The Joe Rogan Experience - #1482 - Jordan Jonas

Episode Date: May 28, 2020

Jordan Jonas spent 77 days living alone in the Canadian wilderness to become the winner for the sixth season of the History Channel’s reality television show “Alone.”

All right, we're rolling. Hey, man, thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's an honor to be here. Hey, my pleasure. Honor to talk to you. First of all, I really enjoyed you on Cafaro Cast, so shout out to my friend Aaron Snyder and Frank the Tank.

Say hey right back to him. I listened to you on the show, and I was like, God damn, what an interesting guy. What a fucking crazy life you've had. So you were on that show alone, right? Right, right. And explain that show for people don't know what the fuck it is yeah so it's a it's a show where they get uh 10 people you each for those people get to pick out 10 basic items you know like an axe and a bow and a saw and you know

10 items just 10 items right does that include arrows like you can only have one no your bow comes with nine arrows. So you get a bow and arrows. I guess it's an item. So it's a loosely ten items. And then you basically take ten people, fly them out into the middle of nowhere, and drop them each off by themselves. You got all the video camera equipment, and it's just self-filming,

and it's basically the last one to give up wins. Wow. And how do you know if anyone's given up before you? You don't. You just are out there. You could be out. Previously, the show's been up. It's up to a year. A year?

Yeah. Hypothetically, it could go a year. Holy shit. So you just go out there and do your best. What if you are still out there, but everybody else has quit and you don't know? That's when they come and tell you that you won. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah.

So when you won, they did that to you. They told you. Right, right. And how long did it take you? 77 days? 77 days. Wow. I was completely surprised.

I thought it would go maybe twice that long. You were ready. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But let's give people your background. It's kind of unfair in a way, aaron brought this up on the podcast that you were on this show with a bunch of people like me like regular folks that have never really lived like that before but you've done some crazy adventure shit in siberia and yeah so man i guess

uh how far do you want to go back let's go back all right go back we have plenty of time how did when did you get started with have you always been an outdoors guy yeah we grew up on a farm in Idaho and that kind of just puts you in the outdoors I'd say I kind of had you know but then I was doing the normal thing working concrete job working at a salad dressing factory blah blah and then uh my brother took me out riding freight trains and we rode across the country I just like like a hobo like a hobo? Like a hobo, yeah. Did you have a stick with like a bundle at the end of it? Well, we were advanced progressive hobos with backpacks. Progressive hobos. So you just hopped the freight trains? Jumped on a freight

train, went across the country, up and back. And then it was also the first time I had been alone for a while. At one point I split up with them and rode for a week by myself. So it was like kind of a – What year was this? This was when I was 19. I'm 37 now, so something like that. I'm bad at math. Yeah.

So cell phone or no cell phone back then? No cell phone, yeah. No cell phone. No cell phone. Oh, my God. I was a crazy person. No, it was awesome. It was a real taste of freedom.

And I think that was kind of like a coming-of-age experience for me because I just realized, oh, man, I don't really want to. You know, I wasn't going to be in this typical life after having experienced that. Like every night, you know, it's like total freedom. You're up. You never know where you're going to sleep. You never know who you're going to meet. You're always out there in the elements. It's pretty fascinating.

Now, when you did stuff like that, did you plan on doing it for a long period of time? I mean, I guess we just planned to go across the country and check it out. Ben, my brother, had been doing it for like seven years. Oh, really? Yeah, so he was like the pro hobo. A pro hobo. So talk me through the process. So he brings it up, or you guys discuss it?

Yeah, he was just like, you know, he'd been doing it for a while. How much older is your brother? Five years older. So he invited me to come with him. And so I quit my job. And just one day up in Spokane there, you sneak into the train yard and hop on a car and take off. Now, did you bring money? Did you bring food?

Yeah, you get cans of food in your backpack. And usually we would stop and work you know a lot of times he had had some connections throughout the country where we could oh we could go stop there and work for a guy make a few bucks and then uh continue on but you don't really need much in those situations you know you'd uh do some dumpster diving yeah where did you well some of you'd be surprised at how good the food is in some of those places they throw out. But, yeah, no, it was – I mean, the first night was kind of a christening. I remember it was like April, April still up in Montana Plains. It's a little chilly. Yeah, and it poured out, poured rain, and I was in the open car.

And I don't know how it happened, but I just slept through a downpour. My brother came climbing up. I was sitting there probably in three inches of water, almost drowned myself. In the middle of the night, he woke me up, and I was like, oh, man, what happened? I remember that was about the longest morning of my life, just waiting for that sun to go up. It's like going 55 miles an hour in the wind, soaking wet. Oh, my God. But, you know, every night was some kind of an adventure like that, and it was pretty cool.

And were all the cars open, or did you just sneak into a shitty one? No, there's particular ones that, oh, yeah, they're on those, like, trains that go across the whole, you know, intermodals, they're called. They're always open, kind of, so you're just exposed to the weather. Did you have rain gear or anything? You know, I had his poncho, but I ruined it, and it got sucked into the train. Oh, no. So anyway. Wow.

Anyway, we ended up stopping in Virginia and doing some temporary work down there, and that's kind of how I ended up in Virginia. Anyway, go ahead. You just got wanderlust, huh? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, yeah, I guess so. It was just a cool experience. And once you get that taste of kind of freedom, it's like a little bit hard to go back to a 9 to 5, I guess. I could only imagine.

I could only imagine that feeling when you're 19 years old. Yeah. You know, and to go back to a cubicle. Right, right. Something like that. No chance. Yeah. It would be torture.

So we did some construction jobs in Virginia. And then, you know, I was a young guy trying to figure out how to live a meaningful life or whatever. You know, what am I going to do with my life? uh did you have thoughts did you have like a aspiration yeah I mean I guess to provide some context I was I'm like follow a Christian path so I was uh uh that me always feels like I got to put some uh caveats to that like it's like I understand for a lot of people that means shame i know you had like some mean nuns yeah you heard that yeah and i'm one mean nun in particular straight me right out i was like all right no i know it means a lot of things a lot of people but for me it was always like it was interesting because it was summed up in like in the bible like uh you know love the lord god with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself.

And God is defined as love. And so that was kind of always the core focus for how I tried to decide what I was going to do in life. And at the time, I heard of a guy that was over in Russia building orphanages and needed help. And so I felt really strongly that, that hey that was the right thing to do how did you hear of this uh so i have a brother that's adopted and when he grew up he wanted to find his biological mom and just tell her thanks for the chance at life or whatever and when he did turns out she had another son who was gonna go over there and I met him and he told me about this guy. So, uh, so I, I basically felt it was the right thing to do and bought a ticket for a year, you know,

just the full years go over to Russia and, and I headed over there and that was kind of how the next chapter, I guess, started in life. Uh, and how old were you then? Probably 21 or something. Yeah. 21. 21 so 21 don't know anybody over there don't know how to speak russian yeah yeah yeah that was uh that was interesting i uh did you try to learn oh absolutely so this guy that i was building the orphanage is an american guy but i went over there and i didn't want to live with american because i wanted to learn russian so he sent me to a neighboring village with, uh, these two families, both of them were like ex cons and, you know, had been spent a lot of time in Siberian prisons, but they had changed, you know, they were

like super cool dudes. One guy was just covered in prison tattoos. One of the funniest guys I know, but he, uh, did they drink a lot? You know, they didn't, those guys didn't cause they had changed their ways, you know, prison. So they, uh, they took me in like one of their own and, uh, and I spent the better part of that year with those guys learning the language. And how much did you know before you got there? How much? Nothing. Just the alphabet. Yeah. So it was brutal. Yeah. I mean, I could make the sounds because I knew the alphabet, but I didn't know what anything meant. Oh. So it was, yeah, that was an interesting experience. Like, just very isolating, to be honest.

But also it was, I mean, it was pretty cool, you know, in hindsight. Did you learn to write it? Yeah. So you could write things to people in that, what is that called? Cyrillic? Is that what it's called? Yeah, right, right, right. So you could write things in Cyr in that. What is that called? Cyrillic? Is that what it's called? Yeah, right, right, right. So you could write things in Cyrillic and you could read it as well?

Yeah, as I learned. Of course, I could pronounce out the words because I could read it. I didn't know what anything meant. And over time, I started to learn. Of course, the guy who lived with us just taught me all the prison slang and stuff. It was always prison bitch. Great Russian. Thank bitch. Yeah. Great Russian. Thank you.

Wow. So that's a crazy thing to do, to just go move there with no Russian at all. Did you buy a book on English to Russian? Yeah, but I found the best way, if you ever go to a different country and don't know anything, just have a notepad with you and you'll you'll start to like get familiar with words as you live in there. And then at the end of the day, I'd, you know, I'd write those words down as I recognize them. At the end of the day, I would look up the definition and just five to 10 words a day

to slowly learn. And by the end of the year, I was pretty, you know, starting to get to where I could be comfortable. It took a long time. So you could have a real conversation with people after a year? Yeah. Yeah. It was brutal kind of. It took a long time. So you could have a real conversation with people after a year? Yeah, yeah. It was brutal, kind of.

It was a long time to wait. Well, Russian seems like it would be harder than Spanish or French because you have to learn the crazy alphabet. It's so different. Well, it's the alphabet and the grammar is so different. I don't know anything about it. How is the grammar different? So you don't speak like, if you want to say like, I love you.

There's no form in the sentence. You could say you love I or love I you. You could throw the words in any order, but the word actually changes based on its role in the sentence. So when you're learning the language, you just get all these words dumped on you, and you have to try to know, how it's formed. How would you say I love you in Russian? No, you could say, я тебя люблю or люблю я тебя or тебя я люблю. Is there a reason why you'd say it in different ways?

I think you could emphasize, you know, make different. It is a flexible language in that, yeah, you could switch it up to emphasize certain aspects. Is it more ambiguous? Like, would people be like, are you sure? Say it a different way. No, no, I think it works pretty good. How much do you love? You know, that's not a phrase I got a lot of practice with when I was over there.

Should have chosen a different one. should have chosen a different one but it's fascinating that I mean it's fascinating that people speak in a completely different way it's just a whole different way it made me kind of understand oh maybe that's why you get those like Russian authors that were so great because they

were supposed to you know they were able to form ideas in a slightly more flexible way maybe it's kind of interesting it was interesting to learn a language. And I was like, huh, it's actually probably a better language in English in a lot of ways.

Yeah. It was like, it's a lot of things you can, it's more fun to speak in Russian because you can like switch up words and make weird. But it's always been fascinating to me how people sound so different in different places. Like they have a different way,

like Brazil. I love Brazil. One of the things I love Brazil, but the way they speak Portuguese, they have a different way like uh brazil i love brazil and one of the things i love brazil but the way they speak portuguese they have a way it's like a song they're like there's like a a rhythmic quality to the way they talk that we don't have yeah no that's fascinating yeah yeah it's uh it's really interesting that you know there's different and then you go to thailand they've got their own way everything tones and all that yeah stretches out yeah yeah it's really uh it's people are so strange in how they i don't you know i want i always wondered like how does an accent like especially when you think about our country right like how does a new jersey accent get formed versus a

virginia like living in virginia sometimes i'm so fascinated by how, with all like TV and being surrounded by the standard way English is spoke, I'm just amazed at how some of the people, and you're just like, what? How do you still have that? But it's awesome, man. What is a Virginia accent? Oh, I liked, my buddy described it best. You know, like if you replace the R's with the L's.

They're like, I got to put L on these tires. You know, put an L instead of an R at the end of the word. That's air on tires? Yeah, yeah. Wow. Stuff like that. And you got to go, what? You're like, huh?

Yeah. But then, no, it's pretty good. I don't know. Oh, and then there's people like Cajun country. Yeah. And Cajun country. Yeah, I haven it's pretty good. I don't know. Oh, and then there's people like Cajun country. Yeah. And Cajun country. Yeah, I haven't been down there. They got a whole different vibe going on.

They got some French shit going on there. It's like, woo. But it's crazy how I grew up in Boston. Right. And I did this thing. I was on the news when I was 19. And I heard myself on TV. And I heard my fucking terrible Boston accent.

Yeah, yeah. And I was like, oh, my God, I got to get rid of that accent. And I had only been living in Boston for about six years. But I just – we've traveled all over the country, and I just – I guess when I was 13, I was very impressionable. Right, right. And I had adopted this. And so I was listening to me, and I was talking about working really hard. We've been working really hard at this. I was like, oh my God, I sound like a moron.

No offense, Boston, right? Sorry. Yeah. I mean, it's where I grew up, but I abandoned it. There was a little bit of it still when I lived in California, when I first moved here. No, you catch it, man. You catch the accents. I'd hang out with my wife's Filipino family. All of a sudden, I'll be speaking like, watch out for the radar. Yeah, it's just crazy.

I always wondered, like, what started it? Like, what started the New York accent? Why is it so different from an accent from Florida? You know, Florida's all over the fucking place. They don't know where they are. Yeah, yeah, I've heard. They're not even sure they're american they're just like they're floating but i hear it's just it's you know you go to texas the totally different way of talking than you do in california it's yeah it's interesting it is interesting a little that's

just i guess how new languages develop over time, well, that's what's always been weird to me. It's like, I don't speak Italian, but my grandparents did, and they spoke dialect. Right. So, like, they spoke, like, a Sicilian dialect. So, they would talk, like, they would say shit that people who speak proper Italian didn't have no idea what they were talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, God, it's so weird. That's fascinating.

It's like, there's so many different ways to communicate. So it's, I mean, I know this, but I only know this in a sense that, like, I know it's a thing. I don't know that, like, you actually experienced it. Yeah, it was really interesting to learn a very different language, you know, as an adult and kind of just be like, oh, wow, that's just a whole new way to think. Did you keep up with it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've been a little out of practice, but I got pretty fluent, could explain everything. I still can, you know, say everything I need to say. Well, if you wanted to go to Moscow, you could order dinner. Oh, yeah, yeah. You know, and I could definitely have full conversations. I just would screw up the grammar. Could you read a book? Yeah, yeah.

