Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #333 From Subsistence Hunting Moose to Axis Deer Conservation w/ Jake Muise of Maui Nui Venison

Episode Date: December 13, 2023

Jake was born and raised in Northern Canada. Adventurous and inquisitive, he followed his gut to Hawaiʻi for college as a D1 athlete. During his years at Mānoa, he was taken in by a Molokaʻi family which was where his relationship with Axis deer began—over holidays and summer breaks, alongside multi-generational subsistence hunters. Over the years, his fascination and respect for this animal grew and after founding a research-based non-profit, the Axis Deer Institute, he took on several projects managing Hawaiʻiʻs invasive ungulates. Maui Nui grew out of his passion to create a full-bodied solution that saw Hawaiʻiʻs deer as both a non-native species in need of active population management as well as an incredible food resource whose sustainability and viability needed to be ensured in the long term. For Jake, hunting and environmentalism in Hawaiʻi are inseparable parts of the same set of actions and concerns. Jake as always walks us through his life before now. He was a college and professional Volleyball player, went to school in Hawai’i where he quickly put down roots and started his trajectory towards Maui Nui Venison. I met him hunting with some buddies and have been watching his conservation efforts since. He gave us a little insight into his experience since the fires that tore through Maui as well as some community building and service efforts Maui Nui is incorporating. This is a long overdue conversation and we will run it back. Can’t wait brother. Yall enjoy and go get some Maui Nui venison.   ORGANIFI GIVEAWAY Keep those reviews coming in! Please drop a dope review and include your IG/Twitter handle and we’ll get together for some Organifi even faster moving forward.   FULL TEMPLE RESET is live!!! Come join us in this incredible protocol to kick ass in 2024. Click above!   Connect with Jake: Website: MauiNuiVenison.com  Instagram: @mauinuivenison    Show Notes: Living 4D w/ Paul Check - Fred Provenza: Food, Farming and Our Future YouTube Apple Spotify    Metabolomics Data Report - Maui Nui Venison    Sponsors: Organifi Go to organifi.com/kkp to get my favorite way to easily get the most potent blend of high vibration fruits, veggies and other goodies into your diet! Click that link and use code “KKP” at checkout for 20% off your order! Sacred Hunting Get with the homie Mansal on a truly transformative experience incorporating hunting and psilocybin. Head over to SacredHunting.com and mention Kyle and the podcast for $250 off your experience!  Cured Nutrition has a wide variety of stellar, naturally sourced, products. They’re chock full of adaptogens and cannabinoids to optimize your meatsuit. You can get 20% off by heading over to www.curednutrition.com/KKP  using code “KKP”  Bioptimizers For an exclusive offer for my listeners go to stressguardian.com/KINGSBU . Not only will you get 10% off by using the promo code “KINGSBU”, keep your holiday stress at bay! To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle: Twitter: @KINGSBU Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service App  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys - @gardenersofeden.earth  Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com - Gardeners of Eden site    Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Today's guest is Jake Mews. Jake, I met on Big Island and Molokai way back in 2018 before the world took a shit on itself. And that was through a series of synchronicities. When I first got to Onnit in 2017, I was deep diving podcasts at the time, obviously hosting the Total Human Optimization Hour, which is what this podcast was called back then.

It might have been Onnit Podcast. I don't know. We gave it a few different names before it finally became the Kyle Kingsbury podcast. But that said, I wanted to go through, I asked Aubrey, I said, who do we have on the sponsored list out of all our athletes? And I saw John Dudley was on the list. I was like, fuck him, man. I've been listening to him on Rogan's. I definitely want to get into hunting. And I got to meet John, had him on the podcast, and he made me my first bow, my RX-1, which I still use to this day and fucking love. And that totally drew me in to bow hunting and was chatting with Kyle Tierman and Ben Greenfield and a few other buddies, and they put together an amazing hunt, which is where I got to meet today's guest, Jake Mews, along with Justin Lee and a ton of other amazing people that I definitely want to get on this podcast. Greenfield was there, Dr. Peter Attia, Dr. Chris Ryan. I mean, it was a loaded, really fun group of people to be with. It was probably the most fun I've ever had camping in terms of conversations, you know, and

just wanting to pick everyone's brain. You know, it was like the hunting aspect was as awesome as it gets and the in-between hunting aspect was as awesome as it gets. So I really had a blast, but I love Jake's background and story. And I wanted to get that out. I wanted to talk more, you know, Jake runs an amazing company called Maui Nui, which we'll dive into here. And, and he was there, you know, he was in frontline and center during everything that happened in Maui. And I wanted to hear about it from, from a local, you know, obviously if you're into the rabbit holes that I'm into, there's a boatload of shit you can read on the conspiracy and the why and all that other stuff. But, you know, I think you can get lost in the weeds. It doesn't mean that I don't want to find that out or that we shouldn't

know the truth. I certainly believe in not sticking my head in the sand, but at the same time, one person's truth, I think is just as important, if not more important. And hearing what life was like during that from Jake and what they did is really powerful. It's a really powerful piece to this podcast that made me feel quite a bit better about the situation there. And that's, you know, in the face of everything that happened, a little silver lining. But Jake grew up in Canada

and you can still hear a little Canadian along with the Hawaiian accent, which is great. And yeah, we get into his background like in any podcast here. I want to know what made them who they are. And it's really cool. Really cool, fascinating story on what made Jake Mews who he is today

and really what he's doing today and everything that he's taken a dive into is really awesome because, you know, if when I look back on everything that I'm doing now, that hunting trip was a big part of, it was a big reconnection from me to the animals, to wanting to harvest my own meat and, and then getting into farming, you know, like that, that made it one step closer, having had that connection to animals and beautiful, the most pristine land, you know,

like I want to create a space in Lockhart that has grasses like they do in Hawaii, you know, that's just like mind-blowingly beautiful, incredibly green, incredibly nutrient dense. And I think we're well on our way to it, but thank you, Jake. Thanks for being on the podcast and thank you for being part of the inspiration for me to do what I'm doing now in farming and obviously continuing the hunting game. As I told Jake, I sense taking a slight step away from the bow. I still love it. But I've been deep diving long range. And I mean like thousand yard shots, things like that with the rifle, which I find to be just as awesome and interesting. You know, the thing about, and I break this down on the podcast with Jake and I promise I'll get into sponsors and then shut the hell up and let it roll. But there's something that's unmistakably beautiful

and challenging with the bow because of the proximity. You have to get close to the animal. Like you can't take a hundred yard, maybe you could take a hundred yard shot. Cam Haines, you know, that kind of Dudley for sure. I got to be to shoot effectively between 40 and 50. And if I'm being really honest, anything inside of 40 for sure. But the closer you are, the more, the easier it is for them to hear you, right?

Especially when we're talking about axis deer in Hawaii. I had a buddy on this hunt that duck, they got four does at 80 plus yards. It was actually Peter Atiyah's archery coach, buddy down in San Diego. Mind-blowing. I didn't get a single, but it was a big learning experience. And so, you know, the proximity from the bow is really special because you don't have that with the rifle. At the same time, I was successful on a cow elk hunt earlier this year. And I think that was close to 400 yards. So not a monster shot, but where we were,

we were at the top of the 9,000 feet up. There wasn't a single fucking tree on the entire mountain. There was no cover. The ground is snow. It's white. They're all bedded down. And there happened to be one rock that our guide knew.

If we go the certain direction, we won't tip them off from the windage and we'll be able to come up behind this rock. And if we're lucky and don't spook them, we can take the shot from the rock. And that's exactly how it went down. There's not a chance in hell we could have got any closer. There's no chance in hell we could in that particular hunt that we could have used a bow. So I like the ability of the gun to kind of open up different opportunities for different hunts. And I also like the idea, you know, like we've been training with my brother Clay Martin, who was a Marine recon sniper, author of two phenomenal apocalypse books that I think are

incredible. Prairie Fire and Concrete Jungle. They're both on Audible and they're hilarious, which you're going to read about the apocalypse. It should make you laugh. But he has his train with 22 rifles and hitting at 300 meters. And if you can hit 300 meters with some wind with a 22, you can take anybody out with a rifle round, any animal. You can pick your shot at a thousand yards. You can, you can hit where you want at a mile. And while it doesn't require as deep or patient a spot in stock, and then the proximity of course, doesn't have to be the same to get the, to get the right shot. You gotta be dialed the fuck in to do that. So that's what I've been exploring lately. And that's my hunting background. Don't know if I've mentioned that on the podcast with Jake or not, but I love both.

