard and there's bad guys and we got to figure out where those guys are but when you have friendly fire you know which is which is some of what you deal with that's what's annoying that's what we gotta get rid of people we gotta stop that yeah but you know like we we've been talking about your your team all day lse do you have that documentary i sent you on the text yeah can you pull that up real quick i just want people to see the the opening scene of this it's one of the coolest things ever let's go right to the front uh-huh press play

so you they were they were capturing you know kind of like the the ambiance around in this documentary we're not gonna have the volume on just because it's it's proprietary content and rip that bandana but you see like these these are your guys in patrol i love this part stands up this is a veteran literally lost a limb over there. Gavin, he's a badass. Fucking out here, jack this shit, protecting these animals at the crack of dawn. Marine scout sniper.

Now, what are they looking at right there? Is that elephant, or is that a helicopter not friendly? No, it's a friendly helicopter. He's coming in and buzzing the tower. He's making sure that uh we're good that's one of the only helicopters that's authorized to fly at night in the region okay so what what's your i i know there's certain aspects of what you guys do and how you do it that you can't divulge but what's the protocol here from a general basis you have a certain number of guys on the ground we're not going to say in the various areas i believe you

work in numerous countries we'll say okay it's a nice list but not going to say how many those teams are sometimes tasked with being responsible on a night watch or something or a day watch for thousands of miles of land in a way. How do you – that's like a needle in a haystack. How do you even approach navigating that from a strategy perspective? It is gathering as much information as you can. Even the smallest things and you're noticing a shift in the atmosphere you're looking for that anomaly something that makes the hair stand up in the back of your neck or something that just you can't stop thinking about something was off i can't

figure it out but let me go back and look at that information again. Let me analyze that again. Let me figure out what I'm seeing that's off here. Can you give an example of binding chest? So, yeah, I would say here's a good one. So you're going down. You're doing a perimeter patrol, which is no big deal during the day. And you're doing a perimeter patrol. It's not dangerous because during the day, like I said, and you're just looking for something that's off, something that's abnormal. And you notice, hey, there is a ton of, and this is a small example, there was a limb on this, this, um, up against this fence yesterday, a massive tree limb, not massive, but you know, big enough.

And we had to move it and we put it over there. And then there was another one down the way and we had to pick that up and we had to move that as well. We just put it off the road and there was another one. We moved that one. Now, all of a sudden you've got all three of those stacked on top of each other like this, all four of them. We'll say there's four.

Well, that's a chute. That's a funnel. That's the funnel animals into a snare, stuff like that, something as simple as that. Or there was, let's say, we just patched up a hole here in the fence, not a hole, but it was pushed up. We patched it up, made it great. And now all of a sudden there's a footprint there. Now we got serious problems, serious problems.

And now you're looking for spore. You're looking for more footprints and you're tracking that. So we have tracked, tell you what, we've gone on 13 hour tracks following yes i'm talking through canyons rocks higher as two stories tall and finding the tracks again and we're back on spore and we're going we had and this is shoot this was this happened twice in one week christmas christmas eve into uh christmas morning and then again new year's eve into new year's day whoa and it was Twice in one week, Christmas Eve into Christmas morning, and then again New Year's Eve into New Year's Day. Whoa.

And it was awesome. There's nothing I would have rather been doing. We are going. Oh, yeah. Sticking to it. And the worst part is, though, is that you've got to leave your vehicles when you're a small team way the hell back there. Why? Because we need all four of us on the ground.

You don't know what you're going into you don't want to go into a machine gun fire so i don't have vehicles with crew serve weapons on them yeah those vehicles are a liability once they hear them they're going to change their course so i'd rather track them on foot i can rely on myself not that vehicle all the time so now we we mentioned it a few times today in passing but i think it's important to go into it a little bit one of the things that you hilariously got some shit for last time you were here is when you correctly called out some of the organizations who are quite literally even doing it on the ground let alone sending in the people and resources to make

it happen weaponry whatever and that is isis boko Haram, al-Shabaab, and these different terror groups. To also dovetail that point for you and add something to it, a friend of mine who is in intelligence, we'll leave it there, who was tasked with watching multiple regions, including the African continent recently, filled me in to back up that point from you and say, it's actually getting worse than what Ryan said when you were on here. And I think we recorded that beginning of August, 2022, it came out September, 2022. And he was like, Africa is actually where ISIS has been rebuilding. And it's very real it's like

they're not dead they're they're very much still around and they have been basically like licking their wounds and trying to recover in africa and one of the ways they're doing that financially is through poaching even if you don't find it in the media i'm telling you right now i've got my sources I trust my who trusts the media nowadays anyways but like if you want to be right on something this isn't your go somewhere else

this is the real deal and this isn't the place for it bottom line is ISIS we've been saying it since the 60s or 70s that Africa is the next battleground ISIS plans on making it that. And their way to do that, one of the ways to do that is wildlife.

