The Joe Rogan Experience - #709 - Steven Rinella

Episode Date: October 15, 2015

Steven Rinella is an outdoorsman, author, and television host. He currently hosts MeatEater on the Sportsman Channel.

It's a good fucking book dude. You did a great job with this thing. Oh thanks man. It was a lot of work. I would imagine. I don't know how the hell you have the time. Where do you see volume 2? Live. We live? So tell me, how the fuck do you have the time to do this? I'm looking at this book, The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butchering, and Cooking Wild Games. Steve Rinell is here, ladies and gentlemen. Ladies and gentlemen, Steve Rinell.

Let me put on my fucking knee here. Oh, I like that. Like that, huh? Sporty. How do you have the time to do this book? You know, when I got into doing the book, that was a great opening to the show, by the way. Thank you very much. When I started doing that book, I thought it would take eight months, man.

We just got on this idea. You know what I wanted to do is I wanted to do a book about field care and butchering and stuff, but then someone said it should be bigger. It should be like the complete guide. We started using the word complete. What I keep saying now is how I should – for a long time, I really regretted including the word complete in the proposal because as we sat down um initially I would sit down with with Doty who you know well

Dan Doty and we would just start mapping out we had like a board you know and sticky notes and we just start mapping out like what would complete look like and then it grew and grew and dodie you know he was working on the show and moved on to some other things that still was involved and other guys came in and janice you know we start working on it and just trying to manage the idea and pretty soon i mean a lot of people worked on that book um but yeah i mean i was in there on the writing process and it turned into several it took several years to do them then when i took it to my publisher she had me in it's published by spiegel and growl at random house and she had me into the office and

and we had turned it in it was going to be 700 and some pages long. And she said, like, it's just books aren't, like, you just don't really, you know, you got to understand, like, that's a big book. You don't really do illustrated books that big. So we were going to hack a bunch out, but then we kind of hit on this idea just to publish it in two things as volume one and volume two. But it wasn't just as simple as splitting it down the middle so uh it took probably another i don't know almost a year maybe to to turn it into volume one big game volume two small game that's a big effort man i i i know how much you work and how much you travel and how many hunts you go on. I don't understand how the fuck you did this.

I remember being down. We were down. I was down with my family just vacationing in Baja. I remember sitting there, and we were fishing and stuff. We had two babies with us, and I'm sitting there trying to work on that book. I just worked on it all the time. But the thing is, I did a lot of work on it, but a lot of the guys you know worked on it a ton too you know like all that recipe stuff um you know dodie like we did a big shoot dodie kind of organized a shoot with some other folks and like we organized a week

of just cooking and photographing but the other thing is a lot of the stuff in there too the images you'd kind of look at the image you'd be like well how would you go and get all these images you'd never be able to justify getting those images to make a book but we had access to so many hours of hunting footage of all this stuff so we're able to do something called screen grabs so in there's a lot of stuff where we're able to pull images to illustrate all these different procedures and stuff that that you just never go out and get those kind of photographs. You would have to kill a ton of animals just on purpose to do that. Yeah, it would be like really expensive.

But we were able to draw back. And the advantage of filming hunts for so many years now is that anything you wanted to explain, we'd sit there and be like, oh, you know what? It would be perfect. And we'd just go in and pull stills out of images and put them right in the books we have it's like as you look at it it's kind of you know it's beautiful another guy a lot of the photography like stuff on the covers by this guy john hafner who's a hunter and photographer um we became friends with john working it up and he opened up his vast library of wildlife imagery.

He just gave us kind of like the keys to his whole catalog, and so we had just a pick of some of the best stuff out there. But I'm real happy with it, man. I'm proud of it. And I always tell people, like, if you get it, there's no way you're going to be disappointed in it. No, it's excellent. It's so comprehensive, and I don't know of any other book like it. I mean, maybe there's one out there that's like it,

but there's so much involved. And even if you're not into hunting, it's really fascinating, the tactics and strategies and why you have to do certain things and what's involved in the pursuit and tracking the habitat of these animals and why they live in these certain places. We put a lot of legal stuff in there. The next one, that one's out. The next one, the small game one comes out in December. But, yeah, they've been doing well, man, and we've heard great things about them.

Well, you've expanded so much, you know, and when I first started talking to you is right after you got done doing The Wild Within. And then you were starting Meat Eater at the time. And now, you know, I really think that the show has hit its stride in a crazy way. Like this, the first episode that I saw of this season was the one where you went hunting for coos deer and you didn't even kill anything. And it was one of your best episodes. you went hunting for coos deer and you didn't even kill anything. And it was one of your best episodes. And it was just because it was so much involved that it just, it's not just a hunting show, you know,

like you were talking about your relationship with your father and how you would love to bring your father to this place. You know, your father's dead. You were talking about how, you know, you have this tumultuous relationship with him and how you'd want to bring him to this place to see what this is like because it's so beautiful. And there's no music, and you were just out there talking.

And it was like, man, this is some really deep, compelling shit. Yeah, we had no intention of doing that show that way until later when the editor looked at it and he went out doing it. There's no music. It's just like the sound of the wind. It was awesome. It's my favorite episode. It's mine, too. It's just like the sound of the wind. It's my favorite episode. It's mine too. It's my favorite one we've ever done.

And I was nervous at first. To do a hunting show, you're working in a really traditional genre that in many ways doesn't invite a lot of innovation. Or one might think it doesn't invite a lot of innovation.

Yeah. You could get away with thinking that. But anytime we've done something that really goes against the grain of what you picture is going to happen in a hunting show, it's like people that like the show have always liked it. Like we can run shows where no one gets anything, you know? When we're out, if we're out filming and no one gets anything, you know, we call them skunkers. I get real nervous, you know what I mean them skunkers. I get real nervous. You know what I mean?

Like, I start getting real nervous from a production standpoint. Right. But in the end, man, I think that people, that fans of the show are willing to go along with you on that if you're giving them something else instead. Yeah. You know? Well, you definitely did. We just filmed a dove hunt down in Virginia with my buddy Ronnie Bame,

who you met. You know, the daily bag limit on doves is 15, right? So it was me and Ronnie, another guy. We all limit out. That's a tremendous amount of shooting, you know? So then you kind of. It's a kill fest. Yeah.

