The Joe Rogan Experience - #1122 - Donnie Vincent

Episode Date: May 29, 2018

Donnie Vincent is a biologist, explorer, conservationist, sportsman, and filmmaker. Links to some of his recent work is available at: https://www.donnievincent.com

Five, four, three, two, one. Donnie Vincent. What's going on? How are you, buddy? Good. Really good. I'm very excited that you didn't know about floating at all. You didn't know about float tanks even remotely until you came here. Yeah. And it's wicked looking. It's fun, man. If you got time after the show, you could float. If you want to do it. I might have to do it just to say that I've done it.

Yeah. But yeah, I didn't know the science behind it. Other than obviously floating would be, you know. Just feels good. Just to meditate and just to sit there in a quiet, like, you know, when you're a little kid and you go in a swimming pool or something, and you put your ears just under the water and you get that kind of. Yeah. And everything's just peaceful and you can just sit there and you can't hear your mother or you can't hear your girlfriend

or whatever and it's just quiet. I assume it's a lot like that. It's very telling that you said two women. You didn't say your dad. You didn't say your grandpa. My dad never talked to me and maybe that's a whole other subject. That's another part of the problem probably. But yeah, I am trying to get floating spread across the world.

I think it's the best way for people to relax. There's nothing like it. Because, first of all, physically you relax because the water has so much Epsom salts in it. It's just really good for your muscles. It's good for sore, you know, anything. Sore muscles, overworked. It's great for that. But it's also great in the environment where you're in that tank with total darkness, total silence.

Oh, total silence. Oh, total darkness. You don't feel anything. Oh, yeah. It's pitch black in there. You close the door. You don't see a ray of light. And then your ears are underwater. And I have to get some earplugs for guests.

I don't mind having the salt in my ears, but some people get a little weirded out by the salt. It's not in there. Do we have them in there? There's a whole bunch of, like, yeah. Did I buy? I bought a big thing of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did. My memory's fucked up fucked up dude what's wrong with me um i bought a whole giant

jug of it right but uh the other thing is that it just gives you alone time in a way that you don't ever get when you're floating in there you're not thinking about your body you're not thinking about anything you're just you're just floating and then it's just very peaceful just it makes you you have a real moment to consider things i've had made some of my best decisions in that thing and i don't think i mean obviously we all know the rat race right now none of us i mean it's why i go to the mountains it's the same thing like sitting there and peace and my mind has been doing this for years where early on and when I would go in the Arctic or early on when I go into the mountains or something like that, everything was frantic. I had to do things really quickly. I wanted to cover a lot of ground. I wanted everything

packing, moving, everything was so frantic. And then when I started realizing that if I would just stop and slow down and look at the very tiniest details around me, no matter where I was or who I was with, then I started having a great appreciation of my presence. And so I'm sure something like that is just because of the darkness and because of the floating, it's just hyper extended into that presence of you can trick yourself into thinking that nothing else is going on in your life. Right. Yeah, no, I agree with you.

I think that we take this attitude that we have in the city when you're dealing with traffic and massive amounts of people, and you sort of have that same momentum when you go into the mountains. And if you do do that, you're not going to appreciate it the same way. Yeah, for sure. You've got to look around. Yeah. I did that for a few years.

I thought I had to accomplish something. So I'd go to site A and hunt there. Then, and I tried to, as horrible as the sentence is to say, I try to kill as fast as I could so I could get out of there and go to site B and site C. And then I started realizing, I actually had a friend of mine. He's like, man, I think you're, I think you're hunting too much. I think this is going to catch up with you and the experience is going to start to degrade for you. But it was almost like I was trying to accomplish really fast goals. And when I started slowing that down and saying, hey, I don't want to go to the Arctic for seven days and try to knock all these things off my list in seven days. I want to go to the Arctic for 30 days and now let the Arctic come to me. 30 days and now let the arctic come to me let let now i just want to sit still and be quiet and not not chase the arctic down but i want it just now i want it to come to me well i i think people for the law people who don't have any experience in the outdoors and certainly people who don't hunt don't understand it and their version of it they're getting either from movies where hunters are always portrayed as villains or they're getting either from movies where hunters are always portrayed as

villains or they're getting it from these outdoor tv shows which i don't think a good do a good job of representing what it actually is even the really good ones like ranella show which i think is the best show out there sure it's still 22 minutes with commercials and i just don't think that you get a real sense of what it's like. What I think you did that's really interesting, and one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on, is you're doing films, like you're doing an hour-long film about a hunt. And in that, you really get an understanding of the environment. You take great shots, or whoever your cameraman is, great shots of the environment. And close-ups on leaves floating

down a river. And you just get, you get a real sense of it, which is missing. I mean, it's still, you're still getting a blink of, you know, multiple weeks in the wilderness, but you, at least you get a feel like, oh, this is something very different than what's being portrayed this is like this intense almost spiritual experience in this very bizarre environment that surrounds civilization and we think of it you know in these weird terms but when you're out there in it it's very difficult to capture what that's like and i think you've done an amazing job at doing that and here's jamie's

put some of your stuff up online here where you get a chance to see it. But, and I, and I appreciate that. It's, um, hunting.

It drives me nuts. Go ahead. No, no, I'm just, I'm just going to say, I mean, whoever's doing your,

your editing, Kyle, he's fantastic. Yeah. He's really talented. He does a really, really good job of, of just picking good shots.

And just the overall experience is relayed very well like you get a chance to see like oh this this is an adventure this isn't just as simple as you know someone's going out there trying to fill a freezer with wild game meat no you're you're on an adventure and then the wild game meat is a part of it yeah it's all absolutely a lot of shit going on and this was this piece right here was specifically done for nat geo because they have um the national geographic society which is the magazine and then they have national geographic which is the tv show and so they wanted to do they hit me up for a bunch of tv shows they wanted me to you know come and find bigfoot they wanted me to uh i yeah those motherf yeah, they called me for everything.

They would call me and say, Oh, uh, where, where, where are you right now? Where are, where's your cabin? And I'd say, I don't have a cabin. And they'd say, well, I'm surely you're skinning a beaver out right now. I said, no, no, no. I live in Wisconsin, just out of Minneapolis. And I'm walking my Labrador down the street in shorts. And, and, um, and so they said, well, they, they really want to do a TV show and they wanted it to, uh, encapsulate hunting to some degree, but the society, the magazine was against hunting, the TV show would allow it. So they wanted me to do a no bullshit, uh, sermon, if you will, download looking down the barrel of the camera and just said, this isn't going to go public.

This doesn't have to be pretty. It's not going to be edited well, but just please tell us why you hunt. Try to explain it so that we can bring it to our producers and say, man, like this is why he hunts. And so I did this, had my little temper tantrum there. And in doing it, realized like it made me really question, you know, I'd say, okay, so you want to know why I hunt? And then it made me take a step back and say, man, for the love of God, I really don't even

know. I don't know why I hunt, but I can explain some of the areas. It doesn't explain why I'm a hunter. It doesn't explain exactly why I hunt, but I can tell you, I love the areas. It doesn't explain why I'm a hunter. It doesn't explain exactly why I hunt, but I can tell you, I love the adventure. I can tell you, I love the really clean protein that I get for me and my family. I can tell you that our ancestry unequivocally comes from 100% groups of hunters and gatherers. It's around the world. I can tell you all of these points. I can tell you that I love seeing antlers of all sizes and the hides. And I can tell you, I love watching grizzly bears eat blueberries and

watching salmon come up a river to spawn. I can tell you all of these things, but I don't know if all of those things make me a hunter or if I'm just experiencing all those things because I am a hunter. It's just very difficult to articulate. It's very difficult to articulate how much you love something, yet you're willing to engage it in such a heavy way, such a violent way that you're willing to step in, kill it, cut it up, get your hands bloody, because really that's what it is. We love it so much that we're willing to expose ourselves to the elements, put ourselves in these places, let the arrow or the bullet go, watch an animal die, which is never, never an interesting thing to watch. I say interesting, but it's just not a pleasurable thing to watch.

But this is how we engage as hunters into these environments. And so I was trying to convey that to Nat Geo in a seven-minute piece. And Kyle, after he put it together he's like I think we should release this and I said hell no hell no I talk about PETA in it I talk about being a vegetarian in it which I'm not against vegetarianism PETA's a joke

but he insisted so he finally won the argument you know PETA you know the idea behind ethical treatment of animals is amazing of course i mean you like you're saying you have a labrador the idea that hunters hate animals too is also a very confusing thing this is hunters love animals you know there's a lot of hunters that have dogs and cats yeah but ethical treatment of animals is is imperative it's

very important. I mean, if we are really the stewards of nature, if we're really the top of the food chain, and we most certainly are, and we're conscious and we have a conscience, we absolutely should be ethical in our treatment of animals and take care of them and be kind to them. Which the problem with PETA is that's not really what they're about. They're the animal liberation organization. That's what they really are.

What they're about, they don't want any animals to be pets. They don't want people to have pets. Like this is, I mean, this sounds radical, but it's absolutely true. In fact, PETA euthanizes thousands of pets a year. They kill pets and they kill them quickly. They don't keep them alive very long. pets and they kill them quickly. They don't keep them alive very long.

And the idea being is that for the critics, the idea that's been bandied about is they don't want these animals to live and breed and stay pets. They want animals to only be wild. And that's fine, but there's thousands and thousands of years of domesticated animals. And if you want to let those

animals loose and have them wild, you have a whole another series of problems. Unless you want to kill those animals loose and have them wild, you have a whole another series of problems. Unless you want to kill all the golden retrievers and all the chihuahuas they're not going to survive in the wild. Yeah, we've perpetuated past that a long time ago. They're not wild animals. They're just not.

No. Yeah, like a little fat kid's not a wild animal either. You leave him in the woods, he's going to die just as quickly as your fucking chihuahua. He's going to be food. Yeah, they're not going to make it. Yeah. This is not, you know, so there's a weird ideology that they're attached to that is, it's not tenable. It's not, you can't argue it.

You know, the idea of ethical treatment of animals, I'm 100% with that. Of course. I fucking hate the whole idea of captive orcas. That, to me, is one of the big ones. That freaks me the fuck out that we can take these alien creatures that are essentially as smart as us, probably, and put them in swimming pools and justify it, and that the only time they've ever killed people in recorded history

has been in those swimming pools. Yeah. They don't kill people in the wild. They kill everything else. They kill whales. They kill dolphins. They kill sharks. They don't fuck with people.

In fact, there's been instances where they've saved people. And yet we've decided to put those. So me and PETA are on 100% the same page as that. And PETA's retweeted a bunch of shit that I've put up before, which is really weird. They've retweeted a bunch of shit that i've put up before which is really weird they've retweeted a bunch of shit that i've put up about you know about uh orcas and when i've done that people like uh you know he hunts right and then then it gets you know radio silence yeah you know they don't want to comment on that they just want to support my hate for you know orca captivity yeah you know i i had um of the most, I've had some, I've been fortunate to have remarkable engagements

with wildlife in my life. But two years ago in BC, I had one with a killer whale. And it was wicked. And to this day, I regret not making the decision I'm about to tell you about. But we had been, I'd been bear hunting on the coast and we were in a boat cruising back to the harbor and we found two pods of killer whales uh three big bulls and a bunch of cows

that were hunting and we kept as they would come up they were chasing salmon as they would come up we would just get closer just to film them or even just to see them and then they'd go down and so i don't know if it was just happenstance of where we were, but we came up and we're just kind of waiting for the whole pod to come up. And all of a sudden, just 50 feet from the boat, here comes the huge dorsal fin of this bull, comes right at our boat, bumps into our boat. I'm standing in the crow's nest, essentially. I'm on the roof of the boat looking at this thing. in the crow's nest, essentially, I'm on the roof of the boat looking at this thing. He comes up, bumps into our boat, and he just glides his left side all along the boat. So his left pectoral fin is probably under our gunwale, if you will, or under our hull. And so he's just dragging his fin

and he rotates on his side, dragging his dorsal fin along our side, exhales, covering our director of photography, William's face in his spray. And as he's doing this, he goes, he hugs the bow of our boat and he never, ever breaks eye contact with me. He's staring at me out of his left eye, literally rolling his eye over and he just cruises all the way around the boat. And I wanted to dive in and I just wasn't sure, like I didn't want to be one of these, the way around the boat. And I wanted to dive in. And I just wasn't sure.

Like, I didn't want to be one of these, you know. The first guy to die. I didn't want to be the first guy to die. And I also didn't want to have, like, some sort of shallow water blackout because the water was so cold. So I didn't want to dive in and have all of a sudden, like, I didn't know how my body would react because I hadn't been in the water yet. I didn't know how my body would react because I hadn't been in the water yet. And so, and then also I was like, I, you know, I'd watched Blackfish or whatever that film is where they killed a bunch of folks at, you know, in SeaWorld and in BC. And so I was just like, well, what if, you know, there's got to be a first, you know, wolves never killed anyone either. And then, you know, some young lady went jogging in BC and son of a bitch, we have number one.

Well, there's a long history of killing people in the past. Yeah. I'm just saying, you know, like, you know, in recorded time, but it was still,

it was, it was, uh, he maintained eye contact turned and then just continued on with the hunt. But it was, did you film all this? Yeah. Well,

you filmed as much as we could cause it happened really fast, but yeah, it was wicked. Absolutely wicked. I mean, literally his, you know, his dorsal fin is probably 10 feet tall.

And it is just, you know, when you drag something against another object with force, you know, his fin is just, you know, he was just very engaged with the boat. Is their dorsal fin really that tall? Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's got to be 8, 9, 10 feet. That's fucking crazy. Yeah. I guess it makes sense. That's fucking crazy. Yeah. It's huge.

I guess it makes sense. They're so big. Fuck, man. I've never seen one in the wild. I've seen dolphins in the wild, and I've seen whales in the wild. I've never seen an orca. Yeah, they're wicked animals. We can't even comprehend what that animal is.

I've always said that if orcas weren't real and Bigfoot was real, we wouldn't give a shit about Bigfoot. Bigfoot would be in the zoo right next to the fucking orangutans. You know, we'd be like, look at the big monkey. Big stupid monkey, you know? Yeah. But orcas, I mean, they speak in a language that we can't decipher. We don't know what they're saying, but we know that they have dialects. We know that they stay in these pods for life.

They have this family organization and they all stay in their clan yeah they're they're fucking incredible and you've seen you've seen blackfish obviously yeah yeah i think so much as i could watch i couldn't watch the whole thing i get angry oh yeah i i get i get furious that this is a giant business that they they take these things and they they buy them from other organizations and i've had you know i just I've had real problems with it for a long time. And my friend Phil Demers, he was a trainer at Marineland. And he's been on the podcast many, many times. And he's involved in these constant lawsuits with Marineland.

He was a walrus trainer. And he also trained killer whales. And he's given us some real insight into the horrors of what it's like in marine land and even in SeaWorld and what they're doing and how they get these orcas and how they're treated and how bad it is for them to be trapped in these environments and how their dorsal fins go limp because they never have to deal with current. So the atrophy, the whole thing is sick. It's sick. Do they still have them now? Killer whales in SeaWorld now? Yes. sick do they still have them now and killer whales and sea world now yes yeah they still have them yeah they can't they can't buy new ones apparently or something like that there's some weird fantastic yeah the whole thing they can't

i think they could still breed them though i mean the whole thing is fucked up man it's it's just like slavery if like we had aliens as slaves. We just couldn't. We're like, what are you saying? Oh, yeah, I don't know what you're saying, dude. Get in the pool if you want to fish. Get in the fucking pool. I mean, that's basically what's going on. It's gross. Yeah, it's sick.

Yeah. It's twisted. Yeah. You know, and I just, so that's where me and Pete were on the same page. Yeah, I think anyone, honestly uh treating anything with ethics right particularly animals of course hunters are animal lovers you know we rescue dogs we rescue cats we it's it absolutely goes without saying which is where the contention comes from that's where the questions come from that's i i get i get as many letters from non- and from, you know, people that, um, think that they're against

hunting or have, um, maybe damning questions than I do from hunters themselves. You know, I get, I get letters from hunters that say, you know, you're a bad-ass or you really inspire me or, you know, I'm, I'm really happy that I can have my kids watch your films. Like I don't let them watch hunting TV, but when we sit down and they want to see something, they want to ingest something that has hunting in it, you know, we'll watch your films. And so I think that's really cool,

but I get a lot of questions from non hunters and then people that have some contention with it. Well, I think there's a lot of people out there that are curious. I mean, 90, depending on who you ask, 95 or 90%,

97% of the population eats meat and the the percentage that actually kill that meat themselves is incredibly small it's probably like one percent sure you know i mean i don't know what it is it might be a little bit higher than that but it's no more than five and there's a lot of people that are just on the fence and they're they're just sitting there going well i eat it but i don't kill it myself. But I somehow know they're angry that someone's doing it themselves. Before I ever thought about hunting, my thoughts about hunters were that they were cruel people that liked to kill animals. Why would you kill animals? It's not necessary. You can buy meat from a store. This is the very shallow thinking that i had you know decades ago then you know as i

started getting older and really considering what i do with my body and what kind of food i put in and then the internet was a big one because the internet came along and i started watching those videos that a lot of them that peter puts up of factory farming oh and terrible it's horrible it's not just terrible it's it's like it doesn't make any sense it's like this is this is like human beings at their very worst like that we've treated these things as like the the most i mean not just as a commodity but we've ignored their feelings and their thoughts and the fact that they have instincts and needs, and that we've stuffed them into these tiny little cages.

