Shawn Ryan Show - #237 Steven Rinella - Founder of MeatEater

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Steven Rinella is an American outdoorsman, writer, and television host, best known for promoting ethical hunting, wildlife conservation, and field-to-table cooking. He is the founder of MeatEater, Inc., a company that produces hunting, fishing, and outdoor lifestyle content across multiple platforms, including television, podcasts, and digital media. As the host of "MeatEater", a long-running TV series on Netflix and many other platforms, Rinella takes viewers into the field, blending hunting adventures with education on wildlife, ecology, and sustainable food sourcing. A hallmark of the show is its authenticity—highlighting not just the successes but also the challenges of hunting, including the reality that not every hunt ends in a filled tag. Each episode also emphasizes cooking and consuming wild game, reinforcing the deep connection between hunting and food. In addition to the TV series, Rinella hosts "The MeatEater Podcast", America's most listened-to outdoors podcast, which ranks among the top ten sports podcasts overall. Featuring expert guests, in-depth discussions on conservation, and plenty of entertaining outdoors stories, the podcast has become a go-to resource for hunters, anglers, and outdoor enthusiasts. An accomplished author, Rinella has written ten books (and three audiobooks) on hunting, wild game cooking, and outdoor survival, including American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon; The MeatEater Guide to Wilderness Skills and Survival; The MeatEater Fish and Game Cookbook; and Outdoor Kids in an Inside World: Getting Your Family out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature. His writing has appeared in many publications, including Wall Street Journal, Outside, The New York Times, Men's Journal, and Glamour. Rinella also appeared in the Ken Burns documentary, The American Buffalo. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: ⁠https://americanfinancing.net/srs⁠ NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org. APR for rates in the 5s start at 6.327% for well qualified borrowers. Call 866-781-8900, for details about credit costs and terms. ⁠https://tryarmra.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://aura.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://betterhelp.com/srs⁠ This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. ⁠https://bubsnaturals.com⁠ – USE CODE SHAWN ⁠https://shawnlikesgold.com⁠ ⁠https://mypatriotsupply.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://patriotmobile.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://ROKA.com⁠ – USE CODE SRS ⁠https://shopify.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://trueclassic.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://USCCA.com/srs⁠ Steven Rinella Links: Website - https://www.themeateater.com X - https://x.com/stevenrinella IG - https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella MeatEater Podcast - https://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater Books - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/84146/steven-rinella Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. dot ca. ymx 1 and sip

and 2 and sip and 3 and sip Oh hey I'm just sipping Tim's all new protein ice latte Starting at 17 grams per medium latte Tim's new protein lattes Protein without all the work At participating restaurants in Canada

Steve Ronella Welcome to the show man Thank you it's a privilege come on Like, I always watch your, I consume tons of your, the shorts you pull from your episodes. Oh, thank you. And I like them, yeah. Thank you. I like all the, all the warriors, man, like hearing them tell stories as a kick, yeah.

Man, it's an honor to do it. You know, I just think it's really important to document the last war. I mean, I was in part of both of them. So I think it's just important to document that stuff, actually, how it happened. Instead of listening to some fucking newshead on the media, tell us about what. happened had never been there or maybe they did a photo shoot there at some point in time but yeah but yeah i've been tracking you for quite a while so it's pretty surreal to have he sitting in here thank you for coming but um all right everybody starts off with an introduction so here we go

steve ranella an american outdoorsman writer and tv host known for ethical hunting wildlife conservation and field to table cooking founder of meat eater ink producing top tier content on hunting fishing and outdoor lifestyles across tv podcasts and digital media host of the meat eater tv series on netflix you run the meat eater podcast america's number one outdoors podcast and a top 10 sports podcast author of 10 books plus three audiobooks on hunting survival and nature including hits like the American Buffalo in search of a lost icon in the meat eater fishing game cookbook. And you're a husband and a father. And so being out there a little bit, talking to your team, we were asking for funny stories.

And they had mentioned something about a hunt, I believe it was in South America for monkeys. Yeah. What is that? Well, I got to hear this. Yeah, I had a number of real life-changing. experience is hunting down in South America with indigenous South Americans, you know, some people use the term Amerindians. I spent time with some guys that are from the Makushi tribe or Makushi and Wapashon tribes in Bolivia and then the Chimane, sorry,

Makushi and Wapashon and Guyana and the Chimane in Bolivia. And we're on a river trip, traveling up a river with some chimani guys and they had they had a shotgun um which is kind of a common armament down there and it would be that like i was with these guys another trip i was with just to give you a sense of the the ammunition and stuff they used down there is i was with these guys and in guy on one time that they weren't supposed to have a gun right they weren't allowed to have firearms but they had a firearm and they had a 16 gauge shotgun and they had 12 gauge ammo and they would I'm not kidding dude they would sit there so at night they like to hunt at night and they would take that they had a 16 gauge casing it's got the same primer so they would

take that 12 gauge shell someone had given these 12 gauge shells and they would cut it open and they had a leaf they cut it open poured the shot out in a leaf got the wad out poured the powder out in a leaf Push that primer pin out. Oh, shit. Put the primer into the 12 gauge. Put the powder in. And then they used, like, they had this kind of waxy paper they'd use for a wadding, put their shot in. Then they had a candle.

Instead of crimping it, they'd cut the crimp off. And they'd melt a candle in there and drip candle wax in there to seal the thing. No way. So they could go take their 16 gauge shotgun out hunting. I remember one. these guys I would go out with them sometimes one night I was I just for whatever reason I wasn't like invited to go I remember they made two of these shells and they're gone for quite a while in the dark and a while I never found out what happened but a while there they come back make one more shell

and then go back out again so that was but these these are these to get back to the question about the monkey these guys in in believe me they really like they like monkeys and different I I had the handful of different groups I hung out with, there's different opinions about eating monkey. It's either taboo or not. But these guys like Red Howler monkeys. So I go out with them in the jungle and they had found a, they knew about a tree that was fruiting.

They had been scouting around and found a fig tree or not a fig tree, maybe some kind of date. I don't remember the fruit. I'm sorry. But we got under a tree and we're just waiting under a tree. And pretty soon you can see a howler monkey up in the tree. and he shoots up there with a shotgun and down comes not only a holler monkey but a holler monkey's baby and man they uh this guy comes back there's some stuff we like we filmed this off there's some

stuff we didn't film or didn't use the footage of but they come back and they you know they kind like cook that monkey's head and eat it like an apple walking around with it kind of to chew in the are you serious took all the intestines out in the river so they took all those monkey guts down and inverted all the intestines to clean them to eat and um yeah they just and they cook everything to the nth degree so they smoke it cook it boil it and sitting there eating that monkey meat and it was like i can eat anything man i'll eat anything but uh eat monkey meat was yeah eating monkey meat was a was a tougher meal so they run around with a monkey head and eat it like an apple.

Did you try that? I didn't try the monkey. I ate a lot of monkey meat, but I didn't try the monkey head. I wasn't offered the monkey head. You weren't a bite. No, but I remember just seeing it. He had the little monkey and, yeah, just palming it, you know. That's crazy.

Yeah. What about the skull? No, just not like, kind of like get, like a picture that you're, picture that you're getting the skin off and the jowl meat and stuff, just kind of cleaning it up. you know cleaning it up yeah that's fucking crazy yeah it was it was a wild experience and what i the joke about that that i always tell people is we run into a they have like our only marsupial here is an opossum they run into a pot we're out at night and we run into a possum

and they just killed this monkey so we see a possum which is not an esteemed food item here once upon time it was like people would even harvest them the commercial guys used to harvest them just for fat just for oil oh yeah we run into a possum i'm like dude if there's some americans eat a possum that possum's dead meat with these boys finding it you know it was so funny there's this possum hanging out of tree and they can see it in the light and um and i'm like man i feel bad for that possum and they're like yeah just keep walking so it's like monkeys cool possums no one's gonna eat that damn what's the craziest thing you've eaten uh i think that like eating monkey meat and And then years ago, I did a story, I went to, I was mentioned to you, even though I promised

not to do this from, like earlier I was telling you. But earlier, I mentioned having an opportunity, we were talking about Vietnam vets, and I mentioned having an opportunity to go to Vietnam years ago. I did a magazine story when I was doing magazine articles. I did a magazine feature on Fitcho, which is like Meat Dog in Vietnam. And it's in the north of Vietnam, around the lunar New Year, so tat, like, tat is like an auspicious time to eat dog meat in the north. And so I did a story about, I did a story about that, like eating dog meat, the mythology of eating dog meat, the business of the business of dog meat in Vietnam, how it's, how it's, how it's, raised, how it sourced, how it served, and went and ate for about a week, and was never

able to enjoy a bite of it, man. It would give, like, it would give, uh, a hot. They would call it a hot food. Like, it was, it was, it's a charged food. They would call it hot, meaning it's like a potent food. But I would get hot, like hot flushes of guilt, dude. Like, I got to get like a sweaty guiltiness. Damn. Eating that dog and there's a common thing they would serve where you'd go into

these places that would open. It was funny because I was right down that lake where they fished McCain. No kidding. Oh yeah, you're sitting like that lake where McCain went down in and a guy in Vietnam mentioned he was a guest of us once talking about McCain.

But it was that where he was, there's a street there that during the Tet holiday is all these sort of like, you'd almost put it like, It's almost like food trucks or like pop-up stores. It's just all fit chill places that are open just for the Tet holiday. And you can go in and get, they'd serve, like you'd go to that, get dog five ways or dog three ways.

And it'd be like a prefix menu. Interesting. Of just different preps. And when I wrote that, I published that story in Outside Magazine long, long ago now. And I remember it was the most, they were saying that in terms of generating like vitriolic hate, mail it was their number two all bet and the number one thing was at the time they said the number one thing was something they had written that was critical of the boy scouts so i was i fell behind him in vitriolic hate mail but you know um that that was a that was a rugged that was a rugged

bunch of meals and um and eating the monkey was it was fine i would do i would eat the monkey you know i would i would do that again because it's such a pleasure to hang out with guys, you got a picture that you're with people, you're with people that, um, that, their, their great-grandfather, their grandfather, their father, them, they hunt and fish 250 days a year, maybe. They spend some time doing these little, uh, little farm fields they cultivate up and down the river, but they hunt and fish. I would ask a lot of guys, like, how many days, and they'd have to think about, they'd say like, you know, two out of three days or whatever they hunt and fish um within a 50 mile radius 75 mile radius for many many many

generations i don't care how good you think you are in the woods you can't compete yeah you can't um you'll never catch them do you know what i'm saying you can't catch them they're so good at like a specific set of things in a specific environment yeah i mean they live in it and it's it's not pleasure or hobby right it's survival it's just it's just you can't compete the stuff they see you'll never see it the stuff they hear you won't hear it yeah damn i bet you've seen a lot of that all over the world yeah um that yeah that so that meaning like if i can go and spend an evening or a day or whatever go out at night with flashlights with with guys that know that the know their business like that Like, I'll do it anytime.

I don't care what I got to eat. I bet you've learned a ton over the years, huh? Yeah, yeah, I've learned. A lot of it's not, a lot of stuff you pick up. It's not, it's not like you're learning tricks that you're going to integrate into your own program, but you're just, you're learning. You know, you're, you're, it's more like, it's more like building a, uh, building kind of like a database of information or an understanding rather than like picking up some little thing. Though I did, like, I have gone and, I have gone and seen, it's funny, gone and seeing people solve, seeing how indigenous hunter-gatherers or hunter-gatherers, like, see them, like, solve a problem that I have recognized in our own world.

Interesting. We used to, for a short period of time, I would sell Snap and Turtle Meat in Michigan, and we would always get. snap and turtles you know and and i remember my dad would how i was taught to do it and how i would do it later when i sold a little bit of snap turtle meat is like you cut snap turtle's head off and then they have such like an ancient nervous system you know that they'll for hours i mean for hours like if you cut a turtle's head off and he's going to retract into his shell and for hours you know the expression like chicken with a head cut off right like i'm always trying to explain that to my kids he's like he's he's dead he don't know it but for hours a turtle is tensed up no kidding oh yeah so

like i'm just remember my old man where he'd like cut his head off and go hang up by the tail and then you'd pull and eventually it would go limp and down in south america i saw these guys they got this big uh they had set a net and they got this big um giant river turtle in it and they They took a, they whittled a big long stick. Have you ever heard of the fish processing technique called Ikegime? No. So it's, you'll catch a fish and brain it, and then they cut it by its tail and crack its tail. So you get an entry point into its spinal column and they'll run a wire into it to just deaden the nervous system.

Well, these guys cut this big long skewer. and when they cut that turtle's head off they ran that skewer into the right into the backbone and shove that skewer down in that thing and that turtle just no kidding i mean melted and then it cooked it right in its shell wow and with something like that i'm like that's something i could wish i would have known about a long time wow that's something i wish i'd have known about a long time ago so there is stuff like that but a lot of it's like it's not transferable it's just cool to see it it's cool to witness it just cool to understand how they do it yeah like as a writer it's cool to know it yeah you know what's i'll write about that stuff how do you deal i mean i could

imagine that with the dog thing you got a ton of ton of hate mail i mean i could see that happening i you know i remember seeing some but surprisingly not oh kidding not yeah well that's good i've had i've had a little bit of that from i always shocked at how little of how little of that i've got i've had I've had to have the FBI look into a guy one time. But they, like, scared the hell out of them, you know, never heard from him again. Good deal. They went through his trash. He was eating pepperoni peach.