Fund what they do. Yeah. So do all your Googling, whatever you want to do, but you can even talk to think tanks if you want. But most of them will support that, if not all of them. But even those that don't, I'll tell you they're wrong. I'll be your think tank there. I see it.

I've witnessed it. I can tell you where cells are right now. Well, that's the question. Have you and your team and or some of the groups, like what was your buddy's name again from Tanzania? Oz? No, no, no. Oh, Robert.

Robert Mandy. Yeah, yeah. Guys like him. Have you guys personally caught some of these guys? I have personally tracked terrorists and apprehended terrorists with Robert Mandy. Confirmed terrorists. Confirmed. 100%.

And they get put in prison. Good shit. When you get them. What happens to them afterwards, it's up to the government. But most of the time, you'll never hear about it again. Yeah. They don't think kindly of terror groups in Kenya and Tanzania. I would imagine not.

Good for them. Yeah. I'm cool with that. Yeah, likewise. That's so, it's amazing that's not covered. And then from a technology standpoint, like is there surveillance and you guys – is there cameras involved? Like I know obviously eyes, ears, you have the – with the donations support all the technology and the trucks and everything that you guys have. How do you cover?

Like just covering all this ground and and and you and as you said people don't usually do this during the day they're not they're not doing this you know in plain sight and so to speak they're doing this at you know in the middle of the night yeah so we do have some drones you don't have to tell me no no it's fine i'll tell you what i can't we do have some drones um uavs that are industrial level slash military level to a certain extent. You know, anything that is not allowed to be exported out of the States due to ITAR restrictions, if we can get it in South Africa legally, obviously legally, we get it there. That said, we do have some UAVs. The reserve, our headquarters reserve actually just got two more this week that have night vision and thermal capabilities, AI capabilities, which is great.

They fly long term. They can land with, you know, there's a box in the middle of the bush. If they start running out of power or inclement weather is coming in, that box will open up. It lands in there, recharges while it's closed. And when the weather clears, it's full of battery and gets up and goes again. It can track vehicles, people, animals, once it learns all the AI stuff. You know, we started getting into the satellite imagery close to real time as much as possible and these companies love to you know they have all these resources they're mega big time companies and at the end of the day they they give you a lot of hope you know we could do this maybe there's a potential for sponsorship but then

at the end of it they want you know three hundred thousand dollars a year just to give us access to their satellite imagery in a very small area and it's like come on dude we're a charity here don't don't sell this to us like you it's it's you have the capability to make a difference here to help save a species and support those veterans and these organizations that are doing this you're making enough money why don't you why don't you hook them up yeah isn't that your your responsibility like everybody in life no matter what you do you have a responsibility to serve others in some way and i think this is a good opportunity for these satellite imagery companies to to really step in and change the landscape of of wildlife protection but there's also i hear a lot of these stories from you

because the the crazy thing about a lot of the undercover work you guys have done over the years is you end up bumping into a lot of other things that have nothing to do with what you're doing that you kind of uncover and i know some of those you obviously can't divulge but like there is such an insane international dark side of capitalism if you will that occurs within the african continent and all kinds of businesses we've seen the stories like the cobalt mines and stuff like that. Again, I've heard some of the ones that you've told me about that blew my mind. There's so much that people are already taking advantage of there, and yet, I don't mean to be a cynic,

but do we expect some of these same companies who are operating in that type of territory, okay, implicitly at least, with some of these kinds of things, to really give a fuck and want to help out you know well i choose to be optimistic i choose to i mean i i hope that somebody somebody steps up and does the human thing the right thing and helps out because you know we don't operate off an endowment we'll get there one day because we're not quitting yeah doing this long enough yeah we we got to get you there and uh we'll make it happen but we ain't paying no three hundred thousand dollars for satellite surveillance that you've already got put it at 435 if you don't

mind unless you can pause it right there i i wanted i wanted to bring up this video too this is another one that's been played on podcasts before yeah right there pause it right there so one of the things I love about the approach that both you and Paul Rosley have your buddy Paul and Ryan if you go look at 117 was the