It's a sickness. Then you see the cruel, inhumane treatment that some of the people that work there, you know, and people that work in farms will tell you, look, this is very rare, and these are isolated instances, and this is terrible. That's well and good, but there's also ag gag laws that prevent people from filming, agricultural gag laws that prevent people from filming on these factory farms because they don't want people to know how horrific those conditions are. So there's some truth to it. I mean, maybe they're isolated instances. Maybe it's a small percentage of

the farms that do treat their animals like that, but it's significant enough that they're worried about the impact on the economy to the point where they're passing laws that keep people from filming and showing people what it's like in these places. You can even just show people without any abuse. Just show what's going on. Just even a still photo of how they're living. Yeah.

And you're not going to want to consume the food. And the people that, they think that these animals were raised this way, right? They're cows. They're bovines they're big dumb animals they were bred for this who cares they have no idea what's going on until that spike hits them or they get electrocuted or they get their throats slit but if you have any wherewithal at all if you have any being, any soul at all, and maybe this is the wrong idealization or the wrong picture I'm building in my head, but if you make yourself the cow just for a second, if you remove yourself just for a freaking second and just say like, is this how I would want to be treated? Is this how I would want to live?

Is this how I would want to die? Then you start to ask yourself some pretty big questions that are relatively easy to answer. is this how I would want to be treated? Is this how I would want to live? Is this how I would want to die? Then you start to ask yourself some pretty big questions that are relatively easy to answer. And we have a lot of people on the earth right now, and it's going to continue until something big happens. But if you can remove yourself from your own ego and from your own comfort and try to visualize at all what these other animals are going through even animals you're hunting um it's going to make you better and and more cognizant of being ethical and treating everything with absolute care even in killing it yeah i mean i know there's a lot of contradictions there though right with hunting because like if you really care about the animal

why would you kill it right that's yeah that the big question. Yeah, it's not hard to wrap your head around. Yeah, if you're not into it. And our wilderness is absolutely wild. I mean, public lands in particular, it's absolutely wild. But it's also very weird because a lot of the funding for that wildlife comes from people that buy hunting tags and hunting equipment in order to kill those animals so the way those animals are sustained and the way the wildlifes are protected in the way that the wardens and game rangers are paid is a lot of it is through the hunters who want to go out and kill the animals that live on so it's it's like a lot of people are like, okay, this is wild, sort of.

But it's also, I mean, it's protected by people that want to go in that water. And engage it. I mean, we're reducing it to a single variable. So you want to protect these elk so you can go in there and kill an elk. No. I want to protect these. First of all, I want to protect the habitat so these elk can thrive. And then in certain instances, go in and remove a few

animals or in certain instances like if you're in alaska or something like that and hunting a stable caribou herd you can go in and remove you know not everything is based off of soul management right as animals encroach where people are we need to cut their numbers down because humans have taken up so much land but there are other populations that are trending in relative harmony. If they have big, huge scales of land and we're not drilling for oil or whatever, where you can go and remove a few animals in a predator and prey scenario and it works just fine for the herd, it works just fine for the population. And actually, in a very small way, helps the population by removing certain animals for an age class or a sex class, things like that. But that's the difficulty is we're preserving the habitat so that we can go in and engage in the wild, right? I mean, I think also a lot of people, they think you buy your gun, you buy your bow, you buy your tag, you go to Utah, you leave with an elk. Well,

that is how it works for like 15% of the people. If that. If that. But there's a whole contingent of 80% or 90% of people that buy their bow, buy their gun, buy their pickup truck, get their hotel room, get their tent, hike 20 miles into the wilderness. Strike out. Listen to a lot of quiet. Look around, hike out, get back in their truck, drive home, send me an email saying, where is it that you find elk around September 15th in Utah?

And so there's, and still those people are engaging and still, you know, and there's all different wise, there's, you know, there's fly fishermen and elk hunters and, and there's people that just want to take photos. And so everyone has their different engagement, but that's really what it's about. And we have what we're trending towards 8 billion people on the face there. So, well, at large scale, agriculture and farming and animal agriculture as well has created this environment where people can thrive in these cities where they're not growing any food. I mean, California, where we're at right now is one of the weirdest places on the planet Earth. There's 20 million people. No one's growing anything but weed. I mean, California, where we're at right now, is one of the weirdest places on the planet Earth. There's 20 million people.

No one's growing anything but weed. I mean, look around here. There's no farms out here, man. There's no farms. It's completely weird. And the people that are, a lot of these people that are writing, a lot of these people that are against this, they're so hypocritical. Well, they're eating cheeseburgers while they're typing. So hypocritical.

It's very strange. It's very strange. It's very strange, but I've been that person. I've been that meat-eating person who thought that hunters were cruel. I've been that person. I get it. I know where they're coming from. And I've considered vegetarianism, and when I was fighting, I was a

vegan, or a vegetarian, rather, for I guess I was probably considered vegan. I don't think I was eating any cheese, and I wasn't drinking any milk, but I did that for like six months. It just didn't agree with me. I mean, maybe I didn't do it right and I never did it again. But I was doing it to try to lose weight. I was also not eating enough.

There was a lot going on there because I was trying to fight at a low weight class. But a lot of people do it and they do it well and it works for them but they have to understand even that's not clean man large-scale agriculture in terms of farming that shit kills a lot of animals it displaces a lot of wildlife you're never supposed to have a thousand acres of soybeans or a thousand acres of corn or a thousand acres of fucking wheat or anything anything all that shit is fake all that shit is something someone's put there and when they're using pesticides they're killing things and when they're using those combines they are grinding up bunnies

and fucking rats and mice and killing countless bugs so the idea that you're getting away without killing any sentient life it's bullshit and even And even look at, so the corridor of the Mississippi River, right, used to be solid wetlands, and our wetlands is how we recycle water. It's how we, that stinky biomass that you smell, that's clean water being made. That's detritus material being processed. Mississippi River used to be completely lined with these wetlands. Farmers have one, and obviously it's not the farmer's fault. As soon as we started agriculture, 13, 14, 15,000 years ago, the stopwatch was hit.

We went one direction. You cannot go away. We were hunters and gatherers. We could only raise so many children. We had to move with the food. We had to move away from our excrement. We had to keep with the food. We had to move away from our excrement. We had to keep a small population. But the second we figured out how to grow corn and rice and stay in one place and raise more than one child, and now we're close to our excrement, literally the stopwatch to something that is going to be a fantastic event has started.

I don't know if I'm going to see it. I don't know if you're going to see it. But something wicked is coming. There's no other way to look around. Anyway, something big. You mean by overpopulation? Overpopulation. Something will happen. You know, human beings are

animals. We have awesome thumbs. We have great brains, but we are nothing. There's nothing amazing about us. We can fly to the moon. We can do all this great stuff. By the way, I loved your discussion with your flat earther guy. That was freaking amazing. And the other guy that thinks if you eat the perfect amount of food, you won't poop or pee.

Oh, that guy. That's silly fuck. California remains the leading U.S. state for cash farm receipts. It's the biggest state for all farms. Yeah, but that's outside of L.A. If you go outside of L.A., I mean L.A. Yeah, we're just talking about L.S. state for cash farm receipts. It's the biggest state for all farms. Yeah, but that's outside of L.A. If you go outside of L.A., I mean L.A. Yeah, we're just talking about L.A. California has a lot of farms.

In fact, if you drive from L.A. and you go to Fresno, like when we were working in Fresno, there's fucking nothing but farms. Like all the way up to San Francisco, nothing but farms. It's a lot of almond farming, a lot of tomatoes, avocados. But you look at, so we've gotten rid of our wetlands, and now our soils are sawdust. There's nothing in them anymore. Right.

So we pump in the nitrogen. We pump in the phosphorus. Explain that, too, because a lot of people don't understand that when you use, when you grow vegetables on a plot of land over and over and over again, you deplete the soil of all the minerals. Yeah, because you're not letting anything die there, right? You are pulling from the earth. You're harvesting the plant. Nothing is dying. Nothing is returning back to the earth.

And so you're, so then the next year you don't have that detritus material creating all the goodies in the soils, the bugs, the microbes. You don't have these funguses. You don't have these symbiotic relationships that are working with all these insects and microbes so that create your soil to be a living system we've, as we push

all that into the plant and we harvest it and we just keep doing that repeatedly, well there's less and less of this biomass in the soil so we have to then go in and fertilize with nitrogen and phosphorus to give our plants nitrogen fixation, things like this, to grow these plants. Then we harvest them. Then rains come.

There's erosion, all of these soils. So we lose some of our top soils, which brings us down to even more other different levels of soils that need even more chemicals brought into them so they can actually grow something. But all these soils that are heavily laden with nitrogen and phosphorus pour into the Mississippi River. And people know about this. I'm not saying anything that hasn't been extremely well documented. And then pushes down to the Gulf of Mexico. The sunlight hits it. All of this algal blooms happen.

All this algae hits this nitrogen and phosphorus. It grows it just like it grows a corn stalk. The sunlight hits it. It has these huge blooms that needs oxygen to function, so it creates these huge hypoxic zones, right? You've heard these things called dead zones. Fish can't live in them. And so anyone that hangs their hat on being a vegetarian,

and I know there's reasons for being a vegetarian. I know there's people that refuse to do it. They don't want to kill the animal themselves, and they're not going to buy from a factory farm. I probably have more in common with vegetarian people that don't want to kill their own animals and aren't willing to eat factory-grown food than I have with some of my hunters, with other hunters. I know what you're saying. It seems. And I also, you know, I'm so focused on conservation and habitat and being aware. And it's not ever-present, but I have this awareness of when I go and hunt someplace that, you know, am I actually doing something good here?

Am I, you know, I, I went a few years ago to Newfoundland to hunt woodland caribou and the population was really down. And so I got, I got invited to go there. And, and, um, so I started looking into it because the population was down. I was like, man, should I even really be doing this? And I, through my research, I found out this population of caribou is really cyclic. And as, as they fall really low, they thrive. It's one of the best times for the caribou.

And actually, when their populations are at a huge boom, they do the worst. Is that because they eat too much of the lichen? Yeah, so their habitat resource just starts to be overlaid, and then they have another bust. And so I went and did it. But there's a constant yin and yang. And as a hunter, as a vegetarian, even if you want to claim veganism, all of these things, we should be asking ourselves big questions. This whole thing, everything lives here in a gray area.

There is no black and white. I'm not against vegetarians. I'm not against vegans. If a vegan comes up to me and says, how in the hell can you kill an animal and wear leather shoes? I say, shit, that's a really good point. Let me ask myself because I'm going to have to sit down in a quiet float tank and think about myself. I should be asking myself some of these big questions and as should they. I just think there's a lot of information that we should keep asking ourselves.

Keep asking ourselves. Because if the population of human beings continues exponentially, which it will, until this major event that everyone thinks is coming, hunters should almost be the first ones to give up hunting. If it trends towards that someday if it gets to be there's not enough wildlife or wild lands or something fantastic happens like hunters should be the first ones they should be on the front line of being aware of the habitat and the resources and say hey you know what we need to back off and um and i've seen it before it's actually really cool a few years ago this is a micro instance but a few years ago cool. A few years ago, this is a micro instance, but a few years ago, actually a few years ago, I say it's a long time ago, 1991,

a huge blizzard hit in Wisconsin on Halloween day. And the Wisconsin Deer Hunters Association shut down whitetail hunting overnight. It said there is no deer hunting this year. It's canceled. It's done. There's no legal deer hunting this year. It's canceled. It's done. There's no legal deer hunting this year. And then all of these deer hunters were taking their tractors out on these public lands and on their private lands and plowing areas for the deer to walk around and the deer to move around. And so there's all sorts of instances about it.

But you get what I'm saying. I think we have to keep asking ourselves these questions as we move through our time and space. I think it's real important. And what you said about, you know, what you're essentially saying is that people, and this has always been my problem with people that proselytize or people that are really into proclaiming that they have the moral high ground because they eat only vegetables. That high ground is filled with holes. You're going to step in one of those holes if you keep talking because the more angry you get at people that hunt and the more angry you get the people that eat meat, you have to understand that if you're eating vegetables, just by fact that you're buying them from

a factory farm, you're buying them from large scale agriculture, you're absolutely responsible for death. And the death of fish, I'm glad you brought that up because those dead zones in the ocean, that's a gigantic problem. Oh, my God. It's a gigantic problem. And it's a problem that's caused in large part by large-scale agriculture, as you said. I think that one of these problems is going to be solved by factory-created meat.

The problem is how many other problems are going to be created by that. You mean like made meat? Like out of soy? No, no, no. No, they're making meat in laboratories. Laboratory-created meat. And they're, I don't know exactly what the process is, but it's flesh. What's the cellular base?

Like what's the first thing that they put in the petri dish? They're cloning it, essentially. They're cloning beef and all these different things, and the idea is they're going to be able to do this without anything dying. So, if you think our population, if you think our human growth is exponential now,

now we can get rid of the land. Now we don't need the land. Now there's no value for wild places, and there's no value even for farms. Now we can get rid of the land. Now we don't need the land. Now there's no value for wild places and there's no value even for farms. Now we can get rid of all of that. And billionaires, you know what billionaires love? They love money. And so billionaires will buy up all this land because they already have all the money to buy the land. They'll buy the land.

They'll get the farms and they'll get all the wild places out and they'll build even more houses because you can eat some beige colored gruel or laboratory designed meat and we can get even more people. Well, I don't think they're thinking about it that way. So I just invented something. I'm sure. I mean, it's like the idea of they. Like they're going to do this. Well, they're us. And there's, you know, wildlife and wild lands are protected.

us and there's you know wildlife and wild lands are protected there's federal land and you can't really build factory farmed meat houses on those places but now i see what you're saying but there's also the real problem of like what what there's no there's no free ride like what happens when you make that meat like what what's that's what i'm asking you what's the first thing in the petri dish right what's the cost of doing this what I'm asking you. What's the first thing in the petri dish, right? What's the cost of doing this? Also, is there some sort of a side effect to eating that meat? Does it have negative health effects? Does it have a negative environmental effect? Is there any sort of like waste product that's created by creating this meat?

I don't know. These are all questions that have to be answered. None of it's clean though. This is what's really important. When you run an arrow through a bull elk and that thing runs 20 yards and falls down and dies, there's this weird feeling that you have. There's a weird feeling of loss that goes along with this weird feeling of happiness that you're successful. There's no one or zero. It's not a binary experience. It's not clean's there's there's no like one or zero it's not a binary experience

it's not clean it's like life itself life eats life and if you want to claim the moral high ground because you're a vegetarian or if you want to claim the moral high ground because you're a hunter i think i think you're missing the big picture that there is all this weirdness to life and that there there is this thing that we do that we consume and that every other animal does as well that's the thing that always strikes me as being strange is uh the people have a real hard time with people eating predators or people hunting predators like bear hunting yeah is one of the number one most surefire ways to get people angry at you online. Yes.

And there's a lot of ignorance attached to it, particularly with black bears, which are responsible for literally killing 50% of all the moose calves and all the deer fawns and elk calves. 50% of them get whacked by black bears. They're very successful at calving season. Yeah, they have a, how strong is their nose? It's some, like a bloodhound is thousands of times stronger scent. Than a deer.

Well, than a deer or than us. And then a black bear. Measurably above them. Measurably above them. So they can smell, like the way I try to explain it to people is like, you know how you smell skunk? Like if you're driving your car, like, ew, you smell that skunk? You can smell that like, the way I try to explain it to people is like, you know how you smell skunk? Like, if you're driving your car, like, ew, you smell that skunk? You can smell that fucking skunk for blocks.