I'm like, he's not even a vegetarian, dude. They're like, no, he ordered a pepperoni pizza. Damn. I was like, what a hypocrite. I'm surprised you don't get more pushback. I've had a couple of guys. Actually, I had Bob Parsons on, you know, he was the CEO of GoDaddy, and he had a thing. And he had an incident.

But I mean, I don't think people realize, you know, how, whatever, how good we have and how sheltered we are here in America. I mean, you go to the fucking grocery store and get everything you need. But, you know, you're talking about in the jungles of Vietnam and Bolivia. And it's like, dude, this isn't like pleasure or hobby for these people. No. This is, this is their occupation in how they feed the villages. Legitimate subsistence. Yeah.

Legitimate subsistence. I think this. On the issue of, like, here and from, just to wrap that up, like, on the issue of getting, being a hunter out in the public eye and getting harassed by animal rights extremists, is like, there's nothing, there's nothing they can take from me. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? It's like what they do is what a better target is someone that you can harm some aspect of their occupation. Let's say you're an actor, you know, you're an actor and you're like a closeted hunter, an actor. and there are some because they're like, well, I'll be rejected in Hollywood if people know

that I do this. But there's, you know, there's no repercussion for me. It's like, no shit, you know. It's like, I'm not going to be like, damn it, I've been outed. Yeah. Well, hey, before we get into the interview here, I got a couple things to crank out. So, first one being we got a Patreon account, we've turned it into quite the community. They've been here for a long.

time, a lot of them. And so one of the things I do is I offer them the opportunity to ask each and every guest a question. So this is from Justin Larson. Justin. Okay. Stephen, given your expertise as a hunter, conservationalist, an advocate for ethical outdoor practices, do you believe that with the right advocate, we could implement mandatory hunter safety courses in schools to promote responsible gun handling and teach sustainable food harvesting from the land. Mandatory. I don't know, because, like, driver's ed isn't even mandatory.

That's a good point. Yeah. I like it. It's nice to have it be available. When I was a kid, we took it at school. You would take it in the, you could go to the school and take it, but it was a weekend long thing. How long can people go on about this?

Because I'll try to be quick about the issue. If there's been a trend in hunting regulation structure, a surprising trend is that that states have tended to over the years lower barrier to entry. When I was growing up in Michigan, you couldn't hunt at all until you took hunter safety. You couldn't hunt with a firearm until you were 40. like we did not pay attention to that rule like my dad was not interested in that rule you could be you had to be 12 to hunt with a bow you couldn't hunt with a bow until you took hunter's ed now they leave it up to a family to decide when a kid can hunt and they make it that

you can hunt for a number of years with a mentor who's within arm's reach before you need to go and take your hunters ed i generally support not generally i support that that that that deregulation there to make it easier for people to participate out in the woods with their little kids i live in the state of montana um i think montana's got it just about right a 10-year-old can hunt with their parent or a person designated to to mentor them they can start at 10 they can hunt two years and then they're obligated to take hunter safety. Gotcha. So you can, so when my kids turn 10, I hunt with them, I'm their mentor, they're right

here with me. Like they don't do, unless I say do it, they don't do it. They're right there. But we can do two years. They can get hooked or not and then go down the path of doing the hunter's safety. And it's like, it's a great program. It was too strict. It was too strict and too big brother.

I felt when I was kids. So I like these, I like these moves to leave it up to a family to figure out when it's appropriate for their kid to get rolling. Yeah, that sounds good. That sounds, I mean, is that, is that when you started your kids? Is that 10? Yeah, well, I would bring them out with me and they could hunt pine squirrels and whatever else, but they, their first, so my tent, I got a boy turning 10 now.

In a couple weekends, we have our, in our state, we have our youth waterfowl season. so that'll be well no because he was able to hunt turkeys in the spring this will be his first duck hunt coming up oh right on so we have a two-day youth waterfowl season it'll be his first duck hunt we have a we have a youth deer season it'll be his first deer hunt and that's what I do with my other two kids too and they all love it yeah and it's nice to be able to get him going and not have to jump through all these legal hurdles to take them out and set them right next to you i've spent years on the show pulling back the curtain and trying to reveal what's really happening in this country. And the truth is, there's a double standard here in America. You see, time and time again, people defending themselves, defending their family, and then the

judicial system goes after them. It's a double standard. And if you don't believe me, check out episode number three with Don Bradley. That is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Because it's not just about what you did, believe it or not, it's how the legal system interprets it. And that's why I'm a USCA member. The USCA has over 860,000 members because they know the reality is, after you stop the threat, the real fight begins. Your membership gives you the education, elite training, and self-defense liability insurance you need for the second fight, the legal one. Plus, every member also gets access to a 24-7 critical response team and attorney now.

network in the event of a self-defense incident. Violent crime happens too often in America. This isn't about living in fear. This is about being prepared when things go sideways. You don't get to schedule danger and with the world changing so fast you have to do what you can to protect your family. Check out the USCA's risk-free membership at USCA.com slash SRS. That's uscca.com slash SRS. Protect more than just your life. Protect your future. Go right now to uscca.com slash SRS. There are a lot of choices out there for cell phone service. A new one seem to pop up all the time. But one company continues to stand out, Patriot Mobile. The best part, you don't have to sacrifice quality or coverage to make the switch. Patriot Mobile gives you access to all three

major U.S. networks, so if you have service now, you'll have just as good, if not better, coverage with them. Worried that switching is a hassle? It's not. You can keep your number, keep your phone, or upgrade. And their 100% U.S.-based team will walk you through everything and get you activated at minutes, all from home. Still in contractor owe money on your current phone? No problem. Patriot Mobile even has a contract buyout program to help you make the move. They're good people running a good company, and they actually care about American values. That's hard to find these days, so check them out. Visit patriotmobile.com slash SRS or call 972 Patriot.

Use promo code SRS for a free month of service when you make the switch. Man, I'll bet your kids are dying to get out there with you. Yeah, I've been lucky in that way, man. I've been lucky in that way. I remember having kids in someone standing like, what if your kids don't like to hunt as much as you do? And I'm like, not many people do. But if I've been lucky because they dig it, you know, it's fun. I don't know that they always will, but they'll always carry it with them, you know.

They'll always carry like, I like them to be a little bit, you know, it's good that they're a little bit gritty. You know what I mean? Yeah, I like them to have that. Even if my daughter, whatever, if she grows up and doesn't go near it, she'll carry some things from those experiences with her, you know. Yeah, that's cool. I think kids say definitely need more grit. It's, I think it's, at least from my perspective, it's very apparent. Yeah, no, I love it. Yeah. I like it.

The thing I always tell people, like, if I, like a measure of sort of a way, this kind of like very arbitrary individual way of kind of measuring, like, where your kids are at, like, if I hold, if I got something in my hand, you know, and I hold it out, like, my kid would be like, they don't, they don't go like, well, what is it, do you know? Or if I'm like, no, try to eat. eat that, eat that, take a bite of that and eat that. They'll be like, okay. And I just like, I, like, deliberately try to like get that feeling.

Like, if I hold, if I got a snake, I'm like, no, he's cool. He won't get you. They're going to take it. Wow. You know, or whatever. If they see something, like, they see a mouse run along, like, their instinct is to grab it. Nice. Is hunting onto the decline?

Man, depends on how you, depends on how and when you measure it. So it's remain, remarkably in not percentage, but this is this kind of a weird deal, not in percentage, but in actual numbers, it's remained remarkably consistent. Oh, really? Well, since the end of World War II. Like, World War II kind of gave us the modern day outdoorsmen. And my dad was a product of that. Like, my dad came home from the war. There was even an editor at an outdoor magazine at the time. It made some comment that, like, how can you train an entire generation of men to shoot and camp and not expect them to hunt and my dad grew up he was raised by italian immigrants

he was raised by his grandparents south side of chicago um came home from the war and got into it man like started bow hunting in the 50s started uh you know deer hunting he just got into it he wanted to be outside he said everybody was stir crazy no one to be held tight he told me stories of like being lined up hunting rabbits and someone had shooting everybody hit the ground wow it was like that fresh, you know, but he was just, that's just what he wanted to do. And that kind of gave us, there was other things that were happening culturally as you had, people had automobiles. So people that would live in urban, suburban areas had a way to get somewhere. Freezers were becoming a thing. So you got a way, like if you killed a deer, like picture. And normally, like if you killed a deer,

you know, you had to either be really good, knew how to dry it into jerky and want to eat that. But with the freezer came this idea that you could go and hunt geese, dock. deer, whatever, and bring it home and freeze it and then have and then be able to periodically throughout the year eat fresh food. And so it birthed the American outdoorsman. And since those post-war years, the number of hunters has remained remarkably static. But obviously, it's declined hugely in terms of, I mean, our population, you know, double, tripled, quadrupled, or whatever the hell since then, I'm not sure has to have tripled. So the percentages have dropped. You look in California.

So California, New Jersey, it's less than 1%. Are you serious? Less than 1% of the population. New Jersey doesn't surprise me. California actually does. The population buys a hunting license. Fishing participation is different. But just speaking about hunting, other states are pretty robust.

There was a huge spike during COVID, you know. Behaviors change. So hunters are kind of hard to count. Right? Right. Like if I go and buy a license in, if I buy a license in my home state of Montana, and we have a little fish shack in Alaska, if I buy a license in Alaska, I just got counted twice. I'm on the list in two places. The one thing that's really easy to count is if you want to hunt migratory waterfall, you have to buy a federal duck stamp. People could go buy that duck stamp for no reason or just collectors or whatever. But by and large, you can look at like how many federal duct stamps were sold. How many guys hunted ducks because they have to buy this federal stamp? And, you know, they'll sell a million of those stamps. Meanwhile, you know, 13, 14 million people will hunt deer.

Deer's the most hunted thing. Morning doves are the most harvested. Okay. Animal. Yeah, I was having a, I'm not a big hunter. But when I took my first deer last season, it was a little guy. I was excited, but he was like, don't ever post that. Because it was too little?

I don't know. Was it a male or a female? It was a male. The antlers? Yeah. Dude, come on. They were little. He was like, don't post it.

I was like, why not? It's my first one. I don't want to disparage your friend, but he's giving you bad advice, dude. But, um, if you, like, if you were happy? I was ecstatic. You know, I was like, come on. I thought it was awesome. But anyways, we were having a conversation and he was like, yeah, he's like hunting is,

uh, hunting's on the decline ever since. and you know this could be hearsay i don't know but he was like ever since you know smartphones came out he's like it's getting harder and harder and harder to get kids out into the wild and he's like and now we're seeing this overabundance of deer and all this other game and i was like oh shit makes makes sense i was just curious what your thoughts were yeah it's it's you know like suburban deer and stuff i mean it's a very complex issue it's not just a lack of people willing to hunt them like anyone out there if you got a bunch of deer you have 10 acres 20 acres 100 acres and you got a bunch of deer bugging you and you put a sign up says hunters please

inquire the day's not going to be through and you're going to have someone banging on your door there are like you don't meet you don't meet hunters who will tell you like i can't even scratch the surface of all the properties i got to hunt they're dying to hunt yeah we're dying to hunt the suburban deer problem is is self-made it's not because there's no interest it's because people are people are intolerant of that they don't want like hillbillies and rednecks running around their place yeah that's what that's what that's about gotcha and for some people and for some people in some suburban areas they would rather they would rather entertain ideas such as like providing contraception to deer hiring um hiring hiring

taxpayer-funded sharpshooters to shoot deer they would rather do all that than let some hillbilly on their place no shit that is the suburb contraceptives that is the deer what the what is what what they can treat them with contraceptives really yes try to yeah they they somehow like they do with the wild horses you familiar with the whole wild horse problem fair no I didn't know there was a problem there's like a you know the wild horse and burrow in in the air of the there's these feral populations of wild horses. And for a while, they were, you could commodify them.

And so they passed this thing called the Wild Horse and Burrow Protection Act, which is a huge mistake. And now we have, like, now we lose all kinds of wildlife habitat. We lose desert, bighorn habitat, mule deer habitat, to competition with feral horses, just like horses running around. They're not a native animal. And so there's even legislation up right now to, like, up the amount of contraception, darting mares,

with contraceptives to try to slow the population is something they're always toying with with deer. It's more palatable than some dude killing it and eating it. Wow. It's just, it's lunacy.

So like, the suburban deer problem, I'm like, it's a problem because we've decided to let it be a problem. It would very quickly not be a problem. Have you heard about this shit? I can't remember his name. This guy in Hawaii. I guess there's all these deer

that are just like... Axis. Yeah. They're just like taking over everything. Yeah. And I think he shoots them on nods and it's like to take as money as you can get. Have you done anything like that? I've hunted Axis deer in Hawaii long ago,

but I haven't done any of the sort of like eradication stuff that they got going on. Okay. Yeah, we're thinking about bringing him on, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. But anyways, yeah, so a couple more things. Everybody gets a gift. Okay. So. Vigilance League gummy bears, legal in all 50 states.

Oh, legal in all 50 states? That's my first question. There's no funny business in there. It's not a vice. Oh, okay. But they're made up. I would have found a home for them. Made up in Michigan.

And then I got you something else. That's great. I appreciate that. That is. Are you familiar with the USCA? No, I'm not. Okay. Should I be?