I love Archery. I love the long range rifle game and Jake's doing great shit. So support this podcast, support it by sharing it with a friend. We fixed an iTunes issue that is fucking mind blowing. For the longest time, anytime somebody would pull up my show, unless you were a subscriber, you'd get the new episodes to pop right up in your feed. That's just all I wanna ask. It's the end of the year. If you enjoy this podcast and you listen to it more than once in a while,

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he truly carries Will's medicine. I've had one of the, you know, I've had a couple of my favorite experiences hunting. The very first one I did with Monso was actually with the carnivore doc, Paul Saladino. And I wasn't having a great experience hunting. I mean, I love the carnivore doc, but,adino. And I wasn't having a great experience hunting. I mean, I love the carnivore doc, but you know, we were hunting out of blinds and doing some stuff that I wasn't super into. And so I asked, I made friends with Montsel and I said, look, let's do something

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we're running back full temple reset. It's gonna be at the farm in Lockhart. This is your opportunity. If you've been listening to the show for a couple episodes, you've been listening to the show for a long time and you've wanted to meet me or get coaching or have a deep dive in any of the practices that I know to be the very best, the most transformative, this is your opportunity to take a deep dive in any of the practices that I know to be the very best,

the most transformative, this is your opportunity to take a deep dive with me. I'm joined by Eric Godsey. Like I said, five days straight, we're going to run each other through the gauntlet. Fasting mimicking diet that's personalized for your body. Optional blood work through ways to well. We're going to deep dive all the practices, the best practices from mobility daily to sauna and ice bath daily. And Godsey is going to deep dive all the practices, the best practices from mobility daily to sauna and ice bath daily. And Godsey is going to deep dive internal family systems, Jungian symbology, dream work, all sorts of cool shit.

And he's giving away his journaling course for free included in this. So there's so many add-ons and things that are included in this guy. January 24th through the 28th, it's an in-person summit where you'll get to hang with me and Godsey all day long. It is a smaller event. It's January 24th to the 28th. It's an in-person summit where you'll get to hang with me and Godsey all day long. It is a smaller event.

It's an immersive. So this thing is capped at 50 people. Most of these run around 30 to 35 people. So trust me when I say this, this is an intimate container where we really get to deep dive and learn a lot from each other. You can apply now at fitforservice.com

slash, slash, slash, all that jazz. Just look for it in the show notes. And Fit for Service is the host, of course, for Full Temple Reset, which is something that I've done for now three years. This will be our fourth. And I'm incredibly excited to be able to do this with you all January 24th through the 28th. Click it in the show notes. It'll be at the very top with the fitforservice.com link. You have seven days left. There's only one week left to sign up for this. So this is it. And we only run this once a year. So available only at the end of January,

seven days left to sign up for it. Visit fitforservice.com and you click that in the show notes, you'll find the Full Temple Reset page right there waiting for you. I hope to see you guys there. I can't wait to meet you. And without further ado,

Jake Mews, welcome to the podcast, brother. Oh, so excited to be here. It's been way too long, my friend. It has been way too long. And it's been it's funny. It's been a long time coming for this. Like I fucking wanted a podcast with you back back when we were in Hawaii, which was, I think, 2018. Yeah, it was five fucking years ago. That's crazy to think like that. But, I mean, obviously a lot has happened. I was planning with T-Man to come back out. Cal Tierman, you know, buddy who coordinated the whole thing with us. Big wave surfer, writer, extraordinaire.

And he's writing a book right now that Chris Ryan's helping him with. So I'm super stoked for that. But I hit T-Man up. I was like, hey, me and Aubrey want to do a hunt with Ben Greenfield. It's like you open other people coming. I was like, fuck yeah. And then next thing you know, we've got Peter Attia there. And Chris Ryan, Dr. Chris Ryan came and just a ton of awesome people.

And so, yeah, anyway, I'm sure I'm leaving people out. I'm sorry for that. It was a long ass time ago, but, uh, meeting you and meeting the crew, you know, you guys were our guides on that trip. We got to meet Mark Healy, you know, one of the best spear fishermen in the world and, uh, avid hunters. There were so many great hunters that knew the land and had, had made that a real lifelong experience for me at that point.

That was my first major hunt with with a bow i had i just met john dudley that march on my birthday he made me a hoyt and gave it to me as a birthday present and i've been practicing with that rx1 religiously before that hunt but had never seen axis deer i'd only been hearing rogan talk about it and all the different people so it was the trip of a lifetime it was fucking amazing and yeah i was looking to to try to run that back and then covid happened it was like the islands were the last place on earth anybody from out of town wanted to be you know so it was just like man and then and then life continues to happen now so had our second kid that kind of stuff but um it's so good to have you on the podcast you know as we talk general arc of the show is I want to know what made you, you, you know,

talk about where are you from? What was life like growing up? What were your parents like? What got you into everything that you're into hunting wise? And then we'll talk about the business you created and everything that's going on out in Maui, because you've, you've, you've really done one of the most unique things and such a cool thing, you know, with, with Maui Nui that no one else had access, you know, before to access, let alone any type of really, you know, wild game. You couldn't do

that commercially. You couldn't do it at scale. And you're doing something that's helping the environment as well as helping people like me and my family actually eat better and get really, you know, the very best quality meat on the planet. So I'd love for you to deep dive that. Let's take as long as you want to. I don't need a back and forth online. It's a little easier to get into back and forth face to face, but with our little time difference here in the internet, it's much easier if you just go on a fucking tangent.

Go off, brother. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, excited to be here. Selfishly, I'm probably going to try and sneak in some questions because we got all kinds of catching up to do. But i mean stepping it all the way back to 2018 it was so cool to see such like a group of such interesting people a lot of them like picking up even peter i think peter that was peter's first like real hunt too um kind of picking up that bow for the first time and starting to really

like take that extra step to connect with food um which just continues to extend in how you like operate in a place think about places um so yeah that was that was a lot of fun i guess if i to try and follow your arc here before i go on any tangents I guess if I step it all the way back kind of under that same sentiment life for me started in northern Canada uh kind of within the arctic circle so way up in northern Alberta and I think some of the foundations to what and who I am today are I grew up eating like pheasant, moose meat, like fish. Like we were seven hours away from the next town. We were in a town called Rainbow Lake. And my mom, I remember like going down in the summers, we'd spend our time in this place

called Gull Lake. It was a lot warmer. It was in like Southern Alberta. And she would literally pack for the entire year. And we would haul this huge trailer and she would bring like all the mac and cheese and like all the extra stuff that she would need for like baking and whatever else she could. But she never brought any meat.

And so my dad's like, and there was always this like a little bit of tension as we were like going home like okay you better get something like we don't have anything in the freezer and I remember there just being this huge celebration when dad and everybody else would go out and they'd get two or three really big moose and then you'd cut them all up and I remember like being as a kid seeing them on the cranes and then like the freezer being full. And I think that foundation obviously has carried through for how I think about food and ultimately what we've done with Maui Nui. And then long story short there, which probably ties into this too, a lot like you as an athlete,

food, as I developed into an athlete through my teenage years, and then eventually like went to the University of Hawaii to play division one ball and ended up playing professional volleyball, food, as you kind of got into like your latter years in college,'re like wait a second I feel a lot better when I eat good food and I don't think we knew enough then and even then you think 20 22 23 but what happened which I got super lucky and why we went like when we spent time on Moloka'i like why we were there was my dorm assignment got screwed up and they threw me in with all of the Hawaiian kids that weren't smart enough to get into college. So they were taking the summer course to like up their grades and they were all in this like one dorm room and they messed up my dorm assignment and toss me in with like all of the locals.

And I walked in the first day and Buddha, he was like this six, four, two 60. And he's like, uh, Johnson hall B. I'm like,

yeah, two way. And he's like, Oh boy, you're in the wrong place. We're going to eat you. And I was like, this is coming from Canada.

I've never even seen people with bone structure like this. It's like the biggest humans I've ever seen in my life. And true to, like you hear that word used poorly a lot of times, but like the Aloha spirit, that thing's 100% true, man. That group of guys, especially my roommate, just was like, okay, if you're here, you're going to be one of our brothers, we're going to take care of you. And that was probably one of the biggest blessings I've ever gotten was I got to then become a part of like those families. And then

eventually, like that later that year, a family, they call it Hanai, but like, basically, it's like a local adoption they're like oh no we're taking care of you because at that point I was actually the family was living on the east coast of Canada and it was too far to go back and forth for holidays and stuff and I was a broke college kid so I got to go to Molokai every month at least and learn and I'd already been grew up in a subsistence family and Molokai has 7,000 people and 70,000 deer. Like you were there, you know what the story is. But got to like, was introduced to access deer from this place as they're extremely valuable.