Yeah. Now, a black bear can do that with your foot odor. Yes. Yeah, literally can smell you, can smell the mustard on a hamburger and pick it out from the beef and the pickles. It's even better than that. Because some biologists are surmising that they actually can tell time with their nose. So when they walk in, you know, like you and I are driving on the road and we go, oh, my God, do you smell that skunk? Well, he's sitting there as he strolls through the neighborhood.

He's going, oh, my God, a skunk was hit by a car this morning. But yesterday, a little fat kid threw a cheeseburger out of the window here. And two days ago, a woman with really strong perfume walked down the sidewalk with a poodle. So they're literally, there's so many layers to what they're taking in and everything has its, you know, essentially like different strengths because of how long it's been present in that area that they can almost kind of read a book as they're strolling through

their environment. And so it's, how do they know that they can do that? I think they're just making a summations off of like how powerful their noses are and that they're picking up so much information that they're picking up old information, current information, brand new information. And I mean, if you think about that, all of that information coming in their head in an instant, every instant, every time they breathe in.

So I think scientists are probably making a summation that these bears have to process this information as they're going through. Because otherwise they'd run scared all day, right? It's incredible. They're incredible animals. But it's interesting how nature. And they're delicious. They are. They do taste good.

Oh my word, are they delicious. People don't want to hear that though. You eat bears? Yep. You eat a bear? So I have this thing where I've hunted with several hunting guides, several bear hunting guys, where I've convinced them they've never eaten bear meat. Some of these guys that are guides, like they send the meat home with their clients or they get it or they donate it. But I say, have you guys ever eaten bear meat?

I mean, the bears here, they have worms and their fat is yellow. And I say, you're full of crap. And so I did a hunt two years ago with a very dear friend of mine. I won't mention his name because he'd be mortified, as he should be. But I said, hey, let's eat some bears. And when I get there and we kill a bear, and he's like, what if you don't kill a bear? I said, I'll tell you what. He had a few bear hunts before me.

I said, please. He kills very old bears. And I said, please save the rattiest bear that you kill for us, the oldest, nastiest-looking boar. Please save. Ask the archer or the hunter if we can steal one of his hindquarters, and he did, and he let us. And when we got there, he pulled it out of the trash bag. He had it in a trash bag in their hang-in cooler. He pulled it out of the trash bag, and the fat was yellow and it looked horrible and he told me that when he was skinning it he

actually saw some worms underneath the you know the hide they have some they always have worms yeah yeah it's a constant and so uh so we made it that night along with some bighorn sheep and uh which is fantastic eating and all of the bighorn several pieces of the bighorn sheep, which is fantastic eating. And all of the bighorn, several pieces of the bighorn were left. The bear was long gone. It was absolutely amazing. How did you guys cook it? We did it two ways. One way we did it because we were kind of having a dinner party at a cabin,

and so we made just these little tiny medallions. And it was really funny, too, his reaction. So then we just pan-seared it with butter and garlic and onions and just ate it like little whatever, chicken McNuggets, if you will. And he ate that and he's like, well, yeah, I mean, you combine anything with butter and onions and garlic, it's going to taste good. And I'm like, do you hear yourself?

So, I mean, it's going up to a chef and be like, oh, yeah, you made me codfish, but you used dill and mayonnaise and, yeah, you're a liar. So then that night we made this big roast and we seared it on all sides and seasoned it all up, made a nice rub and put it in this broth with vegetables and everything. And he ate that. And then, of course, he's like, well, I mean, you made a rub and you seared it. And I'm like, well, if you suck at cooking, it's not the bear's fault. Bear meat's delicious. I'm not telling you to eat it raw off his skeleton the moment you're skinning him.

But if you take the time to prepare the flesh when you're in the field and then cook it well, it's amazing. It's right up there with anything. You're dealing with his internal biases. Yeah. Yeah, he's got these biases and he's just had them and held on to them forever.

And especially if you're skinning something, you see worms and you get grossed out. And you already think it's weird. Ranella told me a story once about a bear that he shot and killed and was cooking on a friend's smoker. And he told the friend, he goes, man, you've got to clean that fucking smoker out. And the guy's like, what are you talking about? He goes, man, that smoker smelled like fish. And he goes, I never cooked a fish on that smoker ever. Like, what are you talking about? He goes, man, that smoker smelled like fish. And he goes, I never cooked a fish on that smoker ever.

Like, what are you talking about? And he's realizing that the bear that he killed had just been eating nothing but fish. Yeah. And he said that when he was eating it, it was like eating smoked fish. Oh. It's like it was really good. Yeah. But it was this weird taste.

Yeah. Because it was like you're eating this red meat that tastes like smoked fish. Yeah. It's wicked. They're awesome. They're're awesome have you had a blueberry bear before yes i've never had that i've heard it's the most incredible meat on the planet earth in fact i got dropped off um i don't know four or five six years ago i was in the arctic uh for 30 or so days and the pilot dropped us off and he goes hey um do you have a bear tag? And I said, yeah, I have a bear tag. And he's like, if you kill a bear, he's like, there's tons of bears where I'm dropping you off. He's like, tons of grizzlies, tons of black bears, which is uncommon.

But he's like, if you kill a black bear, he's like, and you don't want the meat, I'll take it. You know, he'd made it very clear before he even dropped us off. And I said, no, we'll keep it, but we'll share with you for sure. We'll definitely share some with you. But it's phenomenal. Yeah, Rinella was telling me that it's literally the greatest meat on earth. Like when you have a bear that's been eating nothing but blueberries, and he did an episode of Meat Eater once where he shot one,

and as he's opening it up, you see purple fat because the bears have been eating blueberries for so long, their fat is purple. And it made me think about my own diet, quite honestly, because if this thing tastes so good and smells so good because of what it's eating, if you're eating fucking cheeseburgers and fries, that's got to be in your fat. All that bullshit food, fucking donuts,

that's got to be in your cells. You literally are what you eat. We know it, but do you internalize it? I think when you see a bear that has purple fat, maybe you internalize it even more. I think so. Yeah. I mean, anytime you're able to spend, you know, you're dismantling an animal or something like that, you actually get to see these things. And, yeah, if you have the same perspective or wherewithal that we were talking about a few minutes ago that's when you sit there and go wait a minute you're not just mindlessly skinning this

bear you're sitting there going does my fat look like skittles because i pounded a bag of skittles yesterday right i heard they they are gross though if they've been eating like a rotten moose i've heard if you have if you eat a bear that's been eating rotten meat that it's pretty fucking gross i've heard that too but i've eaten them and it was fine yeah but you you a bear that's been eating rotten meat, then it's pretty fucking gross. I've heard that too, but I've eaten them and it was fine. Yeah. But you ate one that ate a rotten moose? Well, I've eaten one that was eating a rotten whale. Oh!

And the whale was like orange and yellow. They do that, right? Like a whale gets beached, it dies. They like live in it. Yeah. They'll crawl right up inside of its rib cage and they come out looking like they found too much hair gel and just everything's slicked back and that's so foul yeah i we actually good yeah yeah how'd you cook it the same same way i actually i did more medallions that way because i was backpacking so i ate it right on the beach when

you talk about bear hunting you really you're going up against years of movies, years of fucking Yogi and Boo Boo. And people have this weird perception of what a bear is. And we are the only things that keep their population in check. The only things. If you care about deer, and if you care about moose, and if you care about deer and if you care about moose and if you care about other wildlife predator control is the it's a real problem they're one of the most ethical animals really to hunt there are a lot of them there and and you have to like you have to be careful though right i mean they need to be controlled um in certain areas certain areas there's probably a decent balance because there's not a lot of um there's not a lot of food so they might not be focusing on

moose calves right because there might not be a lot of mo, so they might not be focusing on moose calves, right, because there might not be a lot of moose or something like that. But in areas where there's great overlap, like, it's definitely, they don't get killed a lot, right? And so people don't hunt them a lot in general, and people just, you know, they instantly go to the ungulates right they instantly go to the deer and the moose and caribou things like that but yeah there's definitely need to be managed the place i hunted i was bear hunting last week in bc and the place i was hunting hasn't really been hunted in like 10 years and you just know that these bears are so terribly successful at stealing mule deer fawns and moose calves in this area. And I've seen it before, and you just see them.

I killed a grizzly bear a few years ago. I shouldn't say I killed it. It charged us, and so the guy that I was with, he had to shoot it, and so he killed it. But as soon as the bullet hit the bear, he pooped out two cow moose calves. bullet hit the bear, he pooped out two cow moose calves. And we had seen a cow with two calves, two twins, and then he was just cruising up and down the river, and so he definitely got them. And then when we killed them, he'd...

And then I wasn't even really thinking much about it, just didn't have this wherewithal of what was going on, and it was kind of intense situation when it went down. later on we were talking to the biologists about it when we were having the bear skull and hide and meat sealed and um and we told him that he pooped out a calf and he's like oh fantastic because there are grizzly bears and black bears that are really successful fawn and calf killers and then there are others that aren't right they're they're kind of individualistic like we are and so he's, it's really good that you remove this big old boar who was a successful calf killer. Cause he, he would just fixate on that in the spring.

And really it does not take like a lot of people might think, oh, there's millions of moose though. No, there, there aren't. And you go up in these areas, like, um, people ask me all the time when we're up in Alaska, they're like, oh, when you get off the airplane, there's got to be just animals everywhere. No, there are no animals. You get off the airplane in the Arctic and you take a look around, there's nothing. Like you have to go. There's no trees. There's no trees.

There's no moose. There's no caribou. Like you find them when you go looking for them. You find them when you find this little micro niche of habitat. But by and large, there's nothing there because there's, you know, there's not a ton of resources there. And so like, I think people think, you know, it's the Serengeti and it's not. And so if you have a successful grizzly and he's preying on moose in a particular valley, he could really do some damage. And where I was, and I just hunted

mountain lion for the first time in BC this winter and I was talking to the biologist there because I had great um contention about doing it and they showed that um I didn't want to run them with dogs I didn't want to shoot out of a bait in a tree um I just had never interested me and so a buddy of mine um just got his first hunting concession in BC he's been a guide his whole life but he now has his own con He has black bears and mule deers, the guy that I was also just bear hunting with. But he said, Hey, will you come up and do a lion hunt? And I said, no, man, it's not for me. And he's like, well, you know, you're kind of being a hypocrite right now. And I said, well, what do you mean? He's like, well, you're always preaching that people should ask themselves big questions and people should kind of dive into, you know, this tornado or the storm and, and experience things and ask themselves and like actually

challenge their thought process. So who better to come up and go on a lion hunt? And if you have prejudice about it, why don't you come up and do it? And so you can see if your prejudice are real or, or not. And so I did it and it was very eyeopening. It was an incredible experience. What was eyeopening about it um just the animals themselves you know it was um the enthusiasm around the hounds like i kind of pictured this you know i had this you know fox and a hound scenario built up in my head you know like i felt for the same same stereotypes that non-hunters and anti-hunters are falling forward i was like all these houndsmen are kind of redneck and, you know, they're, they're, they treat their dogs like crap and they're, and they're sending their dogs into this lion

fight and it's, it's going to get rough and these dogs are going to get beat up and scarred up. And then finally you treat this lion and, and the hunter comes waltzing in with no, no barrier of entry whatsoever. No physical suffering whatsoever. No mental suffering whatsoever. Comes waltzing in and shoots this thing out of a tree and takes some photos and then skins it out, leaves the flesh, and moves on with their life. And so I go up there. I meet the houndsman.

And first of all, my friend, his name is Ben Storek. And he's a very gracious hunter. He's very aware. He's very kind to animals. He has tremendous wherewithal, which is why we continue to hunt together. So I go up there. I meet his houndsmen. Great guy. His hounds are part of the family.

Sleep in the cabin with him. Great dog food. Great medical care every single night when we get home. And the scenario in which I killed a lion was also very rewarding for me as a person. We tracked him. I'll use kilometers because that's what we were doing there. But we tracked him for like 21, 22 kilometers just by his track. And it was really cool because this lion had tore his back right track.

So it was kind of like a movie. We'd see his tracks in the snow and there's always a dime-sized spot of blood in his track and it was pretty cool because we went and spoke with some ranchers along this river like yeah he's he's sport killing deer which i didn't believe but i just wanted to hear the ranchers uh kind of summation on it and they didn't want him the ranchers were i was really surprised but the ranch, you know, we want you to kill this cat because he's sport killing these deer, but we want Ben to be very measured

in how he takes cats because they really love cats in this area and they just want Ben to be cognizant of the animals he removes, which he is anyway. But they love cats just because they just love the idea of them being there,

the wildlife. Yeah, the symbolism of the wild and then all these ranchers, they raise cattle, and they watch the wolves harass their cattle, but they watch the cats will literally walk right through a calf pen, and the calves won't spend any. They don't even look at the lion. The cows aren't looking at the lion,

but the lion will just stroll right through the pen and just carry on about his day because he wants to kill deer and sheep. that's that's what he wants to fixate on he doesn't want to deal probably with mama cow but right um so we tracked this thing for 22 kilometers we actually got down on it um on top of a mule deer kill that they had made the night before um bumped it and it ran way up into the mountains in these in these hills and we tracked it all the way up there we tracked another four or five kilometers um and then that's when we released the hounds. And it was wicked to see the enthusiasm in the hounds. Like I just pictured something that was going to be bloodthirsty and like,

you know, they, they wanted to rip this cat apart, but these hounds that the look on their faces and I'm making, you know, I'm making judgments here, but the look on their faces were just pure enthusiasm like this is a game like our job is to is to chase this cat down well that's how they've been trained yeah and to get it in a tree like they're not sitting there going we're gonna catch and kill this cat they're like our job is to like kind of get in the tree you know right it was just really cool to be around the dogs and watch their energy. And so they went and treated the lion. We snuck in on the lion and he, he, uh, he didn't like it and see, he jumped off and the dogs ensued and pursued again. And then we treat him again and

I killed him and killing him was, um, neither here nor there. It wasn't, um, it was just an act. It was just, uh, a light switch for me. It was Ben needs, Ben had spoke with the biologist. They wanted a certain amount of cats removed from this area because they were really having predatory impact on the sheep and the deer. And I kind of found out why afterwards when I spoke to the biologist. But we got him in three, and Ben's just like, Hey, he's a big Tom and he's an old Tom. And, um, so we're going to kill him anyway. So if you want to kill him, kill him. If not,

we're going to kill him. You know, they had tags too. Everything was legal. And I said, no, I'll kill him. Um, I wanted to take the process all the way through. So I killed him. He died very quickly. Um, and I'd always heard that their meat was really good. And, um, I'd also heard people say it's unedible. So course, I don't kill anything unless I'm going to eat it. We ate it, and it was arguably the finest meat I'd ever had in my life. That's another thing Ronella told me. She said it tastes like the best pork you've ever had. I'm not even a big fan of pork.

I like pork, but pork is okay. Mountain Lion is succulent, flavorful, deep, rich pork. It's just absolutely unbelievable their fat is supposed to be really good as well yeah yeah absolutely and and uh so it's just really rewarding experience for me and like then i got to hang out with the dogs afterwards and then when i went and spoke with the biologist that was eye-opening as well because um the houndsman we were with he kind of guessed the cat to be like five or six years old, which would be very old. It turned out to be three.

And which is amazing that they go from a kitten to this thing was like 175, 180 pounds. Um, and that big, that big in just three years. And, and the biologist even told me he had one come in earlier that year. That was over 200. It was like 202, 203, which is about as big as they get. And it was radio collared and he's like oh this is gonna be wicked because we have the radio caller i'm gonna be able to call the biologist that radio caller this thing it's 200 pounds this thing it's got to be like five

or six seven years old he called the guy and the thing was um just had barely like he was like just over two years old and he was already 200 pounds two years old yes and they're just so and and with um you know like sometimes aging deer aging bears is kind of a tricky prospect you're looking at the molar wear and you're looking at their lateral incisors and their um medial uh incisors and you're looking at wear and everything with the lions it's very easy to see like they have their age classes have distinct dental changes that happen. Like there's kind of no middle ground. And so, you know, and of course the radio caller, they knew.

But they're just so terribly successful. And just looking at the amount of biomass they put on their bodies, just their size and how they carry it. Their fucking forearms freak me out. Their forearms are like a human thigh. That's what freaked me out because I'm sitting there holding this thing's scun out body, scun out body. And it weighs the exact same as a deer. Like it's the same thing as a deer, but the proportions are way off, right?