Are you a concealed? weapons guy well i have open i live in an open carry state but the other day i was doing an ffl transfer on a pistol and she suggested to me that i should get concealed even though i don't need it because i don't need to do ffl transfer oh really that's cool no my old man had a in michigan my old man had is concealed but yeah we're open carry so basically what u s c a does is they are it's kind of like a so if you have to act in self-defense you know it's going to be a an entire disaster of a legal process. Yeah.

And so what they do is they provide you the attorneys and all of that stuff. So it's, it's an insurance policy for concealed carriers in case, you know, in case something goes bad or you have to defend yourself or your family. And so they'll jump in. They'll provide you with the attorneys if you want them. They'll provide you with all the advice. And they cover all of the legal fees up to a certain amount of camera of what it is. Yeah, well, I'll eat some, I'll eat some gummies.

and I'll read up. Right on. Thank you. I appreciate it. So that's a lifelong membership. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, sweet, dude.

Thank you. Appreciate it, man. But, all right, so I love doing life stories. Where'd you grow up? Where did I grow up? I grew up in Western Michigan, Muskegon County, Michigan. Pretty close, about eight miles from Lake Michigan. How into hunting were you?

Sorry? Did you grow up hunting? Oh, yeah. My dad was a big hunter. We were brought up in it. We did a lot of normal stuff. Everybody does, you know. But I grew up on a lake and had a lot of fishing and hunting opportunities around.

My dad had been, like I said earlier, he was a big hunter. He was into archery hunting very early. You know, there was sort of like, obviously people used to archery hunt before the advent, you know, before the introduction of the firearm. And then archery hunting took a long vacation. And then started, you know, people started towing with bows again in the 20s and 30s. and my dad was bow hunting even before some states were even having archery seasons so I was brought up around archery hunting we hunted ducks we hunted squirrels uh we'd hunt mostly within probably definitely most of our the vast majority of our hunting was in 10 mile 10 mile radius um we had a lake and so I grew up fishing in the lake grew up trapping muskrats got real into fur trapped when I was a kid um but yeah I was just totally immersed it was never like a thing that you I I I It was never a thing you decided to do.

It was just around. It was kind of give you a sense of like what the community was like or how it was perceived. Is I remember I would wake up, I remember waking up in the morning and hoping to look out my window in the dark, hoping to see those rain and blowing so that we didn't have to go hunting. And I remember feeling real guilty for feeling that way. I feel like, I hope it's real windy, so I don't got to get up.

I'm like, man, I shouldn't feel that way. That's terrible. Yeah, it was just, it was baked in, man. It was baked in. Everybody around there hunted. I got a friend who's an outdoor writer, Pat Dirk, and he was talking about Wisconsin, right across the lake from us, you know, very similar.

And he said, if you're not a, in this community, said, if you're not a deer hunting, you sleep with one. And it was just, it was just a thing. People just did it. You know, people did it. Everybody did it. Not the women. Would you like doing more, fishing or hunting?

Hunting. what do you like more firearms or archery firearms really yeah why do you like firearms like them i don't know i hunt bow when it's bow season the real serious archers like the way you measure a real serious archer is a real serious archer is bow hunting during gun season right i bow hunt as a way to extend my hunting opportunities gotcha a real archer like a real bowhunter even when they could use a firearm they're like, nope. Like when I see that, I'm like, that's a bowhunter, dude.

Right on, man. You know, and I'm like, I use it to extend my seasons. Right on. Yeah. I bow hunt when I came at the minute I can grab my gun, I grab my gun. Is it that much more challenging? It's just different, man.

It's too hard to say, okay, I would say this. If you're bow hunting during firearm season, hell yeah, way more challenging. But there's some great archery opportunities where, and no one is able to be out with a gun. So then, I can't say it's more challenging because it's like giving you an opportunity in a behavior set in wildlife that you're not going to see during firearm season. Like, deer know, let's just take something like whitetail deer, like, which they're all over here, they're all over everywhere.

People hunt white tail deer in 40 some states. They know. Like when general firearm season opens, they know the day. before firearm season opens, like unusual activity, whatever, and they go into lockdown mode oftentimes, right, in high pressure areas. So their habits just change. So if you're hunting them a week before that with a bow, I can't tell you that it's more challenging because you're hunting deer that are acting more like deer, right?

They're out and about. But if you were a purist, you're a purest, and you're like, even when gun opens, I'm out with my bow. And I got plenty of friends to do it. Yeah, way more challenging. I mean, the difference between I see a deer at, you know, I catch a deer crossing something at 200 yards. And it's just like, he's mine. For him, it's got to be 35, 40.

It's got to be that close. Well, I mean, depends. I got one very serious bow hunter buddy. I was having this conversation here a day. Like lifelong bow hunter, the kind of guy that's going to hunt with a bow, even during gun season. And instead of his range going out, out, out, like the better, the game. gear gets everything he was telling me just the yard night but guy named a white tail hunter named mark canyon was telling me he's like from now on i don't know how true he'll stay he says

from now on i don't shoot more than 30 yards why too much margin for error they got too much time to react you know they got too much time to react they're they're already doing something makes sense in the time from that the minute that like that bow makes a noise he's already responding. Gotcha. And you'll see people, there's a term people use called jumping the string or ducking the arrow, where if you look in slow motion, there's an arrow coming toward a deer and it looks like he, it looks like he ducked it because he like scrunches and the arrow over his

back. What he's actually doing is he's loading up to spring. So he hears it. They're so fast. You can't even comprehend how fast there. They're so fast. He's already down, loading up to. take off.

And so that's why it gets really tricky at certain distance, especially with fast animals. Like elk aren't nearly as fast. But a white-tailed deer, you know, who's most famous, I'd never kill one with the bow, but the most famous string jumping thing is the Axis deer. No kidding.

That's what very, like, credentialed friends of mine have said that Axis deer, you know, they'll point out maybe this is a thing that had, in its native range, coexisted with tigers. right they're like you you think about releasing that string and that deer's already loading up you know that's their reputation is they're they're way ahead you can't comprehend time but think about like you picture that there's a fly sitting here you know and you're like bam and he's already

gone you think you're going fast in the flies head you're going like this how he perceives time he's like yeah i should probably get out of way of that thing at some point i should probably move if you uh i got it i'm sorry i just got a bunch of random questions oh no please but have you ever done we're going into fishing have you ever done anything in brazil or maybe peru on the amazon have you ever done an amazon fishing i fished in the the extreme headwaters of the amazon in bolivia and stuff that will eventually flows into the amazon yeah but it would be like

tribute headwater tributary stuff yeah but never the amazon proper okay and i fished over a drainage divide into rivers that would like on ridge lines that would one side would go to the amazon but the other side flows into the Caribbean i fish that stuff but never i've never been like on an amazon river trip though i would like to man i've been dying to do that for peacock bass and stuff yeah for whatever arabima yep if you got one of those i've seen i've laid eyes on aripima and when i'm I was talking about those guys in Guyana that, like, they used to bow hunt Arapima for the commercial markets, and I've caught Aeroana, which is like a small, much, much smaller version of Aero, much smaller version of Arapima. And I've observed Arapaima, but I've never even taken a cast at Aero Pima. Man, that's cool. I love to do that.

Yeah. No, I've never done it, but it'd be sweet. You know, you see those pictures of them. I think what is the largest freshwater scaled fish? That's the rumor. you're adding a lot of like things because it can't be the largest fish which is the whale shark so you got to be like the largest freshwater scaled fish because in the mekong delta there's a catfish that's bigger than the aripima no shit have you got any of those no i've caught some big ass weird catfish but not that kind of catfish no right on man yeah that's something i would love to do i would love to get into hunting too the the uh it's just me of you know business gets in the way of

just about everything yeah you got little kids though now well yeah i'm i'm uh warming my son up to fishing yeah we've been we've been at it for almost a year now he's coming a long ways now he's cast and he can do pretty much everything but put the worm on the hook and take the fish up he's just like i'm glad you let him fish with worms poking their eyes and shit it's hilarious i had such a good time there day i was with my little daughter and we went out and she didn't call her little anymore she's 12 but i took her out we caught grasshoppers Um, I have this little grasshopper container that once belonged to my dad and we caught grasshoppers and put them in there and then went down to the creek and this is an area we're not allowed to kill cut throats, but we pinched the barb and hook grasshoppers and just send them downriver. Nice.

Watch those fish come up and grab them do. It was fun, man. Like I said, they'll, she'll carry that stuff with her, you know? That's cool, man. That's cool. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Well, actually, one more. Where is your favorite place to hunt? I mean, I like hunting all over the place. I really have a lot of, I've had a lot of fun opportunities to hunt up in Alaska. I have a brother that has been there for a long time. And so when he moved up, I started hanging out up there as well. I really enjoy being out in Alaska.

Between different kind of things I'll do, I spend maybe a month every year up doing different stuff there. We have a little fish shack in Alaska that I bought 20 years ago. with some with my two two of my siblings and a buddy of ours um we just bought it on a whim at 20 grand apiece nice smartest thing i ever did nice um and we fish up there and and uh do some hunting up there so yeah i i like that not to i mean i love where i live i live in montana we have a great time there but i really appreciate um i'm all some of my best experiences are up are up in the far north yeah up in alaska yeah it's beautiful up there are me and do you Do you like the adventure of getting into new ecosystems, new environments to hunting?

Yeah, I'll bet. I just, I spent a month in, after toying with the ID and toying with it and toying with it for decades, I spent a month in Africa this year. How was it? Just life-changing, life-changing. Went to Tanzania. I met these dudes, this guy, I got a professional hunter named Morgan Potter. He worked for this place, Robin Hurt safaris, and I met Roger Hurt, a kid of the founder. You know, he got tore up by Cape Buffalo.

So he had come to the U.S. for some medical care. And this other professional hunter married a woman. Morgan Potter married a woman. They live, so even though he spends half his year in Tanzania, he spends half his year by me. And so we just got to hanging out, and I had him come on my podcast, just talk. about their life and the kind of hunting they do and once i knew once i had some people i really trusted to go um i went and it changed i mean like life-changing experience i got telling people i was there so long i had to cut my fingernails twice and it was it was dude it was just i mean utterly

life-changing yeah just the stuff i saw other ways to live you know I was blown away, man. I'll be talking about that the rest of my life. Do you, I mean, when you go on these remote trips like this, are you embedded with indigenous people? You get to see how they live, what they eat. Yeah, I got to hang out with the trackers, you know, and the way these guys, the way these guys work is we were out,

just to give you some, I mean, obviously, I mean, you know you've been all over the world. I mean, it's a huge continent, right? Like, it's the different ways that, not only the different ways people live, the different climates and all that there's very different ways in which wildlife has managed in africa um tanzania has a very progressive view on wildlife management um we were on it we were on a area that's we were on a hunting area that's the size of yellowstone national park it's a two million acre damn game concession there are human activities occurring it's not a

peopleless environment like there's guys that have permits to commercially fish there there's guys that do commercial honey harvest in there. But it's like the government has said that this 2 million acres doesn't get developed and they make money off it. They're able to make money off it by allowing hunting to occur on the place. And so we're out in this like 2 million acre thing. We're the only people around. We would some days do 100 miles.

Wow. 100 miles of pickups. I'm just trails these guys hack out through the woods, you know. And you see just crazy. stuff but yeah there's guys out on the landscape you know they'd run into the honey season was just finishing up so there's guys out doing honey but we were with trackers um in this part of tanzania um in in in eastern tanzania i had was spent some time in messa land which is the messiah tribe where we were was was like bantu peoples but we were with trackers that and the trackers they

use are buying large poachers that they caught So they'll catch poachers. And if they're young and ambitious and good, they'll be like, listen, you know, you should come see us. So the two trackers that I was hanging out with were both people that were brought up as poachers. They were in the bushmeat trade, snaring and hunting with homemade guns and poison arrows. Wow. In order to sell bushmeat. And these dudes are now trackers.

and um yeah it's it's unbelievable i said to our guy one time the professional hunter who in some ways in some ways acts as a liaison between you and the trackers you know like they the trackers hold a lot of carry a lot of weight like their opinion matters immensely right and you're there you don't know shit and the professional hunter is kind of like he's the he's meant to be like He understands you, like the white dude, and what you're hoping to accomplish. And he understands the trackers and what they know. And he's aligning, he's aligning everyone's interests. And he's also in charge.

You know, I mean, like, he's there to keep you from getting killed. But at one point, we're going along. And I would now and then make the, I would now and then be like, you have to, like, when they're looking at the ground, I'm like, come on. Like, what are they seeing? And when I would do it, they would be like, okay, if you really need to know, one went one walk one cape buffalo walked right there one walked right there one walked right there one walked right there if you look at that piece of grass you see how it stepped on it look how it looks now that shit has

about an eighth of an inch of dryness on it it wasn't it wasn't laying there yesterday it wasn't laying there that night it's laying there this morning and they're probably bedded down over that way wow and you're like okay but at one point i said to this guy i've told people this bunch of times I said to the track or to Morgan, the professional hunter. I said, man, I don't see what they're seeing. You know, we're going to a burned area and we're trailing something. I'm like, I don't see it. Like I was incredulous.

And he turned to me and he said, he said, that's the point. You can't see what they see. And he's gotten to the point where he's totally fine with that. No kidding. He just, he's like, he's fine with it. If they say it's there, he's like, okay. Right on, man. If they say it's there, it's there.

