The Joe Rogan Experience - #637 - Remi Warren

Episode Date: April 22, 2015

Remi Warren is a hunter, adventurer, and videographer. His new show "Apex Predator" is on the Sportsman Channel and available at http://apexpredator.tv

Okay, we're live. Remy Warren. How are you, fella? Pretty good. How's it going? I watched your show last night. Oh, did you? Good. Yeah, and I watched it again today. The show's called Apex Predator. It's on Thursday nights on the Sportsman's Channel. Yep, 8 p.m. And this is a show that last time you came in with Dan Doty, we kind of talked about it off the record, right? We couldn't talk about it yet.

Yeah, it was kind of like in the wind there. It was not, we didn't have a network for it yet. We filmed like the pilot episode, and now it's a real deal now. Yeah, now it's actually on television. Yeah, it's a real show. It's cool when stuff like that happens, right? Yeah, it is. You plan it out, you work, and it actually comes together, and you have a real television show. Yeah, it's pretty exciting.

So I've been pretty pumped about it, because this is something that I've been thinking about for years. And then, you know, we came in, was it? It's quite a while ago. Over a year ago. Something like that. And now it's finally come to fruition and people can look at what I've been talking about for the last couple of years. It takes a long time to make something fucking happen, man. It's this hurry up and wait game.

Yeah. My buddy was in the army and he's like, yeah, war is just hurry up and wait game yeah my buddy uh my buddy was in the uh army and he's like yeah war is just hurry up and wait i was like that's television war it's hurry up and wait yeah wow that's a jaded individual come on can we just get to killing folks um the show is uh what you're doing on the show is you're essentially emulating a lot of tactics that various predators use and you're using these tactics to get close and figure out how to hunt animals the one i saw last night was the buffalo one oh sweet where you put a coyote outfit on and we're crawling up to these buffalo and it's it's kind of fascinating that they don't run necessarily from coyotes or wolves

that just sort of walk towards them. The only time the coyotes or the wolves would actually attack them is if they were running, that that's when they would move in on them. Yeah, exactly, because the way wolves hunt is they have to get the animals running first. And tomorrow night's episode, we really see that when we look at the way wolves hunt is they have to get the animals running first. And tomorrow night's episode, we'll really see that when we look at the way wolves hunt. But the reason that the wolf has to get the buffalo running is the wolf's essentially outclassed by the bison. It's so much larger. So if the bison say, we're going to stand here and fight, then it can kill the wolf.

And it's the cost-benefit analysis for the wolf to attack that bison while it's standing there isn't great enough. So the wolves will actually get around the bison and try to instigate them to run. Because if the bison makes the mistake of running, then they can hunt as a pack. They can wear it down once they get it moving. And then they attack from the back and they're safer and they're more successful. So the bison know this. So if they run, well, they're going to be in trouble. But when a human hunter comes along using primitive weapons or whatever, the human hunter needs that animal to stand still in order to kill it.

So when the bison sees a human, it runs because that's how it stays safe. So, you know, the point of this show is really dissecting the way nature does things. And you look at like every animal is so specialized, it does something really well. And everything falls into a certain niche. And as a human looking at nature, we look at and go, man, what can we learn? Like humans are an amazing species. And what I've come to realize is we've adapted a lot of the techniques and tactics that a certain animal specializes in or does really well and use it for ourselves to become this essential top predator. So, you know, looking at this, the Plains Indians, we looked at a George Catlin painting

where it's a pretty famous painting. There's two Plains Indians. Yeah, let's see if we can get that painting, Jamie. It's a pretty famous painting. There's two Plains Indians. Yeah, let's see if we can get that painting, Jamie. It's a really famous painting. It's really cool. Describe it. Yeah, there's two Plains Indians sneaking up on a herd of bison underneath these white wolfskins.

And I'd seen that. You know, I've always thought that was an awesome picture. How do you spell his name? George? Catlin. C-A-I-T-L-I-N. And, yeah, so, you know, he paints this picture of supposedly what he saw, but you never really know these artist types.

This is from the 1800s. Yeah, I mean, this is a pretty old photo or painting. It was kind of a gamble whether or not this guy was a bullshit artist. Yeah, he was kind of going out west and painting what he saw or what he interpreted to see. And so I've always thought, oh, I wonder if that's really true. But when you dissect it, obviously those Plains Indians sitting around saw that, huh, when those wolves are there, those bison aren't running. Well, let's throw some of those skins on our back and see what happens.

And it's attacking, like, through the show we find out that. No, that's not it of those skins on our back and see what happens and it is attacking like through the show We develop find out that no, that's not it top left corner there. Yeah Yeah Yeah, let's pull that sucker up Wow, that's crazy that they really did that. Yeah, they must have yeah, I mean it makes perfect sense if you're sitting there and see the correlation between the wolves and the bison, and you come to this logical conclusion that if we act like a wolf, the bison will stay there. How many bison there were back then, too?

Oh, millions. God. And on that episode, Steve, you know, he's the bison expert. Yeah. And just how many bison were there? He was telling me that they used to find the bison by giant clouds from their breath. It'd make, like, huge clouds. What?

That's what Steve was telling me. Wow. I mean, millions and millions of bison. Well, you know, there's a guy named Dan Flores that's a good friend of Steve's as well. And he is a real bison expert. And he's written a very controversial paper on uh what happened to the bison and what he's saying is that he compares he's going to be on the podcast soon as soon as he's done with his book uh hopefully by sometime in the summer um

and what his what his paper is basically saying is that the Plains Indians, once they had figured out how to ride horses and shoot from horses, were already on the way to wiping out the buffalo. Really? And the reason why the buffalo were in such high numbers was because so many people, so many Native Americans had died from smallpox. Americans had died from smallpox. And if you go back before the smallpox epidemic, the people that arrived in North America, like the Dutch, when they had made an accounting of all the different animals, they talked about turkeys and deer and elk and bear, no mention whatsoever of buffalo. And they were visiting all these same areas that 200 years later had millions of buffalo. visiting all these same areas that 200 years later had millions of buffalo. But during that 200 years, 90% of the Native Americans had been wiped out by smallpox.

Really? And during that, and they were apparently like probably the number one predator of these bison. I'm probably doing a really shitty job of explaining this. That makes sense. I mean, they would do things like the buffalo jumps mm-hmm where just drive Herds of bison off a cliff cliffs and they apparently the wolves would feed and because they're just be dead I mean you couldn't take all that meat doesn't if you've got a small village you're taking what you can use There'd be dead bison everywhere and the wolves would come in and gorge on them. I guess there was an account where there was wolves so full on food, they were just laying there in excess, just gorged.

And they were just hanging around next to the Native Americans? Well, where the buffalo jumped off the cliffs. But the Native Americans were down there, too, with the wolves? No, I think, I don't know if they would move on. At a certain point, the meat's going to go bad. And then the wolves would just keep eating. The wolves would just keep eating and eating and eating. Fuck.

Because apparently, a wolf can gorge like a hungry wolf that's really hungry. Duran Duran was on to something. Yeah, because they'll eat. I read something. It was like 25 pounds in a sitting, and they can process that meat in two hours. So they'll just eat and eat and eat. 25 pounds of meat processing. Imagine if you ate a 25 pound turkey.

Like you went to the supermarket and picked up a 25 pound turkey and you ate it yourself. And there's never been a wolf bigger than a human being, right? The biggest wolf ever is probably like 200 pounds right ever yeah so we're talking about you know 150 pound wolf which is the size of a normal man can eat 25 fucking pounds and go through it in two hours that's insane crazy that's insane competitive eating at its finest well their bite power is also freaky i didn didn't know. Ricky Gervais told me, and I was like, this guy's got to be wrong. He said that a wolf has a bite that's five times more powerful than a pit bull. I'm like, how could that be true?

Oh, yeah. It's true. I can't fucking believe it, but it's true. Really? Yeah. I mean, they're not that. You look at, like, pit bulls have all these muscles in their heads, and they're known for their bite.

Nothing compared to a wolf. Wolf can go right through an elk shin bone. That's crazy. Fuck. Yeah, that's one of the inspiration. Wolves were actually the inspiration for me to even think of this show. I'm pretty fascinated by wolves. But one day I was out hunting elk in Montana.

And I'd been hunting this one bull. And it was the first time I ever saw a wolf in the wild, and it was probably really close, too. I was like, well, this is awesome, because this is before you really saw a lot of wolves, and then I do, I actually got a little video of it, and then I go and do my hunt, and then the wolf happened to be chasing these, hunting the same group of elk, and... Was it a lone wolf? Yeah, it was by itself. And I was actually telling, I did Steve's podcast with Steve Rinella the other day,

and I was telling him this same story. And I've seen four times I've seen wolves take down an elk in the wild. They've all been by themselves. Wow. I've never seen a pack attack elk. I've only seen lone wolves. That has got to be amazing to watch that go down. It's cool. Wow.

You see the elk running and it's almost like the wolf, it could almost run between its legs. It's going back and forth. The elk is beelining and that wolf is back and forthing. Just much faster. Much faster, yeah.

So how do they take it out? They bite its back legs? Yep. Grab hamstring, bite its back leg. Anywhere it can sink its teeth in, but mostly go for the back end. Do they try to take it down all in one shot, or do they try to wound it and then eventually get it? I think it's whatever they can grab, and half the time it ends up wounding it when i've seen them be the most successful is they run the

elk into deadfall because the wolf can go under and over the logs up and down back and forth and the elk struggles it uses all its energy it kind of gets trapped oh wow so the wolves kind of funnel them into areas where they know they'll be more successful. It seems like it. Seems like I've always seen them catch them on the downhill, like run them down a canyon in the bottom of a canyon. Seems to be where, I'm trying to think about it, yeah. It's like in the bottom of a canyon where there's lots of logs and things down. That's got to be an amazing thing to see happen live because it's so rare to be able to be there. I mean, you might see a wolf, you might see an elk, but to see a wolf because it's so rare to be able to be there i mean you might see a wolf you might see an elk but to see a wolf kill an elk like to be at that moment where it didn't matter

if you were there or not that was going to go down i mean that's nature exactly we were i was blood trailing my my friend's wife's uh she shot a nice bull with her bow last year and we're sitting there trying to find this elk and here comes this cow elk running with a wolf hot on its tail and i was like sweet we're gonna watch it go down and my buddy like yells at he didn't know what to i mean it was right in our face it was like right there and he just kind of yells and it spooks the wolf off and i was like why did you do that he's like he just he didn't even he's like i don't know i was like now he's just gonna go hunt more i, it would have been cool to at least see it, you know? You would have seen it, right? Oh, we were 75 yards away.

I mean, it was right there in the open, like in this burn. It was amazing. God, they're incredible. I have so mixed feelings on wolves. I mean, one thing, one part of me thinks they're amazing. I love them. They're fascinating. But another part of me is like this reintroduction of them into the united states is it just i just don't think it was really planned out very well and their numbers are

staggering now oh yeah it's well when we talk about the american model of conservation there's checks and balances and goes with game animals and non-game animals so when you reintroduce an animal into an area that it hasn't maybe never been in that area or it's been so long that it's been in there, they have to be managed as well. Otherwise, the whole ecosystem comes out of balance. Well, I watched this video about Yellowstone, about wolves in Yellowstone. It was talking about the impact that wolves have had in Yellowstone and all these other animals that are thriving because of the introduction of the wolves.

And it's kind of interesting. It's kind of interesting. But the reality of those animals is they're predators. You're not talking about any other kind of animal. You're talking about a predator. It's like if you have a large amount of elk in an area or a large amount of deer, I mean, this is a completely different animal than having a large amount of wolves. And when you're managing these types of animals with emotions rather than objective logic

that's when things get weird because you've got a lot of people their version of conservation never would include hunting a wolf but if you get thousands and thousands of wolves in a state like you you have to hunt them because then they start attacking livestock like where i was up in bc where i um shot that moose there was um the guy that i hunted with his neighbor had a cow get taken out by wolves in the middle of the winter it's like cold and there was not not much for them to eat and they said fuck it let's just do this they took out a cow you imagine like out you're in your house and you're you're hearing you're looking out there's 20 wolves just ripping apart one of your cows like fuck man yeah once they figure out what an easy meal is to it i think it's hard for them to go back to chasing moose yeah other animals well they have

no limit on the amount of wolves you can shoot up there you can shoot as many as you want oh they i don't think they could ever hurt the population well Well, it's so dense. When you go up there, everybody who lives in a city, you owe it to yourself at some point in your life to go out into actual real wilderness. Because there's all these people that have these opinions on animals that are completely based on some Narnia-like idea of what nature is like. Like, they've never actually been out there, like, in real wilderness. Like, days in. Packing, go days in, where you go, oh, god damn. Like, I just, I didn't get it. I just didn't know.

It's nuts out there. I think the other assumption is people think that the real wild is what they would see in a national park. It's the zoo version of what wild is. When you go out into a place like remote BC or outside of any kind of park like that, it's a completely different world. And you don't see as many animals. It's tough life out there. And you don't see as many animals. It's tough life out there.

Even, I mean, not that the boundary of the park makes it more animals, but it's set up. Those animals are acclimatized to seeing humans. They don't have their same natural senses. So if you go out to a place that they aren't acclimatized to seeing humans, it's a tough go. It's not as easy as people think. Well, it's not only not easy, there's a weird silence to it out there. There's an eerie indifference that you get. That's one of the things that we went to Prince of Wales. Steve Rinella took us up there hunting deer.

Yeah. We struck out, but it's, it's an amazingly remote place. Like you don't see it. You know, we didn't see a single fucking person other than us the entire time we were there. And you just, it doesn't give a fuck about you.

If you fall and break your leg and die there. So what? So what? You're just a part of this whole thing where everything's going to go. There's bears there. There's deer there. There's deer there There's all sorts of you know interesting wildlife, but it doesn't give a fuck about you It's it's I don't think people kind of understand that and a real like a note in it

We really Rationalize it or really like got it into your brain like this is reality Until you actually go into the woods, the real woods, not Yellowstone, not Central Park. The real woods are a different animal. It is. And that's when you kind of understand if you've, I haven't encountered wolves in a while.

I've seen what they've done. We talked about it in the last podcast. I took some photos of this moose calf that we had come upon that had been killed probably like the night before it was kind of interesting, but I haven't encountered them in real life But the people that I know that have have a completely different opinion than the people that live in cities That think that you'd have to be an asshole to shoot a wolf. Yeah

Well, if you aren't around it, it's so far removed I mean you can oh you almost can't even make an accurate assumption of what it's like. No, you also can't make an accurate assumption that you'd have to be a person that hates animals to shoot the wolf. That's the management aspect of wildlife, especially when it comes to predators. This is lost on a lot of people and it's one of the reasons why California doesn't have mountain lion seasons But like mountain lion attacks in California have steadily gone up Mountain lion sightings have steadily gone up and they're kind of playing with fire because there's like there's a lot of them here now They don't get hunted, you know

that's what I wonder what what the future is gonna look like in a place in the long future because mountain lions if you look at African cats, they're a very dangerous animal. But mountain lions are a shyer version of the species. And I think it's because they're in the predatory realm. They weren't always, they weren't at the top. There is in California, you look at California, there used to be grizzly bears or some sort of species of brown, you know, coastal grizzly bear. And then humans hunting. And so you had mountain lions that had to be afraid of things. Now they're in a world where they don't have any predators and nothing's chasing them.

At what point, I mean, maybe it's 100 years down down the road maybe it's a thousand years down the road at what point do they essentially become a different temperament of cat much similar to the ones in africa where they have to or south america or south america yeah yeah where they don't have predators that's a good point you You gotta keep those bitches scared. This family that we went to their farm to hunt turkeys two weeks ago and they lost all their sheep. Every single one of them in Northern California. All of them. Really? They lost all

of them to mountain lions. They have so many cats up there, they see them. Like in the day, just hanging out. Like, fuck, man. They don't even have an accurate account of how many they have oh no it's pretty rare to see them when you if you start seeing a mountain lion in the daytime then there's a lot of mountain lions yeah or you just get super lucky yeah i saw one in montecito which is like a rich suburb of santa barbara i was driving down like a residential road and I saw this thing bounce in front of the

road and I thought it was a coyote at first. I saw its tail and I went, whoa, that's a fucking mountain lion in this like suburban neighborhood. Just looking for a good restaurant to get a steak. Or a good dog. A good dog that he catches slipping. Yeah, I think I've got, I must, my place in Montana, I think I have some kind of strange mountain lion breeding program going on

because every year at the same time, there's just lion tracks all up near the cabin, all over the place. That started right when I, the year I first came here and talked with you, and it's just been continuing. And I don't know what it is, but a friend of mine started chasing lions around there. He said you would be surprised how many cats are living in this area. Within six or seven, within a mile or two. It's crazy.