The thing is so much shorter. The meat, you know, goes all the way down to their paws so they can jump you know 30 feet out of a tree and land and just like you and i would be rolling around on the ground going oh my god look at my femur and these guys just boom and they're off to the races and it's just you know you drop it they weigh the same as a deer you drop a deer out of a tree and it's going to have four broken legs these things just land and off the races freaky animals and so and so i was going to say so the sport killing so the biologist told me where the area where there's a lot of wolves

and so the wolves the lions are so much more successful at killing than the wolves that the wolves just become somewhat lazy and they'll get in these little packs and they'll literally find a big tom and they'll just follow him and so what this cat is doing is scientists have observed him killing deer and he'll literally kill and cache deer and sheep so that when the wolves find his caches the wolves will eat and so then he can he can go and eat in peace himself so he doesn't get fucked with by the wolves so he's leaving them food he's leaving them food which is why the ranchers thought because they're like he killed the deer and he didn't do anything with it. He just killed the deer. And so they're like, no, no, no. He killed the deer. And it was funny because when we tracked him that day, he brought

us to nine kill sites that day. Wow. Yeah. So he's literally doing that while you're chasing. I'm saying, look, just eat this, leave me the fuck alone. Yeah. So as, as you're tracking him, he's tracking you past spots, hoping that you take his cash and leave him alone. Yep. Wow. Yep. It was a fantastic experience. That's crazy.

And then the biologist also told me, and I was like, man, I had a lot of contention while coming here and hunting lions. And I don't know how successful they are at repopulating. We almost hunted them to extinction at the turn of the century, and they're just starting to kind of make, they're starting to expand now back into some of their original territories. He's like, hey, man, Donnie's like, this is a great animal to take. This is an area that receives very little lion hunting. We have to take some of these lions out.

And he showed me data that they had on this one lion. And I don't want to misquote the data, but basically this single lion had removed like 9% or 11% of this particular sheep herd in a year. Just like boom, boom, boom. And this dude knew the game. He knew where to kill. He knew how to kill. But they have no chance.

I mean, he's just a super presser. They have no chance. If he finds them, he's going to kill them. He runs faster. He's stronger. And if he finds them, he's going to kill them. He runs faster. He's stronger. And if he gets a hold of them, they never lose. It's never like a deer gets away. No, they win every time.

So it's right down the same path as all the predators. It's like, you know, it leads to really good discussions, but people get upset when you kill predators. They get very upset. It's really strange because they don't have any problem with the predator killing deer and they have less problem with people killing deer but they have a real problem with people killing predators and i believe it's the same problem they have with like cecil the lion and shit like that they think that you're just doing it to be an asshole and you just want this thing on your wall well you want a head on your wall i do have some contention and you tell me and like like for instance like the grizzly bear issue being shut down in bc yeah

grizzly bear hunting maybe you can explain that for people who don't understand what's going on with that yeah so so the government the british columbia government shut down british columbia british columbia grizzly bear hunting because they equated it, and I guess they're probably correct, with trophy hunting, right, to where hunters were killing these animals and just taking the skulls and hides and leaving the flesh behind. And I don't know. I've never – have I? I grizzly bear hunted in B.C. once, but I was actually more on a sheep hunt.

But, yeah, just this notion of like like the gentleman that killed cecil the lion like if you're really going to kill an animal and uh just take its hide uh then i have a pretty significant issue with that and so like i i just hope these hunters that the guys that were hunting the grizzly bears. I just, I wonder if this was more of a hunter-instilled issue than people are even bringing light into it. Because if people were killing grizzly bears in British Columbia, taking their hides, taking their skulls, and taking all the flesh, I feel like we'd still be grizzly bear hunting in British Columbia.

I don't know. I mean, maybe, maybe, but grizzly bears are another notch up even above black bears in terms of like what Rinella calls charismatic megafauna. People love those things because they like to see them. And if you don't have to deal with them, if you're not like that guy in Ennis, Colorado last year, they got his head cut open by one. If you don't have to deal with them, they are amazing to look at. And we all want them around. Of course.

They're an incredible animal. But it's this thing of trophy hunting. When you think of some fat, lazy asshole with a rifle that stands on top of a lion, there's this image that I found online. And I was looking at it. I was like, that's why people have a problem with trophy hunting personified. This fat fuck who should never in a million years without that rifle have ever. Or the help.

Yeah, or the help. Especially the help, right? Like there's no way he would have got on it. There's no way he would have got to that position. He must have got there in a car. And then they have this lion there and he's perched up on the lion like he did some amazing thing. Meanwhile, that's probably

one of those caged lions anyway. It is. Yeah, they have so many of those high fence hunts where they let these lions they have them all caged up in a pen. They throw cows over the dead cows over the pen, over the wall of the pen. The lions tear them apart and then they pick one and take that one out into the wilderness

area, which is all fenced in anyway, and then they let it loose. And the lion stays in the area because it has no idea what its boundary is, what its territory is, what other lions are in that area. So a lot of times they sit still and they wait for a while before they figure out what their territory is. The hunter comes in, shoots it, stands on it, takes a picture. I mean, you shot a pet. If you told me, you said, hey, man, I went into Tanzania.

I went into the wildest part and backpacked in and set up camp. And I was there for 40 days. And I killed an eight planes game and I worked with the locals and and and you know I shared meat with these different tribes and and man we found a pride of lions and there was a giant maned male and there was another sister pride over here and and we you know we snuck in and we killed him we hunted him we killed him you know we skinned him out we took his flesh and we went on an honest hunt, and we engaged the wild here, and we removed an animal. Wicked.

I would love to read that book. I'd love to see that film. I'd love to hear you tell me that story. But does anybody eat lions? Lion life. African lion. That's what I'm saying. Does anybody?

I don't know. I've never even heard of it. I've never been to Africa. that's what I'm saying. Does anybody? I don't know. I've never even heard of it. I've never been to Africa. And if you're not, then what are we doing? I understand killing. So there's some weirdness there too. Because if you told me, if you called me and said, hey man, I'm going to pay you a million dollars. I want you to come down to my concession. I get these offers daily, not a million dollars. But if you come down, will you come down to my concession. I get these offers daily, not a million dollars, but if you come down, will you come down to my concession and shoot a giraffe? I'm just making

this up, but I'm trying to pick a zoo animal. Will you come down and shoot a giraffe? I'd love to see you come down and film this, blah, blah, blah. And the answer is no. Explain a concession to people too. There's large areas that are most of the time fenced in. Thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of acres. You're never going to see the fence. We could drive you around in there for a week and you'd never see the fence. So it's semi-wild. Yeah.

The fence thing is very weird, right? Because their habitat, the fence essentially keeps people out. Yeah, it protects them from poachers. It's not necessarily to trap the animals, although the animals can't leave. It's to keep the poachers out. It's to preserve these areas because people with greed will take, they'll kill anything to get a few dollars in the marketplace for market meat. marketplace for for market meat and then certainly to sell a hide to maybe even an even more fat hunter that or a person that calls themselves a hunter that wants a lion on their wall that doesn't even want to engage in the process right they'll buy the skin or something that's why

there's trade in tiger skins and things like this but um so in these concessions and so these you know if you called me and said hey will you come down and shoot a giraffe um you know i'll pay a million bucks to come down and shoot a giraffe you You know, the answer is no, I don't want to kill a giraffe. But if you called me and said, Hey, um, we have restored this habitat and this whole river Delta. And lo and behold, the giraffes have absolutely taken off and they're very, very successful. And they're decimating the vegetation here. And they're starting to fight each other with, um, great severity severity and we're finding dead bulls and stuff, we need to remove 10 animals from this herd. Will you come down and shoot 10 giraffes with me?

100%, absolutely. Like if I can come down and contribute to the ecology of an area, either as a hunter or as somebody that's just removing animals with a high-powered rifle to create some more balance, I'm all into it but if i'm gonna pay you seventy thousand dollars to get a big maned lion so i can have my photo with a big maned lion um that i can show my friends be like oh yeah that's when i was in botswana and that's oh i could tell you that story and i have no interest in it and i think some of that stuff is

maybe really poisonous for hunting. I think it's very poisonous. I think that Cecil the Lion story was incredibly poisonous. Yeah. It was one of those stories where it was almost impossible to find any support for the guy who did that thing. And it was legal. It was.

I mean, people say, people say what was a collared lion yeah boom you can't really tell like they have giant manes even if it was it doesn't mean anything you can shoot collared animals yeah yeah i mean they're not collared because they're protected it's not like the idea is like you can never shoot it because it's collared yeah and you know um it's the it's just not what people you just it's real hard to justify if you're not eating it. I mean, why would you want to do it? Why would you want to go and hunt a lion? It doesn't make any sense.

You'd have to be an asshole. That guy's not asking himself any questions, I'll tell you that. Right. Yeah. Right. Why is he doing it? He's doing it because that's what he likes to do. And so that's why I wonder.

I haven't grizzly bear hunted in British Columbia, but I wonder. I have lots of friends there that are guides and outfitters, and I understand that the meat... I've heard it's gross. I've heard it's gross, too, but I've eaten it. How is it? Fantastic. Really? Grizzly?

Yes. Now, again... My friend John... You know John Barclow from Sitka? I think I've met him. I think I've met him. I think I've met him. Yeah. He's telling me that he served people brown bear meat at a party once. He'd cooked it and made it like little hors d'oeuvres and he didn't tell people what it was. And they're like, this is really good. What is it? And they're

like, oh, it's a brown bear. And they got real mad at him. Making me bear? Yeah. But they liked it. Yeah, they liked it. um i was hunting brown bears on kodiak island a few years ago and i didn't kill one um but when we got done there was a guy there a classically trained chef that lived in town and he had him and his buddies had killed a bear and so he invited us over for dinner when we were in town and he served us brown bear and it was amazing it was absolutely amazing. How did he cook it? He did it several different ways, but one of the ways he did it that was really amazing,

and again, this is all in preparation, right? But he made kind of like Swedish meatballs. So he probably, and he told us that the preparation was intensive. So he made a bath, a whole milk bath, put the bear meat in it, let it sit for 10 hours, dump the milk out, put more whole milk. And he did that like four or five times to just leach anything that was in the meat out, right? Probably blood and any sort of, I don't know if you can leach. Why milk? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if that's... I've heard people doing that with bass, like taking bass fillets

and catfish fillets and putting them in milk. Yeah. I mean, would it be something along the lines of osmosis? Would it be that the milk has a greater density so the blood wants to leave the meat and go into the – and create – You're asking the wrong guy. I really have no idea. I'd just be guessing. I don't either. But anyway, and then he pan seared a bunch of it,

and it was like in a roast, if you will, but he did it all in a really hot cast iron skillet, and it was phenomenal. And then I just heard somebody the other day, what was I listening to? I was reading something about polar bear hunting, and somebody was remarking that polar bear is really good to eat. And so I think there's a lot of misinformation out there about what is edible and what is not edible and what is good and what isn't. misinformation out there about what is edible and what is not edible and what is good and what isn't. And probably because of the preparation. Because people just have been ignorant about how to prepare and keep the meat.

Because I have people that think, I have lots of friends that think deer meat is disgusting. Soak fish in milk for odor-free cooking. Okay. So it says when you're buying fish. Okay, here's a science. Try to say that word. Trylene trimethylene trimethylene oxide is a common chemical in living things it's colorless odorless and produced by normal metabolic processes when a fish or shellfish is killed however it breaks down into trimethylene

which is the chemical responsible for that fishy smell that we know so well if your cut of fish isn't too far gone as the flesh is still firm and only a few days thawed at most, a quick soak, about 10 to 20 minutes in a bowl of milk will help get rid of that odor. The casein. Okay. How do you say it? Is that casein or casein?

I've heard it both ways. I've never heard it. I only read it. Yeah. C-A-S-E-I-N in the milk bonds with the trimethylene. And while it's not a full extraction, a quick soak can pull a good bit amount of the flesh and reduce the odor. So that's probably what's going on. You're reducing the odor in the meat.

And probably enhancing the flavor in doing so. Yeah. Especially if a stinky-ass bear has been eating fish. Yeah. Right? And this one definitely had, I think. Yeah. Well, the big ones especially.

I mean, that's one of the reasons why they grow so big on Kodiak, right? Because they have so much access to fish. Yeah. And short torpor, short hibernation. Yeah. That's crazy, man. Yeah. I've never eaten grizzly.

I've eaten brown bear or black bear, rather. My friend John and Jen, they have a camp up in Alberta and we ate. Oh, sure. Do you know them, the Rivets? I don't. They have a camp up in Alberta and great black bear hunting. And Jen is a really good cook and she made this black bear stir fry. And even people that were skeptical, they were like, okay, I've never eaten bear before.

They're like, holy shit, this is fantastic. She cooked this stir fry and then served it over rice. I mean, it's amazing. It was so good. And so good for you. The way I explain it to people, it's like a deer fucked a pig. That's what the meat tastes like. And maybe its cousin was a cow.

It's a strange, it's not a meat that tastes like anything you could put your thumb on. Like, oh, that's just like this yeah it's just like that it's just really rich and it's it's just yeah it's fantastic and yeah bear hunting all the way around is just awesome yeah but it's again it's so charged it's so charged in the public eye in terms of like how people perceive it it's one of those animals and i think it's because of these movies that people grow up with, these movies where these animals are our friends, you know, and they're looking out for us and they're our buddies.

And it's just like we've done ourselves no service by doing that, by creating these films that have poisoned little kids' minds as to what these animals are. And what these animals are are opportunists and predators and they are there to remove the weak and the the limping and the babies and anything else he can get his hands on for population control i mean this is the balance of nature if we still were hunters and gatherers right there would not be there was not a single anti-hunter in that group right there was no that guy didn't live.

There's no room for that guy. So even, you know, what I talked about in our short film, Who We Are, like the president of PETA comes from a strong group of hunters and gatherers. Otherwise, the dude wouldn't be here. But to play devil's advocate, their thought process and the thought process of vegans and vegetarians are that, if I could speak for them, is that we're moving past that. We're moving past animal cruelty.

We're moving past the need to eat and consume meat. Right. I disagree. I think we have, through infrastructures of safety and laziness, we've set it up so that you can go down that road if you want. We've set this up so you don't have to break it. You never have to crack an egg. If you have enough money, you never have to crack an egg in your entire life and you can eat eggs your entire life. So you can back away from who we really are. If you have the financial wherewithal or you live in New York City or you live in LA, you can back off of the real muddiness as far as you want. But in true reality, this is really who we are.

It's just that we have infrastructures now that make up for it, that make you, that allow that disconnection. They allow you to say, hey, we've moved past this now. Like, I can get my coffee at the corner, you know. I don't have to go to Ethiopia, right? Yeah, It's hard to argue, right? It's hard to argue. And we did a piece, um, uh, my production company, Sigmanta, we did a piece a few years ago or last year for Epic Meats. Um, have you ever heard of those guys? They do like high end jerky and they do like animal fats and they do bone broths and things like that. Anyway, the owners were, they make, uh make bars, right?

Yeah. Those are delicious. Yeah, they're really amazing. So the owners were vegans. They were both vegans, a husband and wife couple, and they're both also triathletes. And they were doing these races, and they were having a tough time recovering from their races.

And they actually owned one of the largest vegan food companies in the country. And they went to go see a friend who was a medical doctor, a friend of theirs. And he said, Hey, look, I think you guys need to get some really, um, high end, uh, animal fats in your systems to help your bodies recover from these races. And they started doing that and their symptoms, you know, like their soreness, whether it be back pain, uh, hip knees, I'm assuming that was all from the races, um, started to go away almost instantly. So they started kind of, um, delving into their psyche and their questions and they started kind of, uh, revisiting their philosophies, if you will. And, and I don't want to get the story wrong, but I think while they still owned the vegan food company, they started Epic Meats.

And they thought, can we find meat that is responsibly grown and sourced for people that don't want to kill it themselves? And they went down that road. They ended up actually selling the vegan food company off because people found out that they own both. And I think there is obviously some problems there. Yeah. But they just found really good sourced meat, and they do all field harvest. And so we did a commercial production for them, a branding piece for them, to kind of highlight how they treat their animals and how they kill their animals because they kill them rather than putting them on a truck and loading them into corrals

and doing that whole thing. They literally drive out with the same tractor that they feed them with, and they have them on huge pastures so that they're actually reclaiming the ground. And it's really cool. When they do ranches, they'll go in and test all the soils of these ranches and the grasses, and then they'll retest them after one year, three years, five years, and they're finding even better soils and better grasses as these animals have spent time there because they're doing more fertilizing and the grasses are being reclaimed and then

they shoot the animal in the head with a hypart rifle and so they do just lights out boom done and then that's how they butcher them so so they do it about as ethically and humanely as you can kill an animal as you can kill an animal that's being raised in a pen what was that place in la was it called harmony cafe is that what it pen. What was that place in L.A.? Was it called Harmony Cafe? Is that what it was called? What was the place where the people owned it? Gratitude. Cafe Gratitude.