Sometimes, a lot of times I will try to read in Russian just to keep. The Gulag Archipelago? Ah, one of my favorites. Heavy reading. Heavy reading reading but it's good so when you were over there and it took you you said like how long like a year before you were really fluid yeah I think a year and the guys I lived with so they had you know both been to prison but they had also been in prison together with some uh native nomadic guy that lived up in the north of Siberia. And so my buddy would always tell me, oh, you got to meet my buddy from the north. You know, you got to go live up there.

And so I was like, yeah, that'd be cool. Eventually he connected us. You know, dude was coming through to sell furs in the city. I was there and he introduced me. And the Evenki guy, Yura, invited me up to the far north to kind of check out his way of life. Is that the videos that you sent me? I'm going to send these to you, Jamie, because it's crazy. Dudes riding on reindeers.

Like, you were, what is the name of those people? So those are the Avenki people. They live in the, like know the taiga the forest up there and they uh are nomadic man i didn't even know people like that existed until i met him because they oh you have a video you already have it there you go look at you wizard cutting the antler off of one so why do they cut the antlers off they do it for a number of reasons one is because they uh that antler well, this one particularly was growing into the reindeer's eye. So they were going to cut it off to help the reindeer.

And then you can also eat the skin off the velvet. And it's Chinese medicine for men's health and stuff. Well, it actually was a thing that they were selling as a supplement. They were selling... Oh man, they're digging in there. It's all bloody and shit. Isn't it crazy? Animals with antlers,

it's such a bizarre thing because they regrow them every year and they fall off. Yeah, so much energy into that. And caribou, which is what a reindeer is, i believe they have the largest antlers to body size of any all right yeah there's a massive one oh hey he's getting serious so how often did they do that uh i'll show that oh yeah folks that was a uh an assassination caribou assassination so they would ride them and take care of them, but occasionally they would eat them.

Yeah, exactly. They provide everything for them. So they have a big herd, a couple few hundred reindeer, and they basically live off of them. So they're their transportation, their clothing, their food, you know, their economy, basically. My friends John and Jen, they live in Alberta, and there was a place near them that had an elk farm, and they farmed elk for the velvet. Oh, yeah. That's what they farmed them for. Fascinating.

And that velvet, I believe they would sell to like a bodybuilding company. I think there was a – Vitality, you know, it's supposed to be good for you, right? Well, I think it's got growth hormone in company. I think there was a – Vitality. Well, I think it's got growth hormone in it. I think that's what it is because there was a time where it was a thing that you would buy in like – I don't know if they do it anymore, but in health food stores, you'd buy like antler spray. Yeah.

And somehow or another, they broke it down to a spray. I mean, I don't even know if it worked. No. Yeah, I don't either. But I'm pretty sure rhinoceros horn doesn't. But I'm imagining. No, rhinoceros horn doesn't. Did you see what happened where there was fucking tons of beaver penis that they found?

They caught a cargo going to China. Black market beaver penis. Because there was tons. Here, I'll send you this, Jamie. Fucking tons of beaver penis. Here it is. Man, you're fast at that. Too fast.

He's the wizard. Chinese authorities seized 12 tons of beaver penises smuggled from Canada. Wow. Yeah, and it's, again, it's a vitality thing. It's about erections. The cool thing about the Havinki up there is it's sustainable what they're doing because they got their own reindeer and they manage them and all that. They don't have to import beaver penises. Right.

They got reindeer. Plenty of reindeer ones. Oh, God. There's the beaver dicks. Oh, boy. Poor beavers. I mean, to kill that many beavers, what is the number of beavers? It says 40 to 50 billion U.S. dollars. What is the number of beavers? It says 40 to 50 billion US dollars. What?

The market value of animal parts illegally imported on the Chinese market. I mean, that's still a huge number, but yeah, a little steep for those. Yeah. It's so crazy. Like they have these, according to my friend who's been to China many times, he said, it's not even that they really believe that, like, rhino horn is good for your dick. But what it is, it's like it's so hard to get and it's so exotic and illegal that they like having it. So they're like, like if a businessman comes over your house, he asks, would you like some rhino horn? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come into the secret room.

Woo the folks. Push on the fucking wall of the library and slides, you know, like in the spy movies. And you go back there to a tea room with rh folks push on the fucking wall of the library and slides you know like spy movies and you go back there to a tea room with rhino dick yeah yeah deer antler velvet igf1 spray supplement 50 bucks factor in it yeah i don't know about that but is that i think it's real i mean it could be it could be the fact that they do grow so fast every year you know there might be something in there i don't know know. But they taste good. Just like off the velvet and we'd roast it over the fire real quick. What does it taste like?

It's kind of got the bamboo shoot texture, like kind of that firm texture, but it's real smoky. Anything smoky is good. What does it say? Ban substances. Although previously found on the World Anti-Doping Agency's list of banned substances, deer antler spray was removed in 2013 when it was deemed completely safe and legal to consume prior to athletic activity. Okay, you know what that means? Oh, yeah. That means it doesn't work.

Yeah, they took it off the thing. That's what it means. They take it off. It means it doesn't work. Safe to eat. Good to know. That doesn't mean – that means there's no fucking performance. Oh, that's it.

Ray Lewis was rumored to have used it following an injury to his tricep in 2013. You know what? I bet they just realized, hey, you know what's better than this? Real growth hormone. Right, right. This is fucking stupid. Concentrate it. Running around sucking on deer antlers.

But this farm near my friend John and Jen's place, they bought this farm specifically. These people did. Not John and Jen's place, they bought this farm specifically. These people did, not John and Jen. These people specifically started farming elk just for their velvet. Yeah, weird. And then the market crashed. It wasn't valuable anymore. I guess this was prior to 2013 when it was illegal. And so this poor guy had all this fucking elk.

Yeah, there's an elk farm up by my house in Idahoaho that has recently closed down i wonder if similar yeah i wonder i mean how crazy is it that the most delicious meat on earth yeah you think that'd have a market right yeah that's not what you want you want the fucking antlers yeah yeah yeah oh man that's yeah such a crazy animal that they grow that stuff in like three months. Yeah. Look at the size of that rack. That rack on the wall back there. It's got to be some growth hormone in there.

Something crazy. That's pretty wild. And also with elk, they keep them a lot longer than a lot of deer species because they use them to fight off wolves. So apparently they keep them them deep into the winter. Okay, yeah, yeah. I know the female reindeer keep them a long time too. Isn't that interesting? The female reindeer are the only deer that actually have antlers.

Antlers, right. Probably also for protection. Yeah, I think it is. To some degree, yeah, yeah. I think it is. So when you're up there and these folks have these caribou and they're riding them and they're taking care of them, do they shield the other caribou from seeing're riding them and they're taking care of them. Do they shield the other caribou from seeing one of them get slaughtered?

No, they don't seem to be too worried about it. It's a very mutually, you know, symbiotic relationship between the reindeer. And the reindeer, they're always getting attacked by wolves and tore up and stuff. And they always are coming to the people for protection in those times. Not only from wolves, but even from mosquitoes and gnats. They'll build big smoky fires. So the reindeer know people are their friends and I guess are okay with an occasional sacrifice. So if they have 200 of them, how often do they kill one? They try not to kill them. They actually really avoid trying

to kill their own reindeer. You're mostly living off of moose and wild reindeer and game birds. Oh, like reindeer that aren't theirs. Interesting. So because these are domesticated, they just behave differently. It's so weird to see them with saddles

on and shit and people riding them they're uh almost they've been they're one of the first animals to be domesticated actually by humans yeah it's interesting so they before dogs not before but one of the first i guess yeah and then they uh and they've been domesticated so long that they don't even know how to domesticate wild ones anymore so this is crazy jamie go back to that let me see how they put up these teepees so is this uh they're they have this setup ready to go yeah then when they get to a place and they decide to then they pull out the sticks yeah in the summer you're moving every three days or so just following the reindeer herd through the forest you know in the winter they everything's a little slower you'll be in a place for a month or so but just yeah no mad nomads

and what do they do when the weather sucks like they have this this teepee set up always out you know it's you're just out in the weather also basically when it's when it's really cold negative 50 you know like they have a little wood stove in the teepee, and it keeps the thing pretty warm. What I was asking about actually is the wind. Oh, yeah. Because the way they have these sticks set up, it's like they have these animal skins that go over.

Is that an animal skin? That's canvas. That is? Yeah, yeah. Oh, so it just looks like it's a buckskin. So they have these canvases. Do they have loops where they tie it down? Yeah, they do.

And then they put, they lean sticks on the outside also to kind of hold the canvas in place. These people live so nomadic. Yeah, it is very nomadic. And it's, man, it's awesome though. It's so fascinating to live like that and compare it to the modern world. Like, cause not too many people get the opportunity anymore. And it's, uh, you're so wired for it. It's weird.

You know, like. Right. So your body just immediately falls into place for it. Yeah. You're all your dopamine reset, you know, like you'll be out there fishing and every day you'll just be like, yeah, I got a fish, you know, cause you're relying on it so much. And, uh, whereas like in normal everyday life here in town and stuff when do you get that excited you know like you're always uh you don't have any

schedule so every day you wake up it's like well what do i need to do today and you can kind of you're just free to choose you know you can go try hunting you go collect berries you go find your reindeer and you know like there's just a number of options all available to you. And they're all directly related to your life. So you don't have any, you know, there's no money being thrown around out there. It's just kind of, I'm hungry. Let's go fishing. Let's go to that spot because it's cool.

What do they do if they get injured? That's the problem. They actually have. There's good and bad out there. They can call in a helicopter, but it's so far out, you know, it's going to be a problem. I've broken some ribs out there and had some – myself had some serious injuries that just wasn't an option. You know, you just got to tough it out because there's overcast.

Like what kind of injuries other than ribs? Oh, man. I chopped my knee with an ax one time, cut a tendon, that tendon on the inside of your knee, right in half. And my other knee had recently had a knee surgery, so I was just laid up. Literally, like, three days I was just laying in a teepee. Couldn't move.

I had to roll over, poop in a bag it was brutal but then you know you they rubbed like pine sap on it and it actually healed and uh really yeah i could have swore it would get infected but they're just packed it with pine sap and pine sap yeah so it would ride up pretty fast what happened to the ligament or the tendon that got cut? It doesn't really feel as bothering me. But I didn't know it was cut at the time. It was only later when I did a – An MRI?

Yeah. They told me it was. And so it never healed? Well, I don't know what it did. They said it was hanging on by a thread. I don't know if it ever healed back or what. Wow. You don't even care?

You don't want to check that out? I don't notice it as being weak. So I haven't bothered. My surgery knee hurts more than that knee. What kind of surgery? AC, a couple of ACLs. Yeah. Yeah, you know how it is.

Yeah, I do. So, one of those videos was showing a net. Is that the way they would fish? Both. You know, a lot of times you'd put nets out, and a lot of times you'd just go cast your birch, you know, homemade rod and just see what you can catch. So this is a net. They would just move it across the middle of the river?

You'd set it and leave it, and they're just setting it right now. How do they do that thing that they do on the ice when they do that when it's frozen? When it's frozen? When they cut a hole yeah yeah and then they somehow another get that net to go through you cut a hole you cut two holes and then you get a long stick and you shove it in the hole and slide it then like push the stick under the ice and on one end you have a string tied to it so you push it and keep trying that until you get it to slide under the ice to the other hole and when you do you pull the stick out of that hole and tie your

net on the end of the other one and you can pull so on the string through this string on the end of the stick do you catch it with a hook or something and try to pull it up like let me see if i can yeah no you just uh you pull the actual stick up through with the string tied on the back side of it so you just have to find the hole yeah you just got the actual stick up through with the string tied on the back side of it. So you just have to find the stick. Yeah, you just got to get the stick to, you might have to three or four times slide it under the ice until it ends up where the other hole is. Whoa. Yeah, it works good.

I did it on that alone show. It was fun. Yeah, that's what I'm asking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that must be really hard to do by yourself because I've seen people do it on television on those survival Alaska shows. Oh, right. It wasn't too bad. No, that part wasn't too hard.

But no, yeah. I don't know. It was all good stuff to learn out there with the natives and then came in handy for sure. Have you ever seen the Werner Herzog documentary? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the native that I actually first met that I was telling you about, that Uruguay, he isn't a nomad himself. He's a fur trapper. So he does all that. Real similar to that Werner Herzog documentary.

And actually, where they filmed that isn't that far from where I was in Siberia. So I went fur trapping him with him one year and it was kind of he showed me the rough ropes on a you know he told showed me a topographical map he's like there's a cabin there's a cabin there's a cabin uh threw some noodles in each of my cabins you know we stocked them with noodles and then he just dropped me off and said to see you in a month and a half or whatever and so just was out there my had a stupid little oh they're wrestling there you go yeah good times these kids wrestle a lot yeah it's a good way to grow up man always just outside having a good time yeah i guess so the warner herzog documentary

was really fascinating because as you watch those people and when they talk about like no depression they're all happy they're always laughing they love what they do they enjoy what they do but even though that's like everybody's goal right everybody's goal is everybody's like fuck that i'm not doing that yeah it's that's a fascinating conversation in of itself because you know having been up there and stuff I'm just like man this is an awesome way to live if it was like my friends my family in that context it's like I would probably choose that way of life but you know then you find yourself here in America and you're stuck on your phone and you know and

it's just so unsatisfying that it's it's interesting to experience both but it's kind of hard to uh i mean i mean because you're in where you are so my family's all here everybody's all here we're not nomads you know right but it's funny to have experienced that way of life and almost think man that's kind of what we're made for it's almost better i wish i wish i could implement that in some way here. Well, I'm aware of that because people say it, but I'm not aware of it in the sense that I've experienced it before. I've never experienced just completely living. I've hunted, and I've camped out for a week at a time or so.

Yeah, yeah. You start to get a feel for it. Yeah, sort of. Maybe not. I mean, it seems like when there's no other option, like that's how you're eating. Yeah. We were eating mountain house, and when we shot a deer, then we'd eat the deer. I mean, it seems like when there's no other option, like that's how you're eating. You know, we were eating Mountain House.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when we shot a deer, then we'd eat the deer. Right. Yeah, no, you were, speaking of which, you've read those like Quanah Parker and stuff. Yes, yeah. Books and stuff. Me too. And now having lived with those natives, it's like there's so much good there. You see like, they really are happy people.