They're a resource. And through college, they were like we would go we'd fit as much as we could into those crappy little red freezer like those coolers and then you'd stuff not only would you stuff your dorm room you know those tiny ass dorm room freezers you had like not only would you stop but then you'd go to like the people down the hall and you'd be like hey if i can like stick 10 pounds in here you can have a little bit of it anyway like that food source became something like i loved interacted with from like a recreational subsistence standpoint but as i got into my later years

um in college and started to like really focus on performance i was like oh wait a second like i feel way better when i'm eating deer meat versus whatever crap is in the cafeteria. Right. Um, so that was like, there's a lot of foundations there that at the time I probably didn't realize it, but thinking back now, like there are foundations in like kind of respect for that animal and nutrition and an understanding of like place and what it does for me and again biggest one of the best things that's ever happened in my life

is that somebody's screwing up my dorm assignment because typically they stuck you in these other dorms with the california kids and or somebody else from europe that was coming into the team and yeah just wouldn't have never been the same person ended up like meeting my wife on Molokai you got three Hawaiian babies running around like yeah best thing that ever happened to me for sure that's that's so incredible and and yeah you're right there's it's something I noticed with Justin Lee you know like the Ohana you know like you come on your family now like that and that was just like a taste of what you experienced but I remember being there and like the food the cookouts like everyone everyone's there and it's like oh we know him from such and such you know like you're getting introduced to everybody literally like you just

married their daughter you know yeah it's it's pretty pretty remarkable but um that's why i played defensive line in college football and i remember in junior college at mcc i was the only white guy on the defensive line we had like two black guys and the rest were pacific islanders and they were giants you know like a couple went on to play in the nfl um three or four of them actually but yeah we'd ride we'd ride the bus everywhere in at mcc like these 10-hour rides to snow utah and the guys would go and steal two five-gallon gatorade drums from the office and make kava the night before. So we'd have 10 gallons of kava. And I was the only white guy allowed to drink it because I was on the defensive line. So we'd be in the back playing cards, just smashing kava, laughing our

asses off, then pass out with our mouths wide open, wake up, you know, and like, all right, cool. It's game day the next day. But yeah some of my best memories were were hanging with the crew in the back of the bus that's so cool that you know you get you really do get taken under the wing and that that's awesome that uh that that was your experience you can hear you know it's both ways like i'm good buddies with john hackleman um and and john hackleman growing up you know on the islands he didn't have it that way for a while he had a few guys you know he was he was actually buddy buddies with the big fat singer that the the guy who died but sang um oh israel with the ukulele yeah yeah yeah they were in high school together yeah they're in high school together but you know and then that forged john hackleman who became one of the best

fighters and best fight coaches on the fucking planet first guy to bring you know hawaii kempo big into the ufc so so I guess it's all for a purpose, but that's awesome. That's awesome. It makes sense too. I mean, talk about moose for a second. I don't want to take us too far off topic here, but we did a fishing trip,

one of my buddies, bachelor parties in the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. And we weren't way north. You know, like we were north for, you know, as far as Canada's concerned but like not central like central Canada up north is a whole different animal the first time I saw a moose because I remember people telling me like watch out for moose there's there's more humans die from moose up here than anything else I'm like from what like well car

accidents getting charged and we had like a lifted f-250 and the thing was taller the shoulders were taller than the truck and i was like good god like i never even i had no idea they were that big like no idea they were that big like you see one on tv and you're like yeah it looks big but so does an elk and you know there's different things like that and you just see you see a moose in real life and you're just like this this seems like unimaginably big yeah i i remember it's funny you say that i haven't thought like thought about moose in a long time i just remembered i so they call them swamp donkeys like their nickname was like swamp donkeys in canada and it's because like they primarily live in swamps but when you look at like their leg length again every animal is designed for a place right so when you look at their leg length i just remember having a memory of like me walking

through the swamps and seeing like a moose kind of doing it at the same time and the moose doing it like effortlessly right like massive like front and rear shoulders like to kind of pull all of their legs out of the swamp and be able to like move through it without and like as a like useless human just being like oh my god how the hell do i get through this place and i think like that's what it is is those those northern areas where they have to like survive throughout the winter or well just survive through the winter and then basically like gorge themselves through the summer just to make it they they do i think they have to carry that level of mass to be able to move through those like peat moss bog type environments um which is so interesting because you can actually and i'm sure we'll talk about this later but like

moose has a distinct taste because of like what they're eating. Like they're constantly eating this like wet, mossy vegetation. And you can kind of taste that. It's not like a – it's like a musty – some people don't like it. I love it. Like every once in a while, I'll bump into somebody that has moose and I can taste it. I was like, oh, like that's what that place smelled like. I remember like that's what it smelled like um yeah really unique animal just massive creature not so great memory i remember a guy it's a big truck it must have been like a i think about it now like maybe it

was like an f-250 but the old one like the steel ones and moose hits the passenger side guy somehow lived the passenger side gets crushed all the way through to like the tailgate essentially like damn moose walks away like they're just such an enormous animal. Yeah, they are. I remember driving home like long drives with my dad and him just being like wired looking for a moose. Like he wasn't worried about anything else. He was just like if we hit a moose, it's going to be really bad. So, yeah, really cool. An amazing like place to grow up in and remember versus like where I'm at today, right? Yeah, no doubt. No doubt. So that,

that explains, you know, why you stayed, obviously you had good reason to stay, meet the woman of your dreams, you know, all that good stuff. And you were already kind of plugged in with the locals getting to hunt places that most people don't. Talk a bit about the progression of, of you as a hunter and the things that you're getting into when you finish school yeah um where did it you know what i think it was was again starts from this place where you love this animal it's an amazing resource and i think it was maybe like third or fourth year in college i was going back and go to our like regular hunting spot come around the corner and i see it's all about like a couple hundred yards. And I see like 200 deer, which isn't like, that's not a big deal.

Like it's not on for anything, but they're all bedded down. And it's like 10 in the morning. I remember we got up late that morning. I'm like, man, they're like, they're bedded. What is going on? And keep getting closer and they're not moving. And I'm looking at my friend and he's like, or he's like basically my brother.

And he's like, Oh, they were that entire herd was laying down, basically dying of malnutrition. And it had been a pronounced drought that we didn't really recognize on Oahu. And this was on like one of the drier areas of the Island. And basically they had eaten all of the food and there was literally like nothing left to eat and they were they were dying of malnutrition and I remember thinking like wait a second like

this is how this works like this is how deer are managed on an Island with no predators. And I thought everything was perfect. I was like, this can't be it. And they were so unhealthy that we actually couldn't like harvest one of them because they weren't going to be like good to eat. And I was just like, so we ended up like walking or going to the other end of the Island and finding and shooting some deer that were like in a better place. But I was, I think I remember that as like a key moment of like wait a second this can't be how such an important food resource is managed and it started the path of like

a complete understanding of what axis deer as a quote- unquote, like invasive species does in a place and what that means for ecosystems and food systems and community. So I think it was like that startling event that went like, come on, there's got like, I don't think it's a classic entrepreneurial, like, aha, it was just like, holy, there's got to be a better way than this this can't be what happens to this animal when mismanaged right um so that was kind of the very first i think that's when i went from recreational subsistence hunter to trying to do a little bit of problem solving and then remember writing a business plan in my capstone class in college that i became kind of obsessed after that um but found out new zealand in the 60s and 70s basically created a deer industry from almost the same like happenstance a whole bunch of red stag and stuff got introduced to new zealand

as an invasive species proliferated with no predators, great, like very limited seasonal stresses. They started the deer industry by basically like shooting them out of helicopters, retrieving them, and then like processing them. And then they shot so many of them as a food, like as a commercial commodity item that they started running out. So they domesticated them. So I was like, Oh, wait wait a second these guys got it figured out that's what we're gonna do we're gonna as a business plan i was like we're gonna reduce exterior populations maintain them as a food source and we're gonna farm them end up winning that business plan competition and find out nine months later that i was completely wrong axis deer are essentially i don't even wouldn't even call it domestication like you

they're unhabituate like you can't they're unable to habituate so there's one guy that's been able to pull it off in australia um he can't have herd size bigger than seven even if they're third and fourth generation bottle fed if they get into herds of more than like 15 or 16 they like revert straight back to wild so the idea that we could like manage them like went out the door from like a typical ag standpoint so it then like shifted to like okay wait a second if we can't do that what else is there and basically in college I mean everybody kind of fakes it till they make it but basically in college uh I started I was trying to get a bunch of information from India because that's the only place that at that point was doing any studies on axis deer that's where

they're originally from that's their homeland and nobody would answer me I'd be like oh I'm a college grad doing this and nobody would answer me and so I started like I started the Axis Deer Institute overnight went online signed up for a quick state registration for 50 bucks made myself executive director made a logo and then I started sending emails from all the executive director and then everybody started answering me and sending me all of their studies so then I was then I was able to start collecting huge amounts of data on population dynamics and fond mortality and all these different things that like I was truly obsessed um and played three years of professional volleyball throughout Europe and the Maldives and Indonesia and had just an amazing time but was constantly obsessed and kind of collecting information and yeah very long story