Tohono Ranch, which is about an hour plus from here, there's a great hunting spot. They have pigs and oh yeah rocky mountain elk and they have one trail camera on this pond and they found 16 different mountain lines on this trail camera that's pretty crazy but it's a huge ranch the biggest ranch in california it's 270 000 acres and they have um just a large supply of wild pigs wild pigs are are all over the place. It's like their bread and butter for their hunting program. Yeah. Yeah. When we went there,

we saw, I was like, we only, last time I went, I went like real recently. Um, we were bow hunting. We saw 50 pigs in a day.

Yeah. And we didn't even see a lot. The time before that we were seeing hundreds of them, just hundreds of pigs all over the place. Did you end up getting one? First time? Yeah. Second time, no. That's cool. Wild pork's pretty good. Yeah, it's delicious. It's

very different. It's very different than, like I had wild turkey and I was surprised at how much it tastes like turkey. You know, especially the breast. It's good, but it's turkey. It's turkey. But you eat wild pork and you're like, ooh, this has got a whole different thing going on. Depends on the pig you get, but you eat wild pork and like this is kind of a different thing going on depends on the the pig that

The pig you get because if you buy pork You know if you shoot a boar it tastes a lot different than a sour even like pregnant sound maybe right, but I in New Zealand we get quite a few pigs and This guy showed me this tactic where when you're skinning it you get your knife sharp and make your initial cuts And then he doles the tip on the on the concrete And this guy showed me this tactic where when you're skinning it, you get your knife sharp and make your initial cuts. And then he dulls the tip on the concrete. And so when he's skinning it, because what it is, is he can skin closer to the skin and keep all the fat on the pork. Which normally, if you just kind of skin it off, take the hide off, all the fat's removed.

But he said that if you leave that fat on, it gives it a lot more flavor, a different flavor. And it's really good. I did it, and it was pretty exceptional. What's the difference in the flavor? Could you describe it? It's more like regular pork, I would say. Hmm. Yeah, more of a.

Do you know who Joel Salatin is? No. He's kind of a famous farmer. He's got some really unique ideas about farming, and he was a guest on the podcast as well. And what he does is he lets his pigs kind of run wild. He sets up like a large electric fence, and he moves that electric fence all over the place. So these pigs, the way they eat is they root. They eat acorns, and they eat like a normal pig would. is they root.

They eat acorns, and they eat like a normal pig would. There's plenty of food in the forest, but they keep them intact in a certain area with this portable electric fence. So they just keep moving the fence. It's like the pigs will root out this area and forage in this one area, and then they'll kind of move them to another spot, and then they'll let them forage in that area. And so these pigs have a dark meat, like a wildar yeah it's good it's good it's it isn't like domestic pork but i i almost prefer it we if you try it if you next time you get one try to leave cook a little bit

with the skin on oh that's good really with the skin on we just you just burn the start a big fire and get some water and just shave the hair off yeah Burn the hair off. Yeah. And then cook with the skin on. I'll bone it out first and you can stuff the ham with, I don't know, some kind of stuffing, whatever you want really. And then put it in the oven, roast it in the oven like that. You don't eat the skin. I've seen people do that with domestic pigs. I've seen them do those

big whole pig roasts. Oh yeah. That looks awesome. In the pit. Yeah. That looks awesome. We tried doing that for a buddy's bachelor party, but we didn't get the fire hot enough, so we're all out here camping by this lake, and I brought this big pig, and I'm all excited about it. Get it out, and now we all have a raw pig. So we fired up the grills and made the best out of the situation, but everything's closed. Everything just smelled like pork after that.

Was it a wild pig or was it a domestic pig? It was a domestic pig, yeah. I wish it would have been a wild pig. Yeah, well, you have to worry less about trichinosis, right, with the domestic pigs. They're actually lowering the temperature that you could cook a domestic pig now. The recommendation, they've got it down to 140 degrees. See, I've heard that the trichinosis comes from them eating rodents hmm, so

Technically they could get I mean there could be mice because they would eat the feed Mice would get in with the grain and everything and they can still get trichinosis definitely I wouldn't quote me on that, but I definitely heard that a lot. Well. I've watched my chickens I have domestic chickens, and I've watched them eat a miles Oh, yeah, they found a mouse in the chicken house. They fucked that thing up man. It was wild just cuz usually they just They just like peck in and they'll you know they get real happy if they find a snail or something like that But they found that mouse and they just stopped that little fucker went to town they went to town they were fighting over it They're both they're all tearing it apart apart You see their raptor past you know

Because on apex we I wanted to look at a lot I'm just fascinated by birds and the way they the way they move and especially predatory birds a lot of people think of birds as Seed-eating bird bath animals most birds are meat-eaters Carnivores yeah well i mean there's a lot of smaller species that aren't but there are a lot of carnivorous birds and the way they hunt like the great blue heron we did an episode that'll be coming up here shortly the thing's got a spear attached to its head what other animal what other animal you can there's videos of great blue herons spearing these gophers. Really?

I want to see something like that. Pull that up, Jamie. They have a spear on their face. Yeah. How about pelicans? Pelicans. They got a scooper. A net. They have a built-in net.

Yeah, man. I rented a house in Malibu for a few months. I was getting something fixed in my kitchen. The house was right on the water It was really fucking cool because I would eat breakfast every morning like essentially like you'd look out from the kitchen table and just Nothing but water and I'd watch these pelicans diving in and I'd watch these swarms of birds when they'd find you know Fish feeding oh yeah, it's just it's so wild to be around them. Oh blue hair on Spears a gopher you know, fish feeding. Oh, yeah. It's just, it's so wild to be around them. Oh, look at this.

Blue Heron spears a gopher. So what, is he just chilling, waiting for it to pop its head up? Yeah, I don't know if this is... Oh! There's like... That's it. He just whacked a gopher. They'll catch anything.

But he speared it. That's what's crazy. They stab it. Imagine having a weapon built into your face. Is this another one? Yeah,, they stab it. Imagine having a weapon built into your face. Is this another one? Yeah, that's a pretty good one. A weapon built into your face. Catch him.

The bigger fish, they'll spear other ones they grab. But these gophers, they definitely go for it. I saw an eagle for the first time, I guess it was two years ago now, in Alaska. Went up there salmon fishing. I'd never seen an eagle in the wild. I'd seen eagles before, but when you see one in the wild, you start going, oh, this is not what I think it is.

Oh, yeah. This is like some killer. Oh, yeah. Some flying killer that literally has knives on its fingers and it's floating around looking for something to snatch and just fuck up oh look at that bam yeah they just jacked that gopher it's like there's your birds wow catching gophers dinosaurs yeah they look like it they're pretty cool yeah birds are fascinating man Have you ever seen the videos of the harpy eagles in South America? Oh, yeah

Harpy eagles killing monkeys and sloths flying off with these sloths They're apparently the biggest eagle right the harpy eagle. I believe is the biggest one. Yeah, well, I'm not sure I believe they are yeah, I think so either way They're fucking enormous and so they did this Nature documentary where these guys were setting up a camera on the harpy eagles nest and they had a chance here goes one look at this whoo Poor sloth he's what a shit deal He lives his life in slow motion to get ripped out of a tree by an eagle and put on that geo. Oh god

Seriously what a shit deal it is to be a sloth oh that's crazy oh god i mean it's amazing that they can fly with an animal that size too easy too look how he swoops in that's bitch bam that's cool it's really cheating you know oh yeah i mean it's like it's like hunting a cow with a pen that's pretty cool it is really cool but it's it's that's an eagle you know i mean that's what we think of when we think of a bird of prey that is the quintessential bird of prey doing this apex predator show i've got to get up close and personal with a lot of animals that i just think are pretty badass i'm sure we did one that was a golden eagle episode. Oh.

And went to this lady. She runs like this rehabilitation center, Raptor of the Rockies. And she's got all kinds of crazy raptors. And there's a golden eagle and a bald eagle in the same enclosure area. We've got to take the golden eagle out and check it out. And the golden eagle is an impressive. I mean, it's quite a bit bigger than the bald eagle. It's an enormous bird, right? They're native to Colorado and the Rocky mountains. Yeah. They're, they're probably the most widely distributed eagle in North America. I mean, all the way through Mexico there. And

they are a crazy predator. Yeah. I've seen some videos of them killing wolves. Oh, yeah. In Mongolia. Yeah, the Mongolian guys. It's bizarre. They've trained these eagles to hunt wolves for them. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Yeah, it's an enormous bird. It's really crazy to think that at one point in time, they were even larger.

They had much, much larger birds of prey in North America. Look at the face on that thing. God damn, those eyeballs. Yeah, apparently that's what we're, I was studying their eyesight. And they can spot medium-sized prey from up to two miles away. Two miles. Isn't that, I mean, that's the thing that, one of the things that just so much fascinates me about animals especially is they have capabilities that it's almost hard with all our technology to even replicate.

Yeah. If you really think about it, there's a lot of weird stuff on this planet. to see two miles away or there's just a lot of crazy things in nature that has taken us years and years to replicate some kind of machine or contraption where we can even compare to it and in some cases we haven't even come close like the smell that a bloodhound can pick up exactly smelling things that have been there ages ago we don't have any idea like we don't have any idea how to make a piece of equipment that can smell something in the distance the way a dog can when dogs are i mean kim i would just love to wonder i would love to experience what are they what's going on inside their nose when they when they catch a scent yeah like what is that what are? The smell where a bird walked. It's crazy. Yeah. They say that the comparison is with skunk spray.

Because with skunk spray, a person can pick up parts per million in a way that you can't with any other spray. With any other smell, rather. Like, when you're driving down the street, like, there's this area near my house. And as I'm driving on my way home, I smell skunks in this one spot all the time and they're probably blocks away from me right but i smell them so clearly like i roll down the window like you could smell they're right there and they were there days ago probably yeah it could be or it could be there well they're definitely not right there they're probably blocks away from me there's nothing else that i could think of that's that small that you could smell blocks away that's crazy they say that that's kind of like a dog but way better like they they know

where it is like they don't just go fuck what is that they go it's over there it's over there yeah a dude like i think it's you can make make them smell a dude's socks and then they'll know he's over there and they can chase his ass down just like you could smell a skunk they could smell a person like that it's fucking crazy so if have you been elk hunting yet not yet one of the things i always tell people is especially if you haven't been elk hunting most the elk that we end up killing i attribute to smelling them first and people that don't elk hunt would never pick up on it. But I'm hunting with my nose almost as much as I'm using any other tactic.

Really? Oh, yeah. And I always keep a lighter in my pocket. And as soon as I pick up the scent, I flip the lighter on and see which way the wind's going. Because you'll catch it. Like, if the wind blows for a split second or swirls, you'll smell it. And you can get right in and i i can

distinguish the difference between the smell of an elk and where an elk's been you can actually smell it an elk's urinated right here where there's a wallow and there's a different smell between that and the smell of an animal so i'll tell tell my clients, I'll say, I smell an elk, like a physical animal. Be ready. It's within X amount of distance. And just through practice, you can decipher those things. Is there a way you could describe it? Like what does it smell like?

So smells are the hardest thing on the planet to describe. An elk smells a lot like a beef cow, but there's a different note to it. And the smell of, say, a bull, a live animal, it's a weird, it almost smells hot. I don't know how to describe it, but you can smell the difference. It's stronger and it just smells different. Hot.

Yeah, I don't know. It's like at the very end of the scent, you can pick it up. Does their smell vary based on whether or not they're in the rut? Yeah, it does. Well, the intensity of their smell varies. A cow, a cow elk will smell different when she's in heat or during the rut. Same with mule deer. You'll smell mule deer as well.

Wow. Well, I know when we hunted mule deer, Reninaldo was telling us, don't touch the tarsal gland. Because that gland, if you get that on you or if you get it on your, especially if you get it on the meat, it just funks up everything. Yeah. What does that smell like? Smells like musty deer. Just funk. Yeah, funky deer.

Just deer funk. Have you ever got it on the meat before no not that i know of i did have one mule deer that i shot during the rut uh with my recurve bow and it was not as good as other deer it was probably one of the worst tasting deer and so maybe i did somehow because i thought I was eating it and going this tastes like they smell really Usually Usually they smell great or it tastes great. It's awesome, but that must it could have been that or it just could have been I Don't know who knows really

What is if you doing this show? What has been the most surprising thing when you're you're analyzing all these different animals and their hunting tactics i think the most surprising thing is humans have a natural innate ability hunting ability that is very comparable to animals that have to hunt to survive and i say that like we one of the one of the things that really brought this to light was one of our last episodes of the season we look at the river otter river well it's a mammal that hunts underwater we're mammals can we hunt underwater and i'm pretty much from the desert so water is people are in the water but i think of it as something that

people have trained their whole lives to do or whatever you know be efficient free diving so i go to florida and kind of just try to uncover how humans compare to mammals that hunt underwater turns out we have the same dive reflexes and other things as other mammals that hunt underwater. Turns out we have the same dive reflexes in other things as other mammals that hunt underwater. And we, anybody off the street can initiate these reflexes. The thing that our trouble is, is our mind, we have this mental threshold that we have to get over. But once

we get over that, within two hours, I was able to hold my breath for over four minutes. What? Yeah. Crazy. What? It's all the mental thing. Well, you're in really good shape, though. shape no but this is the guy that i did this free diving course and the guy is like we could take if if everyone could just block mental things out of their mind pretty much the average person off the street could easily hold their breath for three minutes and if you could completely clear your mind, pretty much everyone could hold their breath for four to five minutes.

That's insane. It's crazy. So it's just a panic, the freaking out, like I got to breathe, I got to breathe, I got to breathe. Yeah, but there's this mammalian dive reflex in it. It restricts your capillaries, slows your heart rate automatically. Your spleen releases more red blood cells, so your body consumes less oxygen. It's the exact same thing that happens in whales, dolphins, otters. So we're just born with these things that other predators have,

and it kind of really comes out in this TV show. And that's one of the things that I really wanted to do this, because looking at it and talking about it, you say, what are you doing? And at the onset, it sounds completely ridiculous, especially to a guy like me that's made most of my life hunting. So I go, okay, well, what am I doing here? I'm trying to dissect nature and see is hunting really something that's natural for humans to do? Are we meant to be hunters? Are we born to be hunters? And obviously there's a big learning curve in it, but we are very similar to these other animals that are born predators.

Well, it only makes sense that if buffalo have a natural instinct to avoid bipedal hominids, because they've seen that, okay, they get shot, get killed, and they know that wolves come around, okay, don't run, stay put, and we'll fuck these wolves up. Like, it almost seems like all this information just gets passed on somehow or another through genetics, and that's how these animals manage to be here. got here is by eating everything that we could eat up till now including every animal that we could figure out how to hunt and all those skills and all those abilities especially the idea that your spleen starts releasing extra red blood when you dive underwater to allow you to stay there's only one reason to stay underwater it's the two to hide from something or to kill something that's it yeah it's crazy. Wow.

That's pretty wild. Yeah. So what did you do when you did that? Did you use a spear or something like that? So, yeah, then we went out into the Gulf of Mexico and speared some greater amberjack and diving down pretty deep. And it was awesome. It was so cool. How long?

It wasn't long as you stayed down? While moving. So the static breath holds we long as you stayed down. While moving. So the static breath holds we were doing, four-minute breath holds. And when I got up from those, you feel this kind of euphoric sense. You're like, wow. And you get up and people black out at the top because they forget to take a breath. Because at that point, you get to a certain point where you get up and you're like, you aren't really out of breath. It's a mental thing.

It's a horrible feeling. I'm not going to lie. But it is a mental thing because you realize your body doesn't. It tells you it needs oxygen, but it essentially doesn't. Well, it does at some point. But there's people that will hold their breath for 12 minutes. 12 minutes. Well, didn't that dude, David Blaine, right?

He did something where he took like oxygen in he did something he did some sort of a sneaky trick where he uh he breathed in pure oxygen held it and then held his breath for like 17 minutes or something like that yeah this is before he did that stunt this is the same thing that he went through to prepare for it oh really yeah so he went through free diving yeah performance yeah there's a dude named egan inouye his brothers with a guy named ensign inouye who's a famous mma fighter and egan actually fought some mma himself but egan was a world champion free diver and i think he would hold his breath for like seven minutes crazy yeah living in hawaii

the they they would use um holding their breath underwater it was one of the strength and conditioning programs they would do, they would move rocks underwater, BJ Penn had it on one of his, one of the countdown shows to one of his big fights, he would dive underwater and lift up a big rock and then move the rock underwater and drop it and come back up for air and go down and move it again

drop it and come back up for air I've heard through the grapevine that a lot of athletes are doing these breath holds before competitions because they're naturally creating more red blood cells, performance enhancing breath holds. Wow. That makes sense. Yeah.