So you're sort of thinking they're not they're five ounce birds but and then you're sort of thinking like man this is gonna be a great show but it doesn't and i hope that it will be but it doesn't necessarily mean that you know it's like it like having like getting stuff doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be great because you kind of there's always like there's always a story hiding around down in there and when we're getting ready to go somewhere to film i'm always getting pressure in a friendly way from janice or from dodie you know who are like what's the story you know like what's the and i just feel like i understand where they're coming from like it's their job to wonder about that stuff but i always feel like you're just going to wind up responding to something that happens.

What I think is important about your show, I think there's a lot of things important about you and what you represent in this world. But one of the things that I think is important in your show is there's a lot of these shows, these hunting shows, without mocking them or saying anything bad about them, but they're very simple. They appeal to simple people. They have this simple ideology that goes through them. And I think you get caught in that genre, and everybody sort of starts thinking, well, this is what these shows are about. These shows are all about, like, go sit in a tree stand, and when you shoot this animal that you named earlier in the spring, and you got trail cam pictures of it. I mean, a lot of those shows are the same goddamn show every week.

Yeah. And you get it in your head, oh, this is what a hunting show is, and this is what hunting is. And I think it's a problem with the stereotype that people have with hunting. They connect hunting to sort of like a low vibration of thinking. Yeah. You know what I mean? No, I understand what you're saying.

I don't know if it's you being a comedian, I notice you guys always say comic, you being a comic. I don't know. I'm guessing you watch other guys. Yes. I can see in that world you probably would'm guessing you watch other guys yes i can i can see in that world you probably would really want to watch other guys i haven't found it helpful to watch hunting shows um i generally don't watch hunting shows um because i don't want to wind up uh i don't want to wind up

having the stuff that i do be a response to that. Right. You know, I'm always afraid. I'm always afraid of that, of like feeling like something would get in your head. And even if you didn't intend to, that you'd wind up responding to it, you know? So I haven't watched a whole lot. And I don't like to hack on. I don't like to hack on. Like people often invite me to like hack on hunting shows. And I just don't. There's some things I see a little bit that trouble me like some of the ways that female hunters are portrayed as like little sex dolls

you know with the mascara and it just doesn't feel like when i think about my daughter growing up and going hunting i just don't feel that that will i don't want that to be how she finds her way into it as sort of like every man's fantasy that stuff bugs me a little bit but um i haven't found that help with the watch so i don't think of i don't do like a reaction to what's going on i just try to make things that uh to to show just like the complex relationship i had with hunting before i started doing this filming hunts definitely changed the way i think about hunting. And in a way, I try to react against that.

I try to recapture how I used to feel about going hunting when I wasn't having this production thing in my head. About making a show. Right. Being worried about making a show. Well, I think that it's the elephant in the room. I mean, how do you avoid thinking about it while you're out there and you're doing it?

You have to consider it. It's one of the episodes that you did in your podcast recently where you were talking about with Casey, Casey LeVere? Yeah. Where you were talking about all the different aspects

of putting together a show and that you kind of feel like sometimes that filming a show in a way, it kind of, it's almost like prostituting it. Yeah. It makes me feel a little bit evil. I feel evil for being involved in, I feel a little bit evil for being involved in TV.

Partially. Well, that's also because your wife is into publishing and she wanted you to stay within the world of book publishing. It's a very respected thing. Whereas TV, especially like hunting shows or even reality shows which is your first thing it's filled with bullshit and yahoo's yeah yeah so yeah when i when i feel a little bit embarrassed not not so much i mean i obviously do it and i and i love doing it and i fight to try to keep it it'll do it but like so in the back of my head like I you know I do carry that with me you know I do carry it with me that I think of like I think of TV as

yeah it's just as like a it's just it just something about it feels kind of base man you know I mean well I think a lot of that might have to do with your experience on your first show too they were trying to like let a fucking moose out of a cage and you shoot it with a musket. I mean, they were trying to pressure you into a lot of really stupid fake shit because they were operating under the guidelines of quote unquote reality TV. That's how they do it.

What's important to them is getting the shot, not whether or not the shot actually happened. I remember one time being in a meeting early on when we were starting to work on that show and a guy that I later became friends with he still does like those kind of reality type shows that come out of alaska but he uh he we're talking about how much time you know like i was always like we need more time we need more time because of finding animals and he and early on the first time we ever met he, well, that's why they have wranglers.

You know? And that was sort of like where we began with that. I liked doing it. You know what I liked about doing Wild Within? It was so many years ago now. We did eight of them. I liked, I fell in love with the guys that I traveled with. Bad.

I mean, like, when we quit doing that show, the show didn't get renewed. I mean, they knew we were still filming the last episode, and we already knew it was going downhill, right? Just because the viewership wasn't there, the wrong viewership, or, like, the numbers weren't there, and the numbers that were there weren't the right numbers, like not the demographic they were after, right? And you weren't going to fix that.

But I had fallen in love so bad with the guys that I worked with that it was like getting broken up with by a girl that we weren't going to hang out together anymore and travel together anymore. I mean, it was bad. You know all these guys. Which guys? Everyone, man.

Mo, Nick. All those guys were on that show? Yeah, Mo, Nick. You took them over. No, I know. So I still associate with them. But at the time, like now I try to wonder, when I i look at that show and there's some good stuff about and there's a lot of bad stuff about it um embarrassing stuff about it when i look at it now

and i try to go like why did i want that to why did i so badly want that to continue um and i did at the time you know i really wanted to keep doing it not knowing that i would find such happiness doing what i'm doing now um that i'd find such a like a a sense of peace doing what i'm doing now i feel like i'm being constructive and working with good people and doing good work at the time i was just devastated that we weren't going to go and now i'm like why did i feel that way and i think in some ways just because i like running around with those guys well Well, it's fun. Man. We had a lot of fun. When you took us to Montana.

We had enemies that we could, like, there was, like, a gang of us, and we felt like we were surrounded by enemies. Oh, the enemies being the executives? Just all these people around, and we're like, man, if we can go another season, we're going to clean house. Right? And we're going to turn this into this perfect thing. And it was like, yeah.

Yeah. We were like, I don't know, man. That's the story of every television show. Dude, we were like warriors, man. I loved it. I still love those guys. There's a fun bonding thing that goes with those shows that's different than any other show. You film a normal show.