short uh three axis deer were illegally introduced to the big island the big island uh had no axis deer at that point the big island is the big island for a reason it's hawaii island it essentially all the hawaiian islands could fit in it it's huge um and believe it or not nobody really knew anything about axis deer as crazy as that is so we got the contract to find and remove those three to four deer um kyle it took us seven months to find the first deer we hunted every day about sunday damn six days a week for seven months you imagine doing it took us three years to find them all you imagine doing a seven month hunt it was like it was crazy but ultimately again long story short there is we had to develop that's like we have a massive integration of ford looking infrared technology into like what we do every day now and it started way back then we were at like month five and we're

like it was a hundred square mile area we're like we're never gonna find these things like we've done all the classic like hunting like transacted every mile looked for sign checked water everything we couldn't find and it wasn't until we brought in we actually like got to borrow this piece of equipment from the military from a helicopter forward looking infrared and then we're like oh like we could see like we could see anything we could find anything. And ended up being able to use that technology to help find those animals, develop survey methodology that is still the most accurate surveys you can do, I think, anywhere at this point. But long story short, then took another two years to find and remove all of those animals,

which ended up being like five total so very few oh fun fact every seven days a new invasive species is introduced to the hawaiian islands hold on this is a this is a great place because i want to backtrack here and go for it i know that a lot of people i want to know a lot of people. I believe a lot of people have hunted or are interested in hunting that are listening to this podcast. It's certainly if they've made it this long. There's a curiosity there. Break down how this problem started. Break down the king getting this as a gift, what it meant, where they went, and what actually transpires without having a natural predator there

yeah because i think this is super important so i framed it frames the whole fucking thing right and i think this is super why would they care you got a few deer on big island why does that matter right frame this thing for us great great question so 1868 two bucks and five does are introduced by king kamehameha V to the island of Molokai. As in like as early as 1894, there were already like articles coming out in the papers about like concerns of them like interacting with watersheds. So Hawaii is the most isolated landmass on the planet. There's nothing more valuable than water. And our forests have been designed over years and years and years to basically capture fog.

So in these high upland areas, they basically capture fog nonstop, and that produces all of our fresh water. And Hawaiians knew this. They knew this for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. So Hawaiians early on in the 1894s were like, wait a second, like they're in our forests and this isn't good. And as early as 1898, they brought in sharpshooters from California. In 1898, they shot 7,000 deer on Molokai to start to like,

they recognized this was like, we've been having this conversation for 100 plus years of like managing access here and still no solution at this point um 1909 the territorial government is already like talking about different rules by in the 1920s so we're on deer only on molokai at this point um and starting to like grow exponentially in the 1920s they get introduced to lanai which maybe some people have heard like that's where rogan goes hunting and like lots of people have heard of like the island of lanai so in 1920s they go to lanai probably by like lanai, probably by the 50s and 60s, Lanai has essentially like a maximum population. And that population is only being regulated by essentially available feed, right? So like we talked about on Moloka, you like that type of die off.

And then in 1959 and 1960, the state tries to introduce deer to the Big Island and to Maui, essentially, at the same time. And the Big Island gets, like, national parks from around the country. Everybody puts up this huge fuss, the ranching community. And essentially, like, they don't get introduced to the Big Island, but they get introduced to Maui. And that's in 1959, 1960. And now there are 60 to 70,000 deer on Maui, but there's going to be, the population is still emerging. There's going to be 210 to 240,000 deer on Maui,

essentially if we don't balance populations. And there's a huge, like we we can dig into, like, the no predators, perfect weather, no seasonal stresses. Like, a lot of, like, elk, mule deer, all of these different animals will, like, die from, they call it winter kill, but, like, winter's hard, and a lot of animals don't make it through winter. So they don't have any of these exterior stresses. But the most

important thing is axis deer are one of the few deer species in the world that can breed year round so when an elk mule deer uh sitka when they drop their antlers what ends up happening is for for those folks that don't know access to your or all deer regrow their antlers every year it's actually kind of crazy it's one of the only species that can like regenerate a bone in a period of like three to four months it's kind of nuts it's why antler velvet is pretty coveted throughout you know asian culture and a bunch of other things um but long story short when that antler falls off, testosterone drops, sperm with the vast majority of species

are no longer viable. That's why there's a pronounced rut period, and there's a very specified period where you see all of these, cakey, all of these fawn being born, right? Axis deer's sperm is viable year round. And it creates, what it does is create like prolific growth rates, like viral level growth rates at about 33% a year. So cool story. Axis deer get introduced to Maui in 1959, 1960. In 1961, black-tailed deer get introduced to Kauai. You can't find a black-tailed deer on Kauai.

Like they're still extremely hard to find. And it's like the differentiating factor, there's no predators on Kauai, it's perfect feed, et cetera, et cetera. The differentiating factor is sperm is viable year-round. Eighty-nine percent of the 40,000-plus deer we've harvested on Maui, 89 percent of those females is either lactating or pregnant when we harvest them. Oh. Yeah. So long tangent to say King Kamehameha happened to, well, he introduced them to Molokai.

The Baldwins then introduced them to Lona'i and then the state introduces them to Maui. But the deer that is here is one of the most prolific deer species in the world. And then on top of it, one of the most intelligent as well. So you're dealing with a, now, they're one of the best tasting. So it makes it like –

They're the best, for sure. Yeah. It makes it easy to eat, but that's really where the problem lies. The problem lies in that very extremely unique species that is highly viral and healthy. So, yeah. Yeah, one of the things too, because we had the option, there's a lot of axis deer in Texas, and it's not the same as Hawaiian axis. That's for damn sure.

You understand you are what you eat, ate kind of deal. And we've seen that even amongst our sheep thus far. But it's the fact that they'll eat all the way down to the root. They'll eat the root. They'll eat all the way to the ground, right? And what happens, and we see this, like Peter Attia called it the passion of the Christ, because he was walking through nothing but thorn bushes. And these seeds are already in the soil. They lie dormant. If the grassland remains, you don't see them grow. But as soon as the grass is taken out, and it won't return if the roots are eaten, then these giant thorn bushes come in.

And that's what we had to hike through in effectively warm weather gear. So he looked like he got whipped with a thorn, you know, like a thorn whip, you know, just cuts all over his legs. He was successful, so he didn't give a shit. But, yeah, I mean, that's really what changes the landscape. So it's not just that it's an uphill battle fighting against a hyper-intelligent animal that was designed to escape tigers in India, and it has no real external forces working against it. Those are all – talking about growth rate, which is in and of itself hard to manage. But what's actually happening to the land is also a really important factor as well. And you guys know this inside and out from pig populations, you know it from golf courses and local reefs, like all sorts of shit.

And so it really does become an environmental threat rapidly, almost faster than anything else that you guys have had to deal with. it is it really is like and it's just this sad like two sides of the coin like such an extraordinary resource but it is literally an ecological disaster at like when they get to the point where the only thing managing their populations is they eat everything and they like they don't have any food left right and at that point you have huge so you we think of it as so mountain to ocean so you have mountains that are collecting significantly less water so both in stream beds but in our aquifers. So like significantly, like having a significant impact on the health of the island as a whole, you have deer in like these central

locations that are denuding landscapes, but more importantly, those landscapes can't grow other food, right? So you have a food, like a dysfunctional food system where it doesn't matter if it's sweet potato or cattle or anything. You can't grow anything else. And then all of that soil, which takes epochs to make, especially on a Hawaiian island that's volcanic, all of that soil runs off into the ocean when we get these rain events. And then it affects not only the reefs themselves but near shore fisheries one of my guys uh one of the guys on our teams from moloka ikaya he was just home incredible spear fisherman he's like i was sitting down at 60 feet looking for these things and he was talking about mu which

is like one of his favorite fish to to hunt down there and with mu you have to kind of like move the coral around because they dig through the coral for food. And he was telling me he couldn't, he couldn't bait them in because there was a silt layer on top of the coral and he couldn't actually like grab the coral to make it look like he was a moo. There was just like, there was just mud at 60 mud at 60 feet down in the ocean. And so it really does impact everything from mauka to makai, from mountain to ocean. And the idea is how do you find balance? How do you find a place where – absolutely, water is always going to be more important than any food source like they don't belong in our in our watersheds and they belong within our food systems at a place that like there's balance and and they're not impacting communities and roadways and ecosystems so yeah it is the the alternative of like not balancing populations, which is what Lanai and Molokai look like right now, is bad.