That makes sense. If you're saying that the spleen releases it when you're underwater, it probably is releasing it because you're holding your breath. Correct, yeah. Wow. That's going to be the new doping. Yeah, it is. You've got to breathe, you fuck.

Are you breathing? It's the new blood doping. But there's a lot of athletes that are initiating these natural responses to enhance their performance. these natural responses to enhance their performance. Yeah, that's one of the big ones that I've been really getting into over the last few months or a year or so actually is cryogenic therapy, where you go into this chamber that's 250 degrees below zero. Wow. You put a surgical mask on, earmuffs on, gloves, you have underwear on, and you wear socks

and like rubber Crocs so that you, your foot doesn't touch the bottom. Cause you will get frostbite. Anything you touch, you'll get frostbite. And you step in this thing for 250 degrees below zero for three minutes. Okay. And you get out and you feel fucking fantastic.

When you get out, you feel like you could jump over the building. Just wow. You just, everything just feels so good. Once you're, cause your body thinks it's going to die. If your body pulls all its blood into your internal organs and when you come out they actually do a temperature test the surface of your skin and the surface of my skin is usually somewhere

around 30 32 35 degrees it's like it gets really cold and then immediately your blood just rushes back to all your extremities and the anti-inflammatory response is spectacular. So people who have pretty significant injuries, arthritis, even people that are close, borderline, and needing hip replacements, they've been able to put it off by doing this cryotherapy and mitigate almost all the pain. That's pretty cool. Because it's funny, the mammalian dye reflex response, when your face hits cold water, it starts to initiate because that's closing those capillaries. And it's probably a very similar process that's going on with that cryo. I lived in Boston.

There was this guy named Bob Caffarella that I used to do taekwondo with. And he was like a, he was a senior student. He was like ahead of me. He was a black belt before I was. He was like way, and he was, he was a fucking madman. He used to sleep at the gym, trained all day long. He'd always see him training, but he was also into like forcing himself to do things that he didn't like to do, to be uncomfortable. And what he'd do is in mid January,

he would take cold showers and it was fucking cold. You're talking about 33 degree water. You know, it was like just barely cold enough to not be frozen in the pipes. And he would turn that shit on and he would take a shower in there and he would just breathe in there. And he'd be like, ah,

and I remember trying and I did it a few times, but it's just like, you can't, that's the thing that freaks you out it's like you got no breath why can't I breathe being cold makes sense but why can't I breathe I guess it's probably the same sort of response

it is yeah it's pretty cool you would think that maybe taking a really cold shower before you perform you know before you do anything athletic would benefit you as well i would think so there's a lot of there's a lot of things that nature can teach us that you know our bodies just do by themselves what was what was the motivation to do this show because this is a very different than solo hunter which is how i found out about you which is a really cool show.

It's still around. If you guys want to catch some episodes in that show, you would go out by yourself, just bring cameras and really fascinating stuff. And I'm still doing that show, and I don't really plan on changing anything with that, because I still, my bread and butter is going out hunting. It's what I love. But

I wanted to get a little bit deeper and do something different and by something different i wanted to also do something that looks at hunting and any person watching the show whether they're a hunter or not could look at this and go you know what there's something here there's something that shows me that humans are meant to be hunters. And if I can make one person think that and go, OK, well, maybe maybe hunting isn't so bad. Then for me, that's that's a bonus because it's something that I love. I don't want to see hunting go away because if if I did, then that's that's my passion.

That's what I'm all about. So if all of a sudden it disappeared, wasn't allowed or whatever, people didn't understand it, then for me I'd feel like I don't know what I would do. Is that really possible, though? I don't necessarily know. It could be. I mean, you never really know because it's not guaranteed. Just like mountain lion hunting isn't allowed in california it makes no sense ecologically or whatever if people's emotions get involved with management or whatever

it just seems like california is such an extreme example of people who don't have experience with wildlife or making those choices or definitely don't have experience with hunting the whole department of fish and game out here isn't fish and game. It's fish and wildlife. It's one of the few states that has a distinction in the way it labels itself. But the other reason is I professionally, I've made my living hunting. And there's always been this idea for me of kind of taking it deeper. And in this show, I actually learn something every time I do one of these.

As ridiculous as the premise might be or whatever we're trying to do, seems ridiculous to me sometimes at first, and then I go through the steps, and I really learn something. And if I can learn something, I've been doing this forever, then I feel like other people watching can learn something other hunters other People in general. Yeah, no doubt. I think Just the hunting itself is a learning experience. That's it. There's so many bad ideas that people have or just bad

misconceptions about hunting and a lot of it comes down to We look at hunting or people look at hunting a lot of it comes down to we look at hunting or people look at hunting a lot of times they look at the negative aspects of like trophy hunting like trophy hunting seems kind of gross to people like they're the recent one was that lady was laying down next to a giraffe yeah i saw i just saw that's just really it's just poor taste poor management poor thinking like you you really you keep going on and on forever like why would you lie down next to a giraffe smiling you know the whole thing is very strange and the real fuck up about it is that it puts out this image that confuses the real issue at hand, which is this was a large, non-breeding male that they were going to take out anyway. Like this was, they had already deemed through their conservation efforts that they were going to take this giraffe out and that they were going to use it to feed these villagers.

giraffe out and that they were going to use it to feed these villagers. So her paying money to go and shoot this thing actually helps all these villagers. It gives them food. Then they take the money. They can apply the money to, you know, whatever making wells or whatever they do with the money that they get from, from hunters paying to hunt these animals.

There's a benefit to it because that animal wasn't going to be around much longer anyway, her stepping in and going, but, but then when you put it on facebook and you're smiling and you're it's all so fucking confusing like to everybody else that goes well you're an asshole you just shot a fucking giraffe who eats giraffes you know like no one's you're not like going over there to feed your family by shooting giraffes. And then you find out, well, you actually can eat giraffes. And actually, giraffes taste like a lot of different animals. They're related to.

Yeah. They taste like meat. Yeah. They're deer. They're essentially crazy-necked antelopes, right? Yep. Exactly. Isn't that what their family they are?

They're antelope, yeah. Yeah. I mean, antelopes are delicious. Yeah. But giraffes are so nice. You go to the zoo. You know, I had this bit in my last special about giraffes being like the only animal that I don't feel bad that they're at the zoo. Yeah.

Because they wake up and they're like, another day with no lions. And they just wander around like having a great old time. Like we're so confident that giraffes are nice that they let babies feed them. Yeah. Like when my daughter was two, I was holding her up in my arms and and she's got her little tiny little baby handout with a piece of lettuce. And the giraffe comes over, wraps its tongue around the lettuce, and takes it. And she's laughing. And they're so confident at the zoo in a giraffe's behavior that they'll let babies feed them.

Which is crazy. In the wild, though, giraffes can be, like a bull giraffe can be a pretty dangerous animal. Probably because of their size but if you i've seen giraffes fighting oh yeah they're necks and wham and they use their neck like a weapon they whip their head into each other but they're uh you know ever i think people would assume too like oh giraffes really would be really easy to kill because they're so big i got this uh i was working in south africa and on this place there was a few giraffes there, and they would get this disease from ticks,

and so the guy would hire these professional hunters like myself or whatever to shoot, like inoculate the giraffes with these paintballs filled with like, we call it douse or drench. It kills parasites. So it's a paintball gun, so you have to get closer than you would with a bow and sneak up on these giraffes.

The giraffes were the hardest thing on the place to inoculate. Really? Oh, yeah, because they can see you coming forever, and they were skitterish. They wanted these giraffes to survive, and two of the giraffes had actually gotten killed by power lines So there's a few giraffes power lines. There's a big windstorm and two giraffes boom zapped Whoa, the lines came down and cooked them. Holy shit

How it happened or what just whipping in the wind and killed both of them? Whoa, but so the the guy was really set on inoculate or dousing these giraffes. So I went out there and I don't know why I because a lot I would. There was a lot of other animals in this area that just weren't accustomed to the ticks there because they might have been from another region. And they kind of do this on these giant. I don't even know what you'd call them, preserves in Africa. If you go on a photo safari in South Africa or whatever, it's essentially there's places where, say, they bring in animals. And maybe that animal wasn't indigenous to that region, but they swapped with this game reserve area over here to kind of integrate breeding and keep the populations existing. And so you bring in a giraffe to this portion of Africa

that maybe hasn't had giraffes for who knows how long, and the ticks there will kill them. They get these diseases from the ticks. But there's a lot of other animals like that too, so I'd go out at night or whatever and try to shoot these antelope with paintballs that would kill the ticks. And I never saw the giraffes at night or whatever and try to shoot these animal antelope with paintballs that would inoculate yeah kill the ticks and i never saw the giraffes at night i don't know why maybe i just it was kind of weird you'd think you'd find them maybe i was driving past maybe trees but or maybe they're laying down maybe that's why i didn't find them i don't know why i couldn't

figure that out but they were the hardest things to shoot with a paintball gun so there it is giraffes paintballing giraffes is one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Those wild game preserves in Africa, boy, that is a goddamn conundrum. And if there's ever anything that's stirred up the sort of the horrible feelings that anti-hunters have, it's those game preserves where you could just go there yeah and just kill these animals and it's such a catch-22 because these animals a lot of them were bordering on being extinct just a couple of decades ago yeah and now their populations are thriving but the vast majority of them are in these high fence game operations it's real weird well even

in the places that aren't hunting where they just are for photo safaris or what have you you get say you bring in i'll pick a species kudu kudu there you go so you bring in kudu to this place where it could be 200 000 acres and people are going to come and take pictures of these animals. Well, if there's no hunting there, even with the lions and other things that they have there, one of these populations may explode. They cannot sustain themselves. They have to manage these areas too. So a lot of times they do game captures or they may allow some hunting that the people taking photos don't even know about. But whenever you have these populations, it's just – it's the same as managing animals in the state of Montana just on a smaller scale.

You have a limited amount of food supply. You have X amount of animals. These populations are growing at this rate. The predators are only taking care of this much. excess has to be taken care of and some of those excess animals are animals that used to be near extinction and now if you don't manage them they'll they'll all die off of wherever they're at it's so crazy yeah it's it's so crazy also that this is a giant booming economy in africa now oh yeah and and all that it's a it's a in Africa now. Oh, yeah. And all that, it's a business on multi-levels, too, because the landowner now owns the meat.

So then he'll either sell the meat or give it to people living there, working there. Yeah, if you go over to Africa to hunt, you can't really bring that meat back, can you? No. But you can in New Zealand. Yep, in New Zealand you can. How's that? new zealand's clean they don't have anything that we don't have so you can't you couldn't bring meat into new zealand but you can bring meat out of new zealand okay so you don't have to worry about some funky

new ebola type thing they don't have anything africa's crazy yeah it's funny ebola the one of my friends is a professional hunter in south africa and a lot of people didn't want to go to africa after they heard the ebola well from africa's such a large continent from where he is to where the ebola is is further away than atlanta georgia wow not to americans yeah that's goddamn. It's just all the same shit. You're going over there. They all got AIDS. From the monkeys.

Yeah, we don't realize how big it is. We did an image on the podcast recently where we pulled up. There's an image of Africa, the continent, and how enormous it is and how many other continents you could stuff inside of Africa And it's so shocking when you when you realize how big it really is because on a map there it is right there Look China United States India Eastern Europe and a bunch of other shit in there, too I mean all of it just stuffed in there. The UK, everything stuffed in there.

Jam-packed. That's crazy. That's nuts. That's a cool picture. It's a very cool picture. This is a goddamn huge country. Or huge continent, rather. That's the other thing is Africa.

People think of it as like United States, Africa. No, it's a fucking continent, man. It's a continent. Lots of different facets and people and problems and solutions. And a huge spot of controversy now for hunting and this this whole trophy hunting thing ranella wrote a great piece about it they really he wrote an amazing piece about um this woman this these young girls that are getting involved in hunting and it's like become a career for a lot of them yeah they look real pretty and

they go over there shoot animals and pose with them and all the pro hunters get on their side and All the anti hunters attack their Facebook's and death threats, and it's like it's almost like a dance that everyone's doing But what he wrote about it, which I thought was really fascinating He was like I think a lot of this is sexism. Oh for sure for sure right Yeah You deal with this pretty blonde who goes over there and shoots all these animals. If it was a fat old guy from Denmark, nobody would give a fuck. You wouldn't be storming that guy's Facebook page.

No. People would find it distasteful that he shot a lion like one of the asshole. But that would be where it ends. Yeah. It's because it's women. And as much as it's the same people, it's kind of a hypocritical way to look at it, too, because they they go, oh, a lot of the people that are doing this, maybe it's just me being hypocritical as well. But all the people that do it probably look at them as women and go, you know, if it's a man, it's different because hunting is a man's sport. And they see these pretty girls doing it and they're out of place or something. Whereas hunters don't even think like that.

It's like, oh, woman hunting. Yeah, that's great. Well, you know what it is too, I think? It's also that they're attractive white women with blonde hair. Exactly. You just think all these evil thoughts of racism and cruelty and just these monster Aryan women that are shooting animals and posing with them big stupid whitened teeth smiles.

Yeah. It is a form of sexism. I feel like, now, on the flip side, some of them probably just, I mean, it's easy. If you wanted to jump in that spotlight, go shoot yourself a lion and wear a cheerleader outfit. I'm actually planning on doing that next week. This show will blow up. Apex Predator. I'm actually planning on doing that next week.

This show will blow up. Apex Predator. Just going to wear my cheerleader outfit, have my pom-poms, and go out and chase some lions. That's what you need to do. You need to take over the transgender hunting market. It's ripe. It's ripe. If you became the first openly transgender hunting, or at least cross-dressing.

Not transgender. I don't want to go that deep into it. When you start pulling out a scalpel and removing balls, I'm kind of like, I'm away from this issue. Fucking with the endocrine system. There's a lot going on there behind the scenes. But, you know, hills and heels. I'm doing all my elk hunts for now.

Solo hunters, and I've just got these stilettos, these pumps. I'm really pumped for this adventure. I wonder how many gay hunters there are too That was something that we had gotten into Before we were trying to describe Like the average hunter And I said well how many people Like a lot of hunters

Tend to lean right wing And maybe that's because Of gun rights or Second amendment ideas Or just because it's like Sort of a traditional, you know, God guns and, you know, grills. Yeah. But they tend to like, like I would say the majority, I would say it's probably like more than 60% are right wing. Yeah. I would probably say that. Yeah. But how many of them are gay i don't know do you know any

gay hunters i do you do oh there you go i know a few of them that are actually guides like professional hunters really are they open not no i mean they just tell you hey man you don't want to share a tent with me because i will fuck you that's one of those no i mean they're i yeah i don't really know if you just know that they're gay yeah it just doesn't come up yeah yeah i think in this day and age it's more about i mean not that this needs to be discussed in depth but i think homosexuality it's more about if you really do care Unless you're dealing with some extremely aggressive individual That's like like annoying with his gayness right like just won't take no for an answer Which I have seen I have seen I know a comedian like that. He's fucking brutal. He's not so brutal anymore

He's an older gentleman. I believe he's calmed down but back in the day like maybe 10-15 years ago I had a deal with him one night at a drunken bar in Montreal. I was like, dude, you got to get the fuck away from me. Like, I'm not gay. You got to stop. He was brutal. You know, like trying, he was trying to get this other dude to come upstairs. And then he's like, what about you?

I'm like, come on, man, get out of here. Like, you just, you're just brutal. Like you realize what it's like to be a woman. I'm not a piece of meat. You can stare Eyes are up here fucking asshole stop looking at my non-functional breasts But then he started then he started to insult you and you're kind of like well me what's wrong with me? Yeah, I started playing mind games now you start wanting him No, I just I think in this day and age, there's going to come a point in time

where the person that is homophobic or racist or any other prejudice, that person is going to be very rare. Very rare and despised. Right now, there's plenty of people that you could hang out with that would share in your racism or share in your homophobia.

But I think because of the internet and because people are kind of understanding people a little bit better could hang out with that would share in your racism or share in your homophobia. But I think because of the internet and because people are kind of understanding people a little bit better and motivations a little bit better, that's going to be less and less. Yeah. I think if more gay hunters were around, I think that would help. So you gay people out there. It's a great way to get fabulous furs. Fabulous furs. That's a touchy one though.

Even people that like to eat meat, they have a hard time with furs, right? Yeah. Furs are tricky. They are. Falls into sort of the same ideas of trophy hunting. Like you're turning an animal into an object. Even people that eat meat have a problem with furs. Or furs or leathers, I guess.

But leathers not. Leathers because you're eating the animal underneath it. Well, look, I could wear these fucking Converse to Whole Foods. Not a single vegan would give me a hard time. These are leather. Yeah. You know, nobody would give me a hard time about these. I'd be fine.