guy who started putting this all together here introduced me to Paul all that very cool to see all these worlds come together but Paul in the Amazon you in africa your goal is more common sense education if you will for some of the people there who are involved in these in some cases there are literally some locals who who are you know roped into this to do this or whatever and the approach is not to so much go after them and destroy them versus it is changing hearts and minds and i love this clip that i want to put full screen and we'll kind of narrate it because it is owned by discovery but stick this full screen

if you don't mind alessi this was you on discovery i, doing a feature back in 2017, something like that? This was 2014. Oh, this is way back. So what you're going to see here is there are a couple locals in this case who were caught poaching. And this guy, we can play it now, Alessi. This guy who's one of the investigators is telling you, and I'll read it on the screen in a second. This night we have to talk to them very, very very seriously but we have to torture them we have to use like at least a bit of reasonable force so that we can like have the crucial information

and he's telling you this the information which we need to get us exactly the people we want to start and your approach is no let's go in there. Let's talk with these guys. Let's say like, okay, you're playing for the wrong team right now. You obviously got caught. You're in trouble, but why don't you think on it? And I'll come back tomorrow. And if you, and, and if you want to tell us where all these cells are who have hired you and take us there, we can look at you potentially becoming park rangers and joining Team South Africa. Or was this in South Africa?

No, this is in Tanzania. Team Tanzania in this case. It's a very cool clip. I'll put the link down in the description. But it's literally showing you on the ground with these guys telling them this. And that approach, this is the peacemaker approach. You know, warrior guy coming in,

having to take care of some shit, but you're not in there putting holes in heads where you can change current holes in hearts and mend them up. I think that East Africa specifically, but conservation at that point had really humbled me. I was no longer – was I capable of doing what I did in the Middle East? Absolutely. But I realized, yeah, this isn't the Middle East and you can't be a bull in a china shop. These are real people.

And if you saw where these men and their families lived, it'd break your heart. It would break your heart as an American. just total poverty they only got water every now and then water was not even a they were lucky to have water during the day they were lucky to have corn or maize it's crazy it's crazy is there who the hell am I as some blonde kid from Florida, marine or no marine, I don't care what my background is,

who the hell am I to come over an ocean to their country and say, do it this way because I said so? Absolutely not. That's not how you get somebody to be on your team. When you do run into the, and again, it's important to note that a lot of times you're not running into locals who are just trying to feed their families it's like quite literally terrorists and stuff that's a huge huge misconception people have but when you do run into the ones where it is that and you know they were obviously hired by bad people but they are trying

to you know literally get water out of their spout for their family is there a part of you that even though you don't, you hate the act and you don't agree with what they're doing, it's the opposite of your beliefs? Is there a part of you that does have real empathy for that? For these people like this? Absolutely. Yeah, 100%. I do, again, I have more empathy for the animals. However, I have enough empathy for that person to give them a chance to do the right thing. I still have that mutual respect that every human should have for one another until proven otherwise. I sit here and I look at that and I wonder where they are today.

Are their families okay? Are they still poaching? Are they doing the right thing? Well, one of them took it all. you know i sit here and i look at that and i wonder where they are today you know are their families okay are they still poaching are they doing the right thing one of them took it all oh yeah oh yeah and then the other one started seeing how we the rangers started treating the the first one and then he wanted to get in on it he's like okay they weren't kidding like it was kind of cool to see but man that the one guy, though, that didn't agree to do it in the beginning, the one that was sitting in the white shirt against the wall by the window, man, I felt really sad for him. Because he had the opportunity to really change his life around

and really help his wife and his kid. It's out of my hands i don't know what their judicial system ended up doing with him do you think he was afraid of what the people that's above him in the line might do to him in a family it's exactly what it is i can understand that 100 i i try to put myself in their shoes to think like, yo, what's this guy going through? I can't imagine that. Can you imagine the stress? No, you think about our everyday stresses and it's, you know.

Whole different playing field there. Yeah. I mean, it's, look, you're very conscious of not being, you know, the great savior from America coming in there. Because, you know, these people, they're from there. This is their land. Like you said. I'm a guest. Exactly.

But you still have to then try to, when you're in these situations, in a way, educate them on their own fucking place. At least the part of it that they're ignoring so it's a very fine line dance you have but someone's got to do it you know because obviously you just look at the numbers before you guys even started in some of these other organizations too like some of these tactics are working they speak for themselves. Yes. And I don't think anyone's better fitted to be able to tactically take on what is going on in Africa than you. You're 100% right. We bring an unconventional approach to a conventional industry and sector. Yeah.

And that's what's needed. The world's just moving faster every day. Yeah. You better bring it you better get creative and think outside of the box or they're going to get you and we do that what is right now obviously like you don't personally do undercover stuff anymore because you're too recognized but like how much does stuff like that that perhaps you your organization is somewhat involved in still go on with guys like your boy in Tanzania? I'm not really at liberty to speak about that. Okay.