When they say it's not there anymore, it's not there anymore i think that stuff's fascinating yeah just a just uh i mean yeah i've been all over the world hunting different stuff but uh but through my career but just seeing like it sounds weird but man like i love being in third world countries and seeing you know how people live and survive and oh yeah what they like to do and all that stuff and and and it's just fascinated me to see how they live in Haiti or Yemen or Afghanistan, Iraq, all of South America. I mean, it's just, it's just fascinating to be. It also gives you an appreciation for how fucking easy it is here in the U.S. You have the added thing in your life, though. You've seen a lot

of places where it's like there's poverty, but it's overlaid with conflict. Yeah. I've seen poverty, but I haven't seen it overlaid with conflict. Yeah. And so that's a, that's a, that's a, what you're seeing is a very different version of poverty than, you know, peaceful poverty. Peaceful poverty is one thing, but wartime poverty is different. And I've seen peaceful poverty too. South America was all on my own accord. And, you know, you know what's interesting is how, at least from my perspective, not necessarily in where conflict is, but to see how happy. people are, especially in South America, living in a grass hut, you know what I mean, or a mudwalled

hut. And it's, it's like, dude, they're just happy people. You know, you go around America, so everybody's bitching about, who knows what, politics, usually politics. But you know what I mean? It's, it's, it's, it's, we have so much here. And yet we are so pissed at each other and so tribalized and it's it's it's and then you go down there and it's they're just they're not even making ends made and you know they have such a positive attitude i think that's cool i was telling someone about this the day on my show and i'll give it to you to think about for a minute too is uh i took this class in college called political rhetoric um and we read you know dr king um this Camille Pollya.

One of the things we read was the Unabombers Manifesto. You ever read the Unabombers Manifesto? Oh, man. If you've been living on credit cards just to cover groceries, gas, and bills, you know those interest rates are brutal. Why keep paying 20% or more to the banks when you could call my friends at American financing? They have mortgage rates in the fives,

and they can show you how to keep more of your hard-earned money in your pocket. and out of the hands of credit card companies. Right now, American financing is helping homeowners save an average of $800 a month by using their home equity to wipe out high interest debt with no upfront fees, no obligation, and just a 10-minute call with a salary-based mortgage consultant. And here's the kicker. If you start today, you could delay two mortgage payments, putting even more cash in your hands right away.

Don't wait. Call American Financing Now at 866-781. 8,800. That's 866-781-8900, or go to Americanfinancing.net slash SRS. My days don't slow down. Between work, the gym, and time with the kids, I need eyewear that can keep up with everything I've got going on, and that's why I trust Roca. I've tried plenty of shades before, but these stand out. They're built for performance without sacrificing style. I've put them through it all, on the range, out on the water, and off-road. They don't quit. They're lightweight, stay locked in place, and are tough enough to handle whatever I throw at them. And the best part, they don't just perform, they look incredible. Sleak, modern, and designed for people

who expect more from their eyewear. No fluff, no gimmicks, just premium frames that deliver every single time. And that's why Roca is what I grab when I'm heading out the door. Born in Austin, Texas, they're American designed with zero shortcuts. Razor sharp optics, no glare, in all-day comfort that doesn't quit. And if you need prescription lenses, they've got you covered with both sunglasses and eyeglasses. One brand, all your bases. Roka isn't just eyewear, it's confidence you can wear every day. They're the real. deal. Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out for yourself at roca.com and use code SRS for 20% off site wide at checkout. That's ROKA.com. According to new reports,

central banks around the world may be buying twice as much gold as official numbers suggest. You heard that right. Twice as much. And get this. Some are bypassing the traditional markets in buying gold directly from miners in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. That means no U.S. dollars, just straight physical gold. The shift isn't just symbolic. It could be strategic. They could be looking to bypass Western financial systems. So if central banks are scrambling to reduce their dollar exposure

and hold more physical gold, should you do the same? That's where the award-winning precious metals company Goldco comes in. Right now, you can get a free 2025 gold and silver kit and learn more about how gold and silver can help you protect your savings. And all you have to do is visit shonlikesgold.com. Plus, if you qualify, you could get up to 10% back in bonus silver just for getting started. Go to shonlikesgold.com. That's shon likesgold.com. Performance may vary.

You should always consult with your financial. and tax professional. Okay. There's a, without in any way seeming like I'm endorsing. I'm not. I'm saying there's a point he raises in his manifesto. If you can get you through it, it's very difficult to get through. But there's this point he raised, which is always stuck in my head since I was in college,

is he talks about there's these different, there's this way he sets out difficulty of task. Okay. And when he's laying out. difficulty of task, he stages them like one through five. I can't matter if it's escalating or de-escalating, but the easiest difficulty of task, or the most difficult task is something where if you try, you're absolutely hardest, you have only a slim chance of success. Okay, let's say that's like level one. On up to, you don't even need to try it all, and you'll succeed. Okay.

He said that humans do best at two and three. Like, at two and three, it's that if you try really hard, you have a reasonable chance of surviving, if you try hard. But he says, that's what was his gripe with technology. He said technology has landed us at five. You don't need to try it all. And you're fine. And he says, that's where all of our neuroses come from.

Interesting. Because the thing where, the thing that he, argues, Kaczynski argued. And again, without getting into like sending mails off or sending bombs off in the mail and shit, it's just an interesting point is he argues that the thing we were, that we're supposed to be trying to do really hard is like to take care of ourselves and take care of our family. But now that it's all a given, we have all this mental room. We have all this mental room to be spoiled and whiny and bitchy because we wake up and there's, we, we're. wake up and it's just it's all pointless it's all taken care of i'm fine yeah you know if you don't know where your next meal is going to come from you probably know it's coming

right it's an interesting point that was that was his gripe you know kind of hard to argue and again i always hesitate to bring up where it came from but i i need to be intellectually honest to say where the point came from and and going to other places and seeing other things demonstrates that my two boys share a room which brings up all amount of bitching you know and the other day i'm saying to my I'm saying to my 15-year-old, we're having the same damn conversation around dinner table, like them sharing the room. I'm like, dude, you just came from a place. They had been out there with me for a week. And then my wife took my kids bumming around.

But I'm like, you just came for a place. Dude, people were sleeping. And you saw, you were there. People sleep in grass huts they made for themselves. He's like, good point. Now that I'm done hearing about the room thing. But at least he's old enough to recognize. Like, yeah, you're right.

That's cool. That's cool. You know, back to the Africa thing, I mean, they take that, I mean, I've had a lot of people in the talk that do big game hunting and they don't want to talk about it because they don't want the, they don't want the blowback. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, and, but friends of mine, guests that have been on here, lots of people. But, you know, from my understanding, I've never been on a hunt in Africa, but they take that shit very, they take conservation very seriously from what I understand. I mean, they have, they have contractors, careers that hunt poachers, correct? Yep, yep.

And I can only, I'm anything but, anything but a subject matter expert, I can speak to, like, I can speak to where I was in Tanzania, but in Tanzania, it's a remarkably different regulatory structure than what we have. One of the things that makes the United States of America so progressive and so great on wildlife, like a way that we, We've just achieved success with wildlife is, wildlife is publicly owned, okay? The U.S. citizens, the citizens of a state, they own the wildlife, and then agencies represent your interest in owning the wildlife. It's democratically owned. In Tanzania, that's not the case. Like, the government owns the wildlife.

So there's poverty there. how they can how they can protect habitat is by declaring these areas hunt areas and they put a fee to the animals and they hold a bid process there's a bid process where a hunting organization needs to go to the government and these contracts renew I can't remember I think it's maybe a contract's good for 10 years you come in and you're like we will pay you Tanzania blank dollars to have access to this parcel land to hunt it. So there's revenue for them.

Then they come and they have their biologists come out and do a survey of what's there. And there's like, you guys are allowed to kill whatever. I'm just going to throw out random numbers that aren't true. But let's say, you know, you're allowed five Cape Buffalo. You're allowed 30, topi, whatever the hell it is. They'll come out with a list. And they'll say that you are obligated to buy 40% percent of that wildlife from us, the operator.

So then when you get an animal, you're what they call a trophy fee, your fee just goes to Tanzania. That trophy fee does. And so they're able to draw revenue from undeveloped lands. The biggest risk they have is slash and burn agriculture, which people, people, small farmers come in, they cook the forest, they burn it. grow a crop. They don't have money for inputs. They don't have money for fertilizer and other things. And so when you cook the soil after a couple rotations, what do you do? You burn the next chunk. It devours the wildlands. Slash and burn ag does. But you're able to come in and say with these areas. And all of a sudden now the government is able to make money off of preserving

habitat. There's a, next to the place we hunt there's this big national park. Guess how many like, I'm not going to make you guess because you never guessed the right number. There's a huge national park of equal size, almost equal size, next to this concession. Last year, that national park had 14 visitors. One four. What? It had 14 visitors to a national park, almost the size of Yellowstone National Park. 14 people went and paid a visit to that national park.

Meanwhile, the hunting concessions meant money for the government. That's interesting. So it's like you can, and that's where, Like a dude, as a dude growing up in America with holding certain American ideals about wildlife management, wildlife being democratically owned, right? Trying to, trying to foresee and prevent ways in which people might commodify wildlife so it wasn't available to like blue collar people. So opportunity, like you grew up with this whole ethos about how to protect the democratization of American landscapes and American wildlife. And you're like, that's the way to do it. part of travel is you go and you say like you realize there's other ways to skin there's other ways to skin the cat right and they have got this other system and you could look at it and criticize it aspects of it it's very hard you know like it's very difficult for a citizen of Tanzania to go out and do lawful hunting there's there's not like an avenue for it like that's too bad I regret it but it's a different place different challenge

enforcement issues, poverty issues, whatever, they have found a way to preserve habitat and to preserve wildlife by assigning value to it. And right now, that is what holds the line. Like, that is what holds the line to burning it. You know, burning it and depleting it. And so it's just, it's hard to condemn it. You know, I mean, and I used to sit back.

I used to sit like in my pomp. you know somewhat pompous American seat and used to be like oh you know pay to play right you got to pay to play in Africa that's not America you know that's not the American style it's like it's not the American style but it's a way to achieve conservation in that place yeah you know and and you also can look and be like we've also you know in the late 1800s and early 1900s um that because of deregulation. I mean, we almost ruined. We almost ruined American wildlife. Yeah, let's move into the history of hunting. Yeah. In America. In the U.S.? Yeah. Um, first off, it's, you know, people who hunted in the U.S., I mean, there's people debate the number, but somewhere between there's people definitely here hunting 13, 14,000 years ago. People were maybe here hunting as much as 20,000 years ago. People were maybe here hunting as much as 20,000 years ago, people that came from Siberia, passed into Alaska, very quickly

at some point by 13,000 years ago, I'd, like, exploded across the landscape, and those were hunting cultures. Only later, right, like many thousands of years later, Europeans started to come, and that's kind of where I'm very interested in native hunting practices, but kind of when we get when we look at the decimation of american wildlife that story begins with the colonials right coming in uh just to get a little extra detail there there is a there is an argument that is a there's a very powerful argument um it's not settled science but there's a very powerful argument that when humans arrived here they wiped out they wiped out many species of wildlife I'm talking the first Americans, Siberian immigrants, they wiped out many species of wildlife.

People debate it, but to me, it's like to me it's verging on settled science that humans had a huge, were a huge contributing factor into extinction of mammoths, mastodons, short-faced bears, giant ground sloths, a host of things, like nine genera of animals, kind of blinked out around the time humans arrived. But then they had this huge period of the historian Dan Florey's calls it, like, Native America. They had this 10,000 year period, 10,000 years of hunting in America had the ensuing 10,000 years of hunting in America, had one extinction, a flightless bird on the Pacific coast. People hit harmony, like people hit where we weren't driving shit to extinction for 10,000 years on this continent. And then boom, Europeans show up in that story shifts. right um to get into kind of like just give you a little bit about like the first hunter

they'll if people that are like loosely familiar with american history will recognize the name daniel boone like no doubt i mean we're kind of in boon country right now you know um let's take a look at boon for a minute so boon um boon's people came from england at the time in england you weren't going to hunt right the king owned the deer There was no sort of public hunting. Wildlife was jealousy guarded by the elites. Hunting wasn't a thing. Boone's family comes here and all of a sudden,

like there's this rich wildlife resource out there and they pick up hunting. Like these are people that these are not hunters coming to America. These are very much like non-hunter. The European colonists that come over are like not, they're not showing up as hunters. They're getting here and they're learning from natives. how to utilize these resources.