So there's a giant difference between the people who live in the village and the people who live in the forest. And the people who live in the forest you would genuinely call like happy people. Like this is they're knowledgeable. They're being productive. They're doing all this stuff. Whereas when you go to the village, it's just like, everybody's drunk. Nobody's doing anything. It's like just a total wreck, especially villages that don't have any reindeer herding connected

to them because they kind of don't have their cultural context to remain connected to. So at least in the villages that have reindeer herding, the kids can go out in the summer and live with the reindeer herders and kind of experience that. And it gives them a source of pride. It gives them like the experience of living in the forest, becoming like kind of really in touch with nature and all that. And whereas in the village, it's just kind of a dark hole. Everybody drinks. Whereas in the village, it's just kind of a dark hole.

Everybody drinks. In those native villages, it's like the statistic is that one out of three people die of suicide, homicide, or accident. So it's just, and you feel it. Like I've got some stories of that that's just brutal too. But the, I, when I read those, like, you know, the Empire of the Summer Moon, those types of books, and I grew up with a couple of good friends that were Native American. And it really made me think, like, I wonder if you could, seeing how well, how much of a difference it makes having that culture intact to some degree. Like, I wonder if, say, on Pine Ridge or, you know, on one of one of these, one of these, uh, reservations, if you could almost replicate something like that, like if you could maybe take the initiative to

like restore some Buffalo herd, use a bunch of unused land that maybe the, you know, government land or, or tribal land, that's kind of unused, a herd, and then kind of bring back those nomadic ways. It's not like everybody would have to live that way, but from my own experience, watching places that have that option, that are connected to that culture, flourish a lot more than the ones that didn't. There were Venki villages with no reindeer herding and ones with and it was Like night and day as far and so I was like I wonder if that would be Anyway, it's something I've thought about it's an interesting thing to think of but

One of the things that happened to the Native Americans in this country Right all the pieces of land that they got for reservations sucked Yeah, I know the dirty trick that the white man pulled for sure i wonder i right and i wonder if it i mean where the is any of that land suitable for raising like well i'm sure some of the land is good i wonder or i'm saying every piece of land but yeah yeah yeah it's not really true but a lot of it no for sure oklahoma that's why they sent them to oklahoma and the dakotas they sent them to some barren barren land that was where the Comanches were anyway, right? Right, yeah.

Oklahoma. But, you know, before the white settlers got here and fucked everything up, Oklahoma was probably pretty dope. Right. A lot of animals. No, yeah, yeah. A lot of things happened. Man, imagine seeing 13 million buffalo roaming the plains.

Well, there's an interesting story to that, too. Like, that seems a little bit imbalanced as well. Well, there's an interesting story to that, too. Like, that seems a little bit imbalanced as well. And there is Dan Flores, who's a – Dan is a wildlife historian, right? And he wrote an amazing book called Coyote America that's about – it just really gives you a really interesting understanding of how weird the animal coyotes are. Oh, yeah. And how they've spread out across the entire country. It's a beautiful book.

But he also wrote a book called, I think it's called Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy. And maybe this was a paper. It might not have been a book. But essentially the thought behind this was these millions of buffalo that you see when that did happen, that only happened because the

europeans had come and given the plague given the smallpox and all this to native americans and wiped out like the hunting population massive numbers of the the hunters so there was like at one point in time there was as many as 90% of all the Native Americans died from disease. Yeah, I know. Can you imagine? Which is insane. So could have been literally millions of people dead from disease that would have been nomadic buffalo hunters. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

So what his theory is, is that they were in these incredibly large numbers because of that. they were in these incredibly large numbers because of that. And then it was, because he points to, there's a time where the earliest settlers were making their way across the country in like the 1500s and somewhere around there. And they didn't talk about buffalo. They didn't. Yeah. They talked about deer.

They talked about bear. They talked about all the animals that we know existed, but there was no talking about massive That all this seemed to have come after the Native Americans were wiped out and it kind of makes sense It makes sense. Yeah, not wiped out totally of course, but you know a large number of them wiped out Where is these animals just where they're used to being preyed upon just bread like fucking crazy. Yeah Yeah, and developed these huge herds i mean you're talking about obviously over a period of hundreds of years right right right yeah no

that that makes sense it'd be interesting to or maybe those those travelers didn't run into the herds if they were bunched up in groups yeah that's possible too but who knows no that i mean it makes a lot of sense 90 of the population you know it's like yeah he's it makes a lot of sense. 90% of the population. Yeah. It's a really interesting story. Like when he breaks it down, like it really is an imbalance. If you think about it, like why would there be a million buffalo or many millions? Yeah, where's the predators? Yeah, it's crazy. Well, buffaloes are so interesting too because they don't really, predators don't fuck with them.

Yeah. This giant furry thing, you can't even kill it. They're so big. There's so many of them. They're furry thing, you can't even kill it. They're so big. There's so many of them, they're just going to stomp you. My friend Remy Warren, he's very famous in the hunting world, and he had a show called Apex Predator, and he replicated a famous Native American painting. And this famous Native American painting, what they would do is they'd kill a coyote,

and they would skin the coyote and then put the coyote skins on and walk on all fours up to the buffalo and then shoot it with a bow and arrow yeah because the coyotes were no threat to the buffalo at all so the buffalo would look at a coyote like what you want some of this bitch like it was like a baby coming up to a grown man trying to pick a fight. They weren't worried about the coyotes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. I believe it. Yeah, it's a famous painting.

I've seen those two guys sneaking up on the herd. Apparently that's literally what they used to do sometimes. Yeah. They had a bunch of different strategies for how to get close enough to the buffalo. Because if they're using a traditional bow like they had, if you're shooting 40 yards, if you're Aaron Snyder maybe. Yeah. You know what I mean? Totally.

But when you get into that range, like 50, 60 yards, like good fucking luck. Oh, man. You're lobbing them. Yeah. And it's probably going pretty slow anyway by the time it gets there. It's not going to get much penetration on an enormous animal with two by fours for ribs. Yeah. Yeah.

Man. Yeah. You can imagine though through those herds you know they say they'd like send arrows into this massive running herd of buffalo while you're on your horse next to it fascinating stuff well that book by uh uh sam what does he call himself s e gwynn uh yeah his name's sam sam gwynn who i had on the podcast when when you read that book there the life that they had was so it was so intense the comanche and it was so fascinating that kind of makes you want to live like that yeah no even even right man that's that's what i was talking about earlier like even the uh even living with the nomads in Siberia, it's like after having done that, it's a harsh climate, you know, brutal place. The alcoholism is rough, so it's a problem.

But all that into account, it's like, man, you would almost choose this. You know, especially now we have the advantage of having modern medicine and stuff also. Yes. And supplies, you know, that you can get. So you're not going to starve if your hunt's bad and you're not going to, you know, a broken leg won't end you. It's fascinating. That's, yeah, that's part of the reason why it's like, I wonder if now you could kind

of help revitalize some of that culture in a way, you know, like just to. You'd have to have an enormous piece of land. See, the beautiful thing about the way the Native Americans lived before the white settlers came along was that there's no boundaries. The worst they had to worry about was other tribes. And what they did to each other was fucking horrific. That's the other thing that gets documented in S.E. Gwen's book in Empire of the Summer Moon.

Because we have this narrative that the white man came along and did terrible things to the Native Americans and the Native Americans did terrible things to the white man. But no, they were doing terrible things to each other. Right. They're humans. Right, right. Humans do terrible things to each other. Yeah, it's true. Especially fighting over resources, fighting over land and women and buffalo and all the

other stuff they fought over. Yeah, yeah. No, it's true. Yeah, you would need a huge piece of land. Huge. There's a... But it's like, also, how many buffalo would you need to have a sustainable, like... Right.

You know, a sustainable thing going? I don't think it would be that many. You know, if you can do it with 200 reindeer, buffalo are a lot bigger. You know, it's like, I don't know. But they're herding these. You can't really... Yeah, but they're like, yeah. I mean, I guess it would be something to figure out.

There's an interesting project. Have you ever heard of that Pleistocene Park? Yes. Have people told you about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of maybe something like that, where you would have to have a big area that you kind of. That's the American Serengeti Project.

Is that what you're talking about? It's similar. It's in Russia, though. It's where they kind of had the hypothesis that if, you know, back in the day, the climate wasn't that much warmer up north. It was just there was so much density of animals that they, you know, poop, built better soil and grass grew. And it made for a more lush ecosystem than the tundra now. And so they've basically fenced in an area, packed it full of musk oxen, moose, and all that.

And sure enough, you can see pictures and the grass is growing taller. You know, like, it's a much more life-giving ecosystem than the surrounding just tundra. It'd be interesting. Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. There was talk about they were gonna do something to try to revive the the mammoth uh-huh what is this this is pleistocene park oh so this

is the place those fucking freaky animals man yeah anyway those are those are cool uh those are cool projects any of those ones where they're restoring land and animals. It's always interesting to see. You know, like when they have these theories about, you know, I had a guy on last week. His name is Joel Salatin. Right, right. He runs Polyface Farms. And he was explaining how when you farm and let the animals just live like animals live, you use their manure, they shit on the ground, they eat the grass,

and it's actually, not only does it not add carbon to the atmosphere, it actually takes it out. Right, it builds a ecosystem. Yeah, it actually builds healthy soil. If you don't need fertilizer, it's natural. There's a whole system that nature's put in place, but when we have these monocrop agricultural setups and these weird factory farm setups, we're just hijacking nature and forcing it to do slave labor. Yeah, it's a shame, man.

It'd be cool to tap into what, you know, like permaculture, I guess they call it, just tap into some of that on a larger scale because it doesn't seem very sustainable. No, it doesn't. And the large-scale stuff, he was kind of saying that it was possible to feed all of Los Angeles that way, but I'm like, I'm not going to do that. It's like, that's a lot of people, man. I'm not sure. It's never been done. When something's never been done, you've got to go, huh, I don't know if you can do it.

I guess you just start small and see where it goes. We might have already fucked this up by just having too many people. This has never been a thing before. Right, right. For the last few hundred years, it's never been a thing when you pack 20 million people into one spot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, what?

Yeah, it's crazy flying into LA. You know, it was my first time here, but you're just like, whoo. Oh, it was your first time here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Pretty packed. From northern Idaho. Yeah, it's crazy flying into LA. You know, it was my first time here, but you're just like, whoo. Oh, it was your first time here? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Pretty packed. From northern Idaho to this. Yeah.

I've been to New York and stuff, but it was the first time in my life. Good amount of smog. That's funny because it's the clearest it's ever been in the history of Los Angeles because of the pandemic. Totally. Have you ever been to Beijing? No. Oh, man.

Talk about brutal as far as the air goes. You step off the airplane into the airport, and it's probably ventilated, and you step off, and you're just like, it smells like aluminum and just nasty. You can't even see the city. It's so dense, the smoke. And then you kind of get used to it as you're walking around the airport, and then you step out of the ventilated airport,

and it hits you all over again. You're just like, that place is rough. But I hear they're doing better now too with the whole shutdown. The coronavirus, right? It's hard to trust them. I mean, as far as the smog and pollution and all that, but who knows? I've been to Mexico City though. Mexico City is rough.

It's rough. I don't think it's as bad as Beijing, but I got a headache the moment I got out of the plane. I was like, whoa, this is rough. And you can't see shit. When you're flying in, you would swear there's a fire. Yeah. And there's no fire.

It's just how it is there. Yeah, that's rough. Now, you were saying that these people that live in the villages outside of the people that are nomadic, those people live in a real shitty way. Yeah, it's rough. It's like unconnected to any other villages you have to only get there by helicopter you fly in and it's what are they what is their their job like what do they do some of them work like in relation to the reindeer

herds and i don't know i think a lot of people live off of like grandma's pension which you know in russia is probably 100 bucks or something, uh, you know, some people work at the school and the administration is just not a lot going on, but a lot of people are sustenance, like hunters, fishers, and trappers that live in the village. But yeah, it's, it's, it's so weird. Cause the first time I went there, it was just like, man, this place is crazy. Everybody's drunk. It's just like a, being in like a zombie land. Like even when the reindeer herds will come from the woods they'll like run into

their house lock the doors shut everything up and then you'll just see everybody like marching over and then they'll start banging on the doors and the windows and the and the guys inside the house get out of here you know i can just drunk just just drunks just it's just insanity like but it's and it's weird because then you take the same people go into the woods they sober up and it's just night and day that's so weird so weird and then uh yeah it's but you feel see the effects of it so like i was telling you earlier it was pretty brutal uh when i first went to there, there was a nice family. It was like Dasha and Artyom, and they're two little kids. Well, the first time I was there, I met the family. I lived with them

in their teepee and all this and that. And then I went back to America. Sure enough, right after I left, a tree fell on their daughter out in the woods and killed her. And then they, after that got, you know, started drinking a bunch, quit the nomadic way of life, started living in the village. Uh, I went back over there, the girl or the, uh, the guy got stabbed in some drunken brawl or whatever, and was in the, in the hospital, uh, slowly recovered. He had this big old gash with a piece of glass. Someone had cut him open stabbed in some drunken brawl or whatever, and was in the hospital. Slowly recovered. He had this big old gash with a piece of glass someone had cut him open with. He slowly recovered and then went back to his village.

The drinking continued. Sure enough, they killed him. They took his body back to the morgue, which the freezers had broken, right? So it's in the middle of the summer. This body's there, but it was a murder, so they had to wait for the police to come and investigate, but it's way out in the middle of nowhere.

So it took like a week, and it's like a week later. It was just brutal. Go over there, had to pick up this guy who's your buddy, and his wife is helping me, like, dress this body. Because they're basically like, okay, we're done with the investigation. You can go bury him. Is he decomposing? Yeah, yeah.

Oh, Jesus Christ. It's brutal. And the wife is helping you? Yeah, and the wife's helping. And we, like, took care of his body, like, pick him up, and, like, skin slips off and all that stuff. And then, you know, we took care of him, buried him. It was pretty rough. But then a year later, I come back.

She had gotten remarried, kind of starting her life again. Turns out he hangs himself not long afterwards. So, again, it's this woman who's lost two husbands and her daughter. She has her and her son. I just found out a little while ago she got too drunk passed out in the snow and died so now it's just the one son left from this whole family and you like hear those stories often up there it's like really rough uh you know but that's balanced with what is could be so. It's like such a juxtaposition because you're out in this life where you have like people are happy, ultimate freedom, and they're doing great. But the village and the alcohol just does this whole other thing to them.