I mean, great example, Lanai. Barry Ellison owns the whole place. That's a whole different story. But Lanai Hale, which is their little watershed, there's all these amazing stories. My wife translates Hawaiian newspapers. There's these amazing stories of all of these perennial streams that would run all the time that all of the locals would, like, utilize for pie and, like, all these different things. Like, literally every stream bread is dry. And Larry Ellison is, like, reverting to desalination to try and, like, figure out how to put water on his island. Like, it changes

entire landscapes when not managed properly um and lana is a bigger story there was other animals involved sheep in these different things but um again high unbalanced populations like highly unbalanced populations are extremely detrimental. And ultimately, like, doesn't matter how incredible they are as a food resource. You've got to figure out how to balance it. Right. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, all things in right relation, for sure.

So, so I'm sure, you know, with what you're learning in college and your previous experience in life growing up, it became the thing to do. See a need, fill a need. Like, here here's here's the fucking opportunity to make shit right talk about the process of creating maui nui and what steps needed to be taken i'm sure there was a lot of fucking hoops you had to jump through with the government getting this cleared to be able to sell and stuff like that make it work um yeah and maybe you had a lot of help too from people that were like yeah please help us you know yeah it was uh i mean that was it's been that big island so what ended up happening is that big island project ended we successfully found all of those deer one of the few like invasive species project that was a success as far as we know there's still no deer on the big island you know that was almost like 10 years ago um and what ended up happening

is the ranchers on maui were like wait a second if you guys can do that we want like get over here like we want you to just kill these things and they were at that point calling them spotted rats and because that was their relationship with them like the ranchers relationship with them was like they eat all our grass they break all our fences like that was their relationship with them. Like the ranchers relationship with them was like, they eat all our grass, they break all our fences. Like that was their relative relationship with them. And obviously that didn't sit well with me, like coming from the place where like they started as a food resource and that's the way we thought of them as.

So that was the very first call to the kind of USDA FDA, you know, 10 years ago now to be like, wait a second, there's gotta be a way to do this. And they had some rules in place. Actually a guy named Sumner Erdman on, um, on Maui brought in elk in the, I don't know how he did it. He got elk in the seventies and eighties and created like some framework, but they're not wild. They're all like within fences. But there had to be some framework for like harvesting techniques that aren't in a perfect corral. But anyway, long story short, it took five years to basically convince the USDA to let us incorporate forward-looking infrared, this technology we that they could so we could meet all of the

standards of a typical slaughter facility so when you go into a slaughter facility i mean very few people listening to this probably have actually you probably have knowing you um but when you go into a typical slaughter facility there are a whole bunch of animals in really tight pens that go into chutes, that go into clamps. Like they're crazy stressed through this process. Head gets clamped. They get shot in the head. No country for old men. Yeah, exactly.

And that's called – like that process is called like anti-mortem inspection. And we basically had to follow all of those rules and those rules are they have to be able to view the animal prior to harvesting to make sure it's like healthy i.e no broken leg or whatever's going on and then they have to be able to watch that animal the language is rendered immediately unconscious but they have to be able to watch that animal get shot in the head and there's no room for error like every single one has to be able to watch that animal get shot in the head and there's no room for error like every single one has to be done essentially perfectly so we had to figure out how to like do all of these things that happen in highly constrained areas so they could make it happen in the field

when we never bait we never pen we never corral like we never do any of those things and so it was showing them that forward looking infrared at night would allow them to be like hey that animal is healthy and then the technology we have like i can tell you the difference between a goat and a deer at six miles so at a hundred yards they can see every hair on that body abscess pregnant like they know everything about that animal and then forward-looking infrared takes essentially it takes heat and turns it into like an optical image and so what ends up happening is they can actually see our bullet it ends up being a tracer because the friction the bullet creates through the air creates like a little heat signature so they actually can see the bullet move all the way to

the animal's head and see the animal be rendered immediately unconscious so but you can imagine how the first call to like the usda went they're like what do you want to do who are you like no no these things need to be in a building like um so it just took a long time we finally got a guy out to like view the process with like all of that equipment and he was like wait a second i actually can't say no like i could see it all i can just like yeah you guys can do it and then it was like i remember like that morning going back i was on maui and my we live on the big island. I called my wife. I was like, okay. They said yes. And we're like huge celebration.

She's like, but what? I was like, but to meet all the other rules, we have to have a mobile slaughter facility and it has to be specially designed. She's like, okay, well, how are you going to do that? I was like, how do you feel about remortgaging the house and she wasn't super pumped but basically we had to design this specialized mobile slaughter facility that could get with us in proximity to the field because some of the other rules are from the moment rendered from the moment harvest it has to be transported skin guts off clean without a hair on it in essentially like an hour so damn that's hard enough to do like when that animal is like in a pen imagine doing that when you're a mile away from your mobile slaughter facility so we had to figure out how to break down proximities and um how to do all of that fast enough so we had to do two

things one we had to learn to move really quickly at night and what that looks like um and two we had to figure out a way within our slaughter facilities we basically can do from the time a deer gets back and all we've done is bled that animal from the time a deer gets back and all we've done is bled that animal from the time a deer gets back and you've done deer so you know what this looks like we can do a deer in two minutes and 47 seconds you'll get it down to a science you're like taking the best from from ray crock and applied it to the axis there's all these crazy pulleys and winches. Like, so we had to design very specialized systems so that we could figure out how

to do it at scale. And the, and I think the reason being is like our goal from day one always was to help balance populations. If the goal was, let's just make a little bit of money harvesting deer. We'd have stopped years and years and years ago. The goal was how do we design our systems to scale so we can do 15 to 20,000 deer a year, essentially, right?

So that's been like seven, eight years in the making to constantly like iterate and design systems to move fast enough, meet all the requirements of the USDA and be able to do that in all these different locations. So it, um, God, I could talk about this for hours, but it's been, it's been seven years of constantly innovating small things to get better fast enough to make it all happen yeah fuck yeah well that's well worth it you know it's so impressive to me because when you when you get into hunting you know people talk about um you know only taking the shot if it's there and and making sure that you do it you have a humane kill and and oftentimes you're gonna run into it my hands raised where take a shot that you think you have and it doesn't quite land right and i remember i

was on big island on that trip before we went out for axis and um i had just got my first pig at like 23 yards it was real easy dead on you know one shot perfect and uh you know went up prayed for the animal, thanked it. And then I forget who I was paired with, but they're like, hey, you got plenty left in the tank. The sun's not down yet. I was like, oh, you're right. All right, cool. And so we started looking and I saw two, and I told this story before, I won't get into details of how hard it was on me, but there was, I had them at 43 yards and they were just walking, you know was a slightly moving target, and then she picked up to a slight jog. I let her by a couple of yards, what I thought would have been perfect,

and it hit her right in the gut. I mean, have you ever hit or heard a pig squeal? I sprinted to her to finish the job with a knife. It's something that will never come out of my mind, right? Then getting into regenerative agriculture and things like that, something that we often think about. One of the biggest problems is that if you want USDA, you have to go through something where you're transporting an animal. That's going to fuck it up. They don't know. These guys don't go on car rides. They're not like your pet dog.

Every animal you brought to the land, it took them at least a week. A week if they were fast, they could integrate in a week to the land and not be freaked out and skittish about it some took two three weeks to finally settle down and feel like they were home and not get weird so you know take something and drive it somewhere that immediately puts it on tilt it's kept penned up it's no longer with its family members it's got all these different smells because everyone's standing their own shit and urine and then this clamp grabs them and squeezes them from all sides on the fucking rib cage. And then the thing comes from behind them and no country for old men's them in the back of the brain. That's not how I would want to go.

That's not humane. That's not like the thing. It's the thing we say yes to. But most people have no fucking idea that that's the process of which all of our meat that's in the grocery store has to go through all of it doesn't matter if it's regenerative doesn't matter if it's bison or cow or kangaroo that's how it died and it's mind-blowing to think like here we are in 2023 and this is the best that's not the best right and so i think about this when when you told me your process i was blown away because even if I take the best shot,

you know, like the best shot is animals hanging out. It just got laid, let's say, and it's, and it's eaten, you know, it's eaten some grass. And the last thing it remembers is hanging with his friends and family with a, with a wad of grass in its mouth, you know, in the euphoria of sex. And then it just falls over dead, right? That's a perfect shot, right? Like that'd be great, but you can't always get that. Even if you're spot on, it's going to take time. There's different things. The fact that you guys get to hunt at night,

you get, you know, they're all bedded down. There's no fear. There's no transport. There's no weird smells. They're in their environment from start to finish. You know, like Whole Foods has that rating system of like one through five. You never see anything rated five

where it was killed on the same land it was raised you can't sell it in the fucking store it doesn't exist so why even make the rating system go to five it doesn't you can't buy it but now you can right and what you guys are doing allows that and it is the most humane way by far to get the very best meat on the planet yeah i think and i think ultimately what going to help change that system essentially like nutrient density labeling. Five years, it's coming. And the craziest part was they were able to measure oxidative stress. So they're able to now tell you when an animal dies from excessive stress, how bad it is for you.