Right. That's right. There was a place in L.A. that was owned by these people. It still is. But they were vegans for a long time. And they were having health issues as well. And they decided to butcher their own animals and start raising their own animals and butchering them. And I think they wrote about it on a blog

and they were just trying to explain themselves and vegans went fucking crazy. The people that owned the restaurant went crazy and they got a bunch of death threats and it became this giant issue with them. It's, you know, I get where they're coming from. They have this rigid idea of what's happening and they don't want an animal to die so they can live i get it but their perception of the

the ethical purity of their deciding to just eat vegetables and and the actual the actual health consequences in terms of like how many people can get by and what your physical dietary needs are. How many people can get by on just eating a vegan diet. Especially if you're not super careful and using algae and all these different things to get B12 and fat-soluble vitamins. You can get by, but is it optimum? For most people, according to most nutritionists and people that aren't ideologues, no. Yeah, I agree. The answer is no. people according to most nutritionists and people that aren't ideologues no yeah i agree no it's like we are herbivores i mean rather uh omnivores we're not herbivores and some people that are in

the vegetarian world they want us to think that we are basically herbivores and that we can get by and that our desire to consume meat is just because of the sickness that we have and this this evil nature that you know human beings sometimes are possessed by but it's just it's just not true yeah the whole reason why we became a human being in the first place as opposed to like one of the lower primates a lot of that is attributed to our consumption of meat yeah hunting meat cooking cooking with fire and it's such a fantastic like i I would love if I could do, if I was a billionaire and you said,

hey, do you want to continue along with the career that you're on right now? I absolutely would. But the thing that I would love the most is to take people with me. Yeah, it would be super hard for a vegan to get into that though. I mean, man, you would have to, they would have to have some sort of desire on their part to see the cycle of life. It's not something you could just, like,

take some flower child and, you know, that's only eating sprouts and say, hey, I'm going to go shoot this mule deer through the lungs with a fucking, you know, muzzy trocar, and you're going to sit there and watch them. Yeah. No, they would have to be, they'd have watch them. Yeah. No, they would have to be, they have questions.

Yeah. I mean, they would have to be on that path themselves. It's just, it's an interesting byproduct to me of society of what we've done with this really incredible infrastructure that we've created where we can get food to these 20 million people that live in LA and no one be a part of that preparation in terms of, uh, you know, getting the animal, killing it, serving it, you know, butchering it, cooking it, serving it. We cut all that shit out and go right to buying the meat that's already cooked. And we've done it so much and it's so much more prevalent than any of the other steps. You know, most of the, most of the consumption that most people in this country, like when we're talking about eating meat, I would say maybe even, what is the number?

I would like to know what the number is, if I had to guess, of how many people even cook their own meat. Hmm. I mean, how many people are getting most of their meals from a store or a restaurant or fast food? Yeah, pre-prepped. Yeah. Or fast food. I mean, I didn't even think about fast food. That's got to be the majority.

Yeah. I mean, how many people are actually even cooking their own meat? I mean, we've cut out so many steps. I would bet it was probably more than half don't even cook their own meat. Yeah. I mean, people, they just don't have an understanding of where it comes from, right? And the engagement, there's just no understanding whatsoever. It's such a charged subject.

And I just saw flying here to meet with you, I just saw, I think it was in the Minneapolis airport. There was a huge sign on the wall, and it was a picture of a massive massive cornfield and it may have been doctored up but it was corn as far as the eye can see and it was for cargill a big corporation out of minneapolis i think they're out of minneapolis but it said um it said um preparing to feed eight billion people and uh so i just see that sign and I'm just like, yeah, that's hell in a handbasket right there. Corn's fucking terrible for you. Terrible. Absolutely terrible.

And literally, you can read that sign and all these people will be like, oh, that's so beautiful. Like all those corn stalks and there'll be food for us forever. Why cook when you cannot? The percentage of diners, or dinners rather, eaten at home that were actually made at home in the U.S. It is so weird having you here. Jamie's the shit. It's so weird.

This isn't just meat, but this is just dinner. Right. So this is how many people are cooking. But really, that's the only meal. It's lower and lower. So it's somewhere in the 60% range. So the percentage of dinners eaten at home that were actually made at home in the U.S., somewhere around 60%. So in that 60%, you got to think there's the mom or the dad that's cooking,

and then the kids that are eating the food, so they're not cooking shit. So it's probably way lower than that in terms of the actual human beings that are eating cooked food that they cook themselves. Yeah. So how can you stand on any sort of laurels at all without at least asking some questions? Yeah. I mean, people, their answers are they feel better if they think that they're doing no harm. And the way to do no harm is to eat vegan.

So this is the ideology behind it. And I, I understand it. I get it. I appreciate it. But the fucking anger at people who don't follow that path is where it gets real squirrely, you know,

and it's a small number of people. And I've talked about this in my act that the problem with vegans is the problem with people. It's not veganism. It's people. If you get a room that has 100 people in it, the odds of one of those people being a fucking idiot is 100%. It's almost 100% that one of them is a fucking idiot. So if you get 300 million people, you have 3 million fucking idiots.

And some of those folks are vegans and that's the problem with veganism it's not it's not veganism itself it's there's a certain percentage of human beings that they don't have to do anything to become vegans right they just join this group it's not like you have it well we're we're thinking about allowing you in to the vegan culture but we want to know what your philosophy is. Are you a hateful person? Are you a person that's looking to be a vegan so you can just talk shit about other people? Are you looking to be in a group or a gang, a plant-based gang, and put the word vegan in front of your name and just start talking shit?

Because that's a lot of the people. And so people read all these angry, hateful things that these people write and they go, oh, well, this is vegans. But it's not. It's not. Most vegans are not like that at all. Yeah. People.

Most people are not like that at all. Yeah. But there's a certain percentage of them, and they claim veganism, and they usually put that name, the word vegan, in their fucking screen name. That's how you could spot those assholes. Yeah. Proud. Yeah, they're into it. They're in a plant-based gang.

Yeah. And that's really what happens. Yeah. Proud. Yeah, they're into it. They're in a plant-based gang. Yeah. And that's really what happens. Yeah. And so what it is is not necessarily even a problem of diet. It's a problem of human nature is that people love to stand on the moral high ground. They love to point down to all the other people, whether it's a religious issue, like you're not eating halal or you're not eating kosher or you're eating meat on good friday whatever the fuck it is they just decide that they have this moral high ground that you don't have so fuck you i'm doing it right and it really comes from our own questions of our own existence and this

messiness that we're all inherently aware of that life eats life big Big time. There was a guy that I did a podcast with out of Maine, and he was for sure a vegetarian. He might have been a vegan. But then he started, and he's a forager big time. It's actually pretty remarkable what he does. But I think 99% of his food he finds in the forest year round. He's just into it big time processes all this food from wild apples to acorns is that uh tovar it's um what's his name um what's daniel vitalis what's that tovar cerulean yeah oh daniel vitalis okay yeah i've heard of him as well yep so um so i did

a podcast with him and he and he told me that um and he'd eat insects he didn't want it he was completely against hunting he didn't want to kill anything he's like that's and he'd eat insects. He didn't want to, he was completely against hunting. He didn't want to kill anything. He's like, that's why he's eating insects. And he's like, and I would get a little bit of hate mail. Um, when I started eating, uh, damselflies and dragonflies, like I'd get a little bit of hate mail. And then, and then a friend of his was like, Hey, um, you know, we should, let's go gig some frogs. Let's go get some frogs, you know? And he's like, yeah, I don't know. Okay. So I'll do it. So when he started catching frogs started catching frogs he's like man like there's a lot of meat on one of these frogs like it's it's it's it's like 20 um dragonflies you know and and he got he got a little bit more um flack for it

and then it's a buddy of his wanted to take him fishing and they caught a trout and he's like oh my god this is like three frogs like this is three frogs and so what he's equating it to is how much work he has to go through right to get this protein or to get this you know to get this plant like you find one apple that's 15 acorns you know and so like he's equating this to work and so he just kept moving up the food chain and um and he's like and then one year he killed a turkey and and he told me he's like i killed a snowshoe hare and he's like I was blown away at how much meat was on a snowshoe hare. He's like, that was, you know, like three meals for him and his girlfriend.

Try a moose. Yeah. And so he just kept moving up. He killed a turkey. Then this last year he killed a black bear. But he's like, every stage that he's moved up, his hate mail has went up, you know, I don't know, exponentially, but significantly. And so it's just people equate all these things to, you know, we relate more to mammals, obviously. We're mammals, you know, I don't know exponentially, but significantly. And so it's just, people equate all these things to, you know, we relate more to mammals, obviously we're mammals, you know, and then you bring in something like a bear that has anthropomorphic, you know,

mannerisms, right? You watch a black bear for a half a day and you're like, you see your dad, you're like, oh, he just sat on his ass for four hours. They roll around sometimes in their back and play. Yeah, chewed on his toenails. Yeah. he's like itched his ear, farted. He pooped over there next to the girl. And then, you know, and you're like, oh, my God, it's my dad. I'm hunting my dad, you know. And so, you know, there's things like that.

But that's where this, I think that's where this really cool engagement comes from with hunters. And there's a lot of hunters. Like I talk to a lot of hunters. And I don't want to be negative. I'm trying not to be negative. But I talk to a lot of hunters. I have nothing in common with them, absolutely nothing. You hunt, I hunt.

I don't even think we have that in common because I see how you hunt, and it's had nothing to do with how I hunt. But isn't that like what we were just saying about vegans, that the problem is just being a human being? Correct. There's a certain amount of people that choose to hunt that are not well-informed, and they're fucking idiots. Yep, and so that's the stuff.

It's like same with the vegans. I'm sure there's vegans that sit at home and just grab their face and go, I can't believe somebody just said that. I can't believe they sent a death threat. We're vegan for God's sakes. One of my best friends is a vegan. Yeah. Ian Edwards, hilarious comedian.

He's a vegan. I know some vegans too. And I actually know some vegetarians that it was an education for me, but I had some vegetarians hit me up for meat. And I i was like uh oh you're a vegetarian and they're like well yeah yeah we're not gonna eat this meat but we'd love to have some fish or deer meat from you like oh okay now i'm starting to this was a while ago but i'm like okay now i'm starting to get it here like right people have ethical concerns about where their meat comes from yeah my friend jake shields he's a guy who fought in the ufc he's a world-class jiu-jitsu black belt.

He's been a vegetarian his whole life, but he said he would eat meat that was hunted. Yeah. He was like, because that's, you know, there's no ethical. It adds up in his head for him, right? Right, right. Like it answers his questions. Exactly. But that's exactly it.

I've had some awesome conversations with people that were not hunters that asked great questions, you know, way better than conversations I've had with guys that were not hunters that asked great questions, you know, way better than conversations I've had with guys that call themselves hunters at times. Yeah, I mean, again, it's the problem with human beings, right? There's certain people that just aren't thinking that much. And then there's certain parts of the hunting culture that are really abhorrent. There's people that think it's funny or fun to shoot as many animals as they can, and they don't have any consideration that this life has been taken so that your life can be nurtured

or get nutrition from this animal. And they're not thinking of it in terms of this cycle of life. They're just thinking of it in just like the worst aspects that you get like in a movie about hunting and for me like doing it going to the arctic um i bring that up often because it's my favorite place but why is the arctic your favorite place i just oh the just so wide open and um you know you have you you have, you know, you know, Northern lights at night, if you're, if you're lucky and, um, massive moose and, and caribou, like watching caribou migrating, grizzly bears eating blueberries. And, you know, I've been, I spent so much time

with wolves up in these areas and, and, and really engaging with the wolves and stuff. And just, it's just always fed these experiences to me. And that's what really started to mean. That's what really mattered the most to me was being in these areas taking a deep breath being super present being super aware and seeing all these different things that were filling my soul right true soul food while I was hunting a moose or while I was hunting a caribou and then maybe being successful on a moose or a caribou and skinning it out and feeling the weight on my back because I'm getting it back to camp and the northern lights are overhead or if they're not out, the stars are out

and I'm hearing wolves howling. And I lived with a pack of wolves one summer in Alaska when I was up there doing research. You lived with a pack of wolves? Mm-hmm. How did you do that? I was doing research for the U.s fish and wildlife service and uh i ran a research camp a genetics camp for the from june through september may through september whatever i did it five years in a row and and one year a pack of wolves moved into my research camp.

Whoa. And, oh, it was whoa. I mean, whoa. I went fly fishing one night and I was standing on the bank of a river casting and it was an eerie little river that I was on. It was pretty quiet, but it had a good flow and I was waiting for salmon to come up and I was fly fishing for grayling. And I just kind of had this eerie feeling. I was by myself and I just had this eerie feeling that I was being watched and and I happen to look behind me and

there's a big alder thicket right these these these bushes that are probably 10 to 12 feet high have green leaves on them and these twisted gnarly almost like a you know a boo radley type tree like gnarly branches and I was I was just staring in in in the alders and there's grizzly bears where I was so I was just trying to mind my and I'm know, I'm walking on wolf and grizzly bear tracks as I'm fishing. So I was just staring back in the alders and, um, it was, it was like a movie. So my, my eyes were starting to truncate down on the leaves. And then all of a sudden it came to this little opening. I could see a wolf's face staring at me through the alders. And she was probably 10 yards away, something like that. And so I saw her and when I looked at her, she was just staring

at me. And I just looked back at her and I, and I just said, Hey, you know, I just said, Hey, I said, Hey mom, what's going on? And I just kept fishing because I wanted her to know that I knew. And I turned my back on her and I kept fishing. Well, lo and behold, she comes out on the sandbar with me. And she starts walking down behind me. And it was funny because if I didn't make eye contact, she was totally chill. But if I made eye contact, she would snarl at me. She'd raise her lips up and give a little deep-seated growl. And so she was standing.

Now she's probably three feet behind me. What? Yeah. And so she's right there. She's literally right there. And so I'm just like, hey, Mom, what's going on? I'm just casting my fly rod. And when I'm not looking at her, she's kind of trying to check me out.

She's doing the whole nose extension, getting a whiff. So she moves off. She moves off down there. Three feet? She moves off down there. Do you have a gun on you? I did have a 12-gauge at that time. I had a 12- 12 gauge slug gun.

But I rarely took that thing with me. But I got in trouble actually from one of my bosses because one of the other biologists told my boss, he never carries the gun. And we're supposed to carry a gun everywhere we go. And so I'm just like, whatever. So she left. Were you worried that she was going to attack you?

No. Why did she get so close? That seems weird. I don't know. Yeah, she was just checking me out. She was just checking me out. That's how I was reading into it anyway. So you think just by the way you were talking to her that she realized that you weren't even interested in being a threat and she was confident that she could get the fuck away from you?

That's a good question. Yeah, that's a good question. Three feet? Yeah. That's this. That's one, two, three. Yeah, maybe even two and a half feet. Like she was right behind me.

Fuck, dude, that's like you could touch her. Oh, it gets much better. It gets much better. I ended up spending a whole summer with her and all the other animals in the pack. So the next day, I hear her howl down the river. So I'm just messing around. So I howl back to her. She howls back to me instantly. I howl back the river. So I'm just messing around. So I howl back to her. She howls back to me instantly. I howl back to her. All of a sudden I see her. She's now standing exactly where I was

standing the night before. It's all true story. She's sitting on her butt, sitting upright, like you would see a German shepherd sitting, staring at me. So I give her just a little coy, rawr, rawr, rawr. She lays down. She maintains eye contact with me and then she's just sitting there staring at me and then she sits up again and i howl again just a little one she lays down again she's just maintaining eye contact then she leaves that night so the area the tundra that i was on is greatly impacted by even human foot traffic. So you have to be really careful where you step because you know, your footprint will be there for a long time. So we'd walk on these little planks that we made out of two by fours that would sit up on logs that were, you

know, that we put in place and put in place. And I had a tent where I slept and I had a genetics tent where I did all my stuff. Then I had a cook tent, things like that. And so, but right in front of my tent, I had this little platform where I would get dressed in the morning. Because I would literally live for five and a half months in a little two and a half person pup tent. And so I'd get out in the morning and get dressed on this little piece of wood. And then I'd walk to breakfast or whatever or to the river. In the middle of the night, the alpha male was sitting on my little platform. And he howled right outside my tent.

Dude! And I sat up and I grabbed my gun and I was just sitting there and he woke me up from a dead sleep I was just sitting there panting with my gun I was looking all around and I didn't know what it was and I heard something and I kind of peeked out and I saw that it was this big male I was like okay it's just not just a wolf but like you know he's not gonna bother me all. So I hung my gun back up and I just, or set my gun back down and I just laid back down. But those two instances just started each day. The next day I come out and I'm walking to the genetics tent and I see him.