And it's like these people who are so beautiful, so nice, so friendly, you know, so open to you. But you just see them suffering so much from this scourge. It's like, man, that's brutal. It's crazy that the scourge doesn't extend to the people that live in the forest. Yeah, once they get out in the woods, you know, they don't have the alcohol available and they don't. But even if they did, do you think they would drink it? It seems like. Yeah, they usually drink it.

You know, like when they go to the village, they get it and then they'll take, go out to the woods and they'll drink for a few days until it's all gone. And then it's all sober. And then they get back to normal. Everybody's back to normal. Do you think it's a genetic thing? Like, do they have. That's been a good question.

I've thought about that. You know, there's that, there's that hypothesis, like that maybe it is because people have been introduced to alcohol more recently that they're not Yeah, you know can't process it as well. Well, that was a thing could also there could you could also have the explanation? It's probably a combination of both that when you do like have a people that are largely stripped of their culture and they're like You know because even the event key as cool as their way of life is, you know, they had You know 70 years of communism where they came in and they collected all the best reindeer herders and said that they were like kulaks or what, you know, like the bourgeois because they have too many reindeer, sent them all to prison, you know, like collectivized all these reindeer herds, these family herds, they turned into like government herds, you know, so it's been like, their culture is not completely intact. And it's like, well, there might be enough cause just from that kind of thing to explain some of the alcoholism, but I imagine it's a combination

of both, you know? Yeah. I've always wondered that about the Native Americans, the same sort of situation, right? Like how much of it is despair for them being removed from their normal nomadic way of life and how much of it is just the fact that they don't have the genes to process alcohol because they didn't evolve with alcohol. Yeah. You know, there's that story of Cynthia Ann Parker who's on the wall out there who's Quanah Parker's mother and she was kidnapped by the Comanche when she was nine and then recaptured by the Texas Rangers. I think it was the Texas Rangers when she was like 30 with a child.

And she was begging to go back to the Comanches. She did not want to live like it. And she found the way of living that the settlers had was just pathetic. She hated it. You know, the Comanche lived in a world where everything was magic and like settlers had was just pathetic. She hated it. The Comanche lived in a world where everything was magic, and the sky was a god, the wind was a god. You worshipped nature, you lived off the land,

you followed the buffalo herd, and then all of a sudden you're in a village. You're cooped up in a house. Everybody's pushing Jesus on you. You're like, Christ. Man, it's the same thing over there. It's a juxtaposition of ultimate freedom and this beautiful way of life versus, like, you're in the village in this little house. You know, these people are never going to be good, like, in Russian society because they live in some remote village. No internet, nothing.

You know, like. Yeah. And then, but they're also, the ones that aren't connected to their way of life are also not going to be great evenki because they've just lived in this little house and drink, you know, a bunch. So people get caught in that weird in-between place. But it seems like even if it's not cultural, there's some there's some thing that draws people to that way of life. Well, when they live like that, it's very satisfying. Absolutely. and as my for my own experience like yeah i'm not a native you know but i but i lived with them and it was

awesome and it like spoke to me deeply same thing even on you know things like the alone show it's like oh man this is what we're built for you know like you really feel it it's it's uh you know an interesting thing like i don't have like a great memory or you know i don't usually have good very vivid or interesting dreams but when i'm in the forest you know it's like i have all these vivid dreams that seem really meaningful and powerful it's like my memory is way better i remember people that i've long forgot just because you go so long without distraction, you can really delve into your thoughts. And, uh, yeah, it's a fascinating thing to experience. And once you do, you kind of realize, you know, what's missing. And it was interesting. It listened

to you talk to like Elon Musk and as the, you know, inevitable march of progress moves forward, it's like, we kind of of lose things but we don't actually know what we're losing you know and so uh as far as like the natives and like one of the reasons i want to see them preserve their cultural culture and their old ways and take it forward is just that's kind of a memory receptacle so that as things move forward we can still connect you know with with what we've lost because it is a lot. Well, it seems like we're becoming something different. It seems like we used to be this thing, this animal that figured out how to use tools and clothes and figured out how to live off the land and figured out how to live in harmony with nature.

And then we invented electricity. Yeah, it changed a lot. Yeah. I mean, then we invented something that allowed you to project media, like whether it's radio at first and then television. And then we are connected in this way where the world is, it's a smaller place in some ways because you're connected to everybody. But it's still the same size, really.

And it's also far more complicated because you get so much information. There's so much shit. So much to parse. Yeah, like Twitter. I don't know if you go on Twitter. I've actually saved myself from that. I dip my toe into it every now and then just to peek at the fucking madness. It's like a bunch of chimps with weapons just fighting in a box. Yeah, it's rough. It fucking madness. It's like a bunch of chimps with weapons

just fighting in a box. Yeah, it's rough. It's madness. I've appreciated your stance on putting something up and forgetting about it. I just get out of dodge. It is hard to do that. Of course, those are, I mean,

it's hard to not get sucked into social media, but it doesn't really speak to you anyway, but it just like absorbs your time it absorbs your time in a negative way though i don't i very rarely get anything positive i get occasionally interesting stories from some of the people that i follow and that i appreciate that but right the actual communication aspect of it like communicating to me or me to them like yeah not interested I like this. Right.

Like, in a way, like, even though this is digital, like, you and I are sitting at the I don't even like when I do them remotely. Yeah. I only do them remotely because of the pandemic or if someone can't get here. That's why I wanted to show up. Yeah, man. It's like, it feels unnatural. Yeah, but you like looking at people.

Yeah. I want to be in the room with you. Totally, totally. It feels better. It's fun. Yeah. people. I want to be in the room with you. It feels better. It's fun. But I think that's ironically, because podcasts are a digital medium in a lot of ways, it's one of the reasons why it resonates with people because they can tell that we are really having a conversation in a way

that people don't have that much. You don't really have three-hour conversations with someone where you just don't look at your phone just sit across from each other and talk to each other and then talk about all kinds of shit yeah yeah it's a beautiful thing it's like yeah you and you gotta have that it's like yeah that's one of the things you experience like what you know when i'm in the woods or on that yeah when i was on that show it's amazing how little you miss social media, right? You don't miss it at all, yeah. You don't miss it at all.

But then when you come back to life, it's still just like pulling you in. Yeah, it just sucks you in. Yeah. It's like a little demon whispering to you, come into the gutter. It's like the clown from It. Absolutely. Come on. I'm making a head check. Just do a little scrolling.

Yeah. Whoa, next thing you know. just do a little scrolling yeah next thing you know it's it's really interesting that those people that live in the village are so close to the happy people yeah they're so close to the taiga they're so close to and those people in that werner herzog documentary you watch it and you're like like why is it why is it that people think there's part there's like a cynical aspect of uh our society where they look at people that live like that. Like, look at this dummy. No electricity. He's got plastic windows because the bears might attack his house.

Get the fuck out of here. I'm not living like that. But meanwhile, he's not on antidepressants. You are. He's not on Xanax. You are. He doesn't drink before he goes to bed every night because he can't deal with life. You do.

It's cool because you're out there and it's like your creative juice is flowing. You get problems constantly coming up and it's like you got to think to solve them. Even that's probably how people developed creativity. It's like, how do I catch this moose or how do I do this or that? And you really just feel alive in that way. You really do. Well, so many people have done it and detached and then documented it. I'm sure you're aware of Dick Prenicky.

Yeah. So there's a bunch of great videos of him before he died where he moved up there. I believe he had some sort of an industrial accident when he was in his late 40s or early 50s and almost went blind and then made the decision, like, I'm not living like this anymore. I'm going to get a fucking cabin and just live in the woods and live off the land. And there's something so universally appealing about that

where those videos are fascinating. Watching him make his tools build his house right and that and that's what that's a just to add to that it's super appealing what's actually interesting about like native culture and stuff is you have that but you also have community because you've got like multiple teepees or whatever all these people and you're interacting with your family and loved ones while also you know know, living in a, you're not out by yourself. And they're all living that kind of fulfilled life. Right.

So you're all like feeding off it together. You're very in touch with like the cycles of life. Like it doesn't, it didn't feel, you know, death feels more like a natural part of the, you're always seeing it with the reindeer and with this and that, you know, there's always, and it just feels more natural part of the site you're always seeing it with the reindeer and with this and that you know there's always and it just feels more natural part of life it's less there's a little bit less existential angst i would imagine amongst the right the average nomad out there than there is here in la yeah but look dude here in la it's a fog that just sweeps through communities particularly now because nobody could work. This is the grossest I've ever seen it. Because people are so angry and depressed and confused and frustrated and helpless.

And it's tough when everyone's in a mask and you don't get the personal connection of just seeing someone and being like, smile. And if you try going out in LA, they'll scream at you if you don't have a mask on. Put your fucking mask on. I'm like, I'm on the other side of the street, bitch! They scream at you, like, I'm nowhere near you. The law! The law! They're fucking, everyone's Judge Dredd.

It's like, come on! Jesus Christ. Common sense. Meanwhile, I was in Texas this last weekend. Normal. People say hi, shake your hand. Everyone's walking around, no mask. You go to a restaurant, they make the waiters wear masks. but everybody else just Everyone's fucking sitting there like normal people and seems fine. Yeah, be interesting. See I hope

Just life has inherent risk. Yeah, but they're like coronavirus cases rising And they walk it off, but of course it will rise, but it's also like... Yeah. But yeah, you also got to live. Yes. And you really should go outside because that's probably one of the big reasons why you're going to get sick in the first place is lack of vitamin D, being cooped up, unhealthy lifestyle. Absolutely.

Absolutely. All those things that are like a side effect of the city, the bad food, the sedentary lifestyle, the lack of nutrients, all those things contribute to all those diseases. And then people being stacked on top of each other. Like, think about where they got it the worst. New York City. Of course. Yeah, yeah.

New York City, which, think about how they live. They live in this really weird way. It's exciting. Right. It's fun. A lot of action. Yeah, a lot of energy fuck you i was like whoa this is a crazy place to live but it's not normal like compared like

take someone from the taiga and bring them to manhattan before the pandemic and they'd be like what is this yeah what is this if you grew up there and you didn't know and you've never seen a tv that would be a fucking trip. It would be. Oh, my God. You'd be exhausted immediately. There's a Vice Guide to Travel special online that you could watch on this guy, Heinmo. And he lives in Heinmo Koth, I think his name is.

And he lives in really far north Alaska Alaska and it's Heinmo's Arctic Adventure is what it's called. And this guy moved out there, I believe in the seventies, he was working as a logger and he has a permit to have a cabin up there. It's like the last guy to have a permit. And he has like a permit on his door in case someone stops by because he's really not supposed to live out there, but he's allowed to. And he's a really intelligent guy, really articulate guy. And he just talks about how he just hunts caribou and catches fish and that he believes this is how people are supposed to live. And he just feels really connected and really healthy and happy.

And I mean, he looks great. He's like in his 60s. He's just wandering around hunting and fishing and occasionally has to shoot a bear because it's fucking trying to steal his food. Yeah, yeah. But there's something about it that, again, this is not a guy who grew up like that. Right. But he just – it resonated with him in a way that nothing else did. Yeah.

My wife came with me to Siberia for – spent a winter and a summer. But, you know, it's like, she's from New York city and she went out there and loved it. You know, like it's like, it's like a way better, she could see what it was. It's, uh, she could feel that connection. It actually, interestingly is a little tougher. There's Heinemann and he lives up there. And one of the things that he said that was really interesting, and so what's really funny is this dude who's with him is, I guess you could call him a millennial, and just looks like a reporter.

Little fellow with glasses on, has probably never done this a day in his life, but he's got balls because he went out there and lived with this guy for a little bit and stayed in a tent and the whole deal. But this guy had never seen 9-11. Heinmo didn't know anything. He never heard that it happened. Yeah, and then one day years later, I believe, he saw a photo of it. It's like that Japanese guy that didn't know World War II ended.

Right, exactly. The guy on the island. Yeah. So this guy, this reporter lives with him for quite a while and sort of experiences the life. And it's the same thing. It's like there's something about it that resonates with you. It does. You see the way this guy lives his life. You're like, wow, this is amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, I mean, obviously there's a big, for someone that grows up in a city or something, there's like a big hurdle to get over.

city or something, there's like a big hurdle to get over. But I think it would be fairly, I don't want to say universal, but I think a lot of people would really connect to it once you experience it. Well, my friend Dan, Dan Doty, he actually takes people out, and particularly kids, troubled kids, and takes them to the woods for extended periods of time and has them live off the land as a therapy. So you take these kids that have affluenza. You know what that is? Yeah, too affluent.

You grow up affluent. That's a sickness probably. It's a sickness. You grow up with nannies, no connection to your father and all that kind of shit, and they take them out to the woods. And Dan has this whole – he's got some project he's doing. I forget what it's called. And Dan has this whole, he's got some project he's doing.

I forget what it's called. See if you can find it, Dan Doty. But he actually has extended this to men. And there's these retreats that they do. And essentially the idea is to just reconnect people with nature. Reconnect people with hard work and living in the forest in a natural way as a therapy. And there's something incredibly, there it is right there. What is it called? Every Man.

Every Man, yeah. And that's my buddy Dan, the guy on the right. I've been hunting with him. He used to be on the meat eater crew, and then now he's doing this. That's cool. Oh, that's me and him. There you go. And Dan's just a great guy it's it's a really interesting thing that he

sort of felt like he had a calling right to introduce people to this sort of way of life as a therapy right as uh just uh just giving them a new perspective and letting them know that there's there's actually meaning to this this is not as simple as like oh let's go camping and be an asshole fucking drink beer we we tried a similar thing in siberia where we took a bunch of the village like young guys that were just kind of drinking their childhood away oh yeah took them out into onto that year guys you know trapping lands and how'd that go just went well i mean they all did great while they were out there. Of course, it's like a temporary thing when, unfortunately, when I left, a lot of them went back to doing the same thing they were doing. But it's like gives people an opportunity.