Say if you do like a television show. Whether it's on a set or it's on location. You go, you film it, and then you go either to your hotel or you go back to your house. Then you show up back on the set in the morning. And there's a bonding involved in that. But there's a totally different kind of bonding when you're in, say, like when you took us to the Missouri Breaks down the Missouri River in Montana. And you're in the wilderness together. You know, your only source of entertainment is you're sitting around at a campfire at night,

shooting the shit, laughing. And there's this crazy bond that you have with people when you do something like that. And when you're doing it over and over and over and over again like you're doing, like the regular world of civilization seems so stupid the red lights and the fucking telephone poles you just want to you just want to go back you want to go back to the fun stuff when you're out there in the woods looking for a buck or trying to find a ram or whatever the fuck you're trying to do it's like there's this crazy heightened reality to that life that especially when you have a bunch of men together and you have the opportunity to just do it's almost like playtime like you have this this

wild existence you know and then it gets taken away yeah i'm Klansman, and I don't mean that with a K. Klansman with a C. And I do feel like, like, all through growing up, I had, like, well, I still hang out. I still consider, I still regard my two brothers, like, the main people that I hang out with, you know, even in a time sense that's not true. Like, in his mind, like, you know, days per year, that's not true. But they're, like, the main thing.

Outside of my immediate, my wife and kids. Like, I think my two brothers are, like, this main thing. But we always had these guys that we hung out with growing up. The same guys. We still hang out. Like, just this summer, we had people out to our shack, our fishing shack. And it's, like, mostly guys from Michigan that we've known a long time. You know? our fishing shack, and it's like mostly guys from Michigan that we've known a long time, you know.

And I do kind of feel that hunting and fishing, for me, do form those kind of relationships, you know, and traveling together forms those kind of relationships. I always feel like I would have been good in the military maybe because you get to, like, have this little core of guys, you know. And, yeah, traveling with those guys that I worked with and traveling with, you know, and now it's just, like, revolving cast of members. Like, faces change, but it still feels the same. Yeah, it's like a little clan, you know, like a little clique of fellas. And I do, man.

I just, like, I like that kind of stuff. I like hanging out with three or four people out in the woods, you know. It's fun. I mean, even me and Callan have only done a few episodes with you, but Callan was pestering me the other night. He's like, when are we going again? When are we going hunting again? I got to get out of here.

He's like, I got to get out of here. Let's go. Let's go hunting. Call Steve. He's like, call Steve. We were just up this summer, August 15th. We were on Prince of Wales Island. Got sunburned.

Sunburned? That's hilarious. Killed bucks. Got sun. I mean, it was like you wouldn't have believed. That's hilarious. Killed bucks, got sun. I mean, it was like, you wouldn't have believed. I believe it. That pollution,

man. One of the things that I took from that trip. It was so nice. I was, if I, I would have done anything to swap the weather. Cause going up there, like,

yeah, I got like, uh, I got Dan Doty mentioned, I just right now, but Doty had said, he's like, I'm never going back to this Island,

you know? And like, we're done with this stupid Island after our trip. And we went up there and he was very like, I'm never going back to this island, you know, and, like, we're done with this stupid island after our trip. And we went up there, and he was very, like, you know, he had a very tentative feeling about the weather. We kept watching the forecast, and it wound up being nice. And we went up there, and it was just, like, sunshine, deer everywhere. It was perfect.

You wouldn't believe it, man. It's August. You got to go in August. Is that the move? Giannis got a buck, like, doing after hours, doing little after hours. After you're filming? Yeah. I took something away very important from that show, and it's something that you said.

I think you said it when we were in the tent when we were doing your podcast. You're talking about the different kinds of fun. That there's fun that's fun while you're doing it, like a roller coaster, but it's not fun after it's over. But there's other things that are fun way after you're doing it, but while you're doing it, it's miserable. Yeah. I stole that theory from two guys, a guy named Hardcore Jeffy and a guy named Matt Rafferty.

Why is his name Hardcore Jeffy? He's hardcore. Yeah, Hardcore Jeffy and Matt Rafferty. And recently someone sent me a link where I think that it had, I feel it was like an ad of some sort that alluded to that. Like an advertisement that alluded to that. But it was like a mountaineering thing, so I don't know. Yeah.

But I just don't want to take claim for that theory, but they had this thing like the four levels of, you know, the four or five levels of fun. These guys out of Anchorage, you know. And, yeah, it was profound. But it is profound, and I never thought about it until that trip. Like roller coasters aren't fun after you do them at all. No.

Like I was on a roller coaster last week. Is that right? Yeah. What brought that on? Not even last week. You kidding? Local carnival. It was a fucking terrifying roller coaster.

I took photos of the base of it and put it on my Instagram just because it's so fucking ridiculous. They have this setup. And when you look at this setup, you're like, why the fuck did I? Because it's so bad. It's like pictures of uh here i'll show you i'll pull it up there's uh these bricks that they have or uh blocks that they have that's holding up the uh the base of this thing it's like a gambling theme yeah well you can see it on the screen a little bit better. But they have the foundation, so they have these posts.

And then a bunch of shims under it. Yeah, it's fucking blocks of wood. I mean, they're not nailed down. I mean, it's so fucking ridiculous that you get in that thing, and it's spinning people around 50 miles an hour. That's pretty funny. They just, whatever they could find, a couple bricks. It's a full-on carny experience.

A cotton board. But after it's over, the only thing that's fun is looking at this picture but after it's over you know i didn't even notice that at first yeah yeah i went yeah so that yeah roller coasters fun in the moment but not fun later yeah and there's things that are terrifying while you're experiencing it but after you survive it you're like that was that was crazy that was awesome that trip was a miserable four or five days whatever the fuck it was on that island but after it was over callan and i laughed about that trip all the time yeah we just got back we just got back from hunting in british columbia and it was it was just my feet are still because my feet were so cold for so long, and my feet are still weird.

Like, when I lay in bed at night, they feel numb. Really? And it just, I mean, just generally sucked. Fog, snow, spent whole days sitting under a tarp because you can't see anything in the fog. It's still, I plan on it seeming fun later. But not yet. Right now, it's not. Right now, I plan on it seeming fun later, but not yet. Right now it's not right now. I still think it sucks.

Did I get a couple of months? I won't think it sucked. Didn't I call you when I got back to LA to tell you how fucking awesome I felt? You did. I, I, it was a quick turnaround. I was driving around LA and the sun was shining like it always is. I was driving around L.A. and the sun was shining like it always is. It was warm like it always is. But I appreciated it on a level that I had never appreciated it before.