Things go on, and I'll tell you Robert Mandy is a pioneer of it. Other countries have adopted similar strategies. Got it. Who's the worst, like who's your most wanted poaching cell right now? Where are they and what's their story? Won't tell you that either, unfortunately. I will tell you that a couple years ago, there was a poacher by the name of Navarra. Biggest damn scumbag in the world, and they finally arrested him.

Was that the one they got in the Ivory game? No. It wasn't? It was a different one? I don't believe so, no. Where was he out of, this guy? Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe. And how big was this organization, approximately?

I mean, it was a whole village. It was massive. It spread across multiple villages. Had a new car every week. Who was funding them? That's a good question. I'm not really going to speak on it. Okay.

Yeah. But we did talk last time a little bit about particularly the culture within countries in East Asia that seems to be very fascinated and enthralled. Not all of them, but some people there, powerful people in ivory, in rhino horns, and things like this. And it's literally, in some cases, including the Chinese government, government-connected. So when you have – I mean that's the second biggest gdp in the world right there when you have a government like that who at least implicitly behind the scenes supports things like this because they you know they look at look at china they buy up all this shit in africa they don't give a fuck about it it's just it's just a it's

a lifelong debtor to them that they're gonna that they're gonna hopefully be able to shylock or or what what's the what's the mafia term the fucking uh yeah what is that what is what is that i mean let's let's ask the connected guy over here but oh my god loan shark sorry shit like that right so they're gonna be able to do that forever to some of these countries so they already don't care about it how do you like how do you go up against something like that a country that powerful who laws don't apply international laws yeah they don't they don't know laws there's nobody to hold them accountable um you know the nations what go stop a war for the first time ever yeah wait yeah um you know you just do i mean you've got a there are so many conservationists and once we get our act together and we are

i say we because we're part of it and i'm not just going to point the finger at others you know but like i said we'll work with anybody and everybody that's doing the right thing but once everybody starts to within conservation once everybody starts to come together realize hey we're in it for the right reasons we can really tackle this thing do you think we've got I think it's starting to happen I do I I do I've seen drastic changes within conservation i i come from a point where people wouldn't even talk to me people within conservation will hear my name uh-uh all because of one bs article and now you know i've got people reaching out people willing to even shake my hand it's like that's cool you know that that to me shows probably i just like to see the positives and everybody and everything it's the only way that you can live life the truth does eventually

win i believe that in the world it's most of the time it does eventually win it's kind of cool because like you and paul rosalie became friends four or five years ago but at a very similar time in very different ways you two experience complete bullshit that threatened to ruin you and then you guys had to kind of build in silence and let actions do the talking and now in the last couple years at the same time you know the tides are rising and people are like oh these guys are doing some bad it's been so cool to see paul just getting the credit that he's deserved for so many years and funny story paul comes to Africa the first time we had talked about this over the phone like you know the the crap we've been through

go figure Doc Antle from the lion oh yeah what's called um Lion uh or Tiger King Tiger King dot that scumbag sends Paul Rosalie on Instagram the article about us after paul had posted that he's out there with us and he goes dude because we had literally just gotten done just bsing about it having a beer about it like joking and he goes dude you're never gonna believe this look at this and so then when the guy gets arrested and raided by the fbi i was like hell yeah rotten hell scumbag and i posted all over social media god people suck but it's like it's stuff like that right yo just have some depth in your life and look at where the info is coming from but no i mean it's it's been cool man you just got to stay positive like you said chas nothing in

life is easy and if it was bro how fulfilling would life be it's all part of the journey it's roller coaster ups and downs and stay positive man everything's meant to be perfect you know what i i forgot to ask about this though too i just thought of this randomly but we talked a lot about elephants and rhinos we mentioned at least pangolins i i know we really educated people on that last time maybe we'll get to that but what about the lions there because you mentioned it earlier on in this podcast they're down to around 19 000 20 000 across the entire african continent which is not a lot but how are we doing there and what what's been the biggest challenge with with them from

from a poaching standpoint like who's has it been game hunters mostly in that case no it's it's poaching so and listen when i say this so when when covid came out i did a uh an interview with msnbc i think it was it was a digital interview and they said do you think that you know the wet markets in china could have caused this and i said you know i i don't know i i'm not a scientist i can't tell you oh yeah yeah and so I was like I said however it's something don't quote me completely but it was something like this um I said I do think that you know it diseases or or illnesses can be transmitted that way it's possible maybe but there's a lot of criminal activity that feeds poaching that that

goes on in those areas and when that thing came out i had people hitting that paul up saying i'm a racist and anti what do you what do you call it a xenophobe xenophobe and i'm like okay you're a xenophobe for thinking that i just called out like like seriously i'm i'm calling out a country here you're a xenophobe for calling me one like that's where your brain goes to i don't think so so i had to clarify because i'm calling it like i see it and facts are facts china pretty well what's the question here now you got me throwing yeah we went we were talking about lions So here we go So 90% of the world's ivory is consumed by China The US is a