You know, like that's all you can do. You can't force anyone to change. Yeah, you can show them the stream, but you can't make them drink. Exactly. Yeah, it's got to be hard because if you've experienced that way of life only briefly, but the other way of life is very normal to you. Well, you just go back to your old friends.

Although that said, there was one dude that did a full 180. Really? Yeah. Well, that's all you need. Just one is a victory. Exactly. That's really out of how many people?

Oh, there was actually only like five that went out there. That's pretty amazing then. So it's actually pretty good, I guess. That's amazing. That's great odds. It felt not like a failure, but it just felt like potential. Hey, man, 20%? Well, yeah.

You have to look at it that way. That's excellent odds in that regard. Fuck, that's incredible. I mean, if you can get 100 people and 20 of them turn their life around, that's as good as any therapy you're ever going to have. As good as you could hope for, right? Yeah. For sure. I mean, how many people go to therapy for years and barely budge?

Right. Yeah, it's absolutely true. When you think of it that way, there you go. Thanks for the new perspective. So were you aware of Alone before you went to do it? Yeah, I was. I had watched it. I don't watch much TV, but it happened to be the one show that I kind of liked.

So I watched the first two seasons and basically just sent them a link to my YouTube videos. I was like, oh, you know, everyone watches it. I'm like, oh, I could do that. And then I forgot about it. And then a few years later, they called me out of the blue and said, yeah, we want you on season six. Well, it must be like Fear Factor. When we were doing Fear Factor, we would get just not, I mean, I wasn't going through them, but the people that were going through the casting folks, they would get just fucking stacks and stacks of people trying to get on the show. Oh, yeah.

It was impossible to navigate it all. Yeah, dude, you'd have to get really lucky to even. But they found you. Yeah, they found me somehow. I would think that they would think you were a little bit too good at it. This fucking guy's already done this. Yeah, I guess. I don't know what they thought, but I when uh they when i found out it was going

to be in the north you know like oh i was like oh awesome i like that place yeah and how how much money do you win when you win it five hundred thousand whoo nice little chunk of change yeah yeah so it's definitely motivating how it's a lot of uh a lot of manual labor to do that especially 77 days worth. Yeah, yeah. If you could bang out a half a mil in 77 days, you're doing pretty fucking good. Not bad wages, no? Yeah, real good.

So when you sign up for the show, how much time in advance do they give you? You probably hear maybe two, three months before they drop you off. A couple months. When you hear, okay, you're going to... I guess, you know, actually it might be like a month and a half. Yeah, yeah. From when they select you to when you get dropped off. So when you knew you were selected and you knew you're...

Did you do anything to prepare? You do little things. Like I had been living with my family, you know, like I haven't been in Russia for a few years because I had a few kids and doing the little family thing and I found out I was going on. I was like, oh man, because I had a few kids and doing the little family thing. I found out I was going on. I was like, oh, man, I'm a little rusty on all this.

But mostly my main preparation was trying to put on weight, which is always not that easy for me. So I was drinking as many calories as I could, trying to put on a little extra weight and shooting the bow, getting out out there shooting the recurve trying to dial in a little bit on that and why did you choose a recurve over a compound because you're only allowed to recurve yeah yeah it's got to be kind of primitive gear that you get okay yeah shitty bow yeah it would have been sweet with a compound oh my god yeah but uh no it was cool. Yeah, my preparations were mainly that, mainly just trying to put on weight, dial in on the bow. Now, when you say try to put on weight,

that was so that you could burn fat if you ran out of food? Right, just so I had a little more reserve because I'm a skinny guy with a fast metabolism. Like previous winners of the show had usually been bigger dudes that had a lot of extra weight to lose. You could live off your fat for a long time fast metabolism like previous winners of the show had usually been bigger dudes that Had a lot of extra weight to lose you could live off your fat for a long time water There's actually a guy Rob wolf was Rob wolf that told us about this guy that had lived No, Dom D'Agostino told us about this guy who lived a ketogenic diet who went he? fasted for 360 something days he must have been huge he was fat as fuck but at the end

of it was a normal size and what's really crazy is he didn't have this the loose skin that plagues a lot of people that lose weight i mean his whole body shrunk yeah and he became like a normal guy good for him he lived off vitamins and water he took a vitamin drip and and drank water and for a whole year ate no food yeah and his body just lived off the fat yeah yeah that's amazing yeah it's a crazy story yeah yeah i mean it takes will there you go there yeah i wonder what he did for just like hunger pangs i know well i don't think you get them. I think after a while you don't get them.

Yeah, they do go away after a while. And when you're that fat, I mean, you basically have a year's worth of food just carrying around. I think he got down like 160 pounds and became a normal person. Like he was morbidly obese. Do you know it? 180. He lost 276. Good for him. 276. it? 180. He lost 276 pounds. Good for him.

276. That's crazy. That's crazy. You got a photo of his I wonder if he was able to hold it off. I wonder if he was able to keep it off.

I know he's a fat fuck now. Now he's 3,000 pounds. Just went back to donuts and only... Yeah. Oh, back in the day. That's what he... Is that him?

That was in the 60s. Oh, was it really? Wow. That's what he – is that him? It was in the 60s. Oh, was it really? Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, and like you say, he doesn't have a lot of that skin. No, he wasn't plagued with – is this – this is the only time this was done, was in the 60s? When I typed it in, that's what popped up. There's another guy that fasted for 385 days, like a hunger strike or something. Wow, look at what he used to look like versus what he looked like at the end.

That's nuts. Yeah, so I was self-conscious about my weight going on there. Like, I'm too skinny for this sport. So what kind of stuff did you eat to pack on the calories? Oh, I was just drinking olive oil and trying to get fat off of that. Olive oil, huh? Yeah, yeah. Really?

Dude, what kind of farts did you have from just drinking olive oil? I would imagine your gastro- It's not like the Mediterranean. The gastro system would be like, what are you doing? Not like your homeland of Italy, right? Just kidding. Now, did you drink soda, too? Did you try to get sugar in you as well?

No, gross. Yeah. I tried drinking those weight gainer shake things, but, man, those are brutal. Yeah, you feel terrible. It's just like all morning I was just laid out. They fucking just wreck you. Oh, they do. It's terrible stuff.

Yeah, those were like, I remember back in my, like, right out of high school, there's a lot of guys who were trying to put on muscle, drink up weight weight gain and stuff, and would come in this tub, this huge tub, and you had to put many scoops into the shake. Yeah, I hate that stuff. And just a fucking feeling in your stomach, and you just drank sand. Just not meant to be at that point. No, no. So you're just drinking olive oil.

Did you wind up putting on any weight? Yeah, I got, like, 25 pounds or so. Oh, wow. So you're just drinking olive oil. Did you wind up putting on any weight? Yeah, I got like 25 pounds or so. Oh, wow. So that was actually pretty good in like a month and a half or whatever. That's pretty impressive because you're a really lean guy. But it was all fat. And honestly, that weight went away really fast too when I was out there. Just from the exercise?

Yeah, just from running around. Yeah, yeah. I would imagine the cold alone makes you – Yeah, you burn – I mean, I think it was about, you know, you average around a pound a day just losing weight maybe a little. That's kind of scary. Yeah, so you kind of feel like the pressure's on to hunt some big game, hunt some, you know, like, yeah, yeah. So do you have formal training with a recurve? Do you know how to use it correctly?

No, I don't. It's self-taught, so I need to go meet up with Aaron and get some tips, right? Well, that's why Aaron really got into it, because he's such a good bow hunter with a compound that he actually found it to be not as challenging

as you needed and wanted, and he wanted to kind of prove to himself and other people that he could do the same with a recurve bow. He's super same with a recurve bow. He's super accurate with a recurve. Yeah, that's awesome. Have you seen the videos that he puts up? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's got these videos of him shooting bullseyes at like 45 yards with a recurve. Right, right, right. Kind of crazy. It is. That's really cool. Yeah, I mean, I just practice getting better. But you've got to practice a lot with that thing. You do, you do.

I did notice on that show like there's something about you by yourself and you need the food you get so concentrated you're so dialed in like when i go shoot at a target it's hard to really be fully focused but man when you see like the squirrel or the rabbit over there it's just like you're so dialed in that i found my i was pretty accurate out there and were you using the point of the arrow the tip of the arrow were you using that as a guide? Like D when you aim yeah, yeah, well, let's see Maybe it's a little more instinctual than that But yeah, you kind of yeah, it's the point of the arrow

Jenna yeah this part Aaron was trying to explain to me how he used it like he actually Like to a certain range like he like, where his 20-yard range is based on the point of his broadhead. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, that's a good idea. I mostly was, I mean, I've done a lot of bow hunting, too. You're bringing it way up here and looking down the shaft of the arrow versus, like, a recurve or a compound where your string is much lower in your face. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah yeah you're using the arrow to kind of guess the distance between the target and yeah the top of

your area and just use you know like bow hunting just allow it gives you good experience with estimating range that's one of the most important things because with the recurve you got a big arc so right five yards off slow yeah or it's going that slow. Yeah. Or it's going very slow. So did you have a target that you practiced with while you were out there? Not while I was out there. I practiced a lot on just rabbits and squirrels, you know, every day. Just got pretty dialed in. And you had nine arrows?

Nine arrows, yeah. Did you lose any? I lost a couple. I was shooting at squirrels and trees. Oh, that's got to suck. They're just so tempting because they're up there like... You're like... shooting at squirrels and trees and they're just so tempting because they're up there like now what about fat like yeah i would think that you would need fat well yeah you do and that's that's why you eat the whole animal you know suck the brain out of the rabbit try to get every bit

of fat you can get and i i learned a lot about that out there because, I mean, I caught a lot of rabbits and squirrels early on, but I still just lost weight as fast as if I wasn't eating. It felt like that said it. Yeah, you know what rabbit starvation is? Yeah, yeah. When I went out there, I was like, I wonder how long that takes. Is that like a year? But basically it's as soon as you start eating rabbits.

But there's no fat on them. Yeah, not much on them. It was like maybe enough to make up for the energy i was expending by running around like i don't think i lost fat their weight faster than someone that was just sitting there it was probably about the same but i was able to run around have fun you know shoot my bow and like learn my land see how animals were moving and stuff so you didn't have any supplies that you initially set out with in terms of like no food no food yeah it's it's a fascinating experience when the helicopter drops

you off flies away and you're you've never scouted this place before you didn't get to choose where you're at wow and it flies away and you're just like wow somehow i have to did they scout it yeah they did so they knew there was wild animals Yeah, they scout out and basically try to find 10 spots that have some form of potential sustainability on them. And then you got to try to unlock the key. Did you have any filtration system for water? No, I started by boiling all my water. But then I just slowly drank bits of raw water until I could pretty much just drink raw water. Because it was a big old lake up in the far north.

It's pretty clean. And I didn't get sick. I drank out of a lake once off of Prince of Wales in Alaska. Apparently it's high enough altitude so there's no beavers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was still weird just dipping your canteen in a lake drinking yeah that's what we had done in siberia too and it's always even in like moss puddles it's like this yellow water but they'll just dip right in and drink out so

now when you said you drank a little bit that was to test to see yeah just to see if i'd get mildly sick rather than chugging it to begin with right so you you boiled it first and then started sipping it a little bit and then eventually just were drinking it. Yeah, although another thing in the cold, when you're trying to conserve calories like that, you don't want to drink a lot of cold water. So I'd heat it anyway. Oh, that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. And what did you do for shelter? A tarp was one of the things we took. So I built a little like a frame shelter just out of logs, covered it, like chinked it with moss, put the frame over. I spent less time on shelter, more time like procuring food and hunting. So it was a quick shelter, threw it up. I knew, I mean, I've lived in a teepee in that weather. So I like knew I was going to be fine on the cold, as long as I could provide enough calories to keep my body warm.

So how many days did it take you before you got an animal? Well, I got a rabbit on day one, so that was nice. And then I continued to get rabbits, but it was 23 days when I got a moose. So that was... Well, then you're good. Then you're good, kind of. That's like eight months of eating. Yeah. I mean i mean again i was amazed how much fat you eat you know like yeah so i was i was counting my moose and being like hmm this isn't like an infinite supply of food here you

know because there's not enough fat yeah because you're definitely eating more fat than you are protein yeah but plus i had a wolverine come and pillage my stores of fat and stuff. Yeah, I heard about this. So how did that happen? Where did you store everything? Well, it was initially, to be honest, I didn't expect to see a wolverine. I never have, and it just wasn't something on my consciousness. And so when I got the moose, I put all the meat up on this shelf I built

and thought, man, if a bear comes, it'll be great. I'll have a chance at a bear. You know, I'll wake up at night and kind of be like a bait pile, basically. Plenty of fat. Yeah, yeah. And so I was maybe expecting a bear to come, but I went to sleep the first night I got the moose and woke up and I came out and there were just tracks everywhere.

Somehow I hadn't woken up, but Wolverine's a lot slyer animal and he had come and pulled out all the kidney fat you know i had like a jug of kidney fat i was just like no he ate all your fat he hauled off a full gallon jug packed with kidney fat i had other fat but that was like you know weeks of fat there did you find it no it was it was rough and so then he was pretty excited i'm sure that wolverine just kept coming back every day i figured i don't know if they're like i figured they were nocturnal but they sure enough i'd be like out there scraping my moose hide in the middle of the day he'd come running up and like try to grab some meat and run off and i was like holy smokes this thing's bold is this a photo of him? Yeah, that's the one.

Where is he? That's at my shelter there. That's off the show. There he is, sneaking around. Wow. Yeah, so he stole 35,000 calories, which is gold up there. Oh, so you got some serious gear on. You're wearing Kuyu.

Yeah, yeah. So you got real light clothes. Yeah, real gear. It's real light clothes. Real gear. Yeah, it's not naked and afraid, fortunately. No, well, that's serious hunting gear you're wearing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and there's your A-pillar. Yeah, there's that little.

That's pretty dope. Is that when you pissed off at the moose fat? Yeah. A gallon of moose fat contains roughly 35,000 calories. Wow, gone. Gone. Cunty little Wolverine. You should have kept that shit in the little tent with you. Yeah, I calories. Wow. Gone. Gone. Cunty little Wolverine. You should have kept that shit in the little tent with you.