Because being rain-soaked in that island, huddling up in that tent. I remember turning on that little headlamp and seeing mist everywhere inside the tent. I'm like, I thought in my stupid head that there was going to be a place that you would go to get dry. Like you would go inside the tent and you would get dry. Well, it's raining outside, but that's okay. You get in the tent, you'll be, no, there's no dry. There was no dry. The air was wet.

The actual air everywhere around you was filled with moisture. So everything was wet no matter what. And so when I got back to L.A., I felt fucking fantastic. I was like, this is amazing. Everything was wet no matter what. And so when I got back to L.A., I felt fucking fantastic. Yeah. I was like, this is amazing. And it gave me an appreciation for L.A. that I wouldn't have had if I didn't go through that. Well, you had to go home from something like that and then be in bed all warm with, like, your wife. Oh, my God.

You know, I've talked to you often about Rourke Denver. You know, he was a Navy SEAL officer and ran that BUDS program, which is like this whole thing. Like, he'd basically go there to suffer. And he was talking about how you think, like, you go into a SEAL's home, you think it's going to be all Spartan, you know, like he's sleeping on a stack of cardboard or something. He goes, those guys have, like, you go in there, it's like the Egyptian cotton,

the nicest, most comfortable homes, man. Because you wind up after like the suffering you so badly want to go be comfortable that they go because like they go out of their way to have a comfortable house you know like more than normal people's because you want to just soak up comfort when you get the chance yeah it makes sense they don't want to live in a log cabin sleep on a futon yeah so you want to go home and lay on really nice sheets. Because it might only be two nights, man. You want to get your fill.

It totally makes sense. I think having these conversations and what you're doing on your show, it's very important. Because it's giving people a different sense of hunting. It's one of the things that I get all the time from tweets and Facebook messages and that people change their perspective because of your show and because of these conversations that you've had on my podcast and because of your podcast, people have changed their perceptions of it because people who don't experience hunting personally and their ideas of it a lot of times are shaped by the portrayals of hunters in movies which are almost always negative yeah i mean especially the animated ones yeah like helmer fudd no yeah my kids watch my kids like the show about animals

and what it's like there's a bad guys it's it's like these two brothers they have this cartoon show Wildcats? yeah my kids love that show there's like some recurring bad guys one of them's a chef it's like a chef who's out in the woods he's always trying to hunt

out in the woods to make food and the other one's like maybe a gay seeming urbanite guy yeah he's like an evil guy. Like a dark-haired guy. Yeah, but real, like real, you know, just like kind of bad. You know, it's like you're one hand telling you there's two people that are bad kids. There's gay guys and chefs who hunt.

Yeah. But I don't want to let them watch that show. You won't let them watch it? No. I mean, they learn some good wildlife stuff, but I'm like, I just don't want to watch that show. You won't let them watch it? No. I mean, they learned some good wildlife stuff, but I'm like, I just don't want to. I'm not going to let it. No, I tell them that I tried to explain to them why I didn't like it. They didn't understand, but now I don't like them watching that show.

That's hilarious. Yeah. Because I don't like the way that they're like, I just can't have a show where the bad guy is like some guy, like a chef who is always out trying to hunt endangered species. But that show, one of the guys, I don't know if it's Chris or Martin, one of them is fat. I took my kid to their live show. They have a live show in Hollywood.

It's fucking terrible. But for a five-year-old, awesome. It's really bad. They have costumes on. They go into their superpowers. They have, like, the animal powers activate, and they have these, like, things that they do. They can assume the attributes of whatever animal they're talking about. But in the show, on the television show, it's cartoons.

Yeah. So they can do all this crazy stuff. But in the live show. But it starts with them going somewhere. Yes. Like, the two bros, and they're jovial, very chatty. Yeah. They go somewhere and then the show starts.

Yeah. Yeah. In the live show, though, they don't go anywhere. And so in the live show, they just put on these outfits. And it's so fucking stupid. They put on like big rubber feet. They pretend to be a fox. Like it's just ridiculous.

Really? I didn't know about that. They have ears and they jump around on a trampoline and they jump on trampolines to pretend that they have like serval cat powers. Yeah.

And the trampoline's hidden behind a rock but you can fucking see it. If I knew that those guys were big vegetarians, I'd be like, okay, that's cool. No, they probably aren't.

But I don't get, yeah. I never even paid attention to the fact that that one guy is like sort of a hunter or a chef, and that's why he's the bad guy. Yeah. I never even paid attention. You're more sensitive to that than I am. I'm overly sensitive.

When I hear people don't let their kids watch certain shows, like because of whatever, I'm like the guy, I don't like them watching stuff that has a negative portrayal of hunters. That's funny. Well, I'm writing this thing right now that I'll put out probably tomorrow about all the people that got mad at me because I put up a picture of that elk last week that got mad at me, and then I went to their Twitter pages or their Instagram pages, and I saw pictures of their cats. And I'm like, what are you feeding your cat?

Fish? You're feeding your cat cat food. And where's that cat food coming from? Someone's killing animals. Someone's killing chickens. No, it's probably some guy running high seas drift nets. That too. Out in international waters.

Yeah, that too. Raping the ocean. That's one of the things that, you know, it's so easy to fall in the trap of talking about stuff that annoys you, but that's one thing is, like, people that you can have this holier-than-thou attitude. Like, a lot of catch-and-release fishermen have it, you know. They'll go out fishing. They'll let their trout go.

And you know those sons of bitches go to a restaurant that night and order fish. And they're like, they don't, like, well, whose fish is that? Yeah. Who's, like, whose favorite area did that fish come from? You know, probably some place that's a lot more imperiled than where you live. Well, not only that, the reality of catch and release is, what, 10% of them die? 20% of them die? Sometimes much higher.

But, yeah, it's that thing that, like, you just don't want to be, you don't want to look at it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, if you got a cat and you're feeding it stuff like that, it's that thing that you just don't want to look at it. Yeah, if you've got a cat and you're feeding it stuff like that, you're probably supporting some fisheries practices that you're glad you don't know about. Yeah, and not just fish. Chicken, lamb, whatever the fuck you're feeding your cat. You're buying cat food, and cat food's animals because cats need protein.

They're not omnivores. They're predators. You can't, I mean, there's very few arguments that make any sense you can feed your cat a vegan diet. Apparently you can get away with it with some dogs. They can feed some dogs a primarily vegetable-based diet, and the dogs are all right. It's not optimum. But for cats, they get organ failure, cardiovascular failure. They go blind. It's a big issue with cats when you try to feed them a vegan diet.