Leather belt, no one's going to get crazy. Is that a leather interior in your car? No one gives a fuck. No one gives a fuck. No one cares. But if you say that you eat an animal that's not on the average everyday menu, if you're one of those weird dudes that goes squirrel hunting, oh, you piece of shit, how could you shoot a squirrel?

What is Ronell's term? He uses charismatic megafauna, like bears. Bears are a big one. People think of Yogi and Boo Boo and all these different animals. Yeah, we've given human personalities to non-humans. Yeah. So we attach to them. But Bullwinkle never caught on.

Nobody gives a fuck if you shoot a moose. No. They really don't care. But Rocky. Oh, the squirrel. The squirrel. That's right. But squirrels are cute.

They're fluffy. They're like the most acceptable rodent ever. That's right. But squirrels are cute. They're fluffy. They're like the most acceptable rodent ever. I don't, yeah. I think they're just kind of big, noisy rats, really. I don't even, I've eaten coyote, and I've eaten coyote before I ate a squirrel. Really? I've never eaten squirrels. I don't know why.

You've never even tried it? Not that I wouldn't, but in my, where I grew up, squirrels, you just didn't eat squirrels. Well, you got your coyote the same place I got my squirrel from Rinella. Did you? I ate some squirrels with Rinella. It was okay. I feel like I shouldn't go through my life without eating a squirrel. I ate a pigeon the other day. We had pigeons on our roof and they were just crapping all over, so I shot it

with a pelican and ate it. Like, whatever. That's hilarious. I's hilarious i felt well yeah i feel like when you when you utilize it then it's okay it kind of it for myself it justifies it yeah okay yeah oh yeah it's like now if i trap a rat in the garage i'm not gonna eat that right something different unless you're really fucking hungry Exactly I was in New York City last week And they had pigeon on the menu

At a restaurant we ate at They call it squab? Nope, it was pigeon It just said pigeon See, that's Some animals get weird There's like a weird stipulation with them Where it's not a tasty, edible item

But dove, if you put dove there Hunters love doves But pigeons pigeons are taboo hunters love doves But if you dove on a menu and a regular restaurant the average person who's not hunter would be like oh the peaceful bird It's the peace bird of love. That's the love bird. It has the twig in its hand I always thought the love bird was the swallow. I don't know that Oh, that's not the lovebird. That's the lust bird. Lust bird, yeah. That's the dirty bird.

I forgot, yeah. But pigeons were actually brought to North America as a food source. When you look at pigeons that are in New York and they're flying all over the buildings and shitting all over the place, those pigeons were initially brought over as a food source. They are non-native animals. My great-grandma raised pigeons for food. Wow. And sold them.

That was their pigeon farmers. Wow. Squab salesmen. Wow, squab salesmen. Yeah. That's crazy. Because I'd seen it, you see it in a few Chinese food restaurants,

squab salad and other things. Mm. But they have to call it squab. Yeah. If you don't call it, if you call it pigeon, that's why I was amazed at this New York City restaurant. But they're just, york city is on some next level culinary type shit and i mean

that's it's like that's locally sourced man that's pigeon from yeah i can see that like it's from my jungle the jungle of my rooftop apartment yeah there's uh a lot of them if you want to serve pigeons in new york that's like you got a sustainable sort of an environment and they're fed well, too They eat lots of garbage probably not good for you. They used to say that Lobster was like a poor person's food in New York like way back in the day They used to when people wanted lobsters they would get them directly from the river They would get them right from the East River and they would pull them out and they would serve them in bars And they were like poor people food or just because they're aqua cockroaches

yeah well they literally are iraq spiders if you have an allergy to shellfish you also have an allergy to roaches we found that out on fear factor that's pretty crazy yeah people that were allergic to shellfish we gave them roaches and their their throat started seizing up oh because they're eating the roaches. Yeah. Yeah, I guess there's no other show where it's like, oh, cockroach over here. Oh, yeah, they're ingesting these. Well, I can't believe that no one knew that.

Like, they would ask people, what are your allergies? And they said shellfish. Okay, eat a roach. Same fucking thing, man. Did anybody go into, like, anaphylactic shock or anything? This guy got real close. Really? He was just whistling.

Where his mouth or his windpipe was closing down. Did you, do you, when someone's dying from eating cockroach, do you, do you kind of like shit talk them still? Like, you scared? Come on, man. Suck it up. It was much later after the show. Yeah.

They had eaten the cockroach. They had gone back to the hotel. And that's when the reaction started kicking in. It wasn't an instantaneous reaction. So I don't know if maybe they have a less strong reaction from eating the cockroach than they do from eating shellfish, or if that's how their reaction normally is.

I guess there's levels of allergies, right? Some people are like acutely... Like my friend, Gary, he can't even come over to my house, because I have cats. If he opens my door, he'll just start... He literally can't even breathe the air inside my house. But my wife's allergic to cats. And she lives with them.

She's fine. She just has to wash her hands if they touch her or they lick her. The cats have to be clean. We have to bathe them. But my friend Gary can't even walk in the door. So I guess it's like there's levels of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's put that on cockroach allergy. Is there game animals that people are allergic to? Is there any animal? Have you ever heard of a person being allergic to like venison or something like that? No. I know. I'm allergic to antelope in a certain way. Really?

I'm skinning it. The blood, when it dries, it gets hives itchy. Some people get that. Only antelope? Yeah. Did you ever get it checked? No. Huh.

I don't know. But I mean, cook it, eat it, I love antelope meat. So, I don't know. But I've talked to other people that that happens to. If you had to say, like, what is your all-time favorite meat? If somebody restricted you to one meat for the rest of your life. Oh, it's so tough. Probably elk. Yeah.

It's just something about elk. It's delicious and healthy and it's good. It's really good. Such a majestic animal, too. I've only seen a few of them in the wild, but every time I see them, I'm just like, whoa, what is that thing? And it's a fun animal to, I mean, it's a hard animal to hunt. A lot of people don't realize, but the payoff's amazing because it's pretty large and some of the best meat around. I really, I keep coming back to elk is the best. Yeah, it's very, very delicious. It's an enormous animal. Like, what's the biggest elk you've ever shot?

Body-wise? Body-wise. Oh, this year, me and my brother drew tags on southwest of Fognac Island up in Alaska, and we shot these elk. Mine, no joke, probably weighed 1400 pounds hold it was now this is for people like most elk are about 400 pounds like Rocky Mountain elk average you know younger bull I think the what was it Wyoming did a study and it's around there 400 and something pounds is the average elk weight this was a very large animal.

And the Fish and Game Department in Alaska sends out a thing saying, these elk are about the size of moose. And yes, this elk was as big or bigger than any moose I've ever packed out, taken apart. God. It was a brutal experience, to say the least. Does it carry it? Oh, yeah. We had to pack this thing.

Dude, it was crazy. My lower back just started throbbing. brutal experience to say the least. Does it carry it? Oh yeah. We had to pack this thing. It was crazy. My lower back just started throbbing. Me and my brother, we both shot, we both shot bulls. Mine was quite a bit larger body wise than my brother's, but eight days of just straight toil, a hundred plus pound packs.

Eight days of just carrying these animals. We filmed a documentary stylestyle show on this. It's not anything yet, but we recorded all our trip in a documentary fashion and recorded on his GPS our elevation because we camped on this one lake and we had to climb up this big mountain, down the next one, and we shot these elk a ways away. this one lake and we had to climb up this big mountain down the next one we shot these elk a ways away and it was i i hate pulling i'm so bad with numbers i always misrepresent them so i'm trying to think here but it was something like 60 man hours of packing between the two of us 30

hours you know 30 hours of just straight carrying holy fuck it was in it I got, and I got really sick on that trip. And I think it might've been partially due to just being physically done. Destroyed. Destroyed. It was one of the most physical trips I've ever had, but it was probably one of the best trips I've ever had. And we came back with 600 pounds of boned out meat. And get this, we put the meat up in a tree because we had to do caches. I mean, this is a multiple day ordeal.

So we're doing these caches. And this island has some of the largest brown bears in the world. And we got them up in this one spruce tree as high as we could get them probably 14 15 feet up and two of the hind quarters in our cache got eaten by bears by a bear and they say these bears don't climb trees i don't necessarily believe that i think that they can get up a tree in some fashion because i don't think it was a 16. I know it wouldn't have been a 16 foot bear, but somehow this bear got the meat out of this cache. And so we came back with 600 pounds of meat minus two hindquarters. Holy shit. Insane. And the hindquarters are boned out or no? Yeah.

Boned out. No bones in them. Just meat. Wow. A hundred percent meat. We took a picture where we got the plane. We had to take two plane trips to get the meat out. Just stacks of meat. So how far were you traveling as the crow flies? I love saying that. As the crow flies, five miles. As the crow flies, but you're going up and down. So quite a bit more than that.

From camp, the summit was 2,500 feet from our camp vertical up. So it's 5,000 each. And in my brother's, we had to go even over two ranges like that. So just to get one trip back, it was 10,000 vert. Fuck. We documented the whole thing because it was just ridiculous. And so I got sick. And I don't know if it was from drinking

water but sometimes the gestation period of a lot of things you pick up i did drink out of one stream that my brother didn't and it might have been below an elk wallow anyways i get sick and it happens to be this night that we had an insane walk back we got back i think it was one in the morning and we could have bivvied out but the the thought was we set up a base camp and if you bivvy out you carry your camp on your back but then you still have to get all the meat back and it was in our minds easier to just do extra effort if we had to come out light and then we would have room to carry meat so we wouldn't have to carry our gear and other things right and with the bears as well i mean these bears are everywhere so we have a electric bear fence around our base camp whoa and the night we

come back and i just got super sick it's gale force winds 70 mile an hour winds and i'm and you're just trying not you're trying to hold throwing up the coming out both ends essentially and it's the worst time ever. So you probably had Jardia or something like that. I don't think it was Jardia. Just something, maybe some kind of food, something. But it had to have been bacterial in some way because I had one of those Z-Pak, the three antibiotic things,

and I just so happened to throw it in. I normally do do but it was a lucky deal because i took it out of my carry-on and threw it in the thing and i've it's been in my kit forever and i've never had to use it and that helped i don't know how i would have done it because i was able to still take that and kind of kill off whatever was going on and then finish packing out our meat. So you're talking about 30 plus hours of just packing meat and carrying it. Yeah. And each pack, you're more than a hundred pounds, right?

On your back? Yeah. Fucking A, man. I was, my brother's, my brother's in really good shape and he's a bigger guy than me. So carrying the same amount of weight for me and eat, but I'm, that little brother i can't he can't carry more weight than me oh i hope he doesn't listen to this because i was hurting i didn't want him to know it but i was oh i still hurt from it he's like a competition to see like who who breaks first exactly who could deal with the hardship better exactly and he's i's, I mean, if I'm ever in a wilderness hard situation, like, that's the guy I want in my corner. He's just an awesome dude.

And because of it, it ended up being one of the coolest trips ever. And while we're hiking, the thing we do, you're just, like, walking and working hard. All we do is talk about how few calories. We memorize the amount of calories in every mountain house. That was our thing is how many calories. Mountain house, those meals, those freeze-dried meals. And when you're overexerting and just eating freeze-dried meals,

nothing is better than some fresh elk steak over the fire. I was hanging out with this photographer when we went moose hunting, this guy Sam, and he was talking about this trip that he had went on where they had not brought enough food Yeah, and everyone on the trip had lost like 30 pounds 20 pounds We can lose so much weight so when I first started guiding every year. I lose 20 or 30 pounds Wow It's starving you're starving. It's essentially starvation essentially

Yeah And you force your body to keep going and it starts eating off fat and muscle. And it doesn't take much to do because you almost come to a point when you're working so hard that you physically can't. You just get sick of eating almost. They need some better hierarchy. You just need to bring sticks of butter or something. Fat. Just actual fat.

Realistically. Yeah. When people say that I can't lose weight, man, I can't lose weight. You're not trying. If you just, this is what you need to do. Get one of those Tenzing packs, throw a fucking rock in it like Cameron Haynes does and go climb up a mountain. Oh, yeah.

He puts a 130 pound rock in his pack. That's one of the ways he prepares for elk season. He puts a rock in his pack and he hikes mountains. I saw, I was on Facebook or something. He just did the Boston Marathon. For a guy in his bodybuilder status to run like that is semi-unhuman, really. That motherfucker works hard. Oh, yeah.

He does it. He lives it. He lifts weights every day, seven days a week. I go, how many days do you work out? Every day. You never take a day off. He doesn't take days off. He just pushes.

I mean, he's always hurt. He's always sore. He's always like aching barely can get out of bed has to drink coffee take aspirin hot shower and then starts running huh just crazy just tough just tough yeah there's certain people man they just and a lot of them are hunters like renell is one of those guys it's just fucking tough just they have this mental toughness the ability to endure discomfort that the average person just doesn't get and i think it's accentuated by this life or death struggle that you you experience on a day-to-day basis when you're hunting yeah you can kind of compartmentalize certain aches and pains and hunger and thirst and cold you can just block that shit out and keep going where

the average person sort of wallows in that stuff but you know you have you have to you come into this this you have to do these certain things where you're tasked with something it's probably a lot harder than the average person thinks you can do but you've once you've done it once meant it's a lot of this stuff's mental and that's the apex predator show that I've been doing comes back to a lot of shits just mental yeah, it's The so many things a lot is mental with almost everything yeah with almost like you know Tattoos here is a bad example, but everybody says like how bad tattoos hurt. I fell asleep and I was getting tattooed Here is a bad example, but everybody says like how bad tattoos hurt. I fell asleep and I was getting tattooed

Like it doesn't hurt I mean it hurts a little but it's not her it doesn't hurt like someone kicking you in the head It doesn't hurt like someone trying to choke your fucking neck off No, it doesn't it doesn't hurt like a lot of things hurt like they really hurt That's it's just discomfort and there's a difference between discomfort and real pain. Yeah, and what you can endure And there's a difference between discomfort and real pain. Yeah. And what you can endure. Like, a lot of times people start focusing on the discomfort.

And, like, it accentuates. It becomes, like, their entire focus becomes this pain instead of doing the task. Like, blocking out whatever discomfort that you have, dealing with it, and get through it. And going on. Sometimes that Alaska trip, while we're doing it, we're like, would you ever do this again? Nah. And then when it's over, we were so excited, we just wanted to do it again. And it was because we hurt the whole time. Like, when was the last time you just hurt for a week?

Just punished. And it's like this cool experience where you push yourself to these limits and then you feel awesome afterwards well after it's done after it's done in the middle of the toil you're like oh god this is not fun but you get oh you get back to camp that night we we flew in a few beers crack open a beer after in the middle of nowhere and you go yep let's do this again ranella has a whole way of describing it that he said he learned from one of his buddies is that there's different kinds of fun. There's the kind of fun that's fun while you're doing it, but it's not fun later.

Right. And there's a kind of fun that's not fun while you're doing it, but afterwards you have amazing fun memories and it's awesome. It's weird. Yeah. you have amazing fun memories and it's awesome it's weird yeah i i noticed and and you you know i don't know if you've experienced this yet but for me you know i've done it a lot and so i almost like to punish myself and some i like it to be hard i like to be a challenge so i will actually create it to be i just did this hunt in new zealand where i was hunting these these fallow deer and at any given time for the first few days i could

have shot a deer well if hunt a lot of people don't realize as hunters it's not always the goal to just go shoot something it's part of the experience and so for me i just kept passing up animals because the experience wasn't right until the last day when I was supposed to leave early and I ended up, oh, I'm just going to be hunting for two hours and I don't bring any water. And I ended up hunting all day and going, I don't even know how far, 18 miles maybe. And I didn't bring any food, bring any water and I'm hurting. And I ended up shooting a deer at last light. And, and now is to me, it was an awesome experience. It made the trip.

It made that memory. The hardship made the memory. And something that I, as a hunter, that non-hunters don't really maybe understand is, like, having these antlers around. And when the meat's long gone, I can look at that and remember the hardship and the journey and the adventure and these other things about the experience. And the meat was a byproduct, but these are the memories that I, like you look at that moose and you think of something completely different than I do. You remember how it went down. You remember, you know, maybe the struggle or carrying the meat back or whatever. So I may have a rack in my house

that's sitting up on the mantle. Why is that one on the mantle and that one? Well, that one I had to work real hard for. So I look at it and I think it reminds me constantly of what I went through. When you say that the experience wasn't right, what do you mean by that? Like, I feel sometimes it just wasn't a challenge. I, it was, I would have been shooting an animal, not the adventure wasn't there. The challenge wasn't there. It just wasn't a challenge. I would have been shooting an animal. The adventure wasn't there. The challenge wasn't there. It just wasn't the right time. I wanted to keep going until it happened.