And so when we got those study results back it was us they tossed us in at the end of the study with like 200 beef samples from across like the continental us and canada from like regenerative to lot fed to all of it which is crazy and like our nutrient density numbers like were obscene like 64 times the omega-3 is like crazy like so much better for you but being at the end of it seeing like their ability to measure oxidative stress and like it like is like the detriment it has to like your like to nutrition that shit starts showing up on a label. Guess what's going to happen? Like you start being able to go into a store and see two things of beef and understand collectively from like a nutrient density score, like which one is better for you. conversation what it does is it like starts to unbundle this like commodity food system which is a race to the bottom for the cheapest thing with like totally like excess calories without any micronutrients what ends up happening is producers that especially regenerative ag which is i just think of as like layered conservation practices.

When they're able to start doing that, they have the ability to measure their quality of food versus another one, like literally apples to apples. And it will start to change the food system. I, the better you take care of a place, the better you take care of an animal, you will be able to demand a better price for it. And that will happen with nutrient density labeling. So really cool. We may get to be at the forefront of that in starting to stick some of those numbers on those labels. But that's the only way that changes.

Like other than that, if the vast majority of consumers aren't going to take the time me and you are going to, to even look into that stuff and then make a relative choice because of that. But the minute they start showing up on a label, like there's this many good things for you per calorie and all, did you know,

like there was this much stress involved. you per calorie and oh did you know like there was this much stress involved you imagine that people are gonna like a people are gonna freak out so who knows if it ever makes it but b um people will start making better choices and the technology to complete those types of analyses is like rat like the technological cost of it is like decreasing monthly it's pretty crazy so i'm super excited to see what is now like just a conversation me and you can have about like we know it's not good for us there's going to be data that shows us in the near future that it isn't so it's pretty awesome yeah that's awesome i mean i think before you'd have you know there's there's there's people who who you know there's a

full spectrum of hunters out there right you've got your you know fucking kill them put them on the wall don't even eat the meat kind of guy and then you've got at least i eat the meat but i still want his head on the wall and you got you know somewhere all the way to like you know spiritual i named my animal before i killed it. I wrote her a letter and did a ceremony and all this other shit. I've done everything in between. It's a fun spectrum to be a part of. But one of the things most hunters will always agree with

is like you kill an animal, the more stressed it is, the more that will affect the meat. And if you know anything about the body, you're going to take that on, right? I'm consuming more cortisol, more adrenaline, and more of these neurochemicals that are layered. It was through every system in the animal's body. It's still going to be there when I'm eating it six months

from now, a year from now. It doesn't matter if I froze it and thawed it, however well that was packaged, right? And I think a lot of people don't they never consider that you know it's just like oh that's woo-woo or yeah no that's not how it works you know what it's like but but there is there is clear evidence i'm trying to think of the guy's name who who really pioneered a lot of that research at utah state he's retired now he's in his 80s dr fred something i know he's on paul check's podcast yeah he's got a he's got it written in a few books. But just a brilliant dude. I'll find it and link the podcast he did with Paul Cech on Living 4D.

It's one of my favorites. They have an amazing – he does an amazing animal prayer in that. And I'll send you the link to that study. We made it – we threw it on our website. You can go look at all of it, which is really cool. Dr. Van Vliet runs the lab over there now. And, yeah, just awesome, awesome information. threw it on our website like you can go look at all of it which is really cool um dr van bleet runs the lab over there now and yeah just awesome awesome information and even apart from like how much more nutrient dense axis deer are as a function of both like they're in the way they

graze but also that study directly measured phytonutrients so like and phytochemicals like i.e the amount of good things in the plant how much of it ends up in the meat so like how many heads of broccoli do you get with this meat that you're eating from those phytochemicals and so super cool information but what it showed which i think is probably the coolest part, is nutrient density is nutrition of place. So what it showed us was that the unique soil sets that are on Haleakala's slope, like these andesols and eustans, which exist like less than 0.5% of the world that directly translates into the nutrient density of what is then food like when that animal turns into food and that type of information again we're thinking about like unbundling this shit commodity food system that type of information i.e like the health of a place translates to the health of the animal,

which translates to the health of your food. That's direct data that says like, no, no, no, no, no. Cause we had to send like 72 soil samples and forage samples to go along with it. So they could actually like pair the micronutrients and chemicals they were seeing in those plants and soils to the deer, to the food and i don't know man like i i think that has the the potential to change our food system as a whole and and if anything will really help amplify the need for regenerative ag i.e like if you take care of a place it's going to translate

into better food yeah this is this is great i actually i haven't talked about this yet i just literally you wanted i don't know what questions you had about the farm but i have a story to tell you that's super recent like in the last 10 days we found this out um so we we we have we do cows we do sheep we've got some exotics, red stag, black buck. There's like 10 remaining white tail. We left the gate open for the white tail to leave because they're all low fence. We had to put high fence in for the big ones. And I'm like, I don't feel like trapping these guys here.

They're so used to just being wherever the fuck they want. But we had some stay behind, and so they're a part of the crew now. The main regenerative piece is we rotate our cows and our sheep together with some livestock guardians to protect them. And then we have a nine-acre fenced-in place where we have our food forest. There's 400 fruit and nut trees. We do sweet potatoes, Japanese yams. We've got 120 chicken, 20 ducks, four geese, a couple donkeys, a couple emus, and a couple more livestock guardians. And they're protecting the birds.

And so we had a choice to make. This was our first year where we could harvest something that was born on the land and finished. So this is like the first real like, all right, here's our first test of the meat quality that we have here since we've gotten ahold of this land at the end of 2021 and started regenerative practices. And what's cool is we, you know, we had a decision to make and it's funny because farmers will scoff at this and Pete is going to be mad no matter what fucking decision I made. Um, but we had 16 Ram lamb to make a decision with, do we snip their nuts? Do we wrap rubber bands around their nuts and wait for them to fall off so we can control breeding or do we harvest them now as lamb which was an idea to

begin with and and and check that out so i said yeah let's do that and our plant manager said give me three of them to come inside the food forest and i'll see how detrimental they are or if they're beneficial because we have a fucking boat ton of johnson grass in there year around because that's getting overhead sprinklering 24 seven, even through the drought, right? We got all our trees and our, and our stuff in ground and this Johnson grass will grow eight feet tall.

Like there's nothing that can stop it. We're out there with sickles. We got weed whackers, you know, as teams of 20 guys, it's an uphill battle and we, you know, chop and drops fine.

Cause it feeds it back into the ground, but it's not as good as an animal eating it and shitting it out. And so sure enough, we bring these three in and, um and they're doing great. And they're eating a lot of the Johnson grass. Then we figure, all right, we can bring the whole herd through. So we brought the flock through just the other day for the first time. It looks pristine. It's like the best decision ever. They didn't hurt a damn thing. So now we know we can do that. But going back to this first 13, we harvest them. Absolutely incredible meat. There's yellow fat that's loaded with vitamin A and all this good stuff. The meat's a dark red.

It's beautiful. And just in the last three days, we had to section these three rams away from them while they're in the same place. And one kept getting through the electric fence. He wasn't having it. He wanted to get in there and have his, he wanted to get his fill of the ladies. So we had this mobile fence, this mobile pen or wanted to get his fill of the ladies. So we, we had this mobile, this mobile fence, you know, this mobile pen or this iron fence, you know, it's, it's heavy duty and we put them in there and then the guys would move it, you know, every day to a fresh piece of

grass. That way he wasn't, you know, feedlot style standing in his own feces and he'd have some fresh food to eat. When they went to move it, he freaked out and sprinted straight out one of the corner posts inside this thing. And it just went bong. And it knocked him out, like full-on fucking knocked out. And unfortunately for him, he never really recovered from that. When he woke up, he could lift his head, he could move his feet, but he couldn't stand. And so immediately we were faced with the decision, like, you know, this was early in the day. I'm like, if he doesn't recover by morning, we should call him because the meat's perfect no reason not

to and uh so that ended up having to happen we did it and the first thing we noticed because now the only difference between these guys is that the original 13 ramlam they were they were going around the land and they had to deal with the seasons. You know, summertime is like winter in most places in Texas because we're, we're year two of one of the worst droughts we've had in a very, in a hundred years. Right. So it was, it was slim pickings and we're giving them hay and supplements and alfalfa

and that kind of shit. And that's not the same as fresh breast. This guy that we just harvested was like two to like twice as dark. So we know right there, he's getting more micronutrients from the iron and converting that into heme iron. We know at least that. The fat was way more colorful.