And Boone is this interesting figure because he sits right at the beginning of colonial history or he sits right at the beginning of the American experiment. Like he in the years prior to the American Revolution, Boone becomes a deerskin hunter. During the colonial period, Boone is also an interloper. He's a poacher in two ways. Boone is going he's living in these settlements first he lives in Pennsylvania then he's down in the Adkin valley in North Carolina he's forbidden for two reasons from hunting where he hunts

the British the colonial British don't want American colonists who they view is like the frontier people they view is like the worst of the worst hillbilly rednecks are these American colonists out on the frontier, right? They question their allegiance and they don't want them crossing the Appalachian Mountains and hunting in native land because it causes so much trouble with the Native Americans. Like the British were somewhat friendly, were somewhat better than the Americans became at like dealing with Native relations. So the British would say, you're not allowed to go over there. And then it also violated Native law where the natives claim these areas, the Cherokee, the Shawnee, like they claim these areas as their hunting grounds,

but these colonists like Boone realize they can make a lot of money going into the Indian territories and hunting deer skins, which they're forbidden, the British forbid them from doing it, the Indians forbidden from doing it, but that's their biz. So like Boone going through the Cumberland Gap, you know, the first time he went through the Cumberland Gap, he's looking for deer skins. And these guys have no, they have no cash economy.

you raise crops you use a family raises crops the family uses 90% of those crops the only access you have to cash is you might sell a small amount of corn or whatever but all of a sudden they have access to a cash economy because they can kill white tails and we see then this thing that's this deer hunting era late seven like late 1760s into the 1770s we see this phenomenon that we're going to see again and again and again where these guys with a commodity white-tailed deer we see that they're able to like wipe places clean they're able to go into an area and literally kill everything and what are you when that happens go further down the trail and literally kill everything and from that point we start seeing this like

this this this de-wilding of America from from commodity hunting from commercial hunting and man I got nothing but respect for boon like I've done projects on boon studied boon phenomenal woodsman but that becomes the American tale is deregulation

commodification and all of a sudden you just realize that this inexhaustible resource we have we just eat it we just consume it from one end of the country

to the other damn you know and you've heard a Jim Bridger like the mountain men era I mean they pretty much they pretty much

wiped beaver out in the Rocky Mountains. The Buffalo, I just finished a project on the Buffalo hide hunters. The Buffalo hide hunters from the end of the Civil War to 1883, they killed the last 15 million Buffalo. Jeez. Sold them all. $250 apiece, $2.50 a piece. And it's like, so when people, it's funny because, you know, I tend to be in many aspects,

I tend to be, like, right leaning. And then you hear, like, deregulation. And I was like, yeah, you know, in some areas, sure. But in some areas, we've caused a lot of trouble. Like deregulation has caused a lot of trouble with American wildlife. Yeah. Yeah. When did we start to see a turn?

Late 1800s, early 1900s. You know, the name that comes up off in Steader Roosevelt was instrumental in this. By that point, you start seeing, by that point, the first thing you start seeing is bans on selling wild meat. in cities like New York have you ever heard of the Boone and Crocket Club no okay like Theodore Roosevelt was the first president of Boone and crock club when you when people talk about you ever hear someone's kill a buck and they say it was a 180 inch white tail what they're usually talking about is a scoring system developed by the Boone and Crocket scoring system it's a way to measure a deer's skull or measure a deer's antler growth uh Boone and Crockett club all these other organizations start

out and they start trying to regulate harvest and they'll come in and say like in New York City, there'd be a ban on selling certain wild meats. And then they come up with a thing called the Lacey Act, which gave it some teeth, where if you broke, anytime you break a state's law and cross a state line, it becomes a federal problem. Because you could have states, when they're trying to save wildlife, a state might come in and say, no more market hunting. You can't kill ducks. You know, you can't kill ducks with punt guns anymore and sell it, but they don't enforce it.

So then with the Lacey Act, it became like, if you're down and you're in Chesapeake Bay and you're commercially killing ducks with a punt gun, but then you take them to New York and sell them, you now have a federal violation. Gotcha. And so that is when they were really able to start curbing the market hunters. There's a great irony with calling the Boone and Crockett Club, the Boone and Crockett Club, because it takes its name from Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. the Boone and Crockett Club and people that came out of that organization, that influenced that organization was instrumental in wiping out the wildlife markets. But Daniel Boone and later Davy Crockett, they were market hunters. So there's a kind of irony in the name.

Like we associate Boone and Crockett. Like Crockett was a commercial bear hunter and became a congressman. But he was a commercial black bear hunter. And he also had military contracts. When there was a military campaign during the Indian Wars, crockett would hire on to shoot meat to feed the soldiers interesting that was one of crockett's early occupations is like feeding a marching army wow you know we did not know that kill enough shit for everybody to eat knows his job right on man right on yeah he was a badass too not he wasn't

a badass like boom but crockett was a badass you know not like boon but you know what made boom more about us there's one time Boone Boone went over there's one point where Boone goes into Kentucky and goes there

with some guys a handful of guys they run into a bunch of trouble with Indians they get all their shit stolen one of them gets killed okay eventually

Boone's one of Boone's hunting partners like his brother and stuff Like, they leave and go home. Boone stays by himself. Some accounts suggest that he's there so long he needs to make his own gunpowder with using wood ash, bat, guano, and sulfur deposits, right? Stays there two years.

Two years? Yeah. Stays in the woods. Two years. Much of it by himself. Builds up a big loot, like builds up a big pile of hides. Twice gets them stolen from him. seized, I should be a better word for it, seized by the natives, and just hangs out two years.

He was like, he loved being in the woods, man. You know, Boone was a badass. And it came at a great cost. Like, there was always these conflicts on the colonial frontier. Boone's, boom was next to one of his kids when he was killed in Indian fighting. another one of Boone's sons was killed an Indian fighting a brother as his was killed brother-in-law was killed many many many people in his family all like gave their lives that that's the right word made enormous sacrifices to live that lifestyle very dangerous lifestyle at that time because there was active warfare yeah in the colonial areas and uh yeah and Boone I mean he just was hooked he couldn't picture living in another way you know talking about theodore roosevelt i mean he's the one that put all the national parks in place correct yeah well a number of things they weren't called national forests then but

he was designated these like forest preserves it was instrumental in national park program too so like the public estate in many ways comes from uh roosevelt there's a famous story with roosevelt where he had authority to declare these he had authority to declare these wilderness preserves whatever nomenclature they used at the time he had authority to do it he was losing that authority while he was in office there was legislation like he was going too crazy they felt declaring all these what would become our national forest system and there's legislation arising that's going to strip him of the authority to unilaterally create national forests support for this legislation is so strong that he knows he can't veto it because his

veto will get overridden so he creates this another huge pile of national National Forest, they call up the Midnight Forests, because his ability to make forest preserves was going to expire at midnight. So in a flurry, he like sits up with his team and he just start making National Forest and then turns around the next day and has to sign legislation saying he won't do it anymore. And those are known as the Midnight Forest that he created. Who was right? I mean, he was hugely controversial at the time. Doesn't think people forget about like all politicians would want to be favorably compared to roosevelt now like any any politician is going to take if someone says he's like a theodore roosevelt when it comes to conservation they're

going to be like thank you that dude was controversial at the time and who was right they carved him into rushmore right as the preservation guy yeah so um he was right you know and it was not popular at the time that's the thing people lose sight of is like what he did at the time was um some people support it but a lot of people hated him for it and then now we recognize that it was a stroke it was genius it was genius yeah i mean what do you you know we just had that public uh public land sale you know almost go through in the big beautiful bill and i was way late to the game on that i didn't i saw a tweet uh from jaco same attention to this guy this guy braxton mccoy and do you guys know each other no i know of him now

for sure but i have never personally met him yeah but great guy amazing story too but um but anyways i saw a tweet that uh that he had thrown out through jaco and i was like hey i'll be in touch brought him on he kind of told me what was going on and we and uh we released a preview who got pulled that night but um i was curious i mean i know you were a big player in that and and uh you and Cameron Haynes and a couple other people I follow were, you know, screaming at the top of your lungs like, no, this isn't a good idea. Yeah. And so, you know, I just wound up jumping in last minute because it was like, this doesn't seem, right? Were they selling this land?

Glad you did. Yeah, I'm glad you didn't everybody else that did, yeah. Yeah, and, well, all of the collaborations together got it pulled. And so, but I was just curious, you know, we were. talking a little bit about this at breakfast, but I mean, what was your take on all of that? Man, it's a, it's a thing that comes up in different, it's a thing that comes up in different forms throughout the history of the country, is this question of the legitimacy, the intelligence or whatever, of having large tracks of federally managed public land that's open to everybody.

Maybe it's on a 10-year cycle, but my friend and colleague, Ryan Callahan, is a lifelong crusader for public lands. And, you know, he and I were talking recently in Osama, it's just like it's a 10-year cycle where in some Western states, the majority of the land is owned by the federal government. okay some people look at that and they're like what an enormous gift that half of the state or more than half of the state whatever is open to any American who wants to go out on that land to ride ATVs in certain areas ride bikes camp up their kids hunt fish live an outdoor lifestyle you don't need to have money to own your own ranch it's just there right it's there for us and not only that it's not developed and it's not industrialized it's like it's it's literally it's money in the bank and it's habitat in the bank right it's just there it's an

american treasure other people look at it and they look at it and they see a huge loss in revenue because you're not able to you're not able to industrialize or develop that landscape so someone you know you're a political figure in a state what you want to do is you want to generate economic activity and then you see that there's these landscapes that aren't easily used now to be fair

on these federally managed public lands U.S. Forest Service land beer of land management land they do mine it they do do alternative energy on it they do oil extraction on it the you know what's the big festival in California

the burning man the burning man the burning man is on BLN So BLM land is like... Is it really? Yes. It's on public land. I didn't know that.

The Bernie Man Festival is on BLM land. The BLM makes money. The BLM makes money by permitting the burning man to occur on their BLM property. All kinds of shit is happening on this land. Cattle grazing, right? It's a land. It's a multi-use landscape. But what doesn't happen is it doesn't get permanently developed.

So in states, you know, Utah is a hotbed. of anti-public land sentiment in the political in the political delegation there a lot of it comes from Nevada where they want more land you know they want more land to develop and this this public land system this federal land system stands in their way of having more areas to develop in more areas to produce revenue from produce opportunities for friends and you know developers and and therein lies the like therein lies the rub there's some states where like i haven't lived in montana in a In Montana, there is a, like, it's political suicide. It's political suicide remains political suicide in Montana to advocate for large scale sales of public land.

You can't do it. You can't do it there. In Utah, you can't. In Utah, you can't. And so oftentimes federal land sales where they're like, where they want to peel off large acreages, there's kind of like, in I think it was 2017, there was talk of, you know, three million acres. There was talk of three million acres this time of like, we're going to sell three million acres of public land. That's usually coming from the Utah delegation. Well, that's where it came from this time. Yeah, they spearhead it and that is that is a

hotbed. I'm not telling you like a controversial thing. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not putting like a spin on it. The intellectual architects of large scale public land sales, the intellectual architects of of that concept come from Utah. Okay. This is not spinny. It's just that's just the reality. It was last time around when we went through this and read something very similar, three million acres.

I think it was 2017 Jason Chaffetz, House of Representatives in Utah had, had legislation out there, which they were calling it, they were calling it, they were calling like excess public lands they were going to sell three million acres. And when you get into three million acres, you're talking big tracks of public land. Yeah. There's a way to, there's a way to move public land. Like, we have systems in place. by which we can move public land.

Like if you have a, whatever, there could be a military base that gets decommissioned. There's a way in which that can be sold. And what these efforts usually are are ways to ditch. It's usually like a way, how can we ditch the process and do this right now large scale? And that's usually what happens. And the last time and this time,

we're identical in the response is your normal groups that the effort to push came from a faction of the American right, came from a faction of the Republican Party. Like, we should move to sell public land, large tracts of public land. Of course they know the tree hugger community, the bleeding hearts. Of course they know that they'll revolt,

but it doesn't matter to them. They don't have their support anyways. But both times what has happened is that people that they view as being their people, people that probably normally support President Trump's agenda people that normally are like very like our right of center

they're like no not that idea I don't like it and then both times with Chaffetz and then this most recent thing was coming from was being pushed from Senator Mike Lee both times it seems they were quite surprised that their constituent base hated the idea

they hated it all right It shocked people, but I'm like, I was always feeling like, it should be that shocking because this is what happened last time. And the response was the same. It was like, oh, wow, all these, all these, we're just shocked at all these, these Republican voters hate the idea of selling off public lands. And they'll focus in, they'll focus because like, oh, it's only three million acres. But what people see lying there is you're kind of like, I'm afraid it's not about that.

I'm afraid that at this level, we're having a discussion about the legitimacy of federally managed public lands. You know, and so people, they're not, they tend to not be interested in the details. It's like American sportsmen, at the end of the day, American sportsmen want public lands. Yeah. And they're probably, and they're definitely intellectually capable of recognizing that it comes at some cost. but look at like what conservative like if you look at like what conservative values and conservative means it's like it's not going anywhere it's in it's it's our federal land right if we were to wind up in some national emergency like we're wind up in an existential crisis as a country

and we needed to utilize some of these lands for extraction or whatever like we were in an existential crisis like a world war two scale crisis for resources I think you'd have a very different reception if you were talking about the need to industrialize some of our beloved landscapes in order to address an existential crisis but outside of an existential crisis, it's there. It gets more valuable all the time.

It does more for the environment, more for people. It's just a wonderful asset. When you sell it, you sell it one time and you sell it at market value and that's it. So this is just a calculus that gets run and I promise you in 10 years there'll be another version of it. You think so?

Oh, absolutely. You don't think they'll learn their lesson? No, I think there'll be another version of it. And maybe someday public sentiment, I don't see public sentiment on it switching because it is a thing that galvanizes a huge group of people. I got buddies that like, they don't hunt fish,

they like to ski, and they don't like the smell of it. They don't like public land divestitures. It's just, it galvanizes people. Yeah, I didn't hear anybody who wasn't in politics that was for that. yeah not anybody i i have friends that are definitely i have good friends and some like big hunters that are definitely that they look and they're like you guys are too absolutist well i mean where does

it end we do three million acres right now because that was the big thing right it's just three million acres we're only going to do it out right outside of the cities and it's like great okay so that's three million acres that's going to become industrialized going to become housing low low income housing in the in the bill the language in the bill didn't match the rhetoric because when people went in and mapped out when people men in and mapped out what lands meet the criteria you could buy islands you could buy extremely remote islands and Tongass national forests what were like would follow the criteria of what could happen also in the thing it has to go to the highest bidder in the end even lee acknowledged this in the end he said that the way

the legislation was written, the government of China. Yeah, I saw that too. Could have been like, oh, we'll happily take three million acres of America. Whatever bid you get, a dollar more. In the end, they couldn't prevent this. I feel like that was an excuse on, oh, we overlook this. Yeah, it was. Oh, you fucking overlooked that?