I don't know. It's weird. But for me, hunting is about the adventure and everything behind it. As well as obviously getting meat. But there comes a point where, okay, if I didn't get a deer this week, well i'll i'll get one next week i'm not going to starve to death i've got a freezer with meat but i also want to keep that freezer full right but so it comes to a point for me where it's about other things as well the experience the adventure the meat all combining into this if it's too easy i just don't like it that's fast i don't know

it'll it'll happen you know for me it happened i started i would when i was younger i never wanted to stop hunting because i liked the experience of being out there so much so i would do what a lot of people call trophy hunting and i'm air quoting that because it means something different to me. I would look for a bigger deer because I wanted to keep hunting and make it more of a challenge for myself. I see what you're saying. See what I'm saying? So instead of, like some people, they want a bigger deer so they could say, hey, I got a 190 buck and 190 inch and look, it's on my, you know. And they'll measure everything and look at his tines and look how big is for you it was just it's a more difficult pursuit right just a difficult pursuit

where it keeps me in the field longer because if i shoot that first first deer i see i i would be the type of guy that goes out if i've got 10 days to hunt i want to hunt 10 days i don't want to shoot something on the first day even if i end up getting something the last hour of the last day that i would have shot the first day, I don't want to spend those 10 days out hunting. That's funny. I'm the opposite. I'll shoot that fucker in the first minute.

I would love to set the Kent up, turn around, look. Look what I got. Boom. Cut it up, start eating it on the spot. But I haven't been hunting as long. I think when you've been hunting as long as you have you have also you kind of appreciate what you appreciate after the fact like you you have a real deep understanding of what it means to you whereas to me it's all pretty new yeah i've only been doing it for three not even three years now so it's like oh crazy we're

shooting a turkey now oh this is cool yeah we're We're going to go shoot this. I'm going to eat that. It's fun. I enjoy it. I love, you know, the turkey, I don't know if I'll do that again. I might. I mean, it's not that I didn't like it, but what I didn't like about the turkey is you work all day and, you know, several days in a row to get a turkey,

and you can only, it's like a meal. It's like a meal for, like, my family. They couldn't even eat the whole turkey. It's it's not that big you know that's what in nevada chucker hunting's big and you might work your chucker what's it it's a it's a partridge uh it looks they're from the middle east they aren't native but they're released into the mountain they're always they live in cliffs and there is a really hard animal to hunt. You may go out and only shoot one bird and hike. My friend put his little

track my run thing on. We're hiking. We get back to the truck after truck running. I'm pretty tired. 22 miles. You're walking from sunup to sundown. It's like, well, we got one bird between the three of us. It's just where I grew up, that was the thing to do.

But it's not even lunch. No. But it's more you're out there, you're working hard for it. And when you shoot six of them, then you really feel like you've accomplished something. How much is one, like as far as the amount of meat you get out of one? Like two quail. Wow. Yeah.

So like six ounces, eight ounces maybe? Yeah. Maybe? Not even. Not even? Wow. Fuck that. I don't have that kind of time.

But I know, but when you, it's just the pursuit of it as well. So you get into, and then the more you fail the the harder you want to try to succeed so the next time you go out you want to go further and hunt harder and try to get shoot better i don't know that's interesting so it becomes so hunting isn't just about going out and acquiring meat hunting is also about the challenge of the pursuit of the animal Being the hunter Being the predator out there trying to outsmart or out hunt Defy their natural instincts Figure out how to avoid the wind blowing in their nose

Figuring out how to approach them the right way And to make it even more difficult Going after the bigger ones that are smarter That have been alive longer Making it a more difficult task and making the appreciation of the accomplishment much better yeah and the harder something is the more skill you need the more you've honed your abilities in the end and i've always said the harder you work for something the better it tastes if you ask me what the best tasting thing is elk elk, it's because you work hard for elk. Now, Himalayan tar in New Zealand, I think they're delicious.

It's a goat that lives in the mountains, but you work your ass off for it, and when you sit down to eat it, you appreciate it. It's just a different feeling. What does it taste like? Because goat, a lot of people don't like. It doesn't taste like goat. It tastes like venison. Really? It's kind of got marbled fat in the meat, which is different. Mountain goats have that as well.

They have a wild coat. Yeah. To pull up an image of a Himalayan tar. I call them, they're gorilla grizzly bear lions. T-A-H-R, I think. T-A-H-R, yes. Or T-H-A-R, either way. That's a wild looking animal.

Yeah, they're cool. Yeah, they look like a werewolf or a chewbacca or something like that you know like their back looks like a grizz or a gorilla because they've got these silver stripes down the back and then they've got a lion's mane on the front and then yeah look at that thing what the fuck what a wild looking animal they're probably one of my favorite favorite that is so strange and that's a very difficult hunt right right? Can be. Depends how you want to do it. Now, it's like, for me, I want to walk up from the bottom, but you could take a helicopter to the top. Do people do that?

Oh, yeah. In New Zealand? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Look at that fucking face. That looks like a baboon or something. Crazy.

Wild looking. Half lion. And they have a red meat that's just like venison. Yeah. Wow. Now, some people, they fly up on a helicopter. They shoot these things. Then they, what, fly back down?

Mm-hmm. Now, what are the elevations you're climbing when you're dealing with these things? 4,000, 5,000 feet, maybe. Wow. Depends where you're at. 3 to 5, 3 to 6. And it's all weird, rocky, slippery terrain. Very precarious.

I watched one of your episodes of Solo Hunter when you went after these things. Oh, yeah. Was it one? Did I get one or did I fail? It was one you didn't get one. Oh, with the bow. Yeah. Yeah, you go, I mean, just the adventure and getting up there is half the fun in the first place.

What the fuck is that pounding? Is that next door? What are they doing? It's a demo. Demo work. Building a robot. Yeah, it seems like those trips are very strange, too, because you were staying in one of those weird cabins that they have set up there

for people that can just use them anytime they want. They can go up there and hang out in those cabins public huts yeah that's pretty cool is it that many people that go hunting up there they have those things are they from other mountaineering a lot of it's most of the ones i stand are for ice climbing because i like hunting around the glaciers so they're all uh ice climber huts like where you base out before you go really ice climbing that's a really popular pursuit around there? No. But there's so much so they have huts?

Yeah, because, well, yeah, because it's tough terrain. And if that's your sport, these groups, like, build these huts. There's historical significance to some of them, too. They were put in for culling expeditions back when animals are running rampant there because they're all non-natives it's a completely talking about i like to talk about new zealand because it's a place that i've i've come to love for a lot of reasons but when you talk about conservation there it's completely different than we think of it here it's almost uh it's a different world and it's really hard to explain to people that don't understand it because the animals aren't technically supposed to be there,

but we want them there and they can't get rid of them. So there's a completely different system in place there. They don't have any tags. You don't have to have a license. You just go hunt. Not yet. Well, you have to have this thing you get online for free, but things might change.

Who knows? But as it is right now, yeah, it's just open. Is there some movement to try to change it and regulate it? I think it looks like there might be. Yeah. Not necessarily just, not that they want less animal shot, because

a lot of people there would want them all gone, if they could. I mean, they poison animals, the government shoots them out of helicopters. What? Yeah, they have to. Because there's so many no predators and no one no knuckleheads want to bring wolves over there or anything do they uh back in back during i think it was world war ii they'd propose to bring mountain lions well it's the it's the woman who swallowed the fly problem like swallow fly so i'm going to swallow a frog yeah what they what they found out is so they bring in rabbits and then they bring in ferrets to kill the rabbits and weasels and then they find out that the rabbits and the ferrets are into killing these endangered

flightless birds because they're a lot easier to kill than a rabbit and so the non-natives eat the native plants and kill off the native wildlife did you find that did you read that study? They did recently on deer and deer eating birds No, and that it's incredibly common for deer to eat birds and that not only will deer eat birds Like they'll find nesting birds and they'll eat them They'll find ground nesting birds delete chicks but they also found they did they they had these birds that were caught in a net and Much their surprise mature deer were walking up to these birds that were caught in the net and just eating them alive

And that birds apparently are on the on the menu for deer deer. Yeah, that's interesting. No one knew this is a really really recent Discovery yeah, I wonder if was there more bucks or does, or do they even know? I don't know. Jamie, see if you can pull up that article. Oh, you got it already. Deer have been eating birds for years. They do need a lot of protein. Eat us next.

Especially the females need it when they're pregnant, and then the males need it when they're growing their antlers. But they pick out higher protein grass and other things it makes sense that if they eat a bird then they get a little bit more protein in their diet they're eating the heads and legs of live seabird chicks as a way to get minerals they need to grow their antlers scientists believe that surprising addition to the red deer's diet stems from mineral deficiencies in the vegetation they eat wow there's a bunch of different versions of this.

There's more than one study. This is from 2003. This is not the one. There's one from much more recent. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. Field cameras. Yeah.

Yeah. This is the most recent one. This is the North American one. It's crazy. In North Dakota, they set up nest cams over nests of songbirds. Expected to see a lot of the nestlings and eggs getting eaten by ground squirrels, foxes, and badgers. Squirrels hit 13 nests. The other meat eaters made a poor showing.

Foxes and weasels only took one nest each. You know what fearsome animal outdid either of those two sleek resourceful predators white-tailed deer they ate living nestlings right out of the nests and if you're thinking that must be a mistake that the deer were chewing their way through some vegetation happened upon a mouthful bird think again up in canada a group of orthonologists that's how you say it ornithologists we're studying adult birds in order to examine them closely, researchers used mist nets. These nets, usually draped between trees, are designed to trap birds or bats gently so that they could be collected, studied, and released.

When a herd of deer came by, the deer walked up to the struggling birds and ate them alive right out of the nets. Crazy. That's cool. It is wild, man. It is wild, man. It is wild. Huh. A cow. They found a cow eating a recently hatched

chick. Wow. Herbivores eat meat when they're not getting enough nutrients in their diet. That's interesting. It is. Yeah. It is really fascinating. I wonder... It's amazing. I wonder what other animals do things that we don't even know about, just happen upon it accidentally.

I'm sure there's a lot. Yeah. I'm sure. You know, I mean, it's one of the things they've found over the last, I don't know how many years, is how many bears eat baby bears. And that it's not just a matter of, like uh trying to keep their bloodline or trying to discourage up-and-coming males they just eat babies like that's just their thing source like when they get out of the hive or the um when the the den when they're done hibernating they

like immediately seek out cubs that's like one of their favorite things to eat i've heard that i wonder uh i've heard also heard that they do that for breeding reasons as well, because then the female will cycle again. Right. Yeah, there's all sorts of speculation about that. But when we were in Alberta last year, one of the guys we were with, they had seen a female eat its own baby. Wow.

It's really fucked. The male had killed it, and then the female finished it off. That's pretty weird. The male came in and tried to attack the female, attacked her cub, killed her cub,

started eating her cub. She chased him off and then she finished it. Hmm. Yeah. That's my snack. That's harsh. That's fucking harsh, man.

Mom, why are you eating me? It's not a me anymore. You're dead. Hmm. It's a harsh, man. Mom, why are you eating me? It's not a me anymore. You're dead. It's a harsh fucking world. The world of nature. Yeah. That's doing the Apex Predator show. One of the things that really kind of was surprised.

Because we start out doing a TV thing, and you have these ideas of what should happen, and that never freaking happens. Ever. Things always go wrong or, or something, but that's why I wanted to take and look at it as a learning experience, not necessarily come out with these pre preconceived ideas of what's going to happen. I just want to act as this animal in the wild, learn from it and then see what its life would be like.

And one of the things that I've come to the conclusion of is a lot of these animals that we see as being super efficient and easily surviving, it's a hard knock life for them. It's not as easy. A lot of animals scrounge and are hunting all day, every day, into the night just to get enough food to sustain themselves. And then there's other animals that it is easier, but for the most part I've learned that these animals that hunt daily,

it's not as easy as you might think. You always see the highlight reel of the lion catching the gazelle, but it's pretty hard even for the lion to catch the gazelle. It's a pretty interesting thought. And then we go out as humans. It's a pretty interesting thought. And then we go out as humans and it's a lot, essentially, it's a lot easier for us to hunt and catch things than it is for these natural predators or animals. Well, I can imagine.

We have guns. Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the archery thing too, right? That's one of the reasons why people enjoy archery is because it is a much more difficult challenge. You have to figure out how to get between 20 know 20 and 50 yards proximity yeah and yeah the the challenge it just goes back to that challenge of what makes it hard and and why you do i mean there's people that only bow hunt there's people that bow hunt and rifle hunt there's people that don't traditional bow hunt and it's all based

on the challenge and the experience for them as well as a lot of ideals as far as okay well i'm a bow hunter and if you shoot with a gun that's too easy for me but for me i i do whatever kind of hunting because i just love hunting yeah there's a lot of people that have there's like a purity involved You're like shooting something with a bow because it's much more difficult than shooting something with a rifle seen I'm I'm cool with that. But I sometimes for me it's there's hunter I don't like when hunters are against hunter like if you're are you're on a hunter because you shoot it with a right rifle and then well the Traditional dudes like you aren't a hunter because you shoot it with a compound bow, right right there's a guy out there wearing no shoes going you guys need to grab them with

your hands and there's some other dudes like you got to catch them with your teeth can't we all just get along yeah it's it's already a much aligned community yeah i ran into uh jim shocky at this thing and and he's always been a hero of mine and i was talking to him about because he came on your podcast and i listened to that and i thought that was an awesome uh awesome podcast the guy's so well spoken yeah i love that you can talk about anything you're just like oh wow that makes sense to me now but yeah i i was kind of talking to him about a few things and his, in fewer words, he's like, don't fuck it up. You know, like, don't be against hunters.

And I thought, yeah, I mean, that makes sense because really it's all hunting. We've all got the same desire to go out and harvest our meat and hunt and be out in the wild. What's it matter if you're doing it with a bow or on public land or private land or with a spear with a gun i mean it's all the end result's the same it's a dead animal well he tried to make it more difficult for himself to make the challenge so his challenge is he uses muzzle loaders right all the time yeah even in regular rifle season uses a muzzle loader because he only gets one shot exactly and that's for me it may if i'm hunting with a rifle then i may try to find something that's bigger or pack into an area that's further or who knows what i do i just to make it more of a challenge and then there's

sometimes where obviously the only intention is i'm looking for meat and i need that meat now but for the most part yeah you either way you're still out there hunting yeah what brings me back to your buffalo show because the buffalo show was a particularly trying one for you because you snuck up on this buffalo you got it it was a good shot with your bow but the buffalo was still alive they're so fucking tough and they're so big. And you know, there's a lot of things that I would have done different, but also I couldn't have done different in them. Sometimes you

have to do what happens in that moment and make a decision. For me, I didn't want to shoot a buffalo bedded down, bison bedded down, but some things went wrong during the filming of the camera guy was in the wrong place and if that bison got up and started walking off we wouldn't be able to film it and and so i i made the decision to

shoot it with my bow in that particular instance and i had to live with that decision and yeah i shot it where it would have been good but it just the bow didn't penetrate hard enough and it was nothing i mean the equipment was all right everything was right it was just one of those deals where a quarter inch left or right and maybe would have made a difference it hit the shoulder and just yeah the next day it was still alive and and for me i mean there's guys that could maybe watch that episode and go well you're bow hunting and you shot it in the end with if you haven't seen it i I'm giving away a spoiler alert. But yeah, I ended up shooting it with a rifle the next day. And for me, it wasn't about bow hunting or rifle hunting or being a purist in this form or following through because the natives who did that tactic would have only used primitive weaponry or whatever.

For me, in that moment, it was about putting that bison down. And, you know, as hunters, we don't want to see an animal suffer as that or the other thing. So it didn't really matter what I shot it with in the end. I just wanted to do my job to make things right. That had to be a hard feeling, too, to know that this animal's wounded and you have to go to sleep. I couldn't. I didn't even sleep that night. And it was raining.

sleep and then i couldn't i didn't even sleep that night and it was raining we i think we got back to the tents at 1 30 in the morning later it'd been just dumping rain we lost the blood trail you know we're just and i also didn't want to keep pushing it because at some point you think okay well it's not smart to track at night the only reason we're tracking it at night was because the rain was coming and then it just there was good blood and then we lost the blood trail and decided to come back the next day and and luckily things turned out but yeah when i came away from that trip there's a lot of things that i was like you know but i i when i do a television show i like to make things i don't necessarily need to show people that i'm pound my chest and be the greatest i'll show my failures as well i'm not saying that that was a

failure or whatever but you know even in solo hunters or other things there's a lot of episodes where i don't get anything there's a lot of hunting shows that won't show that but for me it's real it's hunting and i've missed things with my bow i've missed things with my rifle i've messed up but you know i I've messed up, but you know I keep doing it and I think you know if I just edited things how I'm always it's always perfect Then I'm just kind of lying to myself really there I think if there was very few hunting shows out there Maybe that would be acceptable like to try to make it like the most exciting version of hunting possible

But I think it's really important to portray it for what it really is Yeah yeah what it really is is a difficult pursuit even for an expert hunter like yourself it doesn't always work no things go wrong and and you know and then and then it also adds to the gravity of the situation you know we come upon a bison and shoot it with a rifle and the bison drops and uh that episode in particular um i had quite a few people that weren't hunters at all, but I started watching the series. And they said that it was like there was no warning. The bison just died. And they were like, I felt sad. And I said, yeah, that's the point.