90 Yeah 90 I don't have the numbers on lions But it is Ancient Chinese medicine beliefs Medicinal beliefs That is funneling a lot of this.

Lion bone cures diseases. You've got to be fucking kidding me. Promise you. Lion bone. Lion bone. There is a very important place that's near and dear to my heart, and I'm not going to bring them up right now. I'll just tell you who they are. It's in Pretoria, that area, and they have rescued um big cats lions they even

have tigers that they've rescued that were somehow being trafficked in africa yes kid you not and they were busted at the airport and they took them in when a cat is when a lion or a tiger has had a human interaction it can never be released back into the wild why is that they've they've had human interaction they've been fed by humans they will get they're behind the curve they'll never adapt their lifespans also aren't that long no they're like 16 years yeah 20 if you're lucky for yeah people always think of lions like you know they're living they're living 40, 50. No. And they live a rough life too. Oh, yeah. But the poachers came in. They took dead chickens, poisoned them, soaked them in poison, threw them over the fence.

The lions ate them dead within minutes. And they jumped the wall, cut the paws off or the legs off and took off so these people who dedicated their entire life to these animals rescuing them taking care of them their whole life they show up to work every day it is their life and they had to show up to see just their torsos laying there how brutal is that man yeah there's only 19 to 20 000 yeah now granted that's in the wild you know these weren't wild animals but i mean these animals got the worst of the worst they were removed from their natural habitat and then they were poached in a yeah in captivity yeah yeah now where across africa like In captivity, yeah. Yeah. Now, across Africa, because lions run in prides, right? Yeah.

It could be... Depends on where they are, but yeah. Yeah, it could be, what, like 10, 20 in a pride? Oh, you can get up to 30. You can get up to 30? Yeah, yeah. So how close usually are one pride to another? Or do they really spread out and kind of divide and conquer

territory yeah they they can be they're pretty spread out um again it depends on where you are the closest lion prides i've seen were in countries where there are no fences were like full-on prides females everything not just a bachelor pride that was kicked out at a certain age. I would say 40 miles apart. Whoa. That's actually pretty close. I was about to say that's pretty close. That's, wow.

I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. Now, on your conservation, you have a bunch of different so on our head yeah uh reserve on our headquarters reserve so right now we don't have a a full on pride we were we were going to thank god we didn't we introduced cheat well because we introduced cheetah and the reserve was growing they were moving fences back and it just wasn't the right size and if you introduce cheetah on too small of a reserve with lions they'll they'll crush the cheetahs absolutely crush i mean we we had a cheetah move to the neighboring reserve that

does have lions they don't have cheetah and they kept telling us hey come get your cheetah because the lions are going to get it. And we kept going and getting it, and they came out one day and they were eating them, yeah. Jack. And actually, I'm glad Chaz brought that up. The reserve itself, you touched on this earlier, but this is like a huge project you're undertaking that also has to do with ecotourism to help fund these types of efforts. What's the status there where i just you can obviously talk about like where it is where is it what's what's how many

different species are on it how much like what can people do there yeah so i have to give all the credit to warren and wendy rippin um in the rippin family who So Wendy Rippin, her family originally started Buffalo Clouf way back, and it came for sale. It came back on the market years later. And Warren and Wendy have been very successful as businessmen and women. And at the time, they put everything they had into purchasing this place back, which was amazing. And then because of all of their great work, other private reserves that were bordering said, yeah, what do you think if we take the fences down? We want to be a part of this.

And Warren's like, all right, yeah, let's do it. And then all of a sudden, you've got the local village noticing, hey, this is good work. And Warren goes in. This guy, he dedicates everything he has to wildlife. It's amazing. Again, you go into conservation, certain people are like, oh, you work with Warren? Yeah, he's a stickler. I'm like, well, he's a badass as far as I'm concerned because he says he's going to do something.

He does it. But he goes to the village, works it out. They adjoin land. And now he's helping them with their economy, helping their businesses with farming and things like that. And now the federal government is noticing. The provincial government is noticing. And they're like, yeah, we went on it. And so now Warren's got them joining. And they are just passing as much land over.