Yeah, I really should have. I thought I would hear a bear coming, but I didn't think of a Wolverine. Then the, anyway, he kept coming every day, and I knew it was going to be me or him kind of on that island. They're such scary little fucks. I read, maybe Jamie could find it, but that one killed a polar bear in the zoo a while ago. A wolverine?

Yeah, yeah. I'm not shocked. Ferocious little things. I've seen them chase off bears. I've seen videos of them chasing bears off of kills. Wolves, all that. Bears are like, what the fuck? They're just so ferocious.

And they're so durable. Like they get bit by bears and wolves and they just fucking shake it off. Yeah. Cool animals for real. Oh, yeah, man. Such cool animals. It's just a weird animal, right? It is.

They're so ferocious. Yeah. And small. Yeah. Just making it on attitude out there. Yeah, just fucking anger and biting. Little muscle ball. Did you eat him?

Yeah. Yeah. Of course, if you shoot a wolf. I was actually killed it with my axe. But when you do that, you've got to eat the heart out of it. So I cut it open, ate the heart. Then I ate a drumstick, of course, but it tasted like skunk. So I was like, I'll save the rest for a rainy day.

How do you know what skunk tastes like? Have you eaten skunk? I just smelled them. I was assuming. No, they have a musky flavor to them. Oh, I'm sure. It's a fucking gross animal. Imagine how much testosterone those little fucks must have.

Yeah, they're coarse under their veins. They're so ferocious. So you ate his drumstick and that's it? Yeah, and the organs for the vitamins. Yeah. Did you try to use the rest of them for bait for something? No, I was just saving it for eating later. I put it up on my storage cache. Yeah, when a dark day, I was just saving it for eating later. You know, like I put it up on my

storage cache. Yeah. When a dark day, I'll eat that. And you run out of moose if it really does go a year. Yeah, exactly. So when you didn't have the fat, like what was it like just eating? Did you have some fat left over? Oh yeah, you still have a lot. I mean, to be fair, there's still a lot of fat on a moose. Like there was all the ribs you know the the butt the rump has a big old thick layer of fat you got the it's a weird the bone marrow is oh okay yeah that's all straight fat the brain you know there's like there's a lot of fat still but that was kind of the easiest fat you know anyway yeah yeah it was it was sad but not the end of the world it was only it was mostly depressing in that i figured somebody else got something big,

and once I lose that, now I'm at a disadvantage again. So then it put the fire under me to keep getting more. So you killed him with an axe, but you shot him with a bow first, right? Yeah, the Wolverine, yeah. So you pinned him to the ground with the bow. Yeah. He had come the night before, and I had seen him behind a bush. I had my flashlight, and I could see his eyes.

I thought about firing an arrow in there, but I was like, surely he's going to come out, and I'll get a better shot. But he closed his eyes, snuck away, and I never saw him leave from behind the bush. I was like, dang it, I missed my opportunity. The next day I saw him again the next night coming down through some shrubs. And I had set up some warning systems around, like cans on strings, so I'd hear him coming, and I heard like clank, clank, clank. I was like, oh gosh, I got my bow and went outside.

Sure enough, he scurried down this hill, went behind a bush, and I just sent my arrow in there this time. Through the bush. Through the bush. And so I don't know what it did going through there, but it deflected branches. Yeah, pinned his leg, his back leg to the ground. Top of the arrow was in the branches

and it just gave me enough time to grab my axe, run over there. He was just like, Is that him? No, it's just another one. Those little guys. Dude, you must have been so fucking terrified to run up that thing, even with an axe. It happened so fast. Yeah yeah it wasn't a cool like you picture me like killing it like really but it was like

yeah no it was it was did you film all that too yeah but it was at night so it's kind of grainy you know so that's the crazy thing right like you don't you're not just doing something but you're also self-filming film so you gotta like yeah do they give you tips on how to film yeah they give you film tips before you go out i actually found like this wasn't everyone's experience but i found it was like kind of nice to have a camera because when i'd been like fur trapping in siberia it's like you're just alone alone and everything you do just feels like nobody's ever gonna know about it you know everything you do just feels like nobody's ever going to know about it. You know, like you do all these cool things and you know.

I remember like I'd been out there for a few weeks and I came into like this beautiful woods in Siberia, you know, and I remember being like, wow. And then I was like, oh, weird. That was the first time I've spoken out loud in like three weeks, you know. So I was like. So I was just saying wow. Yeah. Wow. Like caught my attention. Oh, that was my voice, you know, like. And then, of course wow. So I was just saying wow? Yeah, wow, like caught my attention.

Oh, that was my voice, you know? Like, and then of course your mind's really active, but it's just all in your head. But on the show with the cameras, you know, it's like, you're constantly like, hey-ba-doo, she-ba-doo, talking about stuff. Oh, wow. So it kind of made me feel like I wasn't quiet as a loan.

So when they tell you, when they give you the camera equipment and tell you to go out and film yourself, how much battery life do you have? Well, you get this big car battery size pack that you can recharge your batteries with. And then they'll occasionally come on med checks to make sure you're not too skinny or something like that. Really? Yeah, yeah. How often do they check on you?

It varies. Sometime around 10 days-ish or something. Every 10 days, they're like, oh, he's Really? Yeah, yeah. How often do they check on you? It varies. Sometime around 10 days-ish or something. So every 10 days, they're like, oh, he's dead. Yeah, yeah. Have they had people die out there? Not yet, no. Fortunately. Do they give you a bell to ring or something?

You have a thing that you like, it's the thing you would give up with, like if you were ready to tap out a red button. What is it, like a Garmin or something? Yeah, you can send texts on it. Oh, okay. So you text them every morning and night and basically say, I'm okay. Oh, wow. And so they know you're okay.

If you don't do that, then they'll come and probably see if you're alive still. Oh, wow. Wow. And so I would imagine their show is entirely dependent not just on you succeeding, but documenting everything. Yeah. show is entirely dependent not just on you succeeding but documenting everything yeah they very i think i mean they were very clear with us like the you guys have to document everything we need eight hours of footage a day minimum you know like wow and when you're out

there do you have a solar charger no no so but you know it probably wasn't a lot of sun up there that time of year but that big battery block and then you got a lot of little packs, battery packs. And it's kind of what restricts where you live is that you have 100 pounds of gear. So when you're swinging an axe at this wolverine, you got all that on film? Yeah. Even the shot? Yeah. Well, you can see me.

I just set it up. Because I heard him coming because I heard him coming. I heard him coming, because my cans were a long ways away. You know, a ways away, and it's like clank, clank. So you have a tripod? I ran out with my tripod and my camera, set it on. Oh, my God. Because he had a trail, so I knew generally where he'd be coming.

So I just set my camera up, put it in that direction, and that's kind of where he came. That would be a giant distraction. Yeah. That would make it so because i know i missed the first moose because because there was a different moose that i had shot at that i totally missed but uh big giant dinosaur of a moose it was so cool to see but uh i grabbed my bow and arrow and my camera and ran out there set the camera up took my shot and i was like oh i didn't grab my quiver and so my first shot I misjudged the distance and dropped the arrow between his legs I was like oh oh no I only grabbed one arrow cuz I grabbed my stupid camera did he run when the arrow

came near him no I like dropped between his legs he looked around I totally would have had time for another shot it was a real kick in the pants so then i god he kind of took out trotted off and i was just like man did you know you were there was he aware of you not too aware like i took a shot he like heard it knew something was up what had happened is i had set again like those cans up as a warning system and i heard him like in the morning hit the cans and I figured that would just warn me want you know like if something hit the cans it would wake me up and I could go out and try to hunt it what actually happened is he went through the cans scared himself and ran like perfectly in my direction and turned around and looked at the cans like broadside to me like I came out and it

was just a perfect shot but it was 40 I paced it off afterwards 43 yards and it was just a perfect shot. But it was 40. I paced it off afterwards, 43 yards. And he was such a big animal that I thought he was closer. So I put him at, like, 30 yards, guessing, you know. And I missed my first and only shot. I was like, ah. Did you call him in? Yeah, I've been calling Moose, like, every day. I would just pick berries, call Moose.

Just like, ah. Yeah, good one. Ah. Yeah, like, oh. Yeah, good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's very good. I think they'd come. Yeah. Get it in your lungs. I learned that from my friend Mike Harkridge.

Yeah. Now when you're doing that, you're waiting a long time, right? You're calling them and then you're just sitting there waiting. Literally it was like I'd find a good berry patch, just sit there and eat berries and call and eat berries and call. And, yeah, that's all I would do. And I think both the bull moose that I saw came into that calling because it would always – but it would take them a long time. So I'd, like, call all evening and then they would usually come in in the morning, which was interesting. So it's not like they –

They come from miles. But, yeah, they must have come from a long ways away. They come like huffing and puffing all in the rut and stuff. Yeah, it's so cool. I could just hear it going. Yeah, yeah. They're so vocal. Yeah.

And it's nice you can mimic their voice with your voice. That's the nice thing about moose. Right. It's not like an elk where you need a tube. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can actually make the horny cow moose noise. Yeah, exactly. Just got to get into it.

So was it in the rut? Yeah, the fall. Oh, that's lucky. So that was, yeah, made it fun. Was that by design for them? Yeah, they want to give you a chance of getting something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, you shot that moose.

How did the other people survive? And how many people made it? A lot of people just through toughness, you know, like just starving out like just starving out like dude you know that you were pointing out yes just catching a few rabbits here and there you know like uh fishing is a big thing you know like uh but yeah it was it was nice to have the moose for sure i knew i had to it was like that i'm not gonna have a chance if it was starving i would have been out of there so fast did anybody else get a moose no uh-uh i assume someone would but i mean again with a recurve it's pretty hard plus you haven't ever scouted your territory so you don't know how things are going uh because i was so focused on getting one

right from the bat like right when they dropped my helicopter off, it was like, I went out and scouted like where might moose come in. Did you bring binos? No, you can't take those, but I just, I just put my shelter where the wind would always be blowing my scent out to

the sea, you know, out to the, and taking into account all those little things, you know, like, uh, yeah,

building my shelter away from where moose might walk by so that I wouldn't blow up a spot, you know, like, yeah, building my shelter away from where moose might walk by so that I wouldn't blow up a spot, you know, all that kind of stuff. So how did the other people, what did they eat? Yeah, it was, I mean, a lot of- Did you talk to them after it was, like, someone made it to 77 days before they quit, right? 72 or three, yeah. So they let you go an extra four days?

Yeah, because a storm came in and they couldn't get out there. Did you know about it? No, I had no idea. Oh, wow. I was just plugging along out there. So who the fuck made it to 72 days? It was a girl named Wonia and she and another guy named Nathan made it. His

shelter burnt down and that was kind of the end for him. Both of them made it right up to 71, 72 days. His shelter burnt down and he said, I'm not making another one Both of them made it right up to 71, 72 days. His shelter burned down. He said, I'm not making another one. I quit. Yeah, I mean, it was cold at that point. It'd be pretty tough.

Wow, there's a girl. Yeah. Look at her. This is her. She caught something with her bow, like a little game pheasant or something. Oh, and she's sad? She's happy, I think. Happy to finally eat.

Yeah, then she cooks it up. Wow. She's chopping it all up. Yeah, and so, yeah, they would eat, you know, as everybody did. Look how red that is. You just eat everything. How crazy how red that bird's meat is. That's nuts.

It looks like a beef. You know what I mean? Right, right, red meat. A venison bird, doesn't it? Yeah. It's crazy. Look at her, so happy. Oh, I'm so happy.

So she almost made it. it yeah she did really well but uh some fucking ballsy people to do this yeah it's pretty intense you know like good for everybody that tried because you do get like yeah but they don't get shit they get zero you get 72 days of starving, lady. I know. It's rough. And one guy walks away with a half a mil. Yeah. That's crazy. How much moose did you have left at the end of the show? A couple hundred pounds.

Wow. I still had a lot. You were good to go. Yeah. How many pounds of it were you eating in a day? As much as I could. You must be so hungry, right? Plus, I was having fish, so I would have fish for lunch, and then breakfast and dinner I would eat moose.

And I basically told myself, well, I can't quit until I finish this whole moose. Let me eat it as fast as I can. So how were you catching fish? You brought a homemade pole? Yeah, I caught most of them. It was just a birch pole. I had rigged up a little thing that made me so I could cast, and I could cast long ways out and it was the funnest fishing i've ever done you could cast yeah i made with like a spool that i'd brought for my fishing line or whatever and what did you use for like the

eyes for the the wire a snare wire was one of the things i brought so i'd made like rigged up a little fishing pole and it worked great it was real similar to what they use in Soviet, like old Soviet reels. So I had been, it gave me the idea for making that style of a reel because they're just so basic, you know. And it takes a little practice to use. But anyway, I rigged it up. It worked great. I could cast way out there. Took me a long time to catch my first fish, a few weeks.

But after I did i kind of like dialed them in and it was what were you using bait or lure i made a lure like a little spinner i made and that and i caught a fish but it snapped my line but the uh and then i tried moose meat and they loved it so i would just be casting in on catching them all on moose meat or like fish belly you know you catch a fish and cut out a strip, and they loved that. It was mostly lake trout, but some of them were over 20 pounds, and you got this homemade rod, and you're reeling it in, shaking your hands out. It was so fun.

20-pound lake trout. That's insane. With a homemade lure and a homemade stringer. That's a different thing. That's paracord. I was, yeah, just testing out making like a fly line out of paracord there. And did you have a leader as well? Using the paracord and like braiding it down.

That's not the thing I used on the show. That was just experimenting. Now, when you were using the line, what kind of line? Did you bring fishing line? Yeah, that was another item I brought. Like braided line? No, you can only bring monofilament and barbless hooks, so it made everything that much more intense.

Why barbless hooks? I think it's Canadian regulations or something. Fucking cow. Silly people. There was never going to be any release in that situation anyway. Yeah, that's why it's so confusing. Why would they have barbless hooks? Yeah.

But they allowed you to, what pound test did you use? 20. Oh, wow. So you're like at the limit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The lake trout. Yeah. And you got no drag, so you're just kind of going on feel.