Like you go through the you felt the emotions of a hunter. I don't necessarily feel sad, but I talk about it in the end, I say that the path of a hunter is a humbling path, and it really is. In that moment, you watch that, and you go, boom, this bison just is now dead. And you go, whoa. Yeah, there's a feeling of loss, right? Right. And then there's also the feeling of, oh, I'm thankful for this bison, and now it's providing me with all this meat.

And that is what it is to be a hunter. You go through a range of emotions, no matter how many times you've done it, that life begets life, and now this bison is no longer an animal. It is a source of meat, and I'm going to use that throughout the year. That's the real big difference between someone who's been involved in the taking of the life, whether you're a farmer that kills your own cows, or whether you're a hunter that goes out and hunts the meat there's a there's a much deeper understanding of what you're actually eating yeah i don't think it's necessarily healthy that we could just go to a supermarket and buy a steak

i just know i think it's weird it just gives you a massive disconnect and that's where all the self-righteousness from people wearing leather, eating meat and getting angry at people for hunting. That's where it all comes from. It's like it's a sickness. It's like there's a disconnect, like a complete total disconnect from what you're doing by eating a hamburger. You hired a supermarket hitman to go out there and kill those fucking animals and package it up so you can be completely insulated from the the life or death struggle and then you're getting upset at other people like the idea of a meat-eating person who wears leather being upset at hunting is one of the the great bizarre hypocrisies of our culture yeah it doesn't really make sense. And I can't, for me, I've seen, you know, I have a respect for my food in a different way that someone, an animal is now food is not an animal.

But for me, meat is always an animal. It's always food. I respect it in that way. And when it becomes meat, then it becomes something different to me, but it's still an animal. It becomes something different to me, but it's still an animal. I think it's kind of a weird story, but we had a horse that we'd use to pack out things and whatever, and it ended up breaking its leg, and we had to shoot it. Okay. And so I didn't want to do it because it's like you have this attachment to this animal.

And then my other guy didn't want to do it either. But one of the guys that hadn't used the horse as we talked to him, okay, like you need to put this horse down. He shot the horse. And I still felt like, okay, this is like now we have a ditto. And so I don't know why, but I cut the back stakes out and ate the horse. This is like people are going to be like, that is disgust. That is sick.

But for me, it was like, okay, well, now it serves a utility, a purpose. It's now food. It's no longer wasted. Yeah, otherwise you'd be wasting it. Something's going to eat it. Either bacteria is going to eat it or predators or rodents or scavengers. Someone's going to eat it. Why shouldn't you? scavengers. Someone's going to eat it. Yeah.

Why shouldn't you? And I've had horse before. I had it in Montreal. It was a place called Joe Beef. I've had horse tartare where I've had raw horse and I've had a horse loins where they cooked like the backstrap and they cooked it up like a steak. It was delicious. Yeah.

It's really lean. In the end, it's meat. Now it's meat. But I really lean there you know in the end it's meat and now it's but i mean obviously you have like like he ate his pet what a sicko but for me it was more out of a respect thing like okay now it's the circle of life some people were not going to understand that no it's weird but that's okay there's you can't help everybody understand things that make sense to me. To me, it makes sense because it's good meat. It's healthy for you.

It's very common to eat in Europe. One of the weird things is I believe a lot of the horse they buy in Canada comes from the United States, but we can't sell it in the United States. Yeah. I had it in Iceland, and those horses are— that was the only other time I'd had it. I couldn't remember part of the reason. It's like, you can't actually get horse here. I might as well.

Try it. Yeah. Yeah. We served horse rectum on Fear Factor once and it was, yeah, people were so angry. I believe it was boiled. It was very chewy and disgusting, but people were so angry. That it was a horse. Yeah. and disgusting but people were so angry it was a horse yeah well it's a horse to a lot of folks it's like if we started serving dog tongue people be like you assholes you're serving dog tongue that's our pet you know so for a lot of people

their horse is even more intimately involved in their life than a dog because they ride it yeah oh and like that horse worked it carried it was like it carried elk for me it was on the hunt which is kind of a weird i mean maybe it was yeah it's a weird philosophy i mean it's an animal that you associate with it's weird but i think it's i think what you did i was like i was like i didn't really know but i felt weird about it and then i was like but then when we cooked it up and thing. I was like, I didn't really know. But I felt weird about it. But then when we cooked it up and it became, it was like, okay, yeah. I don't know. I'm glad I did it.

I don't know if I'd do it again. But I thought in that moment it felt right. How much of the meat did you take off the horse? The back strap. That's it? Yeah, because, well, it was pretty, yeah. And I thought, well, there was other animals out there that were also going to eat it, but it would have been impossible to get the rest out. When you were in a bear area?

Were the bears there? Yeah, the bears ate it. It was gone. Really? Yeah, I went back. How long? I went back like three days later. It was pretty much toast.

Wow. Yeah. What kind of bears? Black bears or greys? Black bears eagles were they eat a lot there's probably when i got there i don't know there was a lot of eagles on it that's crazy eagles eat a lot i'm sure i don't know how yeah there's maybe a combination of animals coyotes eagles bears it's amazing how quick nature can eat something like that. A horse, you know,

what is a horse? A thousand pounds or something, probably even more. Big ass animal gets devoured in a few days. In a few days, it's gone. Yeah, that's why people talk about like finding dead animals in the woods.

Like you rarely, you find bones here and there. you don't find whole animals. Yeah. Very rarely. Try finding a dead mountain lion. Good luck. You could live your whole life and never see a dead mountain lion.

I've only found one. Really? A dead one? Yep. Where was it? In a river. Ooh, it drowned? Yep.

Wow. I think high water. Either trade swimming across or something. Have you ever seen that picture of a mountain lion and a mountain goat that apparently got into a scrap and they both fell off the mountain onto a highway and they were both dead was it a sheep or a goat maybe it was a bighorn sheep now that i'm thinking about i think you're right i did see a picture or something like that there's a whole series of pictures is there pictures of them actually fighting like no they're dead they're both dead there they are bam they're both dead on the road it's a crazy picture i think that thing to the

left is one of the horns yeah well what happened because the when they fall along the air pressure blows through and pops the horn off really look at look at the top what Go up a little bit. Look at that horn, like where it came off. This weird bloody stump where the horn popped off. I wonder if it fell off a cliff or got hit by a snow cloud. Well, go down, too. No, it died off the cliff. Look, he's got a mouthful of fur. He died with a mouthful of fur, that fucking monster.

Wow. Look at it. He's got it in his mouth as he's dead. That's crazy. Oh, what a weird broken legs and shit look at the fall that's crazy imagine stumbling upon that yeah that is a cool thing to see what is that in canada i don't know i don't know yeah i don't know but it's a classic glacier national park where's that at that's in montana wow that's amazing that's so cool

so stumbling upon things like that just seeing just seeing the well you especially having seen wolves actually take out an elk oh yeah, yeah. It's pretty cool. So what different animals do you emulate? I know this week is wolf. Yeah, so this week, so the first episode, we did the alligator. It's trying to grab a pig. How did that work? I didn't see that one.

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's probably what I heard. So the first episode, I emulated the alligator, learned from the alligator. And my goal was to, well, it's, learned from the alligator. And my goal was to, well, to learn from the alligator. But I was trying to grab a wild boar barehanded. And you've got to watch that episode. It's pretty cool. That sounds like the most ridiculous idea ever.

Yeah. What about the tusks? Do you worry about it reaching back and biting you? I wasn't until I was about four feet away from one. Can you spoiler alert? Can you tell me? No, because that's going to drive people to the site. Okay.

ApexPredator.tv. ApexPredator.tv. If they go there, they can actually stream the entire season, right? Yep. Ones that haven't aired yet? No. So what happens, if you buy the season, the day they air, when they air live on TV, you also get access to it online.

Oh, okay, cool. So every Thursday at 8 p.m. East, or I think it's right after the show, so 8.30 p.m. East, boom. Play the trailer, Jamie. Let's play the trailer. In the wild, every animal has adapted to survive. As humans, we have learned from those adaptations to become better hunters. We're the planet's top prey, but we didn't get here alone. Nature itself was our teacher.

I'm Remy Wong. I'm going to study animals in their environments, learn what makes them successful, and challenge myself with nearly impossible hunts, giving me raw skills only obtained from experience. I plan to immerse myself in nature and hunt like an animal. That's a cool fucking trailer, dude. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Those guys at 0.0, they know what they're doing, man. So good. The thing about it is, when we started doing it i i mean i hate corny things and every time we think of an episode we go this could either be the corniest dumbest thing ever or it could be amazing and the fact that we can take something and be real about it not have to

create drama and other things and make it educational where you can still learn and do something that nobody else has really tried and and make it not Ridiculous to me is a win well also doing it on the sportsman's channel you could actually do the whole show right you could actually Do it the way you want to do it? They're not gonna fuck with you where if you were doing this on you know fill in the blank and name another cable channel They would give you a hard time. They just they used to hunting. They would try to turn it into some bullshit reality show with predetermined endings. They would try to predetermine

beats in it to make sure they kept people you know. For that first alligator episode, we I got charged by a pig when I was moving locations and had to grab it and tackle it. Really? Yeah, because I was moving locations and had to grab it and tackle it. Really?

Yeah, because I was just bare-handing everything. And I left it out of the episode because – for two reasons. One, Dan was filming and he was on the other side of a bush. And so he just – he didn't actually get that charge on film. But the other part was I caught it in a way that wasn't about the learning aspect of the alligator. Right. So it was just an incidental. It just happened.

I just got charged, tackled this pig. How did you tackle it? I had grabbed it behind the neck and then threw it down. How big was the pig? It wasn't very big. It was luckily. 100 pounds? 50 pounds?

Yeah. 50? I don't even know 75 pounds okay yeah small the middle okay yeah somewhere in there so charged yeah mouth open and the thing was laundry yeah we put up you can see the big it we put it on our YouTube channel oh you can see the video yeah we I put that on the YouTube channel what's the YouTube channel apex predator or a warm apex predator okay TV apex predator TV or I don't know so or on our yeah me run our social media there's only two

and the pig so why did it charge you they're just I don't know just had a fucker's from it yeah they're just fuckers yeah i think that pig charged me i think that pig had been caught by a human before like dogs recently i think it had been let go again oh by dogs yeah because it looked like it'd been so i think it was just already pissed off enough is enough you fucks that's what he was like yeah but you know i think pigs will do that from time to time they They just kind of will charge if they feel like. It was funny because that's where we recreate something as humans. Dan Doty.

There's Dan. This is a recreation? Oh, you grab a wild boar. That's it. Everything's a boar, by the way, even if it's a female. Ever notice that? You can't get wild pig at the store, but you can get wild boar. It's a weird way, you know?

It's kind of stupid. Yeah, it's just a little guy. Luckily. That thing charged you. It was funny. It was laying in a wall and just straight up, it just looks at me and there was no lag time. Just bam! On me like that. Wow. Yeah, that's probably a pig that had been fucked with yeah so what'd you guys

wind up doing with them i let it go but i tied it up with uh i had some p cord because the whole goal was i was trying to grab the boar i wasn't gonna kill one and or a pig it could be This thing Instantly charged me. I mean there wasn't even a split second it wheeled around it came right at me So wait, what did it try to bite? Did it try to bite your leg? Yeah Anything it just had mouth open and coming and I just jumped down on its back of its neck and then Got on because they can't bite its own butt So if you get both of its back legs it can't bite you But it's kind of hard to get both their back legs in it just kind of getting its back legs

Getting behind it and then throwing it down putting a knee on it and then tying it hog tying it Wow when you let him go, now he really fucking hates people. We let it go. And it was, we ended up having to go to, there was luckily, there's like a tree stand nearby. And so Dan gets up in the tree stand and I'm like, I'll untie it. So I untie it. And the thing kept, it's hanging around the tree going.

I had to climb up the tree stand and we let it go. Wow. We carried it to it. What a gangster little pig. Yeah, it was ornery. Then he just strolls off. Nothing's wrong. Like I showed those guys.

Wow. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Have you ever been charged by anything else in the wild? Not seriously, no. I mean, nothing that, nothing life-threatening really, I would say.

I mean, I've had elk like wounded elk come pretty close and getting at me but that was just because somebody messed up and it wasn't uh it's pretty weird they were just trying to figure out a way to get out of there yeah if they have to put their head down and run at you antlers first exactly so it wasn't like a chart it was different yeah antlers the fucking antlers on elk are insane how nature engineered an elk that that they fall off and grow back every year yeah imagine really quick yeah if you could harness that growing potential i think that's why that's why they put staghorn in a lot of performance-enhancing things, because of the magic powers. Well, Velvet Deer Antler Spray is a human growth hormone enhancer. Right.

I don't know if it works, but I know that a lot of people were getting into that. Like, a lot of football players were taking that stuff. Supposedly, now, you can't even—it's illegal to use in the NFL. Not illegal to use, but, like, in the NFL, right? Really? Well, I was— Because it's so good? Yeah, I think so. That's what

I was guiding a guy that plays in the NFL a few weeks ago, a month ago, and he was like, yeah, we can't use the staghorn. That's hilarious since they're all on steroids. They have a weird the whole relationship

that football has to steroids is, it's similar in a way to what the UFC has to steroids, but the UFC is more aggressively pursuing it, I think. The NFL, if you look at football players from the 1960s, and you look at football players from 2015, you're like, okay, what the fuck happened? What happened? Did humans evolve? Did humans become much larger the fuck happened what happened did did humans evolve did humans become much larger like what happened well there's certainly like advancements in strength and

conditioning programs yeah understanding recovery and how to enhance growth and all these different things but there's also steroids there's just no goddamn doubt about it supplements do make a big difference Oh, you know anything even vitamins and things. Oh, yeah, there you go, but yeah, those are these fuckers They used to be 190 another 335. Oh my god different game though as well. Oh, yeah, definitely I mean the guy on the 1927 is not wearing a helmet The guy on the 1927 is not wearing a helmet. 64 or 67, the guy was still 245.

Yeah. In 1967, that guy was a natural, Alan Page, a natural 245. Big dude. Yeah, that's a big fucker. And that's a real 245, whereas this guy from 2006, 335 pounds. These guys are in phenomenal shape, though. The guy that I took out, his name is Justin Tuck, and he's a big dude, but just strong. Oh, yeah. Naturally, I wouldn't want to stand in a line against the guy.

He'd rip you in half. That's a ridiculous job. It's crazy. Running at each other. Giant dudes running at each other, coll guy. He'd rip you in half. It's a ridiculous job. It's crazy. Running at each other, giant dudes running at each other, colliding. He explained it. He's like, yeah,

it's just like getting in a car wreck daily for your job, just running into another guy that's just as big. Well, they're starting to realize now the overall effect of all these car wrecks, and it's not pretty, and it's interesting because there's this class action lawsuit

against the NFL, and there's all these different people that are saying that they're going to start suing and all these different players that played for years and years and years that are now debilitated. Their brains have come to toast. Did you see the real sports piece on it they did? No, I didn't.

It's scary. It's really terrifying because they have all sorts of very predictable patterns that these guys follow when they have traumatic brain injury impulsiveness violent outbursts uh memory loss and they they essentially become a totally different human being and it's all because their brain is and the the damage takes really 10 years to fully manifest so if they get a massive concussion the real damage is like 10 years down the line it's it's insidious yeah i imagine that that probably goes for any full contact sport like mma is a real issue it's a real issue in mma for sure guys are starting to talk about it now about how to mitigate

it by not sparring as hard um trying to um spar less and concentrate more on strength and conditioning drills or skill-based drills for fighting. Because in the old days, and some camps still do it this way, they would just go to war three, four days a week. They would just glove up and beat the fuck out of each other, and that's how they got better and that's how they learned. And there's some benefit to that. I mean, it becomes normal to you yeah you

know much like what we were talking about earlier about the mental aspect of just being tough enough to deal with certain situations and not you know not freaking out and not being overwhelmed by your your thoughts like oh my god i'm suffering yeah that's that's that's similar in martial arts too like one of the sayings in jujitsu is always you got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because jujitsu like sometimes people panic tap they just get in a bad situation it just hurts and they just can't take it they tap but they really don't have to tap it's just pain so you're not in danger of getting an arm broken you're not in danger of being put to sleep you just you're not in danger of getting an arm broken. You're not in danger of being put to sleep. You're just in pain.