I mean, it's hard to keep up because you've got to move fences. And so in his lifetime – How easy is that? Oh, that takes – I mean, it's miles and miles and miles. I mean, this is such – you know, Manhattan could fit into this reserve chute like 50 times. I mean, it's huge. Yeah, it's big. And how many – I don't know about 50 times but eventually it'll be 50 yeah okay so it's continually growing oh yeah i mean his goal is to and i share this goal with him and i want to support him to get there um

is to create you know one of the largest shared conservancies in in the southern hemisphere of africa and you bet i don't want to use the wrong word here but in a way you also want to have some sort of resort end goal with that where people can come and stay in a nice place and be a part of it and appreciate the the wildlife yeah so there is antelope hunting that happens buffalo hunting things like that you have to do it because when there's a fence around an area animals can't migrate that's right you know that's that's i i don't envy that burden or that responsibility that warren and and um you know his staff carry because you got to kind of play god at the end of the day um and so the hunters come in and they they have a lower carbon footprint than ecotourists and they

pay a lot more so that's good but yeah the goal is and warren's not a big hunter himself although he does facilitate it um you know having ecotourism but at a light level we we want to keep buffalo kloof and all of the adjoining reserves as natural as possible. But it is also a good opportunity to bring in people from America. The right people. Yes, exactly. I've had influencers out there before. That's not what we're talking about.

I'm talking about people who actually want to see this up close, appreciate it, and maybe do something about it, help fund these kinds of things. It'd be pretty cool. When they're on there, do you have a count on how many elephants you have exactly in that area right now and rhinos what are we looking at their eyes on those rhinos all day and all night yeah but what's the side i cannot tell you oh unfortunately all right we got a lot of babies that's great a lot of babies both species all three species black rhinos white, white rhinos, elephants. And you got all these, not just those, you have all the different diaspora species that would exist within the African terrain here going on.

Exactly. Yeah, I mean, we have lepers. They're hard to find just because we have full canopy jungles. Lions, we haven't moved in lions yet. But, I mean, any reserve in South Africa, you're going to get roaming lions. They're going to – migrating lions here and there. A loner will come in, pass through, and go to the next one. Painted dogs we don't have, but they can come in at any time.

Wild dogs, the most effective hunting species in all of Africa. If there's people listening right now who want to come visit and see this can they do that through the website yeah they better do it right now oh yeah let's do it go to the experience page all any and it's very very wallet friendly but i mean seriously you want this experience to go anywhere else you're gonna pay triple it's very exclusive you're not bumping into. It's very exclusive. You're not bumping into tourists everywhere you go. And you actually get involved.

Like, you help the team. You become part of the family. It's pretty cool. And it also supports vet park. Yeah. When are you coming? That's right. I have to.

Yeah. You and Laura got to go out there. We do. Sure. Laura would love that. I know. She would. She'd love that. I'm definitely going.

I mean, come on. He's coming. Don't worry. Allegedly. We'll see. I'm coming. We'll see. I'm definitely going. I mean, come on. He's coming. Don't worry. Allegedly, we'll see. I'm coming. I'm coming. But you know what?

You had talked to me about this last time, and I was less aware of this. And then I looked into it. I was like, whoa. But some of British high society, like including the royal family, is really, really into conservation. Have you been able to have any contact, maybe not directly with the royal family, but with people from that world into working with you guys at all to this point? No. We were in talks at African Parks years ago,

which Prince did, was it? Which one's the younger one the the redhead harry harry harry became the president of african parks for a little while i guess which is arguably one of the best conservation organizations in africa they run a lot of major parks management um i don't know how he was qualified but he's prince harry so he had spent yeah i don't know if he's qualified for that but he did he has spent a lot oh sure sure yeah so have i but i can't run that company yeah he's helicopter pilot so maybe that's it i don't know yeah um but uh no nobody's nobody's reached out no that'd be kind of cool, though. There's definitely some good power levers there that could help.

I mean, it's a money thing. As long as I don't have to bow to anybody or call them your royalty. We're not into that in America. Your, what do you call it? Your grace. I don't think so. What are the most pressing things you guys need right now like what are what are your on the ground next six to twelve months this has to happen so that we can do a b and

c whatever those are two things we need solar power for our new command center terribly we really need it because south africa dude the power grid is all jacked up and they're going to start shutting power down for like weeks at a time. It's been rumored for a while. We'll see. It's because Russia built all this shit, right? That's what happens when you put Russia in front of your nuclear power system. They're so good at sounding smart. Anyway, sorry.