It was. You just happened to overlook that China's buying up all our farmland. Yeah. It was a path. It was a pathway out. Outside of military bases. Oh, yeah, you just. You just happened to, you found that out last minute and that's what it was a pathway out.

It was a safe, it was a face saving mechanism, but it was a pathway out. It's not because your ass is about to get voted out of office because you pissed off every outdoorsman, hunter, fisherman, skier, rancher in the fucking country. I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. But it won't, it won't go away. It won't go away. And I know you're, I know that you like, you also, looking at your work, like you love to look at your work, like you love to look. at things from a variety of angles, you know, and I, it would be, uh, it wouldn't be honest to me to not say like, of course I look like, I understand the perspective.

I understand the frustration of, of, of someone in a political position being like, look at all the economic activity that under my tenure, you know, all the economic activity that could be occurring under my tenure and that I could go in front of voting. and be like, you know, that I had blank achievements and job creations and certain sectors if I could just develop that stuff. Like, I get it, I get it. I get it. I just don't agree.

Yeah. And I don't agree. Yeah. Me and either. Me neither. But, well, Steve, let's take a quick break. Actually, I'm going to have you show me how to shoot a damn bow. Oh, do you got a lefty?

No. I'll show you anyway. All right. Cool. Let's take a break. You pay for the internet. But the internet also can profit off of you. Data brokers can make billions selling your private details while you get nothing in return.

They can turn your most personal information into their business, all without your consent. I always want my private information to stay private, don't you? Ora fights back. They help remove your personal data from broker sites and keep it off. ORA makes it so you can protect every part of your life online. And if your identity is ever stolen, you are backed by up to $5 million in insurance and 24-7 U.S.-based fraud support to help you recover quickly. With ORA, you get it all. Data broker removal, credit, and identity monitoring, and fraud support all in one place.

Right now, you can try ORA free for 14 days when you visit ORA. That's enough time for ORA to start removing your personal information from data broker sites. Sign up today at ORA.com slash SRS and get the peace of mind that your privacy, identity, and finances are safeguarded. That's A-U-R-A.com slash SRS. Certain terms apply. See the site for details. Why are elite athletes and high-performance? using Armora colostrum? Because Armora colostrum is nature's first whole food with over 400

bioactive nutrients working at the cellular level to help build lean muscle, accelerate recovery, and to fuel performance, all without artificial stimulants or synthetic junk. Armora can help strengthen immunity, help ignite metabolism, and so much more. I've been using Armora ever since they sent me some to try. I have more energy and faster recovery after long. long days and workouts. Whether you're running a business, training hard, or just one an edge, Armora can help optimize your body for peak output. I've worked out a special offer from my audience. Receive 30% off your first subscription order. Go to armor.com slash SRS or enter SRS to get 30% off your first subscription order. That's A-R-M-R-A.com slash SRS. These statements and

products have not been evaluated by the FDA. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or condition. These statements and information are not a substitute for or alternative to seeking care from your health care providers. All right, Steve, we're back from the break. Thanks for the lesson out there. Oh, yeah. That was I'm going to get one. Yeah, they're fun. I'm going to get one. I'm going to get one. I'm going to get one. I'm going to get good at this shit. Yeah, that's fun. Next time you come, I'm going to out shoot you.

Okay. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't be surprised, man. I wouldn't be surprised. I'm not as disciplined as I should be about shooting. I start shooting. I've been shooting pretty good now, but I shoot in prep. I don't shoot recreationally as much.

Oh, like a train-up? Yeah, I'll shoot like hunting season's coming. I'll start shooting. My boy, he shoots league in the winter, you know. Oh, really? Yeah. That's cool. When hunting season's over, this is bad.

I hate to admit it, but when hunting season's over, oftentimes I might not touch my bow for a few months. Right on. You know, I'm like, to me, it's, I shoot a bow in order to hunt. You know, it's fun, but I just, whatever. You like to hunt. Yeah, and I like to shoot. Like, I like to shoot guns just for the kick of it,

but I like shooting guns for fun, but I don't shoot my bow as much as I ought to. You said you shoot a 300 win mag? A lot. The most time when her hunt? Yeah, you know, what that comes from is it comes from having, it comes from this just kind of like desire to have one thing that you take care of and know well and keep tuned up and rigged up. Yeah. And then I can use it for all manner hunting.

So I like to hunt cooos deer. You know, it's a small desert white tail. I mean, these things are 110 pounds, right? and I'll take the same load as I would kill a bull moose with No kidding Yeah, hunt with it, yeah Just shoot it back from the shoulder

Watch off for the shoulder blade Gotcha Just punch clean hole in it So you do that for a consistency That's what it stems from As much as I wind up messing around with all kinds of stuff I just like I'm just comfortable with it

Like I kind of like basically Also you get I just kind of basically understand the trajectory You follow me It's just like it's a little bit ingrained. No, I get it. I get it. And it's just, it's convenient.

We have, like, my kids shoot six, five Creedmoor's because I got them started on something smaller. And those are great to shoot, you know. But, but yeah, if I, and it's a little, that 300 wind mag thing is a little bit, a little bit perhaps antiquated as, as bullets have gotten so good, you know, like uniformity of bullets have gotten so good that you can get away with shooting much lighter rounds, um there used you know you know all this stuff but like there used to be a lot of talk about a flat shooting rifle but with laser range finders yeah it's not as relevant like you wanted a point of you wanted a gun at 300 yards point of impact right that like anywhere from from zero to 300 yards you're going to be within some number of inches or right with a flat shooting gun but with laser range finders it's like just call your shot doesn't matter anymore you know so it's a little bit

A little bit of it's antiquated, but yeah, that's what I'm currently, that's what I currently hunt with. Yeah, I was, I was curious. I mean, like I said, I'm not a big hunter, but I want to get into it as soon as I clear up some time. But, you know, I've been invited to elk hunts, smooth hunts, spare hunts, gator hunts. I told you I took my first deer last year. But I'm always, like, wondering, and because, you know, because of my background, people think I know all this shit, I don't, you know. Yeah.

And so I'm always wondering, like, how the hell do you know what caliber to use on a big, on a big animal? Oh. Versus, you know, something smaller. Yeah. Like, I've heard the most dangerous thing to hunt is water buffalo. Is that true? Cape Buffalo. Cape Buffalo.

Yeah. You know what I was talking about Tanzania? Tanzania has a caliber restriction. Oh, really? Which you don't see in many states. You, for in Tanzania to hunt Cape Buffalo, it has to be a minimum of a 375 H&H. Okay. You know, so that's what I shot.

It was a 375 H&H. Right on. Sorry, minimum of 375. So they set minimums. But there's so many, I mean, there's so many really good 30 caliber, like really good 30-calibur, like, really good 30-8 variations, you know. But for, like, moose is the biggest thing, you're, the biggest bodied thing you're going to hunt in North America's moose. And if you're shooting 180 grain, a good 180. grain bullet um you're fine it's going to work yeah you're fine that's that's what i use yeah

and i just like i just like the versatility of it but listen man there's guys that'll go there's guys that'll go way deep on small little differences and things like if you get into archer you'll find you'll wind up in all these conversations about like prepare yourself for the conversation about mechanicals single bevel double double double double bevel, right, all these things. Yeah. And it all matters, kind of. But in the end, if you put it where it's supposed to go.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't, you know, you make a hole through two, you make a hole through both lungs on something, that thing's got problems. Yeah, yeah. It doesn't matter what made the hole. Have you ever had an encounter where you shot something and it didn't, it didn't drop, but came after you? Oh, yeah.

Well, plenty of counters where it didn't come after me. But I ran at, I one time shot a moose and a pretty, yeah, somewhat questionable shot. That was with a 300 variation called a 300 short mag with a 200 grain bullet. And I shot a moose coming on. They got a huge brisket, right? I shot him coming on, straight on.

We called him in, so he's coming in, he knows we're there. And I shot him right like this. and didn't get in where I needed to get in. And it booed off. When we kind of, we chased it little ways. I shot at it again and didn't know, but missed when I shot at it running off.

Because once you hit it once you hit it once you hit it once, you hit it once just put lead in it. You know, at that point, you know, you already started a mess. So you might as well do what you can. Yeah. So you might take a shot you wouldn't normally take because it's the second shot and you already wounded it.

Anyways, I get up there. and through some incompetence I had cleared my chamber like I shot I had three in the I had three rounds in a chamber and sat down without a round chamber

so I put one in the chamber now I got one in the chamber and two one in the chamber and two in the magazine I shoot the moose I then rack around um

shoot at them again in and then instinctively just rack around. But then I run up to the moose and I racked around. So now I've spit out my last shell. I ejected a shell, a live round. And I'm sitting around an empty, I'm sitting around an empty chamber. And I'm not kidding to do. The timing is so we got, this is all filmed.

Like we, we've used this for a million times. but I get up to him and I realize he's kind of like getting up and I click and man he gets up and just comes at me you know and um

and uh he like he comes I'm trying to get away I got chest waders on I'm trying to get away and he bowls and he gets he runs over me

he ran over you? Yeah so then my buddy shoots him and kills it he's chasing me and my buddy kills it and I reach around and he's got my back, you know, and I reach around, and my hand comes up and has got blood all over it. And I think he's punctured me with his antler.

But then I realized, because I'd hit him in the brisket, that when he ran over me, it hit the blood from his brisket, had got up my back. So I go like this, you know, and I'm like, oh, I'm dying. Shit. But it wasn't, I wasn't hurt at all. I wasn't hurt at all. Any close calls with bears or anything? Yeah, a few little, you know.

here's the thing is like everything seems like a close call and unless you could interview the bear you don't know if it was a close call or not but had one had a number a little you know little mix-ups and things that could have been stupid there's one time we were bow hunting elk it was kind of a weird day and I remember sleeping on a we were sleeping on a ridge just passing the hot part of the day when nothing's going on sleeping on this ridge and something woke me up from a nap and there's a bull a bull out coming over the ridge and like I wake up and my bow's laying there

and I end up just me trying to grab the bow spooks the elk so I'm like what are the chances that would ever happen you know I fall asleep again I hear something again and I wake up and here's a black bear stand there and they do it in the same spot okay I go to grab my bow he spooks runs down the hill I just forget forget but he's gone he spooked later that afternoon

it starts getting toward evening prime time and we go down we go down it happened to go the direction the bear went but just coincidentally went the direction the bear went get down to the bottom

of this ridge where this, get down the bottom this hill where the hill goes down into a riparian area and here nails on bark something climbing a tree okay

I watched this bear go this way so I'm like holy shit it's the bear Like I think he's still in the area And in a black bear You'll spook a black bear He might go in a tree

So I run up there Thinking I'll tree him And if I tree him I can just get him with my bow Because black bears will climb trees But I run up there And like it's thick And I come busting in there

Trying to like be like a demon Coming in there To encourage the bear To not come down But go up the tree Because I can hear you're climbing And it's a And it's a

There's a sow grizzly standing against this tree and what I had heard the claws up was her was her woofing her cubs up the tree so when I come busting in I mean I'm busted I bust in like

I mean easy me to that painting you in the helicopter you know like damn oh and I start trying to back out of there in a hurry you know and she that cub comes down the hill and I remember she like legitimately

she legitimately I could be hallucinately be hallucinating this by like i know i saw it she she swatted her cub to get moving she's like like this and they kept spilling out of the tree and that could have been like yeah that could have been just dumb pissed off a mama bear how the hell do you get out of there she just left you alone she just got i got lucky she went woofing up the hill and and then a couple of things like that then um and then one time i was involved in uh one time i was involved with a bunch of other guys in like a legit bear mix up uh on a foggnak island in alaska and we got we had elk hanging

in a tree and we were eating lunch under the tree this is a totally long story about just being an idiot but we're eating lunch under a tree with elk hanging in it that we'd left there for a couple days the quartered out meat and this bear came in and um in uh my buddy yanni he had sat down and he had spray on his belt and he had his pistol sitting on his backpack and when that bear came in you know what he did so he's got the pistol laying right here and spray right here you know he is he smokes it across the nose with a trek and pole I mean like right like I'm there it's here and he flop across the nose and this other guy my buddy dirt fell on it fell on it and rode it down the hill

fell on the bear I thought the bear was carried him down the hill holy shit when he he was trying to get out of the way and landed backward on its hump and rode it down the hill oh my god into an alder thicket and we thought that it carried him we all read it that it carried him down the hill so all of a sudden everybody's like lunging down the hill and he comes squirting back out of the alders running back. Oh my God, dude. And he had, he

rode it. It's his dude named Dirt. Dirt Myth. Damn. He rode the bear. Holy shit. What did he say? What did he got back? I don't remember what exactly said, but it's scared the shit out of us, man. You know what's crazy about that deal? So that's a draw permit on a Fognac Island. You have to draw an elk tag. And they're not

those elk. So if you're looking at a map, if you can really looked at a map you wouldn't think you wouldn't notice that Kodiak and a Fognac are separate islands there's a narrow straight that separates Kodiak and a Fognaq years ago they brought up Elk from Washington's Olympic Peninsula and turned them loose out there on a Fognaq so it's a draw permit we had that mix-up the next year some dudes and you probably be able to track these guys down and one of my friends interviewed them these Navy SEALs a Navy SEAL drew that permit.