So you've got to just deal with that and just recognize it's only a sensation. I imagine, too, once you get to a certain threshold, you know, oh, I handled this last time and nothing bad happened. Yep. And then you can keep moving on. You can, but there's also borders. There's, like, borders when it comes to joints. You can, but there's also borders. There's, like, borders when it comes to joints.

Like, there's some things you shouldn't fight off because, like, you have to realize as you get older especially, you realize, okay, the reason why I don't want to tap here is because of my ego. But if I do tap, then I don't have to go to the hospital and get surgery on my fucking elbow. But if I don't tap, I'm going to get my elbow ripped apart. And then they're going to have to reconstruct it because I've already done this before. Sorry, I'll just tap. All right, and then you're fine. And then you're good. That's the cool thing about jiu-jitsu is you can just tap.

Most of the time, that's the case. There's occasional injuries, but there'll be occasional injuries if you do any kind of sport where you're trying really hard to do something, even tag football. There's hardcore injuries with tag football. to do something. Even tag football. There's hardcore injuries with tag football. I read somewhere that the highest rate of sports injuries is from running. Soccer is a big one.

ACLs, ACL reconstructions. For soccer, it's like one of the biggest methods or reasons why people tear their ligaments and their knees. They like throw a kick, they're planted, and they kick and their foot doesn't move and their body torques and it's top pop yeah those guys are that's one of those things like they're

in pretty good shape i mean because you're running it's a sport we're running with what i started doing was i got like a sock i'm not very good at soccer or whatever but running up and down hills with a soccer ball like juggling it because then you get You like got to control the ball so on your descent and things you're actually working a lot harder So that's what you do for training. Yeah, I just started that so even on the descent you have to control the ball Yeah, you have a run of it or something. Yeah, or just like try to control it like slow it down Huh, because otherwise you chasing a ball even though you hunt like you probably hunt like what 300 days a year or something crazy like that Yeah, it's been a little bit less now that I've been doing more TV things and other stuff But yeah, and even though all that you still have to train for hunting. Yeah, I just yeah

That's a yeah That's a big one that I think there's a massive misconception in the public's eye They think of hunters as being these fat guys who drink beer and go out and shoot animals and laugh about it Yeah, they don't realize like like, there's guys like you. Like, you were talking about this the last time you were here. You have this insane VO2 max when they studied you for that Predator show. Yeah. For your Predator show, I should say.

They tested your VO2 max, and you're, but it's just by hunting I am training for that. It is an endurance sport. You're out there every day grinding up and down mountains and working hard. It's a hard, now, I mean, if you're sitting in a tree stand all the time, it's different. Right. But hunting to me is something different than maybe someone else hunting well that's one of the fun episodes of solo hunter was you up in a tree stand hunting deer you're like this sucks i hate this i'm way too add for this well that's with doing the apex predator i've realized my biggest mental thing is patience

i have happy i can i'll hike all day every day for years doesn't matter I love it but tell me to sit down for an hour I go crazy I would not do well in prison you probably just get you're probably designed all these years of pursuing

spot and stalk hunting and going after elk that's your specialty right? It's elk. Oh, it's so much mountain climbing It's so much hiking up hills and people don't realize how difficult that is if you don't do it Especially if you don't do with a rifle or a pack on your back You don't realize how goddamn heavy everything is your lungs or would give out exactly like mine my legs were fine Like the first trip I ever did to Montana and we went to the there was all this up and down and that real slippery shakes

my legs were fine but my lungs were like fuck dude you could have prepared us for this I didn't know I had no idea it would be this hard oh yeah I mean you're you're working hard in elevation with weight on your back all the time and for me like my side I'm not a real big guy but i can carry a lot of weight for a long ways i mean i would say body it'd be kind of fun to do like a comparison body weight to body weight and carry something up the mountain because i'm that's what i do all the time i carry animals out for my job is to pretty much a human mule carry shit. You must develop like really great core stability too, because it's all about balancing that heavy weight on your back and then walking with it.

And you, you, you have to stay tight. Like every, you can't slouch over. Just getting, getting used to the weight. Like, like you say, it's just, you're used to that kind of pressure and pain and you realize, well, I'll get through through it human beings are very adaptable oh yeah we just it's a matter of like going on and on and on like i have friends that uh don't work out and one of the most hilarious things ever was taking one of my friends who was a comedian who doesn't work out to the gym trying to put him through a workout like just a fairly easy workout and watching him just turn blue and gray and look like he was dying and

heaving and coughing and hanging on to the, the recovery time he needed in between sets was hilarious. It's like, you realize like this guy just, here's what, this is what a body looks like when it's never been pushed. Yeah. You've allowed it to live for 35 years on booze and, and shitty food. And then you take them to the gym. I want to get in shape. Come on. I'll bring you to the gym. Don't kill me. I'll put you through just a normal, marginal workout.

Nothing crazy. No hill sprints. No cleaning jerks. No deadlifts. Nothing nutty. I just want to get you doing some push-ups, bear crawls, a couple chin-ups, and just you see the body reacting. But if he had just done it, like there's nothing exceptional about a person's body who can do push-ups and chin-ups. It's normal.

It's normal stuff. You just have to do it. But if you did it, just do one set a day. How many can you do? Can you do five? Okay, do five today. Tomorrow, try to do five again. And let's do this for a week.

Just do that for a week. And then at the end of the week, let's work it up to six. Let's get crazy. Let's try to do six today. And if you just do that for six months, guess what? You can do 20 chin-ups. It doesn't seem like it works that way, but it really does. You just got to put in the numbers.

And with a guy like you, you're putting in the numbers for your hunting. You know, you're always doing it. that's a part of your normal life. Like, every time I go hiking with Ronella, I just, I laugh, that fucking mountain goat. I can't keep up with him. And, you know, he's just doing it every day. He doesn't get tired. Like, you'll be heaving and hoving, no matter how good a shape you think you are, the only thing that gets you prepared for doing that is doing that.

Yeah, that's exactly it, because I've taken out and hunted with a few professional athletes these guys are human specimens of the highest degree like they physically and then they try hiking with me and absolutely they just don't get it

no no I train for this is what I do I'm hill fit or whatever if you put me in if I'm gonna go bench press like you bench press, then this is not going to happen. But put a heavy pack on my back and I'll just hike forever. That's a good way of putting it, hill fit. Yeah, you're fit for what you do. What do you use for like a pack? What is your equipment when you pack out meat?

What kind of pack do you use? I use either an internal frame or external frame. What company do you use? I just started using a Kefaru pack. It's pretty good. I actually used one a long time ago when they first started. How do you say Kefaru? Kefaru.

How do you spell that? K-I-A-F-A-R-U. Kefaru. It looks like Keeferu. It's got like a little rhino symbol. I either use that or for an external frame, I've been using the Outdoorsman one. Outdoorsman. Outdoorsmans.com.

Yeah. That's what Ronell uses. And so they've designed these packs primarily for guys like you that are going to do what you did in Alaska. primarily for guys like you that are going to do what you did in Alaska. Where you're going to walk hours and hours and hours with giant slabs of meat on your back. Yeah, and that's special gear for a special task because it puts the weight on your hips and your sanctum. I guess, yes, right above your tailbone there.

Because you don't want the weight, you know, you want it above your hips so you've got full mobility you can move but kind of distribute the weight through the frame to your to your hips and yeah you can put some serious weight in some of these packs and go i mean no joke i've i've packed out a whole elk myself in one trip-pound elk? I got a picture on my Instagram of this one, this dude. We took every piece of meat, ribs, everything boned out. And I've got a pack loaded with meat, and then I'm dragging two quarters of mine up this little hill. It was pretty cool. And the guy's looking at me going, huh, I didn't think you were much when I showed up, but, yeah, you're doing it.

Good job. Good on you. So that's if you're only going to go a short distance. Yeah, it was like a mile and a half. So you just said, fuck it, let's just do it all in one job. I didn't want to go back. Maybe it was two miles. It was uphill for, I would say, half a mile, something like that.

And then the rest was downhill. So I figured, ah, shit, I just get home. When you did that Alaska trip, like how long did it take you to recover? There's you dragging it right there. That's a whole elk, basically yeah I might have when I took that picture I might have had some of it out at the top already I can't remember yep it's a lot of fucking weight yeah like how long did it take you to recover from that that uh Alaska trip um I mean, I recover pretty quick. During the days, I mean, when I sit down, I recover. I mean, I guess afterwards, me and my brother gorged like two bears on a fresh kill. We got back to Kodiak

and we ate at this pizza place. It was probably the best meal I'd ever eaten in my life. I don't know. I was just so hungry. Pizza? Yeah. That seems kind of fucked. Yeah. We just went and got as many calories as we could. We just were under, or just gorged, just ate and ate and ate and ate and ate and then slept the whole next day. So I'd say a day of solid recovery. God, it's so crazy. That's such a wild experience That Kodiak Island man Was the subject of that television show That was really controversial Because it had James Hatfield from Metallica

Was the narrator Do you know that show? Yeah, it was some bear hunting thing Yeah, it was a great Well, it was filled with fuckery That's what I heard Just bear sounds in the bushes And the camera shaking

The same bear sound At every commercial break Did you see him? Where is he? That's what I heard. Just bear sounds in the bushes and the camera shaking. The same bear sound at every commercial break. Did you see him? Where is he? And then it would cut to commercial. And then it's some CG bear like from Cabela's Big Game Hunter video game. It was so bad. It was like there was one scene where these guys were stalking this bear and the guy was about to pull the trigger on his bow

and then they cut to commercial and then they come back and then all of a sudden the guy doesn't have a jacket on and his pack's not there. It's like he's in the same scene, but did he take his pack off? Are you reenacting this? Did you forget he wore a jacket? There was a lot of fuckery, man. And then I talked to this dude who worked on the set and he was explaining to me how

much fuckery was going on, and then it made even more sense. That's what I'm talking about, the creating drama. I hate that. Yep. I was watching some other Alaska show, and it was supposedly about a wolf is coming to eat our cows, and we're going to go kill this wolf.

And then there's the wolf, and then the guy gets off the horse and shoots the wolf. And being a hunter, I mean, you can immediately spot bullshit, like, instantly. And he throws the wolf on. And it was this wolf that had been shot days ago. I mean, the thing had rigor mortis. Its eyes are sunken. And it looked like they just pulled it out of the freezer. Oh, me and my brother were laughing so hard.

He's, like, supposedly tying it on the horse. And he's just Oh my god That's so stupid they're pretending they just shot it Yeah That's so stupid There was one episode of Alaska the last frontier That I watched Where they were fishing

And it was like this really badly acted thing Where they're like the bear there's a bear I hear a bear. Like, stop freaking out. We got to get out of here. And like the bear's coming. There he is. Look, he's right over there.

And you look over, the bear is eating a filleted salmon. Oh, yeah. Like they filleted the meat off the salmon. And it's like clearly cut. Like you can't get any slice. Like it was totally obviously. It was just from the store. They laid this fucking filleted salmon out there, the bones and the head and everything.

They laid it out there for the bear to eat. Yeah. So the bear would, like, get close so they could film it. And they're pretending it's coming after them. Like, what the fuck are you doing? I can't watch your show now. No. Now you got me.

I can't watch it. Yeah. That's one thing that's really cool about your show. And Rinella operates the same way as does Jim Shockey. That Uncharted show that he has, amazing. That's an amazing show. It's more like of a cultural exploration show than it even is a hunting show. I mean, he goes to these places and eventually shoots an animal, but he's in like the weirdest spots on earth, man.

It's really dangerous war-torn areas and he's bow hunting a fucking goat or something. And that's where it comes into the adventure aspect of it as well because there's so many aspects to hunting. The benefit is the meat, but while you're getting your meat, you get these rich experiences that you can't get any other way. Well, you get a deeper understanding of life itself in in in the sense of actual biological life on earth you get a deeper understanding

not just experiencing it from a video or reading an article about it but from actually being there in the environment where these things live you get it the other thing is you get to be a part of nature not just a watcher of nature, not just a bystander. Like even doing the Apex Predator show, I'm looking at the way an animal lives and then trying to see how humans compare and then go do it. And the doing it part is completely different than the watching it part. I can watch the great blue heron do something. And there's the heron episode. Obviously, there's some things that are ridiculous

about it. Like I decided to go into a river wearing stilts. This seems like you're trying to make entertaining television, but, and at first I thought, is this going to be one of those things where it's like the filleted salmon type show? No, that's the last thing I want. So I look at the way the great blue heron hunts and i'm you know bird watching for majority of the first part like watching the way these animals do something and by watching my thought i understood it and then i went and did it in a similar fashion where i'm now putting myself in the experience of dealing with things like water refraction deep water clarity trying to sneak in and and be on this elevated platform and the experience of doing it

i learned something about that bird that i would have never learned otherwise and it was like this light on moment where i thought okay even in these in the midst of these semi-ridiculous things i'm learning something that i can't learn by observing i have to learn by doing now were you using a bow or a spear a spear a spear yeah and light refraction from what i understand it with bow hunting you have to shoot in the water like maybe six inches below where you think these fish is yeah so it it depends it varies on water clarity angle of the sun depth of the fish and there's some at some point i realized the fish were so deep that the spear wouldn't even really reach them with enough force for penetration

so how deep was that like how much penetration you get like so like four it's deep three still steep so it's like three feet so three feet so by So by the time the spear, if you throw the spear, by the time it gets down to the fish, they're ghost. Gone. Yeah. They see it coming. So yeah. Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Did you get anything? Oh, don't tell me. Spoiler alert. Yeah, spoiler alert. Don't do it. You know where you can find out? ApexPredator.tv. What?

Yes. That's what I hear. I hear it. ApexPredator.tv. Or on the Sportsman's channel. You can buy the season for $14.99. You can't go wrong. Or Sportsman's channel every Thursday.

My DVR has four of the Coyote episodes on it for some reason. Something went wacky. Yeah, because it's got all kinds of airing times. I think it's like a couple times on Thursday. Because it's eight Eastern and Pacific, which I wasn't smart enough to figure that out. Somebody had to tell me what that meant. Like, oh, no, no. It plays at eight and eleven.

And then again at eight. Yeah. Eight over here, eight over there. Yeah. So. How many of these things have you done? Six episodes. Do you think you're going to continue to do more?

Yeah, I hope so. What's really going to determine that is people's involvement in viewing and viewership and other things, which I think it's a—this is a show that—I've seen a lot of shows, and this is a show that I want to watch. I wanted to make a show that I wanted to watch. And so this is what we attempted to do here is make a show that I want to watch. So it's got one viewer, me, and if other people in the network should be like, that's not enough. Okay, you like it, but, you know, Billy Bob over here has to like it as well.

No, I enjoyed it. I mean, I've only seen the one, the coyote with the buffalo episode. But I really enjoyed it. I think it's a really well-done show. Like all the 0.0 shows, they're great. They do Anthony Bourdain's show. They do the Meat Eater show. It's just a great company.

They just know how to do it. They do a good production. And they can take a concept that seems out there. And it's just one of those shows, you have to watch it to understand it. I mean, I could talk about it. But if you really want to see if you like it or not, you have to watch it. I think guys like you are really important in the world of hunting because what you represent is what doesn't fit when these guys have this stereotypical idea of what a hunter is the stereotypical idea of what a hunter is to a person who doesn't know any hunters they want to

think of them as these loudmouthed drunken dummies who don't really care these bubba type characters and ranella flies in the face of that as does jim shockey as do you i think it's it's really important that people don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. Because this, yeah, those people are repulsive. The people who, I mean, the assholes that laugh and mock these animals as they're shooting them,

and people who are drunks are going out there and irresponsible use of firearms and weapons. You're right. I agree with you as much as anybody that's listening. Someone who disrespects the lives that they're taking and does it in this

really repulsive way, I'm with you. If you're an anti-hunter because of those people, I would probably, if they were all like that, I would be like that too. But that's not what hunting has been as it's been explained to me, and as I've experienced from guys like Ryan Callahan, from guys like you,

from all the people out there that I've run into that are real hunters, have been very respectful, very fascinated by it, intrigued, constantly curious as to the nature of these animals and super respectful of the lives of these animals that they take you know i think too is because for a long time people i think there's a lot of hunters that have very similar views to myself and for a long time they just haven't had necessarily the ability or the pulpit to show that there's other people out there like that exactly because when i first started i've always wanted to get into hunting television and when i first started trying to break into it uh i got a criticism that i was

there because there was this model it was that bubba hunter guy and i wasn't that guy you know and so the the person had told well, if you really want to do this, then you need to do whatever. And I was on a hunt and I shot a deer and it was like, I was told that I need to celebrate in some extravagant fist pumping type way. And I, I did it for that moment and I immediately regretted it. I felt horrible. I felt like this isn't me. And if this is what it is, I don't want to do this. And I got, it was like, and that right there told me like, if this is that industry and this is that, I don't want to be a part of this. But then my thought was, you know, there's probably other people out there like me that if they had the chance to do it how just be myself

and do it then they would recognize that and maybe change the whole the whole way things are going and that's my goal i i mean it'd be awesome to be a part of the people that change the way people see hunters because i think there is the ability to make that change because there is a lot of us out there that respect nature respect the, see it as a way of life and not just as some crazy Bubba guy out there hooting and hollering and fist pumping and doing his thing and not respecting what we have. The lack of appreciation for the life that you've just taken and also the lack of understanding of the complexities of the whole situation is also one of the disturbing things about the whole quote-unquote Bubba thing.