Go ahead. So we need solar really badly. It's the grand total, I think. We got quoted. It was like $ total, I think. We got quoted. It was like $25,000, which isn't bad. It powers our entire camp, all of our security systems. All right, everybody. Let's go.

So you can go on vetpaul.org. Just type in 25000 and credit card, and you're good. And then, no, but I mean, anything helps, even $ five bucks dollar i mean it all goes into the helping these guys it really does i don't make salary off this i don't and i haven't for many years because this means the world to me but the other thing i'd say is we're starting our canine academy in july i was just gonna ask you what's going on there dude so we've got jackson alonzo coming out he's a former ranger once a ranger always ranger this guy you know got out of the you know army started contracting with canines teaching

socom and other organizations um i'll let him talk to you about that sometime cool uh you know teaching the dogs but also the handlers he also taught sea lions and dolphins for dod and i can't speak on that little darpa action going on dude's a steve erwin man little little comunicato with the dauphinato oh yeah yeah dude you talk about like darpa i mean he's getting married right now so i hope his wife doesn't punch me in the face but if you're single and you go to a bar and you're like, somebody says, what do you do? And you're like, oh, I train seals and dolphins for DOD.

I just work at that bar. I'm out. They're like rumored to be like 40, 30, 40 years ahead at DARPA. Which means like the sky is AI right now and we're just whatever's above AI. Quantum something.

Well, you would know. I wouldn't know. But that's like... So the canine thing, let's move on so we don't get too deep. We don't get incinerated by God knows what's above us. You know, supporting this canine unit and helping us and Jackson and Trevor get this going.

These dogs, anybody from the world is going to be able to pay a full price to come out and get this training. And what that money will go towards is sponsoring a park ranger anywhere in Africa to come out and get the training for free and get a dog for free so it's sustainable. But we've got to get a vehicle going. We have to get kennels built. We have to get the dogs, the puppies, and everything else logistically in place to get that going. So, Alessi, you got your credit card? Because I got a swiper.

Alessi, you know who we got to send out there. We got to send a little Dale Comstock out there. He'll get those dogs in shape real quick. Dude, if Dale Comstock showed up, the guys would lose their mind. Listen, if you're working with Joe, you're a heart listen you if you're working with joe you're a heartbeat away right there joe let's go i gotta i gotta talk to dale about this like because i didn't know when when he was in here i didn't know how far along like the canine academy i tried to meet him years ago at shot show he's like in the distance and there's

just such a swarm of people around him and i'm like i don't like people i don't like crowds i'm i'm out did you see the bbc documentary with him no i didn't oh i see can you pull that up real good i just want to show the imagery it's like this it was this documentary he's like yeah you know this lady came in she said she was gonna do this shit because they were interested in mercenaries at bbc so she comes in and right away i knew it was like gonna be a hit job but i was like fuck it we're gonna do it so i know he like kind of ate this up, but literally the opening scene, they're covering it from all different angles, but the opening scene is like they're talking about Yemen. There's the sinister music on, and then, yeah, we got it right now. And then literally, you got the drone shot, you're getting the fuel for the land, and

it cuts to this badass motherfucker just... He's like, yeah, this is what I do. It's a lot of veins, man. Vascular man. I mean, this dude, he's like 60. And I mean, Christ. I mean, look at the vein in his forehead. He's like, had to go there, had to do the job, real shithole.

We're in there to get the bad guys. Get out. Yeah, I would highly recommend the documentary for people nonetheless because it's pretty funny. I'm going to watch it for sure. But you got to get him out there with the dogs. That would be wild. I'm sure Jackson would love that.

It would be awesome. Ted Eye and Comstock on the ground training your guys. That's a documentary. Might be a comedy for those two guys together the team and the whole jesus they do that ball's gonna explode they train people sometimes one-on-one where it's the two of them training like one or two guys i feel terrible for those guys envy them at the same time that's cool but wasn't it like one time it was like a priest and like some other random view i'm just thinking about welcome to the twilight zone oh i'm thinking about all the funny jokes that probably aren't kosher for tv flying around in those rooms i've been holding back on since we started talking about this.

Oh my God. But all right. You got good shit going on. You got the canines, you got the, the canine Academy. Sorry. The,

the, the reserve you got, obviously you do have an amazing board behind you. There's some awesome people in there who are, who are really starting to help out. And it's cool to see the organization come this far, but for people out there listening, you know this is like something I love. And I love Ryan.