They go blind. Well, I'd also invite those people, your critics, to understand that those elk wouldn't be here if it were not for hunter interest. Yeah, that's an interesting conversation. They just would not be here. Did you, I don't know if you've listened to the Radio Lab podcast on that guy? No, I didn't. The lion. No, I wanted to.

I was gone when that happened and so many people sent me links to it, but I still haven't listened to it. But it was about the guy that- It was about Corey Knowlton. Yeah, about some of the complexities of the guy that paid, I don't know, $350,000 to hunt a black rhino. Yeah. I had that guy on the podcast, and he discussed it, and we talked about it. But what's interesting is they had on another guy who was in the Radiolab show that was a—I forget his position,

that was a, I forget his position, but he's someone who works to help wildlife. And he was saying that the idea is ridiculous, that you could kill these animals and that you would say that you're working as a conservationist, but you still kill these animals, and that you're trying to protect them and make more of them and let them breed and let them repopulate so that you can kill them. Yeah.

And, like, that's preposterous. But the real problem with any of these arguments is you've got to know. Like, I always don't want to know. Like, what do you do? Do you eat meat? Do you wear leather? Like, if you're making this argument against the hunting of these animals, like, where do you get your protein from? Are you getting your protein from all plant sources? Because in that case, maybe we can have this conversation about that. But if you're not,

man, if you're choosing animals that you think are okay and not okay to kill, and it's based on which ones are captive, that seems to me more fucked up. Yeah. It's way more cruel, in my opinion, to put an animal in a cage and make that animal earmarked for death and you just stuff it and keep fattening it up until you kill it. And to think that somehow that's a better moral decision than going out and killing something in the wild.

But then there's the trophy hunting thing, and that's where it gets weird when you say, well, these are animals that people aren't even eating, like the lion thing, which that guy was just cleared, apparently, of any wrongdoing. You know, I never, it was so hard to figure out what exactly was going on there. I would love to know some of the,

some of what was really going on with the with the lion thing because there's so many claims that were being made that just in some way didn't add up like that he had um you heard that they had lured it out of a park right i don't really know what that means now if you because because for instance, and people act like how bad that was that he had lured it out of a park. But in the U.S., an animal can move across borders freely. You know, it's generally illegal to fence in wildlife in some way that it can't get away. An animal can move across borders freely and its own, its public ownership doesn't change when it moves around. This is something I've tried to explain a thousand times, but if you have, let's take some iconic park like Yeltsin National Park.

If you have an elk in Yeltsin National Park, and it jumps a border onto private land, and then jumps a border onto federal national forest land, jumps a border onto state land, jumps a border into a subdivision, jumps a border onto federal national forest land, jumps a border onto state land, jumps a border into a subdivision, jumps a border into a county park. Throughout all his little journey there, he's always been the property of the state. When elk migrate out of Yellowstone National Park, they get hunted. Many animals that get hunted in Wyoming and Montana are animals that, as part of the year, spend time in Yellowstone National Park. My brother once drew a bighorn sheep tag for the upper Yellowstone Valley.

And there's this peak near the gardener entrance to Yellowstone National Park called Electric Peak. And a lot of bighorn sheep spend their summer on Electric Peak. National Park called Electric Peak, and a lot of bighorn sheep spend their summer on Electric Peak. When he had that tag, this was in 2005, I think, so quite a while ago. When he had that tag, we were just waiting for snow to pile up on Electric Peak, and the sheep would begin migrating. And they would migrate down and spend the winter down in some grass, some like rangeland up and down the Yellowstone.

So we would go there. It was on our third trip to the area when we finally found sheep were migrating down out of the high country, out of Yellowstone National Park. We killed a sheep within a couple miles of Yellowstone National Park. So when people are talking about, oh, like how the lion belonged in the park, was of the park, was lured off the park. If you condemn that in and of itself, then you're really talking about something that would have very revolutionary implications here in the U.S., that animals aren't able to freely move, or that an animal becomes the possession of whatever land administration it happens to be on.

But there's a big difference between an animal moving freely. But that's what I'm saying. When they say it lured off, that's what I would love to know. I don't know the answer to this. Did they physically walk into the park? No. What they did is they drove around the area outside the park with bait, and they dragged a carcass.

They dragged a carcass behind a truck. That's true. But not within the park. No, not within the park. Standard practice. Not only that, lions have a huge area that they travel in. And they killed 28 other lions with tags, with collars, and it was never an issue. And this idea that this one lion was like this cherished, beloved lion,

that it was only by Westerners who are like outsiders. So the people that live in Zimbabwe, they're fucking all monsters. They're all terrifying. this cherished, beloved lion. It was only by Westerners who are like outsiders. So the people that live in Zimbabwe, they're fucking all monsters. They're all terrifying. Did you read that guy that wrote that piece in the New York Times? We didn't know about that lion. In Zimbabwe, we don't cry for lions. I mean, that was the name of the piece. It was all talking about his family members that were terrified,

where these people would go outside, and they had a very real fear they were gonna be killed by monsters giant cats that will kill everything anything kill people all the time you know Jim Shockey has this great show called uncharted have you watched it yeah I know about that show great fucking show and I was watching last night's show he was in Mozambique and there's these villagers in mozambique that are just hunted by crocodiles and they showed dozens of people that were missing arms missing feet had giant holes in their head where a crocodile had just barely grabbed them and these are the people that survived and they they all had stories while they were there a woman was taken

into the in the water while they were in camp yeah one of these women was washing clothes or gathering water and a crocodile came and got her and there's there's nothing you can do you just have to they try to kill as many as they can they bring in hunters to kill as many as they can but to these poor people these people are just horrified. We don't look at that the way we look at lions because they're cold and they're reptiles. But it's just wildlife. But I think if you got to the point where you were facing, where you might be looking at a genetic extinction of the crocodile, it would change. Yes. of the crocodile, it would change. My thing, my interest in the lion controversy that came out of Africa,

my interest in that is provincial in that I was concerned about and I'm interested in the way that that's going to impact things here. I'm not that interested in, not that I have antipathy toward, I'm just not that vested in what might happen with African big game hunting. Outside of how people's, how the American imagination, or the way the average American perceives hunting in his own country here in the U.S. would be colored by the actions of people in Africa and the circumstances that go on in Africa. That's my interest in that landscape.