Yeah. Like the show that you put on. Like, we got a good'un, we got a good'un, yeehaw. Faking. Yeah, fake enthusiasm. Because there's, don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with being excited. Right. Because, and it's a different kind of excitement.

Don't get me wrong. There's nothing wrong with being excited. Right. Because, and it's a different kind of excitement. It's an excitement where you're excited for, it's hard to explain the type of excitement. Because it's a, I took an animal, but I'm excited because of the challenge and what it represents to me. Like, it went through this it's not always a solemn moment but it's an excitement in this very deep moment where you did take the life of an animal and you need to respect that and for me i always have and i've expected the entire journey to get to that point and so for

me to smile behind an animal to me means it's not disrespectful right there's nothing wrong with you being with a big animal that you shot you're very happy it all worked out well and smiling correct but people do they think oh you've got to be somber you've just killed you've just taken a life well why if you respect the life if you're happy that it all worked out well you're you're you're you're happy with your accomplishment and your hard work paid off why can't you? Is it disrespectful to the life that you've taken to smile doesn't make the life any less significant if you don't smile or do smile doesn't change anything. But what I think you what you bring to the table and what you know guys like Shaki or Rinella bring to the table is a level of of intellectual capability a level of the ability to communicate really complex situations to the average person that doesn't ever get involved with taking the

life of an animal to for to communicate that in a way where someone could be listening to this podcast and it's one of the things that i get from people that listen to the podcast that have hunters on they go i never had this opinion of hunting until I listened to these guys in these podcasts I always had this really negative really stereotypical view of what a hunter is and now I kind of understand it and I've gotten that like guys on my message board there's guys on my message board that have evolved over the time they've been there where they were there years ago and they had this idea like all hunters are assholes and then as time went on they've kind of been exposed to all these different people and all these different conversations

they realize oh we're just involved in this weird culture that has this this compartmentalization of various aspects of life and the big one is where you get your food from. So there's people that are criticizing people that do it themselves. There's no better way for an animal to die than by a hunter. There really is no better way. If you shoot a deer or an elk and that animal is dead within seconds, that is the most peaceful way it's ever going to die. The most pure way you're ever going to acquire meat.

It's so much less struggle and less suffering than being a domesticated animal that's raised to be slaughtered. It's so much better than being killed by a predator out in the wild that's going to slowly eat you asshole first. You know, I mean, there's no better way. If you really truly love animals, you've got to take into account a few undeniable truths. One is that populations need to be controlled, and they are controlled through the natural way with predators. But when we live in those environments, you have to pick a team. If you're going to say team people, well, then you're going to have to control the predators as well.

And you have to control the game animals because, look, try living in upstate New York where you can't even drive down the road without slamming into a suicidal deer. I mean, they have some places where they have to control the populations of deer so badly that they have, like in Pennsylvania, they don't even have a season. There's parts of Pennsylvania where you could just go and just shoot deer all the time in these suburban areas. They did an episode of Bone Collector on it. Really? Because these guys got up at a tree stand in the summer. They're just fucking shooting deer left and right. They're everywhere.

Because the people are running into them. They're getting deer ticks. People are getting Lyme disease because of it. disease because of it there's there's a lot more to what hunting is and to what what it represents to the people that are involved in it than the bubba image yeah and i there's always the the thing that always makes me laugh is the people that say oh we'll just release more predators to control like if you're all about animal population control like make it before humans like before hume they, or what did they say? It was fine before we got here.

And I always laugh and say, when is when we got here? You mean white people? It's a waspy outlook on life. It's like before we got here, before people came across the land bridge, like humans and animals have been, especially on Archon, on any con, have been coexisting for a very long time. And humans have been a prime hunter of these animals as a predator in the natural food chain. The animals that we didn't hunt no longer exist. I haven't seen a T-Rex in a long time. Well, we were in a row for them, right?

Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the argument, too. If you want to really bring it back to the old days, let's start bringing dinosaurs back. I mean, how, yeah. Well, one of the main arguments with how human beings' brains developed to such a large size is because of hunting, because of the sophisticated methods that we need to employ to make sure that we kept eating food. And one of the things that, like, looking at Apex Spreader, it really kind of looks at humans and animals and how we,

how we've adapted and learned from nature. If you, if we were out there and we, okay, well, yeah, our brains, it all comes back to,

we have every animal out there can possibly beat us in a certain way or whatever is specialized in a certain way, but it comes back to our brains. We can figure out how to do what they do best. And that's what the show explores, how we figure out how to do what they do best and see how we compare to it. And a lot of times we may not compare in a certain way, but it comes back to using our brains and figuring out a way to make up for those adaptations. So you did eight episodes this year. You did the coyote, the wolf, alligator.

What are the other ones? Six episodes. Oh, six. Golden eagle. Yeah, so the coyote one was looking at that Catlin painting, but using the coyote skin in that fashion. So the coyote, the wolf, the golden eagle, the great blue heron, the river otter, and the American alligator.

And if you, when you're done with all this, what are your next ideas? We've got, I want to do, so even, it's called Apex Predator, but sometimes titles of shows may be misleading because I also want to look at every aspect of nature, not just predators, because I think there's a lot of other animals that can teach us things. So we're considering humans as an apex predator. How did we get to this point by learning from nature as well as these changes that we've made?

So one thing that I would like to do is look at camels and the way they carry water. Because humans are, a camel can carry water. And humans are one of the only predators that can carry water. So you think of that as an advantage. And how we compare to a camel, like how much a water camel, how long they can go, stages of dehydration. So I'd like to explore that and hunt in a desert situation for an animal that necessarily not i wouldn't be hunting for camels end quote it's just like trust me i that's not something i want to get into but uh another desert animal maybe a owdad or something in a

very arid climate uh what else there's um i'd really like to look at the way mountain lions they're they're so quiet when they walk. And some of these, you look at some of these episodes, you just see it as a 30-minute episode. And some of these episodes, I've trained for months to prepare to do this episode, the wolf episode. I mean, I was training, running, doing a lot of things to prepare myself to be able to attempt to run an elk down. on an elk down and one of these episodes that we had slated an idea of i was training for is this mountain lion episode where i'd compare how mountain lions like the amount of noise they make when they walk is very little i've had them just walk past me and never heard a thing so let's measure kind of measure how loud a mountain lion is when it's walking and then us with our boots

on and then us with our bare feet and then so and then go and do a hunt barefoot and so for months i was training to harden my feet and get them tough enough where i could go in the desert and hunt an animal barefoot we ended up not doing that episode so for months i was walking around barefoot just i think it was just a crazy trick toughening, toughening my feet. So I'm going to have to do that all over again. But there's, that's one of them. And we've got a lot, you got any crazy ideas? Because there's a lot of cool animals out there that I'd like to explore.

How tough did you get your feet? I could walk for a while and not worry about it. So they just got thickly calloused? Yeah, they're already pretty calloused. I think what I've noticed is it was more of a sensory thing. Your feet don't necessarily get that much tougher. You just learn to feel the ground different. Well, you ever seen that dude from Dual Survivor that walks everywhere barefoot?

He's such a goofball. It's like one of those shows where, you know, these guys, like, for sure there's some fuckery going on the show for sure yeah but this guy wears no shoes like this is his idea that you know to really truly survive you know you're gonna have to go without shoes because occasionally you find yourself with no shoes and then you'd be fucked because your feet are soft so he doesn't want to be in that situation so his feet are they're always hard it does toughen your feet i i did i before i did i did like a lot of research just some there's some crazies out there that are all about this like no shoe thing and there's dudes that talk about drawing like a fake sandal on your foot so because you can't go into places you know like no shoes no shirt no

service so they've got all these like tricks of making like a rope a paracord fake sandal so people don't really notice that you're barefoot. What? And then how to like get into it and start by going on varying terrain. I actually had to spend, while I was trying to toughen my feet, I had to spend some time in L.A. So I was like cruising down downtown L.A. near Skid Row barefoot. And I thought this is a good way to pick up a disease. I'm not going to do this anymore. Or a needle. Yeah, exactly.

Glass and all kinds of stuff. That's probably the most dangerous. You were barefoot training near Skid Row. Yeah. When the cops pull you over. What are you doing? What are you doing? of stuff training near skid row. Yeah, they're when the cops pull you over We do it. I'm training for a hunting show. What the fuck get in the car exactly asshole you go right there So there's there we've got a lot of a lot of things slate a lot of different animals. I want to look at Trap door spider they are cool to me trapdoor spider trapdoor spider what are they it's a spider that hides and then when something comes by it jumps out real fast and grabs it so i wanted to build a some kind of hovel and wait in it and try to grab a deer or

something that comes by so we've got all kinds of fun stuff like that um when you grab the deer, are you going to try to kill it, like with a knife or something? No, I think on those type of episodes, I'd probably let it go. Because I have the opportunity to let it go. And I may, I don't really know. I think I would just let it go. How much do you communicate with people that are critics of hunting? I don't communicate with very many people ever because i'm always out doing stuff but you mean like in my day-to-day do you

ever have issues with people that have problems with hunting i don't really that's one of the things about hunting that i think is um kind of weird is there's there's not a lot of communication there's like the converted like preaching to the choir yeah and then there's not a lot of communication. There's like the converted, like preaching to the choir. Yeah. And then there's these other people that have these misconstrued ideas, misconceptions about what hunting is. And they don't seem, one of the problems is they don't seem to get together and talk that often.

And I've seen Rinella have conversations with people that were kind of anti-hunters. I guess, you know, actually in my day-to-day, I do have a lot of conversations with people that aren't hunters but they're they're also people that are close to me right and they know you yeah like family members that aren't hunters you know it's funny as my brother's girlfriend comes from a family that not hunters like she's the typical yogi type that would never consider hunting she didn't even like eating very much meat game meat and now this year she went and got her hunter safety and is gonna go hunt elk whoa because i think when you

really sit down and think about it if you're talking to somebody that like myself or you know people that have are like-minded to me there's a lot of things that we can pull from that if you just actually had a real conversation and take out all the the bullshit of the i don't even know on both sides i call it like the hunting propaganda and the non-hunter propaganda the things that you're told and you think or whatever you just actually have a real conversation about it it makes sense hunting makes sense it makes sense and it's also it sounds bizarre and contradictory but it's very spiritual yeah there's, it sounds bizarre and contradictory, but it's very spiritual. Yeah.

There's something, it sounds like, oh, no, it's not. You're taking a life. I get all the arguments. I understand the arguments. But I'm telling you, there's something even psychedelic about going into their world and hunting them, dipping your toe into the wild, the true wild. There's something like boundary dissolving about that it it changes the way i looked at the whole world it really did like the first time i went deer hunting the one of the crazy things about it was looking at this deer look locking eyes with

this thing in the wild and understanding the the roles that we have my role is the predator that his role is trying to get the fuck away from me and then taking its life and killing it and eating it. And I was like, this is a spiritual experience, a deeply spiritual experience in a weird way that I didn't anticipate. I anticipated it being maybe somber and that I would have to get over the sadness of it all. And then I might not even want to do it again.

And maybe I would just become a vegetarian. Those were like real considerations that I had. But after the event, I felt like there's something that most folks are missing about this experience. And I think it's because it's been very poorly represented in our culture by media, poorly represented in our culture by media, by the stereotypical bubba type, by all these different pieces of information that have sort of filtered down to the average urban civilization inhabitant. We don't have a connection to it, so we're basing our opinions on it just based on stereotypes, on these immediate depictions of what a hunter is. Yeah, it's those kind of false ideas, but then if you actually got to talk to someone, but it's also one of those things, you talk about it, we talk about it, we're sitting here talking about it, but until you go through that experience, you necessarily don't know what it feels like, what it means, what it means to you.

My mom's stepdad, who we call Grandpa, he loves fishing, big, like loves nature, hiking, other things. Went hunting, shot a bird, felt really sad, never never went hunting but that was his experience so everybody has maybe experiences it in a different way but you really don't know until you jump in and do that experience yeah i talked to someone who had that similar experience with a deer they shot a deer and the deer was moaning when it was on the ground making all those crazy noises and never went hunting again right yeah and it just depends on maybe your your experience but also i think it depends on how your reason for going out there like if you are have never hunted before and you say to yourself i would like to go hunting because i'd like to eat less meat that i don't know where it came from be more involved in

that process. If you went out and said, I have a goal that maybe one day I'd like to, in my house, only eat things that I've killed. Even before you've even killed anything. You go out with that mindset and then it becomes a utility thing. It becomes a part of your process for your life and I think it affects you differently. Because you go, okay, there's a reason for this. I'm eating animals anyways. i'm killing animals anyways i might as well be part of the process you're killing them with your credit card or your money somebody else maybe you aren't seeing it but it's happening it's not gonna not happen and it's happening

as a direct result of your choices that's something that we conveniently try to distance ourselves from yeah so if you can be part of that process then it's not something i mean it's a it's a different experience it really is i i don't it's very hard to explain but i think we we sit here for however long and try to explain it it would take days yeah you just it's very hard for people to get involved too that aren't hunters. It frustrates me. Yeah. And I don't know what, because I get a lot of people on social media or whatever that have listened to, like, found me through your podcasts

or whatever, and a lot of them have now jumped into hunting, and there's still a lot of them that are trying to figure out how to do it. And I would say the main question I get asked is how how i get into it or how how would someone get into it really i mean the first thing you got to take the hunter safety and do the legal requirements because once you have that then your barriers to entry are slowly getting less and less and then really just getting hooked up with somebody that hunts and maybe that's through like hunting conservation organizations i think there's a big niche there that could step up and go to some of these events because i find there's a

lot of conservation organizations that you can join say wild sheep foundation or elk foundation and you go out on these projects and do something for wildlife like build a water guzzler reseed an area that's burnt do all these things Or conservation efforts that are done by hunters and you meet other people. Because hunters, if you meet them in the flesh, are probably really willing to help you out. If you're like, I really want to get into this. And you've got to find the right type of guy too or woman or whatever to get you into it. But the easiest way is to have somebody show you, like a mentor. This place where I hunted moose, I should tell people about this guy

because he's awesome, bigcountryoutfitters.ca in northern B.C. Mike Hawkridge is a guy who is the main guide. He's got other guides there as well that work with him. But he does that with people that have never hunted before. He'll take you through the whole deal. He'll take you through the whole explaining to you how to shoot, explaining to you how to breathe when you're pulling the trigger, how to, you know, shot placement, aiming, you know, the whole deal. He'll take you through the whole thing.

Stalking, hunting, butchering, the whole deal. And he's about as real a guy as you can get to. I love that dude. He's fucking awesome. Had a great time with him. And he's one of the few outfitters that I know that welcomes people that have never had any hunting experience whatsoever. And he has some disastrous stories because of that people panic and they freak out and that those are my favorite people to guide though because they don't come in with an expectation of something that uh there's you know i mean there are hunters out there they have just expectations that i'm not okay with and so people that are looking for a new experience they're

there for the experience like people that go in with the expectation of a certain size animal. Yeah, or like, you know, I think the, or, yeah, like they pay for a hunt. I don't sell animals. I'm an outfitter. I sell a hunting experience. I take you hunting. I don't sell you an animal. Just because you go hunting doesn't mean you're going to kill something. Yeah, it's not possible.

No, it's not. No one can guarantee that. Like if you're new and you're there for the experience, you're learning something whether you kill something or not. Obviously, you want to shoot something. That's the end goal. That's the result. No one can guarantee that. we're doing our part to express what we've learned. For you, it's your whole life. For me, it's just over the last few years. But it's not what people think it is. And if you're tired of these conversations, go fuck yourself. I'm tired of you not knowing. There you go.

ApexPredator.tv. ApexPredators on Sportsman's Channel. Thursday night at 8 o'clock on both coasts Remy Warren on Twitter R-E-M-I and Instagram at Remy Warren you're an awesome dude man

really appreciate having you on it's been fun it's awesome anytime and we gotta hunt one day let's go elk hunting in Montana with some bows let's do it

we'll set it up right now we're gonna set it up off air let's do it alright love you guys. Oh, I'll be back tonight at 8 o'clock with Aubrey DeGray, anti-aging specialist, a real scientist. This should be fun. All right.

See you soon. Bye.