I love what Ryan and Paul are doing with their organizations. The vet poll link is in the description below. So make sure you check it out. And also check out the link to Leap Brands down below. Wow. Our boy Chaz Servino, co-owner. Tell people who Leap Brands is. Let's get that little

yeah it's your recruiting partner m&a and recruiting partner so your executive staff if you need a ceo cfo cmo all the way down to your all the way down to your gm and then we just introduced recruitment marketing so and of your hourly staff so from restaurants you need waiters bus boys dishwashersers. I mean, we'll literally, we'll staff your whole organization from front to back. And then we also do some M&A. So if you're looking to sell a business, buy a business, mostly in the franchise space, but we're ready to rock and roll and handle your recruiting needs. Yeah. You've come a long way.

Play some football. Come a long way. We got the footage. They're breaking my chops early. You love it. I do love it. I don't talk about it enough. I love being an athlete.

You were different when you went between the lines, man. Something clicked. You were a real motherfucker. I was. And now you're like the sweetest person ever get the if i went between those lines again i could really be a badass again i really could you could turn it on i could i need you to turn that on once in a while i can i don't know i need you to do it in the boardroom like you signed this fucking page i don't even need a gun yeah there's footage there's a 15 minute highlight where i'll put the link in the description put the link in of you shutting down the number one player in the country great little clapping in

his face and shit that was you playing your dad like he broke his hand but he can still play running back fucking kicks with one arm just uh you were a savage bro uh i was i was i still can be but i think uh you know i i definitely give you know it's it's how you're trained you know what i mean i was trained at two years old to freaking tackle people at two years old tackling people and do some squats dribbling a basketball like that's not not necessarily you know a normal childhood you know my wife says it all the time you didn't have a normal childhood i'm like but i loved my child let's get into that like i loved my childhood it was extremely structured trainers working out but like i know i think about it now and like after after so many years of not playing like then think about

it like all right from call it 2 to 18 or 2 to 20 you know playing college ball like it is it's something that's so ingrained in you and something that like is me to today. I was talking to, I actually did a couple of interviews with some of the executives, some of our clients. And believe me, I take some notes here from the man himself. And I'm taking notes from you, pal. And one of the things was just being like who you are. And I was like, because I was asking these questions.

I'm like, I'm a competitor. Like at the end of the day, no matter what, like you put me in any situation, I'm going to compete. And I'm a connector. I love connecting people. This is like amazing to be on here and to see what you're doing, Jules, and to be here with you, Ryan. I love connecting with people, love connecting with great people, understanding their whys, understanding why they do things and what motivates them to be so successful. I think that's what – I mean that's why I love placing people and that's why we love doing recruiting. You've had a hell of a journey to get here.

That's a whole separate story. Some of that we actually covered in episode 40 people want to go back and watch that but like yeah you know you you you're a humble guy but how are you 30 34 35 35 you're young as fuck and like the shit you've done to this point is like someone who's like 60 years old and accomplished a lot it's pretty crazy to be as nice as you are like yes such a friendly nicest person don't get between those lines right yeah i don't want to dude when i first when i first met chas and was become friends with him like six seven years ago i think it was like 2017 beat you up that i would talk like i would bring him up to some guys who were from around here be like oh yeah my boy chas and i like chas because you know it's like more it's it's more of like a it's a memorable name i'm like yeah chas servino they're like every time

they'd be like chas servino you're friends with that guy i'm like yeah he's the nicest guy they're like fuck chas servino bro like what and they're like dude you don't understand and they're they're every time there'd be like a like a moment of silence and like a, that guy was a real asshole, but he was the greatest white athlete I've ever seen in my life. They would just say like, dude, this guy was out of his mind. Then you watch the tape. We'll have the link in the description. You were a motherfucker, bro. We'll let a dude talk.

But Leap Brand's down in the description. Yes. We got Vett Paul down in the description. We're going to get Chaz and Lauren out to Africa. I'm going to get get out to africa too you're gonna get to the amazon at some point as well we gotta make that happen but ryan love having you brother thank for thank you for all you've done for the show thank you for telling your story so many times on here and allowing us to spread it on so many other episodes as well and keep doing what you're doing and chaz thanks for always being the fucking homie and supporting me and everything i do what you're doing and jazz thanks for always being the

fucking homie and supporting me and everything i do man this is awesome thank you thanks for the opportunity thank you appreciate yes and for all you've done for me too all right everybody else you know what it is give it a thought get back to me peace thank you guys for watching the episode before you leave please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video it's a huge help and also if're over on Instagram, be sure to follow the show at Julian Dory Podcast, or also on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. Finally, if you'd like to catch up on our latest episodes, use the Julian Dory Podcast playlist link in the description below. Thank you.