Like there were so many things that we saw just from an observational standpoint. So I find that to be really cool because, number one, he looks different. Number two, he tastes different. But now we know that we can rotate these guys in because over the course of a year, they're going to travel through there at least three or four times. Now we get to bring the whole flock in and that's going to help them out with their nutrient density, especially in the summer months. You know, they're going to get some really fresh grass that's still growing in the ground

and doing really well. And, and the impact it had on one animal was un-fucking-deniable. So that, that's really cool that we get to see that, you know, and you only see that firsthand, but it's cool. Like we ran an experiment without even realizing we were running an experiment that's so cool man what what like i i had like checked it out and i was like well he's doing something super cool here i did not know it was at that scale that's kind of crazy my friend um what would be like if you think back over the last like god you've been doing it for a while now give me two of the biggest surprises like could be positive or negative

but like like in trying to make all of it work together what have been two of the biggest surprises of like trying to execute regenerative ag properly because it's like it is extremely complicated there's lots of people that want to do it at different scales but it it's it's difficult to execute on a daily basis right um and you talked about earlier when we're chatting like great people go a long way but like two big surprises like you're like oh i had no idea this was going to be this. What do you think? Yeah. To your point, I had Joel Salatin on from Polyface Farms. He was on the podcast and he said, since 2020, one and a half million people have become homesteaders. Born and raised city slickers like myself, moved out to the country and became homesteaders with a minimum of five acres to work

with. A lot of them got animals, a lot of them put plants in the grounds. And then a year later, they're like, what the fuck now? What do I do? So I always give credit for the fact that we stand on the shoulders, on the backs and shoulders of giants, right? So I've been very well connected wherever I'm not connected to, Aubrey seems to be connected to. So we have decent reach in getting to meet people. And because I've been buying and a consumer of regenerative agriculture for so long, thanks to the same thing you learned in volleyball, I learned in fighting, right? Like what I put in my body actually changes how I think, how I feel, how I operate, my athleticism, my recovery, all that shit. And especially since

having kids, like I've never paid more attention to what's going on in my body than, than, you know, when I started having kids and thinking about what's going into theirs. So we've been super fortunate in that we've been connected with really amazing people. A lot of people hear about Jim Gale, Food Forest Abundance. His, you know, the brains of his operation is a guy named Chad Johnson, who traveled the globe with Seth Holzer. Seth Holzer would be on the Mount Rushmore of regenerative agriculture. He's got some fantastic books. And Chad is somebody that we got to meet and fall in love with. We were fortunate enough to hire him and have him design with permaculture design through Sepp Holzer's work, our food forest. So that was a big deal. And then we met Daniel Griffith, a lady that was working with us about a year ago. It was awesome. She's like,

hey, I've heard so much about this good stuff. And I reached out to Taylor. Taylor and Robbie are homies from Force of Nature. And they got Rome Ranch about 90 minutes west of here. So we've done some bison harvest there. My son sat on my lap when he was four years old and saw his first animal go down at 20 yards. He went and preyed on our warm body, sprinkled tobacco on the land. He started to build that connection. He hasn't hunted with me yet.

But I give a lot of credit to those guys. They've introduced us to many great people. And you know, we've learned so much from Daniel too, on the regenerative side, he's an Allen savory hub and has really taken what savory's work is and added, you know, his own twist to it. And so we've been able to gain a lot there and we've also had really hard shit we've had to learn from. I think one of the most shocking things is, you know, like my dad said it best. He's like, you were studying one-on-one and then you got the farm and you found yourself where you were in four-on-one. You're in your PhD level

shit, right? Like you're just like, Hey, I just signed up for graduate school. Why am I in the fucking master's class right now? Right. We had, we had gotten all of our sheep and we were probably the only people in Texas that brought in a food source without protection. I thought that because we had an eight foot game fence, we were fine. And as I know now, I mean, we could count 27 places along the perimeter where coyotes had gotten in. And so we lost six coyote or we lost six sheep in one night. And, um, I freaked the fuck out. I was like, at this rate, we won't have a flock to protect by the time we're able to secure dogs and train them and do all the things necessary. So we started camping out in groups of two and like, it's not, I want to, I'm only going to

kill something that I want to eat. I don't want to eat a coyote, but for this, you know, it's like, this is, they're directly affecting my food source and my lifeline and the protection and future of this farm. And for my family, like something has to be done. And, um, we camped out, I got fucking, I got like one of the nicest thermals. I got night vision goggles. I went all out and, you know, it was a lot of fucking money and, you know, we're up all night. I'm going to, you know, get leaving the farm first thing in the morning. I come back home. I'm dead tired and maybe slept for an hour. I'm out there spotting stock. I'm looking through lenses and everything. And they're so intelligent. You know, they would always hang

in the tree line just past, you know, the trees have their own infrared, right? So just where we couldn't see them and they do their roll call. There'd be 12 to 20 of them on our land at a time, just hooting and hollering and yipping. And we started to read about them. We found out, you know, if there, if there was a pack of 20 and you killed 18 of them and there was one male and one female, she would go into estrus the next day. That's how smart this, this, this animal is, right? It's almost extinction proof and they always come back with more.

She could have a litter of 20 right then. You know, once she gets pregnant, she would fill that gap and then some. And so killing them wasn't the answer. And livestock guardians became the answer. It became something where, all right, you know, we got to get something. So we got two great Pyrenees dogs and we were pissing all over the place and taking dogs on perimeter laps. So they'd piss all over the place. And, you know, what I was told was that coyotes can't tell if it's a puppy or a full grown, right? So it's just, they just smell the urine. They know it's a dog, that kind of thing. And so we made the mistake of not, not camping out there one more night, thinking the two dogs had it. The two dogs didn't have it. They, they're one was too young and it looks like the other one was

staying to protect while coyotes came and killed seven more fucking sheep so now we're down to 13 we've had six weeks in the field have not been able to fucking kill a single a single coyote and i was like that's it so i drove up north three hours and i came back with five more livestock guardians to make it seven and since then since then we haven't lost a damn thing. It's a, it's a hell of a food bill, but, uh, we don't, we, we don't lose sheep anymore to coyotes. So we've, we've got a, we've got an army, a small army and, um, they're absolutely fantastic. And I love those dogs. And what's great about the livestock dogs is, you know, it's kind of like a service animal, you know, it's not your pet doesn't hang out in your house, but they're the sweetest dogs. They're the absolute sweetest dogs.

And some of them have been really skittish and kind of afraid of us almost because of the lack of human affection and interaction. And, you know, over the year that we've been with them, you know, they'll, they'll come right up to us now. And they're, they're just the sweetest. One of our, one of our dogs is an Anatolian shepherd mix, and he's within five feet of every delivery. He's a fucking midwife. Every delivery, cow or sheep. And then when the mom gets mad, like you're too close, she'll get up and stomp her hooves or something like that. Without taking his eyes off mom, he'll back up a yard like, is this okay?

No? Okay. And he'll back up another yard. Then he'll sit back down and just wait. He's on board right there, every single okay? No. Okay. And he'll back up another yard. Then he'll sit back down and just wait. Like he's, he's on board right there. Every single one of them. He didn't miss a single delivery. And I was like, we got some special dogs, man.

It's pretty cool. So that's been a hell of a learning curve, but something beautiful. And then, you know, with, I guess on the other side of that, you know, on the plants, like summers are so brutal and we had, you know, line irrigation set up. We did, we punched holes. We did the whole thing with, with some really, some of Chad's best guys. And one of our lines went dead and we couldn't tell until it was too late. We lost 50 trees. We lost the whole zone in our sprinkler system because it was down for like a week in the summer and just fucking all of them died and thankfully they're still under warranty we got to trade them back but like that was a quarter of what we planted gone in two weeks i was like dude that is a huge loss and thankfully you know we didn't have to take that one on the chin but um you know observation is everything it's not something it's not in 15 or 20 years

with permaculture design. It is something that we're like, if no humans touched it for 50 years, we'd come back to it and actually would be better than how we left it. It's just going to become self-operating, but it's like, it's a lot like having kids. Like they need you so much immediately to make sure they're alive. And then they need you a little bit less, but they still need you every day. And then somewhere around when they're 15 years old, they're like, Hey, I got it,

dad back off, you know, but up until that point, like it's full on. And, and, um, like having kids,

it's something that's so beautiful. People talk about, you know, like reconnecting to nature and doing all these different things. Like when you put something in the ground and you watch it grow and you tend it and you see these animals, you know, from start to finish. Um, and I know the type of quality of life that these animals have, like it changes the relationship with food. It changed my relationship with nature. And I already had like a pretty deep bond through plant medicine