Yeah, it was very, very fun. Wow. Did you try to drag it out like a fly rod where you let it slip through your fingers a little bit? Yeah, let it pull away, reel it in, let it pull away reel it in let it pull away until it finally wears itself out which you know you're stripping the line in or you do you have something my little reel so i could like put my thumb on it on my spool and it would like drag make drag and then i could reel it and did you reel with a finger yeah oh wow i made like when

it was cold i made this rabbit fur glove that where just the tip of my finger stuck out. Oh, wow. And then, yeah, I got to say, though, that was the funnest fish I've ever caught. So how many fish did you wind up catching? There's 13, but they're all big, you know? Like, they're all... So you can eat them for a couple days. Yeah, like, from between probably 8 and 20-something pounds.

Did you eat the fish guts at all? Did you cook? Yeah, like, I ate the stomachss and the head was the best part. When you're out there starving and you need fat, a lot of times I would eat the fish and kind of put the main meat part of it away for later. But you need the belly, the head, all the fatty parts. Did you make a soup with the head? Yeah, I made all my fish into soup and then I would fry all my moose, basically.

Oh, no kidding. All your fish you made into soup? Yeah, just to get all fish into soup, and then I would fry all my moose, basically. Oh, no kidding. All your fish you made into soup? Yeah, just to get all the nutrients out of the bone. Did you find any edible vegetables or anything? Lots of berries, like up north. So it's awesome as far as berries go. Although my spot didn't really have many, but I found patches. Well, where you find berries, you find bears, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you find any root vegetables or any wild onions? Not much. There's not a lot of that up there. There's lichen, so I boiled reindeer lichen. Oh, that's good. What does that taste like? Real bland.

It's kind of acidic. It's not great for eating, but I would mix it with my moose meat just to get carbs, like some kind of carbs maybe. That's what all the caribou eat, right? Yeah. That's weird. It's weird what you can turn into an animal you know just take a pile of lichen and it turns into it's weird stuff too right yeah so that was you have no seasoning or anything right right but man i gotta tell you i didn't you you know you know elk too but man i didn't miss it at all it was so good from the first bite to the last. Oh, moose.

Man. Moose is so delicious. Every time, you're just like, mmm. Just moose over fire. Yeah, no complaints. Did you eat some of it raw? Yeah, like the liver. You ate that raw?

Yeah, just for the extra boost. Did you have a knife, obviously? A Leatherman, yeah. Yeah. Oh, just a Leatherman. Just a Leatherman. So you butchered the moose with a Leatherman? Yeah, yeah. Holy shit Oh, just a Leatherman. Just a Leatherman. So you butchered the moose with a Leatherman? Yeah, yeah.

Holy shit. How long did that take? Oh, I think I got the moose finally at like noon. And then I think I was done cutting it up and hauling it by like 10 o'clock that night. And do you have a sharpening stone or anything? Yeah, just a rock, you know. Just a regular rock that you would find laying around? Yeah, I find one that looks like it might work well.

Oh, did it work? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. That's so crazy to rely on a Leatherman, that little tiny ass blade. Yeah, but he got only so many items, you know, and I wanted the wire cutters, I wanted the little saw for crafting stuff, you know, so I figured if my worst problem is that I have a small knife to cut up a big game, I'll be pretty happy. Was there anything that you wished you brought that you didn't? Yeah, I would have taken probably a gill net instead of my saw. I took a saw and I almost never used it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you thought you wouldn't use it for trees? Yeah, I just thought it would just be a calorie saver rather than using your axe. But it was kind of a risk I took, and it ended up not being worthwhile.

So that was only one. That's pretty good, though. Yeah, yeah. One thing. Yeah, yeah. It was nice for building. I built like a 12-foot tall cache where I stored all my moose meat and stuff. It was nice for that.

So what other objects did you bring? You brought a tarp. You brought a fishing line. A fishing line. Oh, there it is. Right there. Fucking James the best. Farrow rod.

What is a farrow rod? That's like that sparker. You scrape it, and it makes sparks. Oh, so that's. Right there. Fucking James the best. Farrow rod. What is a farrow rod? That's like that sparker. You know, you scrape it and it makes sparks. Oh, so that's how you started your fires? Yeah, yeah. Mmm. Fishing line and hooks, all barbed wire. How many hooks did you have?

25. Ooh, that's scary. Nice chunk. But yeah, no, they go fast. 77 days. They go fast. That was down to my last ones. A bow and you're allowed nine arrows only.

Yeah. Did you think about constructing allowed nine arrows only. Yeah. Did you think about constructing arrows? Yeah, I thought and I was thinking by the time I got the moose, you know, it was early enough that I didn't really need to make arrows. But I was thinking if I want to shoot more at squirrels, I better make some arrows. Trapping wire. What is that? That's just thin gauge wire, like 20 gauge wire. And would you use that for?

For snaring rabbits. I put hundreds of snares out and then i built you know for building my fishing pole stuff like that and did that in a sleeping bag yeah a sleeping bag brought a fucking warm sleeping bag minus 40 and then you heat up rocks throw it in there with you oh okay yeah and then a multi-tool crazy you didn't bring a knife just a multi-tool wow i guess that makes sense though if i was looking at that list like what would i take off for a knife yeah it's kind of redundant saw what would you take if you didn't have the saw probably would have taken a gill net i ended up making a

gill net out of the paracord but i think that would have been useful wow it's crazy you only get 10 things yeah it puts the pressure on oh my goodness it does so once you shot the moose and you knew you had all that meat and then what did you do with your time after that oh i kept busy i just always assumed somebody else was going to get something so i was like you know i spent a lot of time of right after getting the moose like preserving it smoking it, trying to store it where it would be safe. Because everywhere you put it, something's getting it.

You hang it in trees and the birds are pecking it. Everybody's going for it. Did you have a tarp that you could cover it with? Well, I only had the tarp for my shelter. That was an item I also thought, had I known I was going to get something big, it would have been nice to have a tarp. Yeah, it was a lot of work protecting my meat but then also just continued fishing continued you know all that kind of stuff and after you got

the wolverine out of the picture was there any other i thought man after i got the wolverine i was so happy i was like yes i just gotta eat and live and then like two days later i was sitting there frying up some meat and man i've never i haven't been able to find on the internet a good Wolverine sound. Another one came up? Another one came and I just hear it out in the woods. No, it's like a witch in the woods. It's just like, yeah. And I was like, oh, did I?

I was like just praying like, oh, I think I made that up, right? I didn't really hear that. Like a dream. But sure enough enough he started coming around but we were only we have regulations right so you can't kill you only kill one wolverine so i was like yeah so then i was just on defense mode trying to set up like i'd like set up all these cans so that when i walked through with the you know it clank and then i'd wake up and chase it away shut that camera off we're going commando on this fucking wolverine.

It's tempting for sure. Oh, 100%. I mean, that's survival. It is. This isn't just hunting. Yeah, it is. It's survival. You're trying to survive.

Man, talk about intense hunting, Joe. I can imagine. When I hit the moose, unlike anything I've ever experienced you're like oh my gosh that was a good shot and you're just like you knew you had but then you gotta wait you know you gotta wait like an hour to go look because you don't want to spook it it's such a big animal like how heavy were your arrows um let's see i had 180 point grain broadhead so heavy i mean 125 grain broadheads and 80 grain insert oh So pretty heavy up front. Heavy FOC.

Yeah, yeah. And then what kind of shafts? Full-length shaft. Carbon? Like, what are you using? Yeah, carbon wood-look shafts. Feathers? Yep, with feathers.

And yeah, did the job. It sunk all the way in to the moose entirely and didn't come out the other side because it was a quartering towards me shot. Oh, wow. And it sunk the feathers in. The back of the arrow touched its back hip. Oh, so you must have shot it perfect between the ribs. Yeah, it was great.

But I only hit one lung, so it was a long, you know, of course I was tracking it, lost track of the blood. It was like a big ordeal tracking that thing down. And then you've got to worry about something finding it before you. Yeah, yeah. What would you do if a fucking bear found it? Hunt the bear, I guess. I was expecting a bear to show up and never did. You never saw any bears while you were there?

No, my spot must not have had bear like i was expecting one to come for the kill maybe they hibernated you know right around that time so i was like right on the edge of when they would go in yeah and uh yeah just got away with that one or you know i actually to be honest was kind of hoping one would come because what did you eat first the uh the heart down I love the heart, man. The heart's delicious. Yeah, with that ring of fat around it. Yeah. It's so good. And how did you cook that?

Just slice it? Just fried it, sliced it, and fried it. Put it on sticks or something? I had one of my items was a frying pan. Oh, that's right. Oh, that's nice. Man, it was so good. Did you use the fat as like oil?

Yeah. So you like cooked the fat first? Cooked it first. I rendered a bunch of fat into oil. Wow. You must have felt like a fucking caveman. Like a successful caveman. Yeah, yeah.

It was interesting to get into that mindset because you're just living. You feel really connected to everything. You feel like... Out there carving stakes with a leather man. Yeah. That is so crazy. And do you use the axe to chop up the bones to make marrow yeah just break open the bones with rocks on a rock like and then pick out the marrow and that was that's so good did you cook it yeah cold and raw so creamy and delicious

oh so healthy for you too when you're out there right yeah it's exactly what you're craving yeah wow and so when you had that stashed in your cash a must a lot of pressure must have been relieved though right oh yeah it felt like a just a demon lifted off my back it's just like you know the whole time you're like you're gonna starve you're gonna starve you're gonna starve you're just like trying to fight this thing off and then uh man we, when you shot that and it, it was like three hours, I tracked it and I had lost it. So I was lost its blood trail and I lost its foot trails. Cause it was like hard ground. And I was just like, no, I cannot lose this moose. And then, uh, but I was like, well, I hit it in the lung. I'm sure. So I think it's going to stay downhill. So I just followed the shoreline. Sure enough, I came up up on it but it was like sitting there alert in a lot still alive yeah and I was just like oh man I ducked down I was like debating

like can I sneak in and try to get another shot but no way and it's like so I just waited it out and it was a long three hours where I would just be like sitting there and it would stand up and you're just like no no no no no then it would fall down and you're like yes and then it like really dragged it out but when it finally died yeah walked over there and i'd yeah talk about a weight lifted off your shoulders did people give you a hard time for that for oh yeah i got some good internet hate but honestly it's people i can understand it like it sounds good like why don't you go finish it off with an arrow it could run away of course you could run away you can't even let it know that you're an arrow. Yeah, you got to let it be calm and just, like, go away.

How close were you when you saw it standing up? How many yards? 50 yards, probably. Yeah, so you really don't want to send 150. Yeah, all you're going to do is poke it, and then it's going to know it's being attacked and get up and run away. Right. And I understand the people that were mad just having bow hunted, so fair enough. Yeah, and also, it's survival. It's not just regular bow hunting. Yeah, you hunted, so fair enough. Yeah, and also it's survival.

It's not just regular bow hunting. Yeah, you can't make any risks. That's a crazy situation, man. Yeah, it was intense. God, the anticipation. That's even more crazy, right? Like you hit it, but it's still alive, and then you're hoping you can get that moose. I've lost.

I don't know if you've ever done that where I've hit a deer. You wait 45 minutes, and then you go out there, and then you see it stand up in front of you and run off. And at that point, it's almost impossible to find because it's already bled out mostly, and I've lost you that way. And the adrenaline kicks in. Yeah, and they can run for miles. It's crazy.

They're built for survival, man. They're built to get away from wolves. It's amazing what they can do, too. Yeah. So that was in my mind for sure. Do you have the antlers? Unfortunately, no. Maybe somebody in Canada is listening to this.

I was flying out on the airplane, and the lady wouldn't let me bring them on the plane because I had them improperly wrapped, I guess. Oh, no. And then my plane was just about to leave from Northwest Territories. So you just left it there? I just had to set it in front of the airport. And I was like, ah! Oh, what a bummer. It was a super bummer.

I didn't have any of the locals numbered. Like, hey, could you come grab this for me? That would be something you'd want on your wall for the rest of your life. Absolutely. That was a sad one. Was it a big moose? No, it was like a young moose, which great eating,

but it wasn't huge. But the first one was a monster. Yeah, the first one was a monster. And what if that was, I mean, have you seen moose like up close? No, I shot one. Oh, you did? I shot a young one. Yeah, but it aren't like cool animals to see.

The young one that I shot was like a forky. It was like 900 pounds. Yeah, that's about what I got. Three points on it. But yeah, they're just such cool animals to see. They're so big. Yeah. So I was with my friend Ben O'Brien and he shot one that was huge. And when it was walking across the road, it walked across this dirt road. It looked like a dinosaur. That's exactly what I thought. Even though it looked real, even the one I one i missed like i can't even say i was upset because i was just like that was so awesome to see you know like man that was really like seeing a dinosaur you don't realize how big they are until you're in their presence yeah yeah

absolutely i guess that's probably like all animals that are enormous in africa right it's i mean you see them at the zoo and they're not impressive for some reason yeah they don't have their like wild energy in the forest like and you know where they are it's see them at the zoo. On TV or on the zoo. They're not impressive for some reason. Yeah, they don't have their wild energy in the forest. And you know where they are. It's like, look at the map. Oh, there's the giraffe cage. Let's go check out those motherfuckers. Yeah, not as interesting.

No, it's not like you turn a bend, go around a corner, and you see one. You're like, what? Yeah. It's just out there living wild. Yeah. It's so indescribable. Just seeing something. Even if you just stumble into any kind of animal that's in living wild. It's so indescribable just seeing something. Even if you just stumble into any kind of animal that's in the wild

and you realize this is how this thing's species has been existing for hundreds of thousands of years. Just how you're chilling. When we were doing that project trying to get guys to stop drinking out in Siberia, we had a little hunting cabin we were based at and uh i woke up one morning and we had a stupid dog that just barked at everything and i just hear the dog and it's like oh it's probably a squirrel so i got up and uh i didn't get up i let it bark and then my buddy got up like an hour later and went out to brush his teeth and came running back and he's like like, dude, there's a bear out there. So I went up, jumped up, looked out, and a bear had killed a moose.

Like less than 100. We could have watched the whole thing if I would have just woke up right away. But it came, killed a moose right next to our cabin. When we came out, it saw us and took off running. And we were like, oh, man. So we walked over there like, geez, a whole warm moose still here. So we cut it up, hauled it back to our camp. Stole it from the bear.