They got attacked by a bear right there. But they killed the son of a bitch. Damn. They killed it with a pistol. Have you ever seen that video? I think it was that Russian, I think it was a Russian dude. He has a side-by-side shotgun.

And this grizzly keeps attacking him from all these different angles. Oh, my kid was showing me that. Yeah. And I was trying to question how true it was and he was trying to fish out. But I don't remember. You should just tell it because I don't remember the details. I mean, I don't know any details. somebody showed me the YouTube video and I was like, holy shit, what would you do?

I do recollect my kid showing me something about this. I was able to determine that it was a Russian somehow. I think it said it in the description. I can't remember. Maybe he's read it. I can't remember what it was. But yeah, I would like charge him. And you could just, I don't know if the dude had a GoPro strap to his head or whatever,

but he's just running around this side by side. And then he'd come at him from another angle. Yeah, no, this is ringing a bell. And I remember I try to teach him. my kids I try to teach skepticism and I remember like trying to so my kid will come to me and be like hey is this legit you know watch stuff and try to figure out what we're looking at but I don't remember the details on it but um I got to include on the bears thing I love those bears like I like I like I love grizzly bears yeah I like them you know they're scary but I like

them yeah I'm not I'm not an anti bear guy you get any other close encounters I love there that stuff um just little yeah little like false charge me my buddy cow i mentioned him earlier around the public lands issue he and i got false charged by bear one time um which was scary and i remember i had like a i made like a line an imaginary line at which i would shoot we were hunting the grizzly bears there was a sow with cubs and i had an imaginary line at which i would fire you know and she turned off at that imaginary line um but again man with with those with those bears it always seems like everything seems close because you can just picture it you know um but that's that's kind of my that's kind of my main little run-ins i've had them too where they're coming and you're

just trying to scare them off you know and and i remember uh one was coming and we were trying to shoot rocks out in front of it just to get to not come into our camp and i'm remember it would run over to look at it would it would it would run ahead to look at what it wants it's like what hell was that I was like that's not working damn how do you determine where you're going to hunt I mean you know like around here in every time I've been hunting before I just never got anything and it was always on public land or on the Midwest and your season in the Midwest is like bigger than Christmas you know and I'd I'd go out and I'd be like I'm out of here, man.

There's like 50 people over here. I'm not doing this. So I'm just curious. I mean, how do you determine where you're going to hunt? You know, because you hunt public land. A lot.

I mean, I hunt both. You know, I hunt a lot of private land. I hunt public land. I hunt everything I can get to. I kind of have a odd, not an odd setup,

but like at this point, I've hunted for a long time. And I have some. many friends that are really dedicated, disciplined hunters that for me to do, for me to do like research on spots is just very different. There's not many places you could point to. There's not many places in the country you could point to where I couldn't within a, within two phone calls, talk to a buddy that a buddy or a buddy's buddy that like knows the area real well.

Gotcha. You follow me? So it just winds up being, it winds up being different. And I hunt, we kind of, in hunting, you know, a way to split hunting opportunities would be that you have over the counter, what we call over the counter hunting opportunities, or you have draw hunting opportunities. Over the counter means you go to the gas station or the sporting goods store and buy a license, right? So most white-tailed deer hunting in the east, most states, use a buy a license. But then there's a lot of draw hunts where more, there's greater demand than there is supply. And so to allocate it democratically, they do these lotteries.

And they're generally inexper, for a resident, they're very inexpensive. If you're applying in other states, it can be more expensive. But they're like, they're going to release 20 tags for said unit. A hundred guys apply for that unit. So no one, there's no individual that routinely hunts the spot. Gotcha. So it's kind of new for everyone every time. Okay.

If I do that, I'm applying for a unit. Like, for instance, I mentioned going to a Fogneck. I had applied a bunch of years, eventually drew a Fogneck, but because of my social circle and professional connections, I wind up with a buddy mine who's like, oh, yeah, me and my friends of a hunted at twice. We landed at this lake. You want to hike, you know, we found them over here.

If you can't find them there, go look here. and it's just it's a perk that I that I can't act like isn't a big factor so a lot of the time that someone might normally spend needing to work from the ground up which is what I would do when I was younger a lot of times now I'm able to ask a lot of questions gotcha another thing is is there's other spots particularly like public land spots that I like to go to it winds up being that I there's spots I tend to go to spots I know really well And I understand seasonally what they're like. I understand the impacts of pressure on those spots.

And those are the spots I go to often. And there wasn't a reason that one of the reasons I like them in return is I kind of understand the rhythms of the area. Oh, God. Do you know what I mean? Like late November, it's going to look like this. They'll have been there. Like things that were there are probably over here now because of pressure. weather when i say pressure i don't mean barometric pressure but hunting pressure

weather whatever and so you just kind of get trained up but at a time i had a very you know at a time when i first moved out west um we just went out and figured shit out we were very comfortable with failure uh and had a lot of time not a lot of money and just went and went and that's the guys like that the young guys now that I look up to are the guys that are in that phase of their life or they're just figuring it out and they got they're not bitter yet I look at my kid and his bodies my kid and his bodies man they're just in the exploratory phase do I mean they're like we're going to jump at that bridge and go try to get ducks I'm like man that's cool as shit man that's great you know and they don't if they come back with nothing they don't care they're just in

the exploring phase and and they'll someday be like me and that phase will wind down a little bit for them, you know, and they'll kind of have their habits. They'll have their habits and their, their, their honey holes. Just gaining, gain an experience. Yeah. And it's, it's a blast when it happens. And I look back on it quite fondly. But at this point now, I just kind of have, you know, life's different for me. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about hunting and health. Mm-hmm. Being in the outdoors, the difference between game meat and, you know, the shit we get at the grocery store and wherever you want to start. Yeah. outdoor fitness

one thing I have the other day I had to run a couple days ago I had to run in the airport I'd left my bag and the dude's like run and get your bag so I had to run back to another gate to get my bag and I don't run

so even just running around in the airport for a while and I'm like I got a shin splint dude from running I don't run. But I can, like, if I have a physical specialty, like, to brag for a minute, I am very good at just walking for a long time. Like, I'm an expert, I'm an expert just walker, like one foot in front of the other. And that's, like, hiking. Like, I like to hike.

I can hike, I can outhike people that would beat me up. I could outhike people that would outrun me, whatever. but like I'm hiking across rugged ground and hiking in hills and something something I enjoy a great deal and I have that ability comes from just traveling in the mountains and so that's kind of a little bit of for me like a little bit of measure like the way people might measure fitness you might talk about whatever you can bench or you can deadlift this or do this or that um for me it's like if I was going to ask someone a fitness question that would

if I was going to ask someone a fitness question that would mean a lot to me, it would be like how long can you walk on how little water? That's like something I'm interested in. The food stuff, we eat, like when we're home, we only eat wild meat. No kidding.

In our house. So family of five, like when we're eating in our house, we only eat wild meat. Now and then I'll come home and my kids would be like, don't tell mom i'm telling you but we had a chicken you know my bought a chicken she doesn't want you to know but yeah we're real strict about it like we eat wild meat in our house why is that well because it's it's just cooler it's it's a better it's just better it's a it's it's that's what i like to eat

that's why i want to see my kids eat i can't sit and tell you with a straight face i can't tell you chemically like how it's different do you know what I'm saying But it's like it just, it feels very good to eat it. But I can't so, I can't separate out the emotional, spiritual, psychological aspects of what it's like to eat your own food. And how good that makes you feel compared to like the biochem, the biochemistry aspects of eating wild meat. Yeah. Okay. There's a ton of talk about, you hear people talk about something being organic.

Well, if you're, I hate to tell people this, if you're hunting deer in Wisconsin, okay, I have a lot of friends that hunt deer in Wisconsin, you're probably not eating organic meat because those deer are in, they're eating GMOs. Those deer are eating GMO corn, they're eating GMO soybeans, perhaps, that if it was certified organic, you wouldn't be able to feed it. But you can't control what that thing's eating. yeah if he he could be raiding like you know he could be raiding old lady thompson's garden where she just put a bunch of where she put a bunch of uh sprayed a bunch of glyphosate you don't know what today it's a wild animal so people would be like oh you know it's organic i'm like yeah there's a lot of places you can like you know you kill a caribou on the north slope of you know alaska some bitch is purely organic but a lot of gamutory waterfowl that's a tough climate him to make that it's organic but it just feels good because everything we eat when we're sitting around eating everything we eat is like a story it's a celebration and we always acknowledge this is rosemary's deer right and if they and if i don't bring it up the kids will bring it up that's pretty cool whose deer is this this is rosemary's deer the other night we got back from our fish shack

we had a bunch of pacific cod so the other night i had two one of my daughter was away with her friend So I had my two boys, my boy's buddy, my wife, and we ate, we were eating cod that we caught, we were eating carrots that we grew, we were eating green beans that we grew, we were eating zucchini's that we grew. And like that's pride. Do you follow me? Oh, yeah. It's like we're, we're like proud of that and it makes a cool story. you know one of the more interesting aspects of health is the is the the confluence of where your your mental life and your physical life collide you know it's just it's exciting to us

and i take an immense amount of pride in it yeah that's even if someone came and told me even if someone came and told me that that it wasn't good for you it wouldn't change my perspective i got a buddy a very avid outdoorsman named parker hall and he likes to fish flathead catfish Flat catfish eat fish that eat fish. So they do a thing called bioaccumulation, meaning if there's heavy metals in the environment, like mercury, whatever, they bioaccumulate because when a little fish gets mercury in its system,

it's stored and it's fat. And then imagine that you magnify it, where here's a fish that eats fish that was eating fish. So all of that, when he eats a fish, he takes that load of mercury, okay, or whatever. heavy metal we might be talking about or anything industrial solvents or all these things carry stuff but when he eats a fish he gets that fish's stuff and it goes into his fat and then at the end when he's five years old six years old whatever he's got a lifetime of consuming stuff that was

consuming stuff and so they get a heavy metal load and the states they don't do this for domestic meat but the states will often come out with they'll often come out with advisories sometimes they're very detailed. Don't eat more than one meal every month of yellow perch over 12 inches in length from Lake Washington. It might be that specific. I was saying to one day, you're eating all these flatheads. And he also likes flathead belly. It's like it's kind of a sort of a flathead delicacy as the belly on a flathead, which they say is where the heavy metals accumulate. This is a very turn to new, very long story. I was joking with Parker Hall. And I was like, But what do you think about, like, the heavy metal warnings on these big flatheads?

And he says, man, if I can catch and eat so many flatheads that it kills me, I win. That was where he was at. Right on now. So even if, yeah, like, even if I heard. And I've gotten sick from, you know, I've gotten sick from game meat. It doesn't change my view on it. You know, I just like it. There's no one can tell me that's like, it's just good.

I feel best eating, like, I feel best eating vegetables and deer meat. And I like more and more. I like to eat food. We eat like when I cook for my family, which is whenever I'm home, we eat food that you look at and you know what it is. It either looks like something that came out of the dirt or it looks like something that you chopped out of an animal. Like, that in my mind is, is, I can't tell you this scientifically, but that's how we like to, that's how I like to live.

Yeah, that's how I like to live. Yeah. So let's move into meat eater. Mm-hmm. How did that start? It's, um, that's long story. Again, I came up as a writer. I studied, um, magazine writing, became a magazine writer.

Out of magazine writing started doing books. Out of this came various opportunities in television. The first show I did years ago, I did a show very short-lived. I did an eight-episode show for Travel Channel a long time ago. I was paired with a production company called 0.0 production to do this show. The show tanked, but out of it, the guys I was working with, and 0.0 most famously worked with Anthony Bourdain. They produced Bordane's different shows over the years. So I was working with that same crew of guys that worked on that show.

and they had all in doing our stuff they'd kind of fall in love with hunting and so we decided well let's just do our own thing that we own we'll do our own show it'll be like very simple stripped down show about going out you know on hunting and fishing adventures um and so I had a little teeny kid at the time my boy who's 15 was a baby and I would read mostly books about animals and I always liked you'd be reading about a T-Rex or a polar bear or whatever and it'd be like just meat eater this ferocious meat eater right just like a thing and i was like i just called it that it wasn't meant as like a advice it wasn't meant as dietary advice i was like referring to like these species that that's what they eat so we started doing the show and um and we owned it we only license we only license it out so we maintain the IP of it right and then later did uh launched a podcast and called it that was the meat eater podcast we had a show called me eater um did some did some guide books under that title and eventually kind of built up this you know built up a brand you built up a brand meat eater it's crazy and

then what what's kind of cool about it is because we were doing a tv show uh we would get sponsors And so some of our very earliest people that gave us any kind of vote of confidence and backing, like there was an apparel company First Light. And I knew the guys that started First Light. And they just started it kind of out of their homes and Ketchum, Idaho. These are like big hunters, ski bums. And they were making merino baseliers for hunters. And so we kind of grew up together.

And then later on, our company Meat Eater was able to acquire, was able to acquire. some gear companies. So we have an apparel company, First Light. We have an American made accessory company called FHF Gear. We have a game call company, Dave Smith, or sorry, we have a game call company called Phelps Game Calls and a decoy company, Dave Smith decoys. And those founders are still, those founders are still very much involved with their businesses. So we've become, you know, we've become like media and product. But I, But the vast bulk of my time exists around the media end of it being podcast. We still do print books.