As far as what you're saying about the crocodile thing, I think that one of the reasons that it's so complicated with the lions is, on one hand, we're talking about the threat of genetic extinction of a species. And I'm sensitive to that here as well, because we right now have, we're mirrors the kind of language we're hearing out of Africa, where you have an animal, you have a species that's absent from much of its range. Okay. So there used to be wolves, you know, everywhere, everywhere. But let's just say in the most recent past, you had wolves in New Mexico and Colorado and Arizona.

They're all over the place. Wolves here, California. And then now they're gone from much of that landscape. But there are some areas, like the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, area around Glacier in the U.S. that have what I would say is on the verge of too many wolves. And so people could look and they'd be like, well, how can there be too many if they're extinct across 90-some percent of their range in the lower 48? You know, I'd be like, well, yeah, it's very complicated.

They're overabundant here and missing from there. And I see both sides of the debate because a lot of people who might come from my understanding about wildlife, who like to hunt deer, like to hunt elk, like to to hunt moose do want to see the wolves all the way gone and what they would point to is the effect that wolves have on uh livestock right people's way of making a living there's safety implications or not but some people say that there are safety implications from wolves being around and when i look at that i'm like okay i take all that but i don't think that that means we don't want wolves. I think we do want wolves. Do we want, like, how many do we want?

You know, I don't, I agree that we want them around. I just agree that there's a limit to how many we want. Well, there was an agreement. There was an agreement when they reintroduced them, when the population got to a certain level. It's far past that. It's far past that. They would open up hunting, and then they reneged on it. Yeah. So I don't think most people, it's just I'm sensitive to the thing where, as much as I was baffled by the Cecil the lion thing,

I'm also a little bit like when there was the backlash of the backlash, and people said like, oh, yeah, but, you know, people live in fear of lions, and lions kill people. I don't know that that doesn't really change anything for me. I don't think that that then means that, oh, you're right, we should kill all the lions because they kill people.

Oh, I tweeted the wrong link. Was it a new link? Oh, it's a different link every time? What? The Twitter or the YouTube link is YouTube dot Oh, it's a different link every time? It's not. Yeah. What? The Twitter or the YouTube link is youtube.com slash C slash powerful JRE slash live.

You must have copy and pasted yesterday's. All right. I'll tweet that right now. Oh, Jesus Christ, Jamie. What was different about yesterday's? I don't know. If you copied it from the same place it was at yesterday. It changes. All right.

Okay. I'm sorry. Keep going, Steve. I lost my train of thought. Wolves, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. You want to keep wolves alive. Oh, that.

The argument that like, oh, yeah, man, it's okay to wipe something out because they hurt people. I don't really buy into that either. You don't? No. I think that striving for, with wildlife issues, I think striving for a happy medium where you can have many different stakeholders at the table talking about it is more constructive. And so I think as well with the Cecil the lion deal, I just think it really like clouded and confused tons of that shit here in the U.S. and made it harder for people to imagine the role of what I would call management, wildlife management, game management.

You know, because it's not like this. We no longer live in this Eden environment where you can act somehow like the hand of man is not at play. I mean, we've cooked that world. Well, isn't the issue that a lot of people have, a big part of it, is this term trophy hunting. Yeah. Trophy hunting is deemed to be evil. And people have respect for people that hunt. If you hunt for your food, I can appreciate that.

But what I don't like is this idea of trophy hunting. I mean, that's a giant issue with people. Yeah, it's a semantics issue in some way I see it as. And this is something I spend a lot of time thinking about and talking about in recent years. There's what trophy hunting means to someone who's unfamiliar with hunting. When they hear the term trophy hunting, I think what they see in their mind, they see the wanton slaughter of an animal

just in order to take a piece of the animal, its head or its hide, and have it as a bragging rights thing. That it's like this callous slaughter of animals to take part of it and take possession of part of it and use it as an emblem or to prove your manhood. Right. That's what they're seeing.

It's so pervasive now, that meaning of the word, that I think that it might almost be time for people who do engage in trophy hunting to think about a new term if I go out and and I hunt and get something I do retain parts of the animal that might be, that would be a trophy the same way you have that skull right there and that skull right there. Right. But it was a portion of what you retained.

But you eat the animals. Yeah. See, I think the difference between that and a lion is you're not eating a lion. And I think that freaks people out, this idea of just killing something just for its head to stuff it and put it on the wall when it's not something that you're going to eat i think it freaked yeah i think it freaked people out that the guy didn't eat it i would he should have eaten

the damn lion i think you should have eaten it he should have eaten or found someone to want to eat it and and apparently he shouldn't have been a dentist because people love that that guy was a dentist why i don't understand why there's no other occupation where he would have became And apparently he shouldn't have been a dentist because people love that that guy was a dentist. Why? I don't understand why. There's no other occupation where he would have became the dentist. If he was a welder. The welder that killed the lion?

Yeah. It would just be that he was the guy with a name. Well, he has a public practice. That's a big part of it. There's a target there. No, it's like there's a thing about people just don't want. There's something people don't like about Dennis. Or somehow that it said something to people that he was a dentist. I don't fully understand it.

People loved pointing out that that man was a dentist. Somehow it just made it seem just really egregious. Well, one of those guys that's like one of the big game hunters that he's got the Super Slam and the Grand Slam. He's always on that Tom Miranda show. He's a famous surgeon. No, he's a surgeon. He's like one of the more famous guys that's involved in the world of bow hunting. Yeah.

He's killed everything that walks with a bow. Yeah, it might be that they have the disposable income and a flexible schedule in order to do that sort of hunting. Yeah. He's killed everything that walks with a bow. Yeah, they got, they might, it might be that they have, you know, they have the disposable income and a flexible schedule in order to do that sort of hunting. Maybe. Brian Cowan's dentist is apparently some crazy big-game hunter. Yeah, alright. I mean, it's a common thing amongst dentists. But yeah, I think if that

guy, there's a handful of things that I think could have gone differently. If they had eaten that damn lion. Yeah, but you wouldn't go kill a lion to... Yeah? Without a doubt, I'd eat that lion. What do you think it would taste like? Shit?

No. I don't think so. I think it'd taste like whatever... Even if I had to take the whole... I'd take the whole thing and grind it up and make pepperoni sticks out of it. Dude, I'd walk around. I'd come and do a party and be like,

hey, man, I brought you 30 pepperoni sticks, bro. I'd feel like. I'd come and do a party and be like, hey, man, I brought you 30 pepperoni sticks, bro. I feel like he should have. Well, you had a coyote on your show. Yeah. If he had known, I think that if he had known what was going to wind up. He would have never shot it. That's what he said. If he had known it, he said it.