work and hunting and things like that, you know, like a really deep connection. And this has just allowed, you know, layers and layers further into that aspect. So I've been truly blessed to be able to do it. And, and at the same time, there's, I have no, no, you know, I make no mistake about thinking like the work is done. Like there's always something I'm going to learn. And 10 years from now, I'll have another thing like the sheep where I'm like, holy shit, I didn't see that coming. You know? So it's, it's one of those things. Like it was just, it's unpredictable and it's awesome. And it keeps me on the edge of my seat. That's so cool, man. Um, yeah, you're a brave,

that is a brave endeavor. We have like a small subset of that here. And I think probably what I enjoy most is the same way me and you realize how powerful observation is so how powerful it is to be able to like watch it all and then kind of understand the small connections that make things work like oh these plants and these animals are these plants and these plants are like this this and not that it's been so fun to watch our kids do that. It's been so fun for them to like flex that part of their brain that you think a thousand years ago would have been the most important thing. Like can you observe the environment around you and then make connections to ultimately like make everything around you better, right? And watching our kids understand like, oh, this animal's got a little bit different personality than that animal. And like, why is this tree growing better than this tree? And like, um, what my son the other day was like, Hey dad, what is this new little like weed that's growing by

our tree? Like our tree looks like a little bit greener. Um, that's a, that's a fucking superpower because that same level of observation or like pattern recognition, think about like some of the best people, you know, in business that's pattern recognition. And that like that ability to, to do so is it appears to be like best honed in nature.

Um, and so we get to do that all the time, like with our work, like constantly watching, like, Oh, what are the deer doing? And we collect like an obscene amount of data, like try and like piece it all together. And it's probably why I love our work so much is it's just this constant crazy puzzle. Cause like solving for the variability of them being wild is like literally constant,

right? Um, no different than your crazy backyard that you're dealing with um and but yeah i think what i enjoy most is watching watching our my kids develop that superpower because it really like it's going to be because all of this crap it doesn't do any of it like that's that's there's no pattern recognition in that somebody's feeding you an algorithm that you're literally being spoon-fed exactly. There's no piecing it together. So just congrats, man. I think that is a monumental undertaking.

So stoked that you have such amazing connections to help you learn faster, which is great. But man, that's badass's badass brother that's pretty cool yeah it's been great brother well we're past the hour here but i didn't want to talk you know i mean um people can let's let's wrap it on maui nu where can people get a hold of your stuff uh loved getting to hear the full story behind it but where can people find this and then uh i do want to talk maui in general like i can't have a hawaiian on the podcast or somebody that's there right now you know like that has been through

this firsthand there's all sorts of talk on that so i just love to get you know some some data points from somebody that's been close to it because um i haven't talked about it you know on the podcast because i haven't had any experts here anybody that's even remotely you know like in the area i've had i've had friends that i've talked to, you know, my good buddy, Shervina, wearing a Symbiotica shirt. He's, they have Landon Kauai and fantastic people, you know, a lot of connections there. And, you know, it's, it's heartbreaking to hear about it, you know, for so many reasons, but talk a bit about Maui Nui and then let's, let's dive into that as before we wrap. Yeah, Maui Nui is simple. Everything's basically via the website, which is awesome.

We can get it now at this point like anywhere in the continent. Actually, I think our second biggest customer base is in Texas, which is pretty badass. I get to – yeah. So appreciate all of that. People know access. They know access to you here. They do, man.

Yeah, where to start on maui we were god it it was it was chaotic for a really long time and and still very much is there's like you know there's at least 10,000 plus people that are essentially still displaced, i.e. they aren't where they're supposed to be. And they're either in an Airbnb or a hotel or like these crappy camps. The situation was already bad before as a function of like housing, but like figuring out where these people go and how they still maintain like a plate, like a sense of place. Um, unfortunately people are leaving every week. Like there's a better opportunity on another Island or in Vegas or something. Right. Um, so it's still, that's, I mean, that's the nature of like the news cycle these days is like everybody got it was a big deal for seven to ten days and then all of a sudden it was something else right so um luckily the community if there's any positive notes um community has kind of gone through their mourning period you imagine how like in these

disasters you don't know what's going on for so long. And, and in a nature of a fire like that, like you can't find people, like they're gone. Right. They've been burned. And so having all of that done and a lot of that, like coming to closer has really allowed the community to finally like move into that morning phase, which was really important because especially Hawaiians, like nothing happens till you mourn like don't talk to me about anything else don't talk to me about like rebuilding like we need to like mourn and celebrate and be done and before they can like ever move on to whatever the

next conversation is so luckily some of those conversations are starting to emerge and what's been really cool to see is just a reimagining of these places like Lahaina, the place that burned, used to be a wetland. It used to be like, there used to be like inland bays where these boats would come in and vahas and canoes.

And like, it was a food forest. They had ulu, they had breadfruit on the entire slopes. They used to feed hundreds of thousands of people. And now it's a desert with no water. And as terrible as the incident has been, it's been so cool to see people not reach back to like two years ago and what Lahaina used to look like.

They're reaching back to like the early 1800s and saying like, wait, wait, when was Lahaina the healthiest? When were our people the healthiest in this place? And so it's been awesome to see some like real amazing community leaders come forward that essentially like were there, but were there quietly before and say like, oh no, no, no. Like Lahaina is going to be like a place for generations to come that is healthy and what is that going to look like because literally like the whole thing burned out

um and then we are a small story within like some amazing stories of community within lahaina but you know for our team we immediately pivot. Like, we were literally, like, I remember, like, getting gear on at 10 o'clock at night, looking across. We're at Ulupalakua and Lahaina's across from us. Like, seeing Lahaina still burning and knowing there was going to be 40, 50,000 people displaced that all needed food. And I think that's one of the interesting and things, one of the things we're proudest about and what we've built is the system we've built can call on food very quickly. And that resource. So we talk about a ho'olona, but like a sign. We harvested, it's the first time we've ever done it.

We harvested 100 deer in four hours. And that amount of deer was exactly what was needed to make 45,000 bowls of chili the next day to like get it in there and feed the community, like all the displaced people. And we've just been so fortunate to be able to like continue to share what we've built with the community. So we've done like 40,000 plus pounds of like donations in the community we immediately just pivoted to like we just started buying freezers and we just take freezers like stand-up freezers or chest freezers we like just drop them at people's houses and just fill them up with like one pound packs of ground and so that like anybody that needed it they didn't have to like go to the food bank or something it's just like go to their neighbor's house and be like oh i'm gonna take four for my family like it's been yeah it's been so valuable to our teams to be able to share

through this period because it's been rough and i think having really clear purpose and being truly useful in a time of need like this is all you can really ask for. Right. The worst thing is being like sitting on the side and not knowing what to do and, and, or getting in the way the best thing to be able to do. Like it's, we've been very, um,

feel very privileged to be useful in this period of time for sure. Um, and it's, it's going to take 10 years. So basically what we're designing right now is like we're taking what we call our holo i program holo i is this hawaiian term that is like to rush food to where it's needed um so we're designing a holo i program actually mean you can talk about this after because we have a volunteer program so now like you can come in work your ass off for the weekend help us donate food,

share food with the community. And like we were doing it kind of outside of the USDA. So you can actually be involved in the whole process, which is pretty badass. So we're going to be bringing in a bunch of people to help us. Yeah. So we're basically redesigning who we are to make sure we can support long-term food sharing indefinitely essentially so um it's been tough like lots of guys like lots of folks on the team lost everything um like literally everything and but we've been as a whole the team has just been so like privileged and honored to be useful and feel, yeah, just feel how lucky we are to be able to do that when most people are just like, how do I help? And they don't know how to sometimes, right? So, yeah, it's home. We're going to take care of it.

And, yeah, it's going to be a long, long time. And the goal is just like, how do you continue to provide support so we don't lose our community? Our community doesn't like move away. So we're just trying to figure that out right now. I'm going to invite lots of people to come in and help us do that. So yeah, we'll connect after and we'll figure that out. Awesome, brother. Well, it's been so good having you on the podcast.

We don't have to wait five years to do it again. I hope we run it back much sooner than that. Awesome, brother. Well, it's been so good having you on the podcast. Uh, we don't have to wait five years to do it again. I hope we run it much sooner than that. It's great getting to catch up with your brother. Um, uh, Maui, newie.com. We'll link to that in the show notes. Where can people find you on social media to stay connected to you? Uh, I don't do a lot of social, but Maui newie venison.com or at Maui new evanison is where a lot of our stories roll around and um yeah they can find a lot of our stories there for sure dope brother well it's been awesome thank you so much bro we'll take care Thank you.