Stole it from the bear. Did the bear come back? Oh, yeah. Three days later, we were in our shelter. And sure enough, one dog just came running in and hid under the bed. And the other one started out there barking. Like, rah, rah, rah, rah. And so we grabbed the SKS and go out there.

And it felt like, have you ever seen the ghost in the darkness that's what it reminded me of because it's like all this tall brush and you just hear like you know the dog's barking over here and so i'm like oh man the bear's over here and then over here you hear a oh crap it's over here you know like and then all of a sudden we're like man we're kind of in this tall brush. But I like was like, well, I got my camera. So I handed the gun to this dude. And he's just like, I figured he knew what he was doing. It was a bad choice, but I got my camera.

He got the gun. And then again, we're looking at where the dog's barking and the bear like pops up right here and stands up. It's like, and dude just took off running with the and i had recently camera yeah with my camera i'd recently had a knee surgery it's like i wasn't running out of there so i just like stood there and got back in the brush and then dude comes back like a full you know almost a minute later i was just like there give me that he's like my knees are shaking i was like dude you got, you got a gun. Don't run. And just as I said that, it stood up again.

And he's like, do-do-do-do. It sounded like Vietnam. And it was just like, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. He shot the bear? And he shot it. So did you guys want to be eating it? Well, they were all Ivanky people. And we ate the heart.

But they have like a whole ritual when they shoot a bear. Because they're so wormy up there, you can eat them in a serious situation. But they cut the head off and put the eyes under a rock because they didn't want the spirit to see who got it. And then they put the other parts of it in the river so that it floats down to like a different village so that the bear thinks those are the people that got it. So there's all these weird little things. But in general, because there's so much trichinosis and stuff, they don't eat the brown bear up there.

But although you can if you boil the heck out of it. Yeah, or just cook it over 160, right? I guess. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. My friend Steve got trichinosis. Oh, did he? Steve Rinella? I guess. I don't know. Yeah. My friend Steve got a trichinosis.

Oh, did he? Steve Rinella. Oh, yeah. Rinella. Yeah, he got it. So the whole crew got it. And they even got t-shirts made. Isn't that mild? Trichinosis crew.

Did they get rid of it, I imagine? It just goes away, but it's always in your body. So if somebody ate him someday, they would get trichinosis. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Good to know. But he said it felt like his muscles, like you could feel the little parasite worms burrowing into your muscles. So everything is in pain.

Yeah, gnarly. Your whole body. And then eventually it just goes away. Oh, yeah. Okay. Well, at least it goes away. These fucking worms just living in your body. You get used to it. It's creepy, man. away oh yeah okay well at least it goes away fucking worms just living in your body you get

used to it it's creepy man because when you uh i haven't experienced this but i know that some people who eat bear have cut open the bear and seen the worms literally crawling underneath the skin oh yeah yeah no you could see them even on the bear that bear yeah yeah you'd see them in there they're like yeah it's pretty gnarly. So you guys ate the heart only? That's it? Just the heart. To me, it did seem a little bit of a waste, but that's just, I was kind of doing, I went in Rome, you know?

Yeah, that's one of those things, right? Like if you insult them and say, you fuckers don't even know what you're doing. They had this whole tradition of things they were doing, so. And you're out there making bear barbecue. Yeah. You're going to bring the ghosts. Yeah. Totally. But that's, how big was the bear it was a

brown bear big old brown bear i mean it wasn't an old one it was probably it's hard to say but it was a full grown foot and yeah somewhere i put up a picture of the hide but anyway yeah yeah it was a big bear i don't i don't actually know what i did with that video which is very sad but so you guys you ate the moose you ate the heart of the bear, and how do they do that? They just slice that up? Yeah, just sliced it up, fried it up. And then, yeah, there's a lot of bear stories out there. You're constantly interacting with them when you're always in the woods like that.

Well, and happy people. The guy was talking about losing his favorite hunting dog to bears. Yeah, yeah, that happens. The way they do dogs over there, the Avenki, are interesting because they have a different dog for every type of animal. So if you've got, like, a dog that's really good at treating birds and you've got a dog that's good at going after bears and you've got a dog that's good at sable, you know,

like you just keep raising dogs until you get one that likes to go after what you need it to go for. Where are they getting their dogs from? They're just like this Avenki breed of dog. I don't know. Just random. What do they look like? They're like either white mutts.

Yeah, mutt-looking things. They're not very big, but they're not small. They're just average coyote-sized dogs. And they're usually white or red or spotted. And what do they feed them? Just mush. Like this oat and mush stuff they buy in the village. It's not very good food, but then the dogs try to fend for themselves and stuff. Oh, wow.

It's like not an envy. Well, the dogs seem pretty happy, but they also like, you know, you go out in super cold weather and this dog will have melted a big hole in the snow, and it gets snowed on top of it, and it, like, pops up out of this hole. That's how they're sleeping? Yeah, they just sleep outside. They're tough dogs. Yeah, yeah. So they're, yeah.

And they're eating just mush? Yeah, they're just eating mush and, like, certain scraps and stuff. But, yeah, not an enviable diet they have. They're usually kind of thin. But... They don't know any better.. But they don't know any better. Yeah, they don't know any better. They like it. They seem happy running around free like that.

Incredible animal dogs are. Yeah, super cool. It's just so, what a strange, what is this? Oh, there's one. That's Petka. He's such a cool guy. But that's him and his reindeer. If I saw, like, if I didn't know any better and I saw a dude with a reindeer with a saddle,

I'm like, get the fuck out of here. That's not real. You can't just ride a reindeer around. Because the reindeer's not that big. That looks like about a 200-pound reindeer. Yeah, they're not, but they're pretty strong. They'll pull you. But it is borderline. A guy like me or whatever, it's starting to get borderline.

How much do you weigh? Like 175. And so if you're on a 200-pound reindeer. You just got to get a stronger one, yeah. And the strongest ones will carry well over 200-pound person. How big are the big ones? I don't know the weight. Like a 300-pound caribou is really big.

Yeah, yeah. Not the domestic ones are probably a little smaller, and I don't think they get that heavy maybe 250 but the uh uh but they're strong man you like get on like there's be some cool times where you're just out in the middle of this field in siberia you know you know those swamps have that like tuft of grass that's like you walk on and then uh you know you're carrying your reindeer along you know he's like in tow maybe and then you get to this big flowing river with ice and everything and jump on your reindeer and just hope he can make it through without stumbling and you're like on the back of this reindeer like feels life or death if you fall in this river you know and you just hang on to him and trust that he

won't stumble you know and make it across this river, pull up on the other shore. And you're just like, oh, do you ever have dreams of that life? Like after you've done it, like, do you ever, it's always present with me, you know, like I always think about it. Like I was saying, it's like, it's interesting to live in a modern world and see the things that pull my, suck my time and how, uh, in some way it's very unsatisfying, you know, the internet, the, uh, social media thing, but it's so engrossing. And I miss it, and then those are the reasons why I always think, man, how could you get this, you know, a little more in our modern society?

You know, that was like the initial catalyst for why I thought about, I wonder if something like that would be able to be revived, you know that's what that was like the initial catalyst for why i thought about i wonder if something like that would be able to be revived you know now after you've had all these wild experiences do you long for more do is it something like where you go live a normal life for a while you start getting the itch yeah definitely it's like uh again it's like that thing where it's like if it was my friends and family living that life, I would just choose it. But because it's not, like, it's hard to, like, feel fully committed into it because, you know, you got your kids and all your wife and they're all over there and none of your family can see them. You know, it's just such a different, separate life. That said, I do know that it's very satisfying, you know, on a deep level. So it's kind of interesting to, but yeah, I try to incorporate as many lessons as I can, you know,

and like anything that keeps you connected to, you know, how we were designed to be just, you just connected to the land, to nature. I love all those things. So what do you do now for a living? Well, we're going to i what i generally do for a living is renovate crappy houses and then flip them rent them out usually but uh i'm gonna start doing trying to do some survival schools up you know in idaho in the wilderness oh okay people out there and then so maybe get connected to my friend dan d dodie yeah yeah who's he that's the guy we were talking

about earlier that oh yeah yeah yeah that looked like it really i should i should get in touch with him and so you i'll do some stuff like that but yeah i did a class in ontario this winter you know taught some folks just general survival skills and stuff. When you do that, how does that set up? Do you give a lot of specific amount of time a week? Yeah, the classes we're going to have in July, we'll just ride horses up into the wilderness in Idaho and spend a week up there. And a lot of it is teaching.

There's definitely hard skills, all the hard skills. There's also a lot of just mental, what's the mental framework that you need to have to survive you know and and to be resilient and stuff like that and that's a whole fascinating topic in and of itself you know like you get a you dig deep when you're out by yourself you it's amazing how deep your thoughts go you know now when you say mental skills like what what do you teach people in terms of mental skills like what what do you teach people in terms of mental skills like how can you i would well like if someone was going to be prepared

wanted to prepare to go uh there's a few things that would be really helpful one you need to practice gratitude right it's like just being thankful for what you have even in a rough situation, is key, you know, and that's, that can come from having like perspective, you know, like reading, if you read the Gulag Archipelago, it makes it hard to complain about your particular situation. And so having like perspective like that, I think is good. So for me, it was good knowing my like family history. You know, they're like Assyrians who got, you know, in the Armenian genocide kind of got wiped out. And so they have brutal stories of what happened to them. And it's like, oh, it puts all my suffering in perspective.

And I see that the people who lived through that came out joyful people somehow. And, you know, and so. Resilient people. Resilient people. Resilient people. Yeah, not only did they live, but they went on to have a family that was like my aunts and uncles who were like really happy, beautiful, you know, people.

And so how do they get that resilience is something that I've thought a lot about. And, you know, gratitude is a big deal. Think, you know, having experience that puts perspective on time, like knowing that your relationships are strong. So like having gone to Russia a bunch, you spend a year over there, you know, the first time you're like, oh, man, I miss everybody. But then you realize when you come back, they're right there. They still love you. So having strong relationships is very important.

You don't want to have a lot of skeletons in your closet. If you get out there and you're alone in some survival situation. And you have to think about all the shit you've done. Yeah, it's amazing what you think of. People that I long forgot about. And people like, oh, I should call that guy and make it right with that guy. But I think if you had a lot of issues that you had never dealt through, you guarantee they're going to come up out there, you know, stuff that you forgot about.

And, uh, so that's like combing through and making sure you're just mentally, everything's in order, you know, like kind of knowing why you're doing what you're doing, you know, like, uh, yeah, yeah. So that's, yeah, there's a lot there that you can kind of unpack. So when you have this survival school that you're teaching, do you have a specific curriculum? Do you write out? No, basically I've thought like, what is it that I've learned over the years that's allowed me to do, you know, to be successful or to do, to thrive in some of those situations. And how can I impart that? You know, that's mainly, I'm just trying to show people what I've learned

and what's practical in the woods. Because it's easy to get a lot of skills that you're not really going to use or whatever. But I think if you know what, you know, I've experienced what people in the wilderness really do to live and like having those skills, hopefully being able to impart the mental and also physical skills to thrive. I don't know. I just think that's. Yeah. And some of it's experience. So somebody just going out in the woods, a lot of people haven't spent a week in the woods, just going out there and seeing what it's all like, like what it's like to scout out a new place and be like, okay, where am I going to build my shelter? How am I going to get food? You know, like all that stuff.

When you have those people come out for survival school, what do they bring with them? Well, it depends. Like, I mean, I haven't done a lot of these. This is my first ones in Idaho are going to be in July. The one I did in Ontario, we basically told them to bring, act like they were on that show, you know, bring 10 items and we'll make the best of it, you know. And so that kind of provides a framework.

And how many people are there at a time? Up there, I think it was six. And in Idaho, if COVID is still a thing and there's a limit of 10 people, then I guess they'll bring eight, and it'll be me and my brother, and we'll teach them what we know. How do you vet those people? How do you make sure they're not completely out of their fucking mind? Trapped in the wilderness with someone you don't want to go to sleep next to?

Learn a whole new set of survival skills real fast. Yeah, I mean, you would imagine if someone was a real psycho. Dealing with social. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'd be a way they'd want to express themselves. Out there alone in the forest with a bunch of people trying to survive. Hopefully we can keep that in check. Yeah, do you ask about their background?

Do you do a background check on them right now? Not really. No. Just let it ride. Let it ride. See who wants to put themselves in that situation. It's all right. Jesus.

It'll be cool. I've dealt with a lot of people, so I think it's okay. In general, what are the type of people that want to learn this kind of stuff? I think it can be broad. It's not too extreme. It's not like I'm looking for people that you don't have to be super hardcore. It's just people that want to have a new experience, broaden their horizons. It's kind of like choose your own adventure.

You don't have to go out there and starve for a week. Yeah, just come out. I'll be there with you to teach you things, and we'll make the best of the week and see what we can learn. And I don't know, whoever. It could be anybody. Do you have a longing for personal adventure, though? Is it a thing outside of just teaching this? Yeah, oh, yeah.

One of the things I want to do now, I feel like I got a little more freedom because I just spend more time in the mountains. I love it. It speaks to me. So I'm going to try to do that. I want to also stay connected with the Avenki over there. When the borders open back up, I want to go back with my family. the avenki over there you know when the borders open back up i want to go back with my family we've tried you know restoring some reindeer herds to people who have lost uh their reindeer and

want to go over and kind of check on that project see how they're progressing see if they're if they are you know yeah and like uh it's like that type of thing if i see that people are making progress and like building their herd back or making some kind of progress, then I'll try to support them more and feed into that. So there's things that I want to remain connected to. We'll see. I'm also really interested in, I like all those restoring. When I hear about restoring elk to the out east

or restoring buffalo herds, all that kind of stuff to me is pretty exciting. So we'll just see. I don't know. We'll see where it all goes. Take it a day at a time. Well, dude, I really appreciate you being here. You've lived a really fascinating life. That's fine.

I appreciate you having me on. It's cool to connect with you and be able to do this. Yeah. I really enjoyed it. Come on up to Idaho sometime when you're bored or out to Virginia. All right, man. I'm not going to Siberia, so that's about as far as you get. Well, thanks, brother.

I appreciate you, man. Thanks for being here. It's been good. All right. Bye, everybody. Bye. That was great, man. I love it.

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