I think he said if he had known it had a name, he wouldn't have shot it. Yeah. Well, the craziest thing was the brother. I don't know what that means, though. I don't know what that means. Do you know the brother Jericho? Cecil had a name, he wouldn't have shot it. Yeah. Well, the craziest thing was the brother. I don't know what that means, though. I don't know what that means. Do you know the brother Jericho? Cecil had a brother named Jericho, and they said that Jericho was now going to take care of Cecil's young.

Bullshit, first of all. Like, that's not real. And second of all, they thought Jericho had gotten killed because another lion had gotten killed, and they thought it was Jericho. And then they found out, great relief, the lion that was killed was not Jericho. It was just some no-name, bitch-ass lion that nobody cared about. Trash lion.

But it's the idea of giving a lion a name, like your dog. It's not like some wild animal. All of a sudden, it's a pet. It's a pet that's in a park. And that's how a lot of people that don't go to Africa don't have anything invested in keeping the people around there safe. They have this idea that it's like the Lion King. Some evil hunter is going to go over there and steal, decapitate it, like the language

that they use. First of all, they said he shot it with a crossbow. I saw that in reputable newspapers. He didn it with a crossbow I saw that in like reputable newspapers like he didn't use a crossbow that's not true decapitated it well yeah that's what you do if you want to take the hide you have to cut the head off the rest of the body

man it's like such a that issue is such a black hole but I think that the people I mean it it just has this way, it was kind of one of the ways it was most upsetting to me when it was going on. Thankfully, I was gone for a lot of it. But it just had this way of acting like a black hole,

or like we envision a black hole being where it just sucks everything around it into this thing where it became like the dominant discussion about hunting. And I think that one of the most telling things about it is the people who seem to be most upset by it were the people who had the least nuanced understanding of wildlife management wildlife politics and wildlife in general and just the least understanding of what it means to eat meat in the first place. I looked at all these people that were protesting in front of his dental practice. I'm like, you can't tell me you fuckers are vegetarians.

You're big, fat, sloppy faces. These are not vegans. These are not healthy people. I mean, this is not people that are eating a bunch of salads. These are people that probably got burgers on the way to putting those fucking signs up. I had a FBI. One time I had to have the FBI look into a guy who was messing me a little bit. And this agent came over to my house.

And he was like, I can tell you that guy is not a vegan. Or he's not a vegetarian. I said to the guy, you're talking about how the guy had just ordered a pepperoni pizza. Which in my mind, I'm like, dude, then why do you have such a problem with me? Yeah. What the hell do you think that is? Because it's a target. You're a target.

People aren't looking at things rationally. I think they're finding green lights. Like, there's a green light. I'm frustrated by my life. I don't like my job. I don't like my social position. I don't like the whole life that I've carved out for myself. And I find green lights. And I see those green lights and I can just point my anger in that direction. Instead of focusing it inwardly, instead of looking at what aspects of my life that I should change, maybe I'd have a more

harmonious existence. Maybe I'd be happier. Maybe I'd be more fulfilled. Nope. They just find someone like this fucking guy. What are you fucking? You're a hunter. You get little dick. You get your little dick. You're going to fix it with a rifle. There's like these cliches that they always throw about. And then they'll go eat a pepperoni pizza. It's like, oh my God, do you know what's involved in making pepperoni? Do you, if you've ever gone to a slaughterhouse, do you know what a, oh, my God, do you know what's involved in making pepperoni? Have you ever gone to a slaughterhouse? Do you know what existence these animals have before they get snuffed out? It's a horrific existence. The existence of a wild animal is infinitely better.

And the distance between or the time between the wild animal, even knowing that you're alive and being dead, is like that. Yeah, it can be tip candy yeah the difference between that and an animal that lives in captivity and gets turned into sausage or pepperoni or whatever the fuck it is that's horrific and the idea that someone who buys cat food someone who buys chicken cat food can get mad at someone who goes out and hunts a grouse or hunts a duck it's madness it's just madness I wrote this thing about the hierarchy of dead animals on social media and I showed what you can get away with what you

can't get away with I'm like cut up fish nobody really gives a fuck you could show a dead fish and it's a little sketchier. But you could show a steak that you've cooked, very few people get upset. But if you show an actual animal that's dead, people get really upset. Why do people get pissed about fur but they don't get pissed about leather couches?

That's a good point. Just someone scraped all the fur off. Exactly. As soon as you scraped the fur off, people are like, that's awesome, man. I'll buy a pair of shoes and I'll take that in a jacket as well. Can I get a belt? If you leave the hair on it, they just do not like it. Well, because we're mammals. It's really disturbing to them to leave the hair on it.

They much prefer you to take that stuff and throw it in the trash and then use it as leather. But if it doesn't have hair, like a snakeskin belt, that's cool. Yeah. Yeah. belt that's cool yeah yeah another thing that really bummed me out um about our you know our dentist friend is that what when i'm talking about hunting trying to form a context with the land where you hunt and establishing a context with with the animals you hunt meaning that you understand your place in the world and you understand the world that you're walking into have you heard of the writer aldo leopold who wrote Sand County Almanac?

Yeah, I've heard his name. Okay. I'm never familiar with his work. He was writing in the 40s, and he was kind of the grandpappy of hunter conservationists. I recently had occasion to reread his book because I went to – I gave a talk at the University of Wisconsin. It was sponsored in part by the Aldo Leopold Foundation. So I reread Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac,

and he was a hunter in the 40s. And relative to the 40s, we live in the good old days. We have phenomenal, phenomenal hunting and fishing here in this country. In the 40s, it sucked. In the 30s, it really sucked. There was very few hunting seasons for anything. Most things were just gone. Habitat destruction was off the charts.