He's 20 yards away and he's paralleling me on this plank. And I go into the cook tent and then I'm kind of like peeking out the little corners, you know, like I want to, I, cause I don't know what they're doing. I don't want to walk out and get attacked or, and I don't think that's, they have no body language of hunting whatsoever. And, and so what is their body language of curiosity? Curiosity. Yeah. And, um, I hate to, I hate to, um, anthropomorphize. Yeah. But it was just like, it was just like that movie, never cry wolf. That's exactly how the wolves were engaged. What was that movie? Uh, just about a researcher, a book by Farley Mowat of a researcher that went up to, um, the Canadian government had, they were thinking that wolves were decimating these

caribou herds. And so they sent this biologist up there to research the wolves to see how many caribou they were killing and basically what the biologist found out was that the wolves weren't killing any caribou zero caribou they were killing redback voles and they were fishing and they're doing other ways they're eating small animals which is basically a very large part of what wolves do they eat very small animals and occasionally kill caribou occasionally kill moose things like that in certain areas, they can be really hardcore predators. In other areas, they eat a lot of mice. But that's how these wolves are engaging with the actor in this movie.

They're kind of inquisitive. They're coming around. And so these wolves, they were just always present. Even I would go hiking just to get some exercise, and literally three or four of them would go with me. And they'd hang back like 50, 60 yards behind me. But I'd hike for like 10 miles and they'd do the whole thing with me and return back to camp with me. And then it started to really grow because we have this research gear that's in the river so that we can count, speciate and sample the salmon as they swim through to go spawn. But after the salmon

spawn, they all die, right? And so they would spawn, die, and they'd come back and they'd wash up on my gear. And so I'd have all these, that's why the wolves were there. They wanted to eat the dead fish that were coming back down. And so as I started to toss fish off on the banks of the river, usually I would just toss them back into the river, but I'd toss them on the banks of fresher fish and the wolves started eating them. And then our relationship just kept growing and growing and growing and growing. And then I'm spending like three and a half months with them. Did you think while you were doing this, that this is probably how human beings and wolves developed this relationship?

Yes. 100%. 100%. 100%. And actually, I feel bad saying this, and I hope I don't offend anybody, but I was working with two Inuit guys, two Eskimo guys, and they wanted to shoot all these wolves. I kind of lied to them. And I just said, man, like, have you ever seen wolves behave like this? And they said, no. And I said, well, you know, some of your guys' beliefs, you know, fall that your ancestors move on into the animal kingdom, right? And they're like, yeah. And I said, well, is there a chance that some of these wolves could be some of your ancestors, you know? And I know that's not true. At least I think I know that's not true. But they're like, yeah, yeah.

So I just was trying to convince these guys because they wanted to blast these things. And so I just convinced them not to shoot the wolves. And I feel like an asshole saying it. Why do you feel like an asshole saying that? I don't know. I just didn't want them to shoot the wolves. So I just kind of. It's probably a good way to rationalize i steered them down a path of of where their minds may have gone anyway yeah yeah and so but i i

spent time with those wolves and i've had um you know in the in the idea of management like uh when we were in in in the short that jamie is just playing who we are that we played you can see some wolves in there and a few years ago i got surrounded by a pack of wolves in the Arctic with the crew. And it filmed really beautifully. And it was one of the most remarkable engagements I've ever had in the wilderness. And they were definitely, their body language was definitely looking at us as though, are we food, right? So that was one of them. But we had like six or seven wolves come in behind us.

So this wolf would be in front of us. Two or three others would be behind us. But you can see they're not attacking us. They're not even hunting us. But you can just see like they're wondering, you know, is there a play here, right? Is there a play here? And I mean this. I'm not being a tough guy.

There wasn't an ounce that I didn't have a – not a fiber of my body was afraid at any point. And there's probably six, seven wolves around us within 10 yards. And they're communicating. They're doing this little like – so they're talking to each other. And then they just moved off. And it turns out that the moose that I was stalking, I think they were stalking too. Cause there was a big bull that was bedded.

And if they weren't stalking him, cause I think they would have had their hands full with him. But if they weren't stalking him, then they were just moving in that general direction in a, they were for sure hunting. And I've just, I've always had a, you know,

tremendous respect for them. And I've always spent, I've just, they've, I've always had time with them, I've always had time with them, I've always been, I've had wolf tags in my pocket before, you know, this kind of falls under the same idea of conservation, like these wolves right here, right, I had a wolf tag in my pocket, I had my bow, I could have arrowed any of these wolves easily, multiples of them probably, bow i could have arrowed any of these wolves easily multiples of them probably um but i don't want to kill a wolf here because i you know they know when another wolf is gone right the pack knows and so that that weighs on me a little bit that's also why right like why kill them like what

is there are there too many of them i mean unless there's a real issue see that was the thing for me is like i didn't have i didn't do my homework for this area so i was just like i don't know if there's a lot of wolves i don't know little wolves i'm not gonna kill a wolf i have no interest in killing a wolf i get a wolf tag with my stuff ranella was telling me that there's uh one of the explorers that traveled the west during lewis and clark days his favorite meal was wolf and And that wolf was literally his favorite thing to eat. I've never eaten it. Yeah, I would have a real hard time. I just couldn't.

They're too much like dogs. I think there's some sort of a genetic memory that we have of our relationship with wolves. I mean, they've become dogs and they've become our companions and they've become a part of our community. Yeah, it just wasn't, you know, it wasn't for me. And when the pilot picked me up, he asked me if I'd seen any wolves. And I said, yeah, we saw a lot of wolves. And he's like, oh, they're now, you know, he's not, I'm not telling you he's running surveys here, but he's like, yeah, there's a lot of wolves here. There's a lot of predation on moose here.

So we're trying to really cut the wolves down here. And I saw a lot of wolves, yeah, there's a lot of wolves here. There's a lot of predation on, on moose here. So we're trying to, we're trying to really cut the wolves down here. But, and I saw a lot of wolves, but I also saw a ton of moose and I saw a ton of cows and I saw lots of calves and lots of big bulls. So everything seemed to be functioning in that area. And I also saw a ton of, um, redback voles, right? They look like mice with little short tails. And I know where there's a lot of redback voles. I know the wolves do extremely well eating them. And so you see these little tunnels, right? And the tundra and stuff. And I think wolves eat a lot smaller of prey than people think on average, right? We see sensational things of small dogs or wolves. And we filmed, I don't know if you, did you see the dingo hunt that we filmed in Australia?

No. Oh my God. You did you see the dingo hunt that we filmed in Australia? No. Oh my God. You guys went on a dingo hunt? Nope. We were hunting buffalo. And while we were hunting buffalo, dingoes just exploded from the bush and the dingoes were pack hunting the Asiatic water buffaloes. Whoa.

Nobody's ever seen it before. Nobody's ever filmed it before. We had the dingo institute call us immediately from Australia. We had- How big's a dingo small tiny dude so we filmed all this in australia it's literally never been filmed before to our knowledge uh everyone that we talked to that is dingo researchers they want to know exactly where this was because they've never seen this behavior and see this behavior right here that was them actually coming in to hunt us but you can see the whole crew sat down everybody was totally committed. They're trying to kill that calf right there.

And still that calf is monstrous, right? So there's four, five, six of them there. And then they chase, they stampede the whole herd directly right into us. That's what you're seeing right here. And the herd actually comes to like 15 feet before they split around us. We're all sitting on our butts. And then the dingoes actually turn their attention to us and they come in around us you can see us instantly looking at us as a we're a meal but like wolves like grizzly bears like black bears

very quickly they look at you and they go yeah this is not gonna work out for me yeah they don't want to die you know what i mean so like yeah nobody had ever seen this before why the fuck are they going after water buffalo i don't know to die you know what I mean so like yeah nobody had ever seen this before but if they don't want to die why the fuck are they going after water buffalo I don't know dude those things are giant terrible idea

but obviously they're I don't know if this group has done this before well they must have right they must have been successful on the calf you know and the idea is

that they're going to chase them and wear them out and that one of the calves is going to be separated and they're going to take it down yeah but they're like 35 pounds that's so crazy they're going to chase them and wear them out and that one of the calves is going to be separated and they're going to take it down. Yeah. But they're like 35 pounds.

That's so crazy. They're such a small animal. And these calves, even the calves are probably like 100 pounds, right? You see how... Bigger. Bigger, yeah. Maybe even 200. That guy looks Australian as fuck. The other guy?

Yeah, he's barefoot and everything. Hey, mate. Yeah. Hello. Yeah. Look at my hat. So, yeah. So, just all these instances like this literally i hate to but that's why i hunt like that's like that stuff i'm not i'm probably not

going on a photo safari ever in my entire life i'm not climbing mount everest unless there's something at the top that right i'm need yeah it's just not in my DNA. It's not who I am. Right. But, but going out to, um, kill a water buffalo in Australia because they're, not only are they overpopulated, they're absolutely decimating the country. And they're not supposed to be there. No,

I mean, you could kill them all. You can snap your fingers right now, kill every buffalo in, on the continent of Australia and you'd be doing nothing but helping that place. Right. And so,

um, those are the kinds of engagements that I love, right? Going there, seeing these things. You're not going to see them unless you're there, and you're not going to see them unless you're there for a very long time. Yeah, just being in the woods and seeing wildlife in its wild environment is a crazy experience. I was telling my friend Colton, he's a guide in Utah,

and I was saying, you guys should have a thing for people that have zero desire to hunt. And let them, like, take them, put them in full camo, and have them creep through the woods during the rut. And watch these elk scream at each other and communicate. Just to be around them is amazing. Absolutely. It's an amazing, because to know that these things have done this for thousands, if not millions of years. I mean, they've found white-tailed deer skulls in Florida that have been aged to over a million

years. Yeah. So they know that they've been in that form, and likely elk as well, in that form for a fucking million, maybe even more years. These things, this is what they've done. They've done it forever. And to be around them when they don't know you're there. We did this film for Under Armour, me and Cam Haynes,

and we went elk hunting in Utah. And we were in this wooded area watching these elk that were in this meadow by a stream. And we sat there waiting for a shot opportunity for like an hour or so, watching them. They had no idea we were there, and some of them were 15, 20 yards away. I was like, this is the crazy – just to be around them when they don't know you're there is so amazing. Yeah. Watch them breathe. We did it last year with – Men's Health did an article on us, and so we took.

It was trippy. I'm talking to the art director at Men's Health. She's in downtown Manhattan. They have no idea what life is about. So she's like, yeah, Donnie, so what we're going to do is we're going to have you and your crew. So there's three in my crew. And then we're going to have a photographer, photographer's assistant, and then we'll have the writer with you. Well, good luck.

So I'm just like, all right. So I'm'm stalking bull elk and i've never elk hunted before so i have no idea what i'm doing other than what i've read about and so i'm stalking these bulls with six people and they asked me like hey do we have to wear camouflage said no you don't have to wear camouflage and they said well what is there anything we shouldn't wear and i said just try not to wear anything with really bright stark colors and try not to wear any bright yellows because that's the spectrum that elk see and and the photographer assistant shows up with just i mean like canary yellow pants skinny jeans and i'm like eight they're from ohio where's ohio that's here right yeah southern california yeah so they're from ohio and um but it was wicked because we snuck up to 18 yards from the 6x6.

All of us. Six of us. 18 yards from the 6x6. That's crazy. And what was crazy is they're staring at the 6x6. Like all of their jaws are on the ground, but I'm staring at them because I really don't care about the 6x6. He's too young.

I'm not going to shoot him, but I loved – I was addicted to their reactions. Right. And they're just like, and the elk walk. Actually, so we're staring at them. The elk's staring at these guys. I'm staring at them. I'm just like taking this on. I'm like, this is pretty rad for me.

Where were you guys? Nevada. Shell Creek Range in Nevada. And so we're sitting there. All of a sudden, the elk looks to its left really sharply. And so I look over, and there's a coyote 10 yards from us staring at the elk and then now these guys are seeing the coyote they're seeing the elk and then everything runs away and i turn around look at these guys and they're just like whoa like um

the one photographer he's like that was a literal monster and it was like a three-year-old six by six, you know, four-year-old six by six. He's like that thing. And like, I just shut up and I'm just listening to these guys and they're just, and now two of the three of them want to hunt. They'd never hunted in their lives. Now the writer, writer, Michael Easter, he really wants to hunt and he's actually going to go on another hunt with me. I think in next year, I'm going to spend like 40 days in the Yukon territory. hunt with me i think in next year i'm going to spend like 40 days in the yukon territories just walking from one end of this concession that a friend of mine has like four and a half million acres we're going to try to walk from one half kind of to the other half if you want hunting

our way through just kind of do a journal hunt film the whole thing beautifully try to and tell a story and he wants to go along and write a book about the experience wow yeah and so it'd be wicked but that's the thing is like all these guys like they just just to see their look seeing this bull elk right there and like and they're watching and he he put on quite a show he didn't bugle i really wish he would have although they heard bugles because we camped at 12 000 feet i made him hike all the way up to the top i'm like man if we're camping we're camping at the tippity top i want you guys to like just experience and so bugles would echo out at night around the canyon. But they watched him eat, and he made a rub and just messed this tree up with his antlers. And it was wicked.

Great experience. But I agree with you. I think people like, let's put some camouflage on you. Or hell, wear yellow pants. Wear yellow skinny jeans if you want and your flat bill hat from Ojai. And let's go sneak up on hell. Fuck flat bill hats. I'm saying it.

I'm sorry, Jamie. Just kidding. Fuck flat Bill hats. Yeah. I'm saying it. Yeah. I'm sorry, Jamie. Yeah. Just kidding. He just has a small curvature. Just a small, small curvature. He's been on a Cavalier's tear over the last few days with all sorts of different hats on.

The, just, I think that what I was saying to these guys is like, without even having to have a tag, like you guys could guide these people and it wouldn't be a dent in the resources. It wouldn't diminish the population. No. But it would be, it's an educational experience. Mm-hmm. And just there's ripples that come from that. Those people are going to go back and tell other people about it.

And it's one thing to go to the zoo, but you go to the zoo, it's the most unnatural environment in the world where animals are looking you right in the eye and they're not freaking out. That has nothing to do with what you're talking about those two things you can see an elk at the zoo but you can't watch an elk at the zoo you don't the elk is not an elk it's a it's a farm animal yeah it's just not the same when you see one in the wild and their their noses are flaring and they're smelling the air and their their ears are twitching left and right. They're scanning for noises.

And you realize like, wow, this thing is out there fucking earning, hustling, eating grass, trying to stay alive. And if it gets to, like that elk that I have out there was nine years old. It was a nine-year-old animal that's out there surviving against mountain lions and bears and just figuring out a way to get through and keep surviving. Get through those winters. Make it to spring. Keep going. Keep going.

I mean, that is a, it's an amazing animal. Has a story. The thing has a story. And if you sit down, you know, I'm sure you were sad when you killed him. But you sit down and I'm sure you were euphoric as hell that your plan finally worked because you've watched it fail 2 000 times so you sit there with your kind of holy crap moment of this actually happened and he's actually dead now and you know you have the sorrow of taking an animal's life but then you sit there and you have any perspective at all you think about those nine

years just like you just did you think about any minute of those nine years. And the same with like sheep, you know, or like your water buffalo back here, like this is horn, right? So they don't lose it every year. The elk cast their antlers off every year and grow new ones, which is, I think it's fastest growing biological substance known to man, right? Yeah, pretty crazy. But these things have horns. So it's made out of like fingernails. So you literally can sit there with your buffalo and drag your fingernail or a bighorn sheep or a doll sheep and drag your fingernail through these little crags and you see the splits and cracks and you're like you know what was a bad winter and and what was a great spring and when did the wolves chase you and um when did you almost

lose your life in a fight and when like i wish you know i wish we could kind of hold on to these things and kind of go through a little montage of what this thing lived through you know but that's the only thing we can do is insert ourselves into the wilderness for a short amount of time or as much time as we can afford and and convince ourselves that that's where we still live yeah i mean that just the relationship that we have with nature, I think, has taken such a bizarre turn because of cities. I think that what we've done also in our relationship with animals by putting them in these little animal prisons that we call zoos

and having people go and stare at them in some very unnatural way, we've really distorted the majesty of wildlife and nature and the only in my opinion the only real way to appreciate what an what an animal is is to see an animal in the wild and see it in its habitat and until that happens until you do that you really you could see a you know a giraffe at the zoo and they're pretty majestic they're really crazy and they're one of the weirdest animals too because they let little kids feed them i mean they're so confident in their behavior i mean i had a bit about it in my act and that like you say that animals don't belong in the zoo i'm like i i agree with you except for giraffes

giraffes don't seem to have any fucking problem with the zoo. They love it. Yeah. And my joke was that they're like, another day with no lions, and they're just wandering around having a great old time. I mean, they're so confident that, like, when my daughter was two, we brought her to the zoo, and they'll let a two-year-old hold a piece of lettuce up for a giraffe. They just fucking know.