And I work in all those kind of projects. Everything from I've done cookbooks. And I'm currently working on an American history series. What's that about? Market hunting. So did Meat Eaters American History Volume 1? And that was that story of Daniel Boone and the Deer Skin Trade. Awesome.

And that covered 17. 1963, which is the end of the French and Indian War, to 1775, so right up to the American Revolution, and then did Meteor's American History Volume 2, the Mountain Men, which covers the beaver skin trade, which 1806, so two years after the Louisiana purchase, the return of Lewis and Clark, which launched the era in 1840 when that era and that mark, and that mark, market collapsed because of silk, the advent of silk replacing beaver wool as the way that hats were made. So the silkworm kind of killed that market. We just recorded Meat Eaters of American History Volume 3, which is called the hide hunters. It picks up with all the displacement at the end of the Civil War and displaced veterans, Confederates, and Yankees going west and picking up the buffalo skin trade. And it ends in 1883 when they killed the last herd in northern Montana.

And from there, probably, from there, we'll probably jump up to the Great Depression and do the Alaska fur trade during the Great Depression. I'm sorry, it'll pick up at the end, it'll pick up at the, it'll pick up during the roaring 20s. And it'll, it's closing year. if we do the Alaska fur trade, its closing year will be the Great Depression. Very cool.

You remember like the flappers, you know, like the roaring 20s, every run around with all that fur? A lot of that fur was coming out of Alaska. No kidding. It was like money, all these things, all these different areas

we're talking about are the potential for life-changing amount of money for people. And they're all markets that emerge and then die and emerge and die. And usually, there's usually a variety of factors that leads to their death.

With the Buffalo one, it died because they were gone. And the crazy part about those guys is some knew what they were doing, and some were legitimately they didn't know what they had done. On the Texas plains, the hide hunters were convinced that a bunch of them had run into Mexico. And there was more in Mexico, more Buffalo in Mexico. in northern Montana, they'd all gone into Canada. And they held out hope. And they waited around one year, two a year.

And eventually it was like, you know what I think might have happened, dude? I think we maybe killed them all. It's over, you know. So that history stuff is something I love working on, the American History Series. Well, he built one hell of an empire, man. I don't know, I'd called it. Yeah. Yeah, we make cool products.

Yeah, we get to make cool products. It's fun. How do you balance all the business and family and all that stuff? One of my, I'll tell you, like, if I have a, answer that question, that picture, remember the old cartoons where does a dude with the devil and the angel? you know what i mean yeah i know what you're talking about like if i carry with me a thing like that it's about what i've done and haven't done for my kids the devil is saying um there has been years in in my all my kids lives there's been years the devil's like dude there's been years

when you missed half of their days right you worked half their days or traveled half the days they were alive. And the angel, it says, but dude, when you were home, you were home. Like, you were all in, you know. And that, that's a debate that, that's a debate that goes on. Goes without saying, like, you know, I adore my children. We have, I have a very strong relationship with my kid.

I've missed my kids. I've missed a lot of their lives. but I've also spent some like extremely impactful times with them where I'll be able to just be immersed with them. We just spent two weeks at our fish shack where they're like in my sight for two weeks.

When I'm home, I've pointed this out a bunch just to other people that have young kids and stuff like and when I'm home I like what I like them when I'm home they see me serve like they see me serve the family do you know i mean like i clean i cook when i'm home i make dinner i lay dinner on the table

right i call them to the dinner table we when i'm they eat family dinner whether i'm home or not they do with their mom or we all eat it as a family but like i want them to to know that like when i'm there i'm there and and that's one of the that that is the sort of like that's the compromise is that hard for you to switch it off you know long time ago my wife came up with this rule where she said um she's like if it's i remember sitting when we first had a kid it's it's so funny to think about this now because he's like little like little enough where they're like in the hanging out the bathtub and i remember needing to go out of town to work and i remember sitting there like weeping i was so sad when i had a little baby when i had to go out of town and um my wife's like you got

button you got to button it up dude you got to tighten up this isn't what it is like you can't display like you can't like display this this like lament you know and then later she had said if it's it's not going to be a big deal when you go and it's not going to be a big deal when you come home meaning when you come home you merge you merge into traffic right like it's not like balloons and shit like welcome home dad it's like you come in and you're you're you're in it you know and so no i i i i find it easy to come back a challenge i've had and dude all this pales in comparison i was with the guy the day i was with the guy the day that came from your that came from your professional world of military and his wife told me i was with him and his wife he told me that

the first three years of marriage they were together 200 days so this is nothing like like that it's nothing like that but i do find some parallels with with people that have dealt with that level of being gone um but no i don't my wife would tell you that i don't turn it off well i would argue that i've gotten better at it you know do you take your kids out with you now yeah that they're older i can get man any chance i can get to business on business well i'm sorry i think i'm going to take them out in the woods and out in the field yeah both both my older one i'm just now exposing him my 15 year old i'm just now exposing him my 15 year old i'm just now exposing him to I'm now exposing him more and more to what I do.

He's very interested in it. We never let him have any kind of social media. Once he turned 15, and he was taller than me. It seemed weird to tell him when he's taller to me. He's got like his learners permit. He takes a gun out of the gun cabinet and goes shoot and ski with his friends. And it's hard to be like, you're not allowed to have social media. You can take the shotgun, but no Facebook, you know.

So he has social media now, and he likes to kind of post about his outdoor adventures. you know and and I encourage that um and keep a tight rap on it but yeah he's real curious in what i do um he's uh i'm not a photographer he's very interested in photography he's very interested in communication so i'll be curious to see where that leads right on man um but yeah the other one's man i i for me the funnest thing now is to take them out hunting 100 percent 100 percent i don't care if i get like to me it doesn't matter to get stuff just time yeah i just like to be my buddies are the same way buddies with kids after a while they're like you being the one that gets something no one cares about that anymore it's good to see the kids have success you know yeah man

that's like i was telling you at breakfast i just we've been uh i'm official with my son he's a toddler for almost a year this fall it'll be a year it's been so fucking cool to watch him like learn figure out how to cast they learned it like like a couple days yeah i mean now it's just it's like trying to dodge bullets when he casts but uh and all the untangling and stuff you know to get a trouble hook in the nose but yeah it's it's it's just i love watching them real abyss and or it's so cool man yeah i love being outdoors with my kid yeah it's good it's good to spend time it's it's it's good for them it's good for you yeah yeah but um well

man i just i really appreciate you coming in i thought this was an awesome conversation oh well thanks man like i said i've always uh admired your work and enjoyed watching the clips and my boy likes watching the clips we have a good time he does yeah oh we'll give him some stuff take home oh really yeah no he likes again like me he likes hearing from he likes hearing from all the warriors man cool yeah well there's a lot more coming on so good yeah but steve honor to meet you man yeah thank you man appreciate you thank you so much cheers son is there anything we didn't cover you want to cover great thank you thank you all right yeah that was awesome i really like that boast up dude it's fun that's i could see how that could

get addicting yeah there's a lot of guys that find like quite therapeutic to shoot you know what is your what's the favorite animal to hunt for me yeah or maybe like the one you're most Proud up. Oh, yeah. Well, I like hunting doll sheep, but I don't get as many opportunities to do it. But, like, for day and day out hunting, I like mule deer 100%. I just love everything about them. I love everything about them.

But I grew up on whitetails. So it's funny because I got friends out that grew up out west, and they're like, dude, that must be so cool tree stand hunting white tails. But then we grew up tree stand hunting white tails. Like, that must be so cool to hunt the mountains for me old deer. Yeah. You know what I mean? It has a lot to do with that, but I like that.

And I've really gotten into, I've been, I've doing it for a long time, but I like to hunt moose. I like to call moose. Like on the 11th, I'll take off to go with my brother, Danny, who lives up in Alaska, to go call moose, you know, which is a total mind fuck. Man. It's a slow game. It's a slow game. Like, a moose might take days to come to a call. Like, he hears it.

Oh, yeah. And he might be like, yeah, eventually. I'll venture you get over there. Right on, man. Yeah, it's kind of funny. You know, you see them. And they're like aware of you, but the time for them is different. You know, elk might, he just comes ripping in.

But Moose is like, yeah, I'll get over during three days. Is there, is there, I actually meant to ask you in the interview, but is there anything that you think the hunting industry is getting wrong, like in the public's eye, anything that pisses you off about the industry? I think that, yeah. There's a handful of things, but it's not anybody, but I think that a lot of the commentary around, a lot of the commentary around relationships with predators

isn't accurate. And I think that people are, what our ask needs to be in the West, on wolves and grizzlies. Well, not just that, and not the West, Upper Midwest. What the aspect needs to be on wolves and grizzlies is it needs to be that, like, they're going to be on the landscape. the ask the days of it being that they're going to be gone

that's not going to happen the ask needs to be that they be managed as game animals it's like lamenting the existence of large predators or just like you know this whole like smoke a pack a day you know shoot shovel shut up shit about wolves I don't think that that's productive gotcha the ask is like

the ask is like get them off the ESA what's that what's dangerous species act okay they shouldn't be they don't qualify for endangered species act protection just like categorically when they started doing reintroductions on wolves and when I started doing protections on grizzlies all the people all the stakeholders came together and said here's what recovery looks like recovery will be this this many breeding pairs right this level of distribution we hit recovery on wolves and grizzly bears 20 years ago in some cases even longer ago

in some areas and but and there's still is this faction of sportsmen that thinks we're going to go back to having those animals not out there praying on deer and it's fucking dumb yeah like the ask is delist and manage as a game animal um that that's the thing that people got up and in order to push their viewpoint they kind of over they like exaggerate human risk on things that there's not human risk there's not like a reasonable human risk like wolves like wolves just don't fuck with people you know mountain lions every now and then but predators need to be there yeah they need to be managed as game animals yeah we need to have hunting you know like it's ridiculous right now that there's no wolf hunting in the upper great lakes it's ridiculous

they need to you know they delisted then they listed again that needs to be a hunted population of wolves but um they're not going away what about um like invasive species and stuff like hogs down south and i mean um i used to have a habit of asking guys the own land that had hogs on it the bitch about the hogs and i'd be like if you could wave a magic wand i've had so many farmers and ranch If you could wave a magic wand and they would really be all gone, would you wave it? And there, I was like, I mean, I don't want I'm all gone. Again and again. I don't know I'm all gone.

I mean, that's ridiculous. Yeah, but, you know, the thing that hunters don't, if you're going to look at from a conservation habitat perspective, non-native plants are probably, I, I think. think that you'd probably get buy in on that statement. You'd probably get buy in on that statement for most people that non-native plants are a greater risk to hunting in America than non-native wildlife. It's a little bit, there are cases where one could argue that because in the Mississippi system, the Asiatic carp species have to be having an impact on game fish. There's no way they're not having an impact on game fish. So that's a huge thing in that area. zebra mussels in the Great Lakes is a big problem but non-native um habitat that is becoming that it

doesn't support wildlife because it's got plants that wildlife can't utilize like that's a problem whole fucking hillside i mean whole mountain sides taken over by plants called like uh spotted napweed leafy spurge whole mountain sides used to support animals or hillsides used to support animals now don't no shit I did not realize that Canadian thistle it's another one like ecosystems that had game

that don't have game because they can't digest noxious weeds interesting I never thought about that noxious weeds are noxious weeds are huge will be a huge problem in the future

I mean they're already a huge problem like if you anywhere if you went anywhere and talk to someone from like most states if you went and talked with someone it's like we got plant problems more than we got animal problems you're familiar with like the pollinator crisis

no um losing losing all of our pollinators oh like bees yeah I have heard of that from habit habitat and also habitat and then the fucking pesticides damn herbicides and pesticides

and I'm not hacking it dude like people got to eat you know um if you wanted to live in a world with no herbicides no pesticides you should probably plan on losing about half the world's population to starvation right it's like a real fucking conundrum um it could be that anyone that's poorer dies because we don't use herbicides and pesticides anymore or we continue to like wipe out insect species

and wipe out plant species that that are the sound of the foundation of you know all of our environmental shit you know yeah yeah man that's an interesting aspect i never thought of yeah it's it's one of those it's one of those hidden things and it's like a lot of people um a lot of people aren't hip to it you know but i have the like i have the luxury of of of i have the luxury of just like occupying a world occupying a conversation that you know some guy that works his fucking ass off and you know gets to hunt a few weekends a year and he's happy if he can hunt four weekends a year it's just like he just doesn't have time for hearing about all that shit you know yeah because he's got whatever he's trying to fucking

raise his family and so there's people that just there's a lot of sportsmen that don't know and it's not necessarily like ignorance it's just like it's just complicated yeah so they might be like what's wrong with hunting you know why are you not seeing deer and it's like oh fucking coyotes it's like yeah it's more complicated dude that's easy but it's it's more complicated you know interesting yeah the predator thing is a is a and you wind up fighting both extremes like I wind up arguing um I'm always arguing with people that think that like I'm always arguing with people to think that wolves if I can walk around eating granola or flowers you know be like no dude wolves have a major impact coyotes have a major impact and then I turn around I'm arguing with some guy

that thinks it's the only thing that matters is that if we just killed more kyle it's the world to be overrun with wild game you're like you guys are both fucked up damn you guys are both wrong we want to grab some lunch mm-hmm cool Thank you.