Yeah. But if you saw a giraffe, like fucking know yeah but if you saw a like i the first time i ever saw him i was with my friend mike hawkridge and my friend ben o'brien the first time i ever saw a moose in the wild we pulled the car over and it was like that scene in jurassic park when jeff goldblum sticks his head out of the jeep and he's like wow yeah like you see one in the wild you realize how big they really are. And this thing was just walking through this open field in the woods. And we were like, holy shit, look at the size of that thing. Filmmaker killed by giraffe while working in South Africa.

Oh yeah, he got headbutted, right? Yeah. That's how they do it. Oh yeah, they use their head like a whip. Yeah. We showed a film of these two battling, these two bulls slamming each other with their heads it's fucking crazy brutal yeah as is anything that lives out there that's a way to go huh get killed by a giraffe he didn't even see it he was looking through the camera

oh no something else yeah oh yeah he still thinks he's looking through a camera right now he probably is yeah some other dimension yeah he's like what oh, everyone's gone. Boom. Yeah. Yeah. That had to be lights out. And that's, you know, back to the grizzly bear hunting thing. That's the unfortunate thing, right? It's all those people that closed down hunting. Mm-hmm.

They never even, they all, I would venture a guess that anyone that voted on that ballot has never seen a grizzly bear or been a grizzly bear territory or participated at all in understanding how that ecosystem works. Well, isn't it a very small percentage of people? It was a very small number of people, and they got the information from an email list, right? I think it was less than 3,000 people. Yeah. Something really crazy. A pile of misinformation and rumor.

Well, it's also, if you talk to the actual wildlife biologists, and maybe even more importantly, the people that are in the field on a daily basis, there's no problem with the grizzly bear population in British Columbia. In fact, it's thriving. Yeah. It's a giant animal that eats a lot of meat, and it's out there taking out a lot of calves right now as we speak. And now that they can't hunt them, they're very likely to have a situation where they're going to have to hire people to shoot problem bears.

Absolutely. The first eco tour that goes down where a boat full or a bus full or a hiking group watches a boar kill and eat triplets, kill and eat three football or watermelon-sized cubs and rip them to shreds and eat them while they're bawling and trying to get to their mom and then have him kill their mom and once that goes down they'll be like okay i think we might have a couple too many bears here so now we're gonna but that happens every day even in a great not every day but it happens often even in a good population but now that they've shut down any killing whatsoever these things have no predators other from old boars that become giant bullies on the block yeah what are they going to do about

that because apparently there is some sort of a movement to try to educate people and get them to understand what they've done by making this hunt illegal but what i would like to see is people also be educated on the fact like what you said that these animals are actually edible and that instead maybe the part of the problem is the fact that these people are just taking the head and the hide and leaving behind the meat and if you were responsible for not just taking the meat but showing that you're consuming it and then teaching these people how to cook it and how to prepare it and and make them realize like you should be using this thing as in its entirety as a resource and don't just think about it as this fucking rug or this you

know skull that you're going to have on your wall and that's the problem i think that's the problem i don't know but i think that's the problem because if people if people and some people do think this i get letters like this all the time where people say let me get this straight so and it always happens after we post a picture of me with an animal in my backpack, elk antlers or whatever. They're like, oh, yep, I can see it. You know, I'm going to meet in that backpack. And I tell them like, look, my first four backpack loads were meat.

I'm taking the head out last. That's how we do it. The head goes out last because it's the least of importance. It holds the least importance. And so the hide and the head go out last because it's the least of importance. It holds the least importance. And so the hide and the head go out last. And if you take a picture of a backpack full of meat, it looks like a backpack because the meat's inside. So it looks like you're wearing a backpack.

And we purposefully did one last year in Nevada where you can see the elk's hoof sticking out of the top of the backpack so people realize, like, we are moving quarters and we publish these photos but so people will write and say see let me get this straight you kill the deer you take its life you take its hide and you take its antlers you just take it home and mount it and you leave everything else to rot and say no no anybody says that is they they're ignorant they're not paying any attention well they they're whatsoever that's willful ignorance because you could find that out and And first of all, everyone knows that deer is delicious.

Deer, venison, and elk in particular, it's delicious meat. The fact that you would even consider leaving that behind is crazy. Nobody does that. I've never heard of anybody doing that. I've heard of it. But I've heard of a lot of deer and elk. Not in reality. I've just

heard of it. I've heard people saying oh yeah, it's what they used to do. It's what they did. I couldn't even imagine that as a scenario. In today's day, I mean, the meat is so good. I've had people over at my house before that have never eaten elk, and I've cooked it for them. They're like, holy shit.

Because there's a feeling you get from eating it, too. It almost has energy in it. It charges you up. It's such a potent protein and so delicious. Anybody that would leave that behind, that should be a crime. Yeah, I mean, if anything, I've seen it go the other way. I've seen hunters argue over their share. Like if you're sharing an elk with a friend or you went out on a hunt and one of you killed a case,

like, well, how much do I get know i've seen guys argue over that more than anything and i sent i sent elk meat to uh the writer of men's health um who's writing the article because i i ended up killing the elk two days after he left he had to go on another story and i ended up killing you so he's like hey will you send me a box of meat so i can try it because i feel like i was really part of this hunt and i did so and he's just like yeah he i mean he wrote about in the article but it's in the last paragraph forever but he sent me a text message he's just like are you freaking kidding me this is the finest thing i've ever eaten in my life and he's like it's prepared correctly but you have to learn how to do that too yeah you know and he's you know he seared everything he talked to us and we told you want

to keep it like really medium rare and just and he just loved it he loved it and and uh and he talked about like all those days that he hiked with us in the mountains you know he remarked that he could taste that in the flesh right he felt that he felt that connection now he's like big time wants to wants to start hunting for his food yeah i always tell people if you really want to start hunting, you really want to do it, it's so difficult to get started. It's so difficult to even find the resources to take the first steps. Like, what do you do? And people that say, I want to bow hunt. I'm like, listen, man.

First of all, you need to learn how to shoot a bow. And second of all, by saying that you want to bow hunt, what you're saying to me is I want to practice 300 days a year with my bow. I want to really learn archery. I want to learn the proper form. I want to learn mental control. I want to learn the ability to keep your mind in the moment while you're under extreme anxiety and facing an animal to understand how to range an animal, what's the proper yardage, where's the proper shot placement. You're talking about a lifestyle. You're talking about literally changing your life.

This is not, don't say I want to go bow hunting like I want to go deep sea fishing on a chartered boat where they put the bait on the hook, drop it in, and I just reel in the fish. Yeah. That's possible. Yeah. But saying I want to go bow hunting, like, you know, they see you do it and they go, oh, you bow hunt?

Yeah. Okay, but I'm crazy and I've been obsessed with this shit for years and I practice every day and you go to my backyard, I've got fucking rubber elk sitting on a hillside and I shoot at them every day before I do anything. So how much do you want to do it? Yeah. How much do you really want to do it? Because you first have to become an archer.

Yes. Then you have to learn something about hunting. Now you have to actually get out of your truck and take a bunch of steps into the wilderness and hope you can even just get back to your truck. Right. Let alone finding an animal, a legal animal, sneaking into within archery range, killing him quickly, dismembering him, getting him.

And you've got to be in shape. That's the other thing that freaked me out when I first went hunting. I was in shape as far as like jujitsu and martial arts shape, but fucking hiking with a backpack on in altitude and you're going up and down and up and down at seven hours a day, you're like, oh, okay, you got to be conditioned for this shit. I think if you want to, I mean, I think the way to do it, if somebody really wants to, is really wild pigs.

Wild pigs with a gun is probably the first way you should do it. Because I think, first of all, it has to be done. This is something that's imperative. You're talking about it. It can't be done enough. It can't be done enough. Again, you could go, no wild pigs starting now, and it would be a great service. It would be a great service, except for people who enjoy wild pig meat.

And hunting, because it's awesome. Yeah, I mean, it's an awesome way to get started, too. You go wild pig hunting. You're doing good for the environment. This is an invasive species that devastates ground-nesting birds, all sorts of plant species. And if you're dealing with agriculture, like, wow. I mean, then it's really – you're talking about a massive financial burden on farmers. But with a rifle, that's the way to do it.

Because it's so much easier if you have a rifle rest and someone can take you to a range the the learning curve is so much shorter than with a bow yeah absolutely 100 that's a great that's a great first animal the only other thing that i would maybe say if somebody could share with you is to share a duck blind or something along those lines because sometimes it's difficult to wrap your head around killing a large animal first it It might help to kill, as odd as that sounds, we're more comfortable with killing pheasants or grouse or ducks or something like that. But that's also a very tricky shot, and there's safety elements there

because a number of people have guns and not everyone's paying attention. Right, right. Yeah. Have you been to Lanai? I haven't. I've done it two years in a row now where we hunt axis deer in Lanai. And it's another one of those things that has to be done. There's something around 3,000 people on the island and more than 20,000 axis deer.

And it's a very small island. And it's fucking bananas. I mean, we were coming home from uh we got super lucky on the first night the first night of hunting we got out of the truck we set up a target to see if the bows were in tune shot one arrow at a target and uh alec the guy that i was with went fuck there's a buck about 200 yards. Look right there. We're like, holy shit. We kicked off our shoes, stalked in on them, and I killed them within 15 minutes, which is nuts.

Because the next four days without killing anything, and I finally got another one on the last day. But you could shoot as many as 12 a day. I mean, they want to get rid of them. Oh, of course. Yeah, they're eating themselves up out of house and home, right? Yeah. It's crazy, the numbers. The numbers are crazy, but it's also crazy how tuned in these things are and that they evolved to escape tigers. Oh, yeah.

They're from India. Yeah. I mean, they are fucking switched on. Yeah. They're like a white-tailed deer on steroids and meth. Yeah. I mean, they're like, what's that? What's that?

Pew! And then they're gone. And they're so fast, man. I've never seen an animal so fast. So wicked so wicked yeah but it's a good argument for hunting it's like well here's a here's a situation where the animals are out there the population is fucked up there's no balance of life here this is not like this there's no balance here this is completely out of balance and because of that they hire snipers to come in and shoot them. Yeah, I'm assuming they're hiring guns to come in at night and shoot them with night scopes or whatever.

Exactly. That's exactly what they do. Just to keep it in. Just to keep it somewhat in check. Yeah. But unless you want to let wolves loose on this island. And, you know, I don't know how else you're going to fix that. You want to put tigers there? That's what's really supposed to be catching them.

I actually studied tigers right out of college in Bangladesh bangladesh and nepal and i would see i would see axis deer there and they were i mean the jungle there that was real so like they that's why they're looking at everything right because you look at a tiger in a zoo and you're like there's no way that thing can hide but then you go to their jungle and everything's green except for all the palms that die turn bright orange and they all have really long sharp uh fronds that look like a tiger stripe so you see as little blotches of orange and black all disappearing into the green and so but we would see the deer and the deer would know like when we were going into an area to either we had a cat that was radio collared or we're going in to look at a particular piece of habitat the deer would know, like when we were going into an area to either we had a cat that was radio collared or we're going in to look at a particular piece of habitat.

The deer were just like on pins and needles. Like we'd get even remotely close and you could see them. We were dealing a lot with islands and you'd see them leaving the island on the other side. Like they'd be ditched and swim to the next island. Wow. Very aware. They're extremely aware. How crazy is it that somehow or another the tiger evolved to develop those stripes that look like the colors in nature?

Like, what is the mechanism? Phenotypical representation. Yeah, see, like this is from, I don't know where this picture was taken, but this reminds me of like in Nepal, in southern Nepal where I was, the Royal Chitwan National Forest. They have this grass that grows like 20 feet tall and, I mean, just absolutely disappear. But how bizarre is it that this animal somehow or another evolved this camouflage yeah it's so strange so strange that's so that's so amazing though yeah so the evolution of it and that you know this idea of phenotypical their physical representation of their genetics is just so fantastic what did

you study in college wildlife biology biology. Yeah. Cause I wanted to, you know, when I got started doing, you know, hunting and things like that, I don't come from a hunting family. So I just, um, when did you start hunting? Oh, as, as, as soon as I could, like when I was, um, 10, 11, 12, I would force my dad. Um, he had a, he had a couple of guns cause he just had guns when he was a kid and he would he would go up and he'd go like deer hunting once a year with um buddy of of his in maine but you know i think they just drank beer and i don't think that he like he never killed the deer i don't think they ever even deer hunted they just literally drive up get in a cabin

with their buddies and just get hammered get hammered i think that's probably the worst case scenario right that's like when when i was in high school uh one of my friends from high school he did that he his uh his family would uh go deer hunting and his dad literally never killed a deer yeah i was like that is the dumbest shit i've ever heard in my life your dad spends all this time hunting in the woods and he's never killed a deer not hunting yeah david abel yeah david and so but, my, my dad, the gift to me was, uh, my grandparents got him a subscription to outdoor life books. So he'd get all these, uh, all these books that were penned by these gifted authors. One of them was named Jack O'Connor who's inspired my entire career, but I'd read all

these things. And, and so I just thought I want to spend time outside. So I might as well get a wildlife biology degree and then do research and live outside and things like that. And it was odd, as odd as it was when I was in college, I was still hunting a lot. And I, family and friends sit me down and they're like, hey man, you got to like buckle down on your studies. And I wasn't disagreeing with them, but they're like, you need to stop hunting, stop hunting so much. And cause I'd literally, I'd go to the Arctic caribou hunting by myself and I'd come home and go to classes.

And then I'd leave to go to Alaska on a black bear hunt. And I'd come home and go to classes and I'd just save as much money as I could didn't party didn't drink with any of my buddies didn't you know didn't do anything lavish I just literally kept going on trips and you know it's kind of basically what's led to my career today but it was funny that I you know these kind of things traveled in parallel if you will. When did you start making films and when you it, did you make them with the intention of trying to relay, like what I was explaining at the beginning of the podcast, that what you do best is, as much as possible in an hour, you're relaying the whole experience. Yeah. As opposed to what you're going to get when you see a hunting television show, or especially what you're going to get when you see a hunting television show or what, especially what you're going to get when you see hunting in a movie. Yeah. So I, we started in 2012 and I had some

guys that approached me to host a hunting TV show. And I said, well, I, what's that going to look like? And they said, we'll pay for your trips. We'll get all your sponsors and stuff lined up. You'll be fully sponsored. We'll split the sponsor dollars with you. We'll buy your airtime X, Y, and Z. These guys were pretty wealthy. I was like, this sounds like the absolute dream to me. Um, but I said, I want to control how it's filmed, where we go, how we hunt and the gear that I use. And they said a hundred percent. Well, very quickly within like the first eight days, those things started to go out the window. They said, we want you to go here and hunt with this guy because he's super popular. We want you to kill this animal.

We want you to wear this clothing. And I was like, no, I never do any of this. I'm not doing any of this. So I said, you know what, you guys, I appreciate the opportunity, but I'm going to walk away from this gig. And so I walked away from it. And then I met, ended up meeting up with Kyle, of whom you met earlier, is in your green room right now. And then another guy named William Altman, who's our director of photography now at Sigmanta. And I met up with these guys and through a series of weird circumstances, we ended up

filming together and we, when we just started kind of going on trips, but when we started going on trips, our intention was never to do a TV show. Our intention was how can we tell a story about what we're doing? Because really what we're doing ends up with having a really fantastic tale. It doesn't have to be a huge tale. It doesn't have to be Moby Dick, but there's a story whenever you're going on these hunts. And so we just decided that like, how can we flesh this out? So we just went on these trips. We filmed them as beautifully as we could. We filmed them as completely as we could, right? A lot of guys, when they go on these trips, they'll film, okay, you arrived and now you're hunting and then you kill an animal and they're just trying to like get a little piece of it.

Well, we would try and film everything. And then when we got done, we started putting together our first film and we thought, okay, we'll put together a film. We'll see what the audience kind of thinks. And then we'll just play from there. We'll just go from we'll see what the audience kind of thinks and then we'll just play from there we'll just go from there and see what happens and so i started writing the film writing the script every all the all the dialogue that was going to live outside of what was already naturally occurring on camera and i brought it into kyle's office and i was like yeah so read this and he picked up my notebook and he's like dude i, I've never ever heard you talk like this. I've never, it was, I think probably a little bit macho and a little bit sensational, a little bit like being actual delivered, like delivering a line

and trying to convey something on film that wasn't me. And he's like, I've never, he's like, why don't you write like how you talk in the office? Like when you're ranting and raving and talking about wildlife and talking about your experiences. Write like that. Like paint a picture for us. You know, and answer some questions maybe that you have of your own. So I started writing in that manner. And then we released our first film in 2012 or 13, The Rivers Divide.

It was a story about a deer that I was hunting for two years in North Dakota. And it just took off. Yeah, I watched that. Steve. Steve. Steve the deer. Why did you name him Steve? A friend of mine named him because a friend of his, who's named Steve, said,

the fact that you named deer is idiotic and completely stupid. And my friend Jeff said, great, that the next deer we find is going to name Steve. It is a weird thing when you watch a lot of these shows and people have like a piece of property and they have trail cameras and they have all these different names for these deer. I'm like, that's where it gets real squirrely too. It's not good. And I do it too. It's not good. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not good. It's not good. And it's funny because we're actually talking about this in the blind one day, and it's like, we name things, right? If you have two sons, you don't go, yep, so there's my skinny boy, the one that does okay in school, and here's a little fat one that we can't keep peas on the fork with. But these are my two kids here. You're like, no, this is Bob and Jeff.

And so when we're deer hunting with these animals, when you're on Lanai, you don't have this opportunity. But if you were there all year long, you might be like, hey, I saw the buck with the crooked. You might be like, I saw a crooked horn. I saw him again tonight. You know, and then rather than saying to your wife or your girlfriend or your buddy saying, hey, I saw that, you know, that one buck that I'm hunting with the crooked. Instead of going down that road, you start nicknaming all this stuff. Right. People name their cars.

We name motorcycles. We, I don't know, whatever. How is it that you got this far in this hunting journey and you just recently started elk hunting? September is only so long. And like I said, I like the Arctic. So I would just always go moose hunting and caribou hunting. Right.

Yeah. But no excuse whatsoever. I hunted a few years ago in Colorado, 10 years ago, 15, 20 years ago, I hunted cow elk. I went on a cow elk hunt, but I literally, the hunt lasted three minutes. Oh. I hiked up in the pitch black. I hiked up to like 11,000 feet. Sun came up and there was a huge cow elk at 30 yards and I shot her.

And I was like, all right, that's done. And so I cut her up, cleaned her up. And I just had always went to Alaska during September and not in the elk mountains. And finally I was just like, I need to do this. And it was awesome. I had a good and bad experience. Great experience with like the morning that I killed was sensational. It was misty, rainy.

The bulls were screaming. Everything was very wild. We were way back in there. It was really sensational, really, really impactful. But up to that point, the area that I was hunting, the Shell Creek Range in Nevada, they only have a few tags there. But when you get a tag, um hires basically all of their family and friends to come and help because it's such a rare tag so there's 30 guys to every tag and so i

saw four wheelers and side by sides and there's complete and utter intrusion negative intrusion by hunters into this wilderness it's ridiculous ridiculous. And it needs to be stopped. In my opinion, like you should have to leave all your motorized vehicles on pavement and go into the mountains on foot. That's my opinion. But, um, this area that I was in, they had something like 400 miles of, um, improved, uh, two track roads that guys had literally just like, they see something over here they want to get to they just start driving their side by side right across the sagebrush and they just start beating this stuff down and pretty soon there's a road and so this area started out I'll just make these numbers up because I don't remember the but they start out like a hundred miles of dirt roads

in this mountain system quickly expanded to 400 miles of dirt roads because people just trying to access wherever they want to go with an ATV really started to impact the elk to where they were getting pushed out of their winter ranges by people on ATVs. And they're getting bullied so badly by people that were accessing the area by ATV that they just recently closed down something like 200 miles of roads. And I think they're trying to even close down even more. But as far as I'm concerned, it should be closed down. If you want to go and ride your ATV, go ride your ATV. If you're elk hunting, leave the ATV on the road.

Right, and by ATV, you're talking about like those little rangers, those little— Yeah, mostly side-by-sides. There are a couple of quads, but mostly side-by-sides, yeah. Yeah, those are are very very controversial we were um in Nevada a couple years back um in the the the desert area like sagebrush area near um uh a few hours outside of Reno and uh we experienced a few of those where people were doing them they were using them illegally and they were they're driving into these areas where you know you're off the road and you're you're just just driving through these open plains areas with these atvs that aren't supposed to be there and spooking deer

and yeah impacting the substrate and the soils and yeah bad yeah it's on one hand i say well you know it's not the worst thing in the world in terms of like if you need to get an animal out of there. I kind of agree with it. But I kind of understand your point. Maybe you shouldn't even be able to do it with that because then you're going to look. I mean, it's going to be really hard to regulate whether or not a person should or shouldn't be able to use it at any point in time. Yeah, and I'm not talking about like if somebody that's handicapped or somebody that's truly debilitated wants access to this area, absolutely by all means.

I'm talking about able-bodied, middle-aged and young men that are not doing their, not working hard. Yeah, that's a weird thing, right? Like they want to be able to do that. And then there's also people that want to be able to go in there on horseback. Yeah. That's another argument. I mean, I've heard people that want to be able to go in there on horseback. Yeah. That's a, that's another argument. I've heard people that have been hunting and they,

you know, in a quiet area and then all of a sudden five people come by on horseback in front of them, you know, that they're with an outfitter and the outfitters, I mean, they took the time to hike 19 miles deep into the back country. And,

uh, you know, it's a, it's a hard haul. And then the next thing you know, some people come in on horseback and, you know it's it's a hard haul and then the next thing you know some people come in on horseback and you know they're it's they got pack mules and all sorts of other shit there's a fucking caravan of animals and people and they're spooking everything out yep and it

all comes down to that um that barrier of entry right yeah i thrive the most like it's for me and i'm sure for you too it's the most rewarding to do the work. Backpack in, suffer, right? That's suffering. I feel like we should have to suffer for these. Well, it's also rewarding to do it on foot because you're going deep into this area that's hard to get to. And when you do get there, there's nothing there but you. If you're the type of person that's willing to hike in seven, eight, nine, 10 miles, the deeper you get, the further you're going to distance yourself from everybody

else because most people aren't going to do that. No. Most people aren't going to. Especially, that's the weird thing about public land, right? It's like kind of anybody can get in there, but who's going to get in there 22 miles yeah very few people yeah and i have people all the time and i'm i'm sure you go through this too but i'll kill an animal and hunters right away they want to identify you was that on public or private land right it was on public land you know and and and people think that it's this and i'm not i mean you know in there's certain areas of the country it's more difficult but people think if you killed an animal on public land like you're a real hunter because you had to deal with other hunters right no where i went there was not another person so

you know it's like when when you're accessing when you're going deep and there's not atvs there's not side by sides and you can actually hike into an area you can get away from these people right you can get away from where people are willing to access but um people like to celebrate public land because you you are not a guided hunt you weren't in this well it's also a wealth thing too people want to they they they want to disparage accomplishments for people that do things that the wealth is the barrier for entry yeah like but the problem i have with that is first of all the wildest of the wild is the place where people can't go you know if you can get to and the other thing is like, if somebody said, hey, you know, I'm going to give you a tag for Nevada for some, you know, private land area that

is just an unbelievable elk hunt, but it's a private land, but I'm going to give it to you. You're not going to go on. I'm not going to do that because it's private land. I don't do that. No, I was saying, can I get it next year too? Yeah. Most people are only saying that they wouldn't do it because they can't afford it.

And so they want to disparage anybody who can because there's a barrier for entry yeah and that barrier is financial yeah but those areas where you go if you can get into these private places those are the areas where they're really wild because there's no fucking people yeah they can't go back there yeah you know and you get to see these animals the way they would be when there is no access to the public. Because there isn't. Yeah, and that's the best. But I get it. I mean, I get the sentiment, and I get why people would be upset that some people can afford it and others can't.

Oh, for sure. For sure. It's definitely, yeah, I mean, everybody wants to participate. Everyone wants to see and access all these different areas. And, and, uh, if you can't, right. And it's, it's a negative experience if somebody can. Right. And I feel the same way.

Like you see, you know, I see this every year when I go to some of these hunting shows around the country, like I'll go to a wild sheep foundation and they bring up the Montana bighorn tag for sale. I would love to buy that thing. Those, those things are so ridiculous when they have those auctions and the tags go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah, $350,000. That is fucking crazy.

Yeah. That really is fucking crazy. I mean, the fact that people spend that money. And then the other thing is, I mean, I know a guy who did that, who hired these people to sit on this one fucking Bighorn for months. They hired these guys to basically be full-time employees to scout this one gigantic bighorn track it around follow it keep an eye on it no and then finally the season opened and this guy trudged in there killed it and

killed it i here's what i would do if i was a billionaire or had the cash. I'd buy the tag. I'm telling you right now to your face, I would buy that tag often if I had that kind of money. But instead of hiring the crew to find me a big ram and waltzing in there on opening day and killing it, I'd fire the crew because I have enough money. I'd go in there and spend the entire season in there myself immersing myself in that wilderness and using the fact that I have a pile of cash at home to live in the wilderness for 30 days and maybe kill a big ram, maybe not. Right. But these guys want...

They want the bragging rights. They want that giant ram. They want the bragging rights. It's a resume. Yeah. It becomes a resume of animals. And I kind of equate it to... I've talked about this a little bit before, but when we were kids, like if you went fishing with your dad

or hunting with your dad or whatever, like let's say you went down to a little local lake here in California or whatever and you guys were going bass fishing. You guys go bass fishing and you're catching bass or whatever, and then all of a sudden one magical Sunday morning, you or your dad hooks a monster bass. And you guys, oh, grab the net and you're you know have the energy in the boat right grab that real you know keep your rod tip up you know there's a lot of energy

around this big fish that's going to be really hard to land it's such a special occurrence you finally get the net underneath them you get this big bass in the net and you're you know you're hugging your high five and you're oh my god we've come to this lake 30 times it's the biggest fish we've ever caught that that you know and then and then you take the pictures and you go home and you tell your, you know, you tell your mom, you tell your friend, you're like, oh my God. And he came up and he ate the frog and we set the hook and you tell that whole tale and you have that energy that lives around that fantastic experience. And these guys are trying to buy that.

Like, that's a really remarkable experience. When you, when you go elk hunting and you stumble into a really big bull or you do your homework and you keep truncating down the information, you keep taking steps into the wilderness down until you find this really massive bull. You slip in. You have the wind right. You're hidden in a bush or against a rock. And here he comes and you can't believe it. You've done your homework and you've truncated down this experience. And here he comes and you can't believe it you've done your homework and you've truncated down this experience and here he comes and you come to full draw and he for whatever reason stops at 30 yards and you find your pin you just and you watch your arrows zip right through them

and you know you're looking around for somebody to tell it's just a huge experience they're trying to bottle that up write a big fat check and try to experience that in one afternoon. Is it that they're trying to experience it or is it that they want to show that they have the thing? They want to show it because that experience I just described to you, those emotions, everyone can relate to that or people that have done this can relate to that. So when they show you their picture of their 200-inch Ram, all their buddies go, oh, man, how, oh, my. Right, right. relate to that so when they show you their picture of their 200 inch ram all their buddies go oh man what all how all my song right and really has no he's no interest in that whatsoever like that is literally just to build a resume same with the big maned lion right if you if you went in and

dilled it if it's a truly wilderness experience you've really did your homework and i know i'm splitting hairs here but this is how my mind works tell me the story I'd love to hear it but if it's anything other than that then it's not for me well that's the thing about you what you're saying mirrors what I hear from guys like Steve Rinella and people that are really accomplished hunters that are very ethical and have the right mindset is that this is supposed to be difficult. Hard. Yeah. The experience is supposed to be you're supposed to hike all those miles.

You're supposed to go up and down those mountains. It's supposed to be exhausting. It's supposed to be hard to get close to one of these creatures. It's supposed to be difficult. You're supposed to not know what's over the next ridge. Yeah. But it's part of the reward. And if that reward isn't there, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Shooting fish in a barrel is weird.

It's not interesting at all. It's great if you definitely need a fish. Yeah. Yeah. And that's okay. There are little, you know, you can cut little corners in life, right? Right. You know, I'm not saying everything has to be like, because then somebody might say,

well, you're using a compound bow. The other guy's using a recurve. right that's that's a good argument that argument gets weird right but if you're doing it we say if you're doing it well and good it doesn't matter you know it shouldn't matter like if you're an ethical if you're hunting for the right reasons you're asking yourself these big questions it shouldn't matter if you pick up a rifle and you shoot them at 100 yards or you pick up a recurve and you shoot them at 10 yards. Cause I, I know recurve shooters that can only shoot like 15, 18 yards. I know recurve shooters that can shoot 50, 60, 70 yards. And, um, you know, so we're all different. We all like to, you know, some people really enjoy

shooting their rifle. Some people really enjoy shooting their bow. I don't think we should split hairs there. Just realize that the bow hunter maybe had to go to the next level of immersion to get himself next to that animal. And the rifle hunter, there's a slightly less barrier of entry, but it doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with it. Well, rifle, I've heard it argued, and I agree with them, that rifle hunting on public land is probably more difficult than bow hunting on private land. Without question. And certainly more difficult than bow hunting on public land, because bow hunters have, that's the reason I started bow hunting, was have access to public land prior to the rifle season. Yeah. To extend my season, to go in the woods when it's quiet and no one else is around and see animals acting naturally

rather than seeing this orange army and seeing everything running for its life. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, that's where it gets squirrely, right?

It does. I mean, public access is great, but man, it does get really weird and I've experienced it when there's a lot of hunters around. It gets really,

like I was in Wisconsin for opening day a couple years ago and it is like a war zone the moment light goes off you hear boom boom boom boom boom and i was i was with ranella and we filmed it for meat eater and i was looked at my what the fuck is going on man are we at war he's like this is opening day in wisconsin i was like that's crazy yeah i mean it is just everywhere just gunshots ringing out in the distance yeah and again like you know sometimes we like to talk about management not every not every population needs to be managed but literally you probably can't kill enough deer that day in wisconsin you better manage those fucking deer

because people are hitting them with cars all day long yeah you literally couldn't kill enough deer that day in wisconsin you better manage those fucking deer because people are hitting them with cars all day long yeah you literally couldn't kill enough and we were eating them they were they were eating a lot of corn because uh where my friend doug duran's farm is where we're hunting it's all corn yeah and man they could not have tasted better yeah they were so good yeah i mean it was insane we we sauteed them that night in a cast iron skillet with uh garlic salt and butter and holy shit was it good yeah people were just moaning in orgasmic ecstasy while they're eating this deer it's cuisine man it's really good you know and you're sitting there with your bodies yeah it's it's it should be uh and it's valued freezing cold outside You're indoors and it's warm and everybody's happy. Man, it was epic.

It was epic. It's something to be told. Yeah. For sure. It is something to be told. I think, and we should probably wrap this up. We're about three hours in. But I think I would want people, if they're really curious about this endeavor, I really

would want people to start with your films. Because I think- I appreciate that. I think that what you're doing, if they have the time to sit down and watch that whole thing, what you're doing is, I think you represent the best, just the best slice. It's so hard to get that slice in 22 minutes. And I think Rinella does an amazing job in doing it in 22 minutes but i think what you're what you've done by turning these into films and by really giving yourself the opportunity to relay your appreciation the wonder and the awe of nature and your immersion into that world and to do so in such an incredibly

creative way and beautifully visually stunning way that I think you've done an amazing service. And I think, I think it's a great place for people to start to get a look at them. And for people that do hunt, I think they will really appreciate if they haven't seen your stuff before. I appreciate that, man. Like it's, we definitely suffer for the work, like writing the music, the shooting it. Like we do, we want to represent ourselves with absolute purity, but we also realize that there are people that have questions. So we try to write and behave in a manner that, like you've done today several times in a podcast. You say, hey, explain what a concession is. People don't know what a concession is.

Well, if you can write in this certain manner, give them some sort of an education while you're telling them the story and do it poetically. And that's, it's, it's, it's, I appreciate it. Well, there's so few people doing it that way. You know, I mean, Sitka makes some really good films and making some longer films, you know, they're into 20 minutes and longer. But I think very few people are doing what you're doing, really making it into a movie. I appreciate that, man. This next one will be about 90 minutes in length, and I'm really excited about it.

I can't wait, man. Let me know. Donnie Vincent, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for being on here, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you.