You could legally hunt turkeys almost nowhere. Waterfall was just about wiped out. Deer were just about wiped out. So now, if all the leopold could be alive now he'd see a lot that would make him very very happy um because we've done such a good job on this continent with wildlife management but in this book he pushes this idea he's talking about hunting but he's using the metaphor of of aster, okay, because he had been trained in forestry and worked in forestry. And he talked about how a forester, or you might say a hunter,

goes out on the land and with each stroke of his axe is writing his signature on the land with each swing of an axe. And when I say he's talking about hunting, because he's kind of talking about this in the conversation with hunting, meaning when you go out on the land, you are like writing your signature out there. You're building a legacy. You're making decisions and having implications for the landscape, impacting it. What it seemed to be with that guy,

I think one of the things that upset me about that guy and that might have upset other people about that guy that shot the lion, was that he seemed to claim, he seemed to be claiming in some way that he just had no idea. Didn't know where he was, didn't know what was up with the lion line didn't know the lion had a collar and be like i just didn't know you know i think that in some ways obviously you're in another country it's hard to follow what's going on you

rely on other people's judgment but in some ways i think it was upsetting to people that he wasn't doing like he wasn't following that thing that Leopold set out about writing your signature on the land. Because it was sort of like he just had no idea where he was, what he was doing. And I think that when you hunt, you do have an obligation to understand your role and your place. Okay. And understand the context that you're working in what are the limits and the needs of the resource you're trying to exploit can the resource withstand exploitation are you generally behaving

as a force that's ultimately for or ultimately against wildlife like you have an obligation to answer all these questions. You can go in a situation like that and rely on the judgment of someone else, but that judgment can get really confused, I think, when money enters the picture, you know. But the money thing's funny, too, because people were very upset. I was joking earlier about them being him, them, I was joking about the dentist thing.

It was just funny how often it it was pointed out his occupation was pointed out but what I'm not joking about is people were very very upset about the amount of money the traded hands which puzzled me because the old narrative from a century ago was that people of European descent go into Africa and take resources and pay for nothing. That we go there and just rob the place of its resources and we take what we want and we leave and we don't pay a dime for it. That was upsetting and is upsetting to me.

Now it's like he's being criticized for paying too much for a resource. It's like, and he paid, or like the guy, he paid $350,000 for a rhino. Would it be better to you if he paid $5? It would seem to me that him having expressed the value of the animal in some way is almost a compliment to the pursuit rather than just going in there and robbing what you want and never paying for anything. That makes sense, but I think a lot of people have a real problem with the idea of putting a value on life at all. Like saying that if it's $350,000, you can go kill an endangered animal. Instead of the real issue is that animal was killing, we're talking about the rhino.

Yeah. The endangered black rhino. No, I'm conflating. I'm doing a Brian Williams. I'm conflating the. They had a real problem with that rhino. They had a real problem with these older, non-viable rhinos because they were killing young rhinos.

This rhino had killed a female. This rhino had killed a female, and in the NPR piece, the radio lab piece, they actually found the dead bodies of this female and a male that this rhino had killed. He took them to these spots, the guy who was the professional hunter. So in Africa, they have these things called professional hunters, where you would call them a guide in America. But they took them to the spot where the bones were of this female. I mean, this rhino really fucked this young female to death. Like he kept mounting her and fucking her and horning her, you know, hitting her with his horns and wound up killing her.

And killed a male who had, you know, gotten in the area and wanted to breed with the female too. So he had killed two other rhinos. They had targeted him anyway because he was dangerous to the population because he was killing breeding males. The money that had come in from that $350,000 that guy gave was going to stop poaching, was going to protect the environment that this animal lived in, was going to stop poaching, was going to protect the environment that this animal lived in, was going to protect habitat.

So the argument is real weird because on one hand, it does seem strange that we're talking about value for life, like that this life would be valuable. But on the other hand, the real value is like you've got to kill this thing anyway because it's a non-breeding male. Either kill it, or you have to capture it and take it somewhere and make it live in a cage. But if you kill it, this guy's willing to pay you $350,000. And he was saying that that was

undervalued, and that if there wasn't so much bad press, there would have probably been over half a million. If they had had a park ranger go out, or some kind of land manager go out and shoot it, and act like it was just something that had to be done, you know. There would be no protest. The guy would have been applauded.

But they would lose all the money and all that money that would go to wildlife, to preservation of the land and protecting of the habitat. All that money would be gone. Protecting against poaching. It's one of those things in life that it's not clean. No. I was reading this morning this article in the New Yorker by Adam Gopnik. He was writing about, he's actually writing a piece about books about the Holocaust. But in there, he had this line that stuck with me, or at least it stuck with me for the last few hours, where he said that something to the effect of of the only way to simplify history is

to make it complex you know it's like anytime any real explanation of something particularly with wildlife you don't get any real aha moments until you get into the deep complexity surrounding the issue. I think that's how we can sit here all these whatever number of months after that, and I can sit here and still hold in my hand simultaneously a disdain for this guy and what he stood for. We can talk about the line, like some kind of disdain for this guy and what he stood for. We can talk about the line, like some kind of disdain for it. There's something about it. I just like it's a visceral reaction about some of the things I know about what went on and what might have been in people's mind.

And at the same time, disdain for the general public, for feeling the disdain that they felt. It's like I just see it as such a big thing that I haven't really made that much sense out of it. And whenever I get that conflicted about an issue, I start to feel like I'm getting somewhere. That's fascinating. Why do you feel like you're getting somewhere when you get conflicted?

Because then I realize that I'm probably seeing it from the necessary number of angles. Well, it is one of those things where there are a bunch of different angles to look at. And it is complex because this guy, whether or not the Zimbabwe government cleared him of any wrongdoing, which they did, he still tampered with the collar, which is illegal. He still was a poacher. He had been convicted of poaching already. He had killed a bear 40 miles outside the area that he claimed to kill it, tried to bribe the people that he was with to claim that he killed it in a legal area.

So this guy was already unethical. So he was a perfect guy to pin all this on. Yeah. But you want to say, like, okay, yeah, this guy was an asshole doing some asshole stuff. Right. But does that mean that we're not going to manage large predators? And I want to be like, do we have to manage lions? I mean, is this a critical issue like it is with wolves?

Like, you're talking about the wolf population getting out of control. And this is from a biological wildlife management standpoint. Like the guys who are wildlife biologists gave a number that they think a wolf population should reach before it should start being managed. That number has been far exceeded. And when that number was exceeded, that's when all the blowback came back where they were saying, no we've changed our mind we don't want to open up a hunting season and that became a real issue because then the elk population dropped radically then the deer population dropped radically and then there was all these positive spins on it like did you uh there was this one guy who um there's another radio uh radio all the guy that had on the guy that like the

how wolves say the river yeah that guy's fascinating because that guy's I saw that piece and I thought well maybe this guy is making some interesting points until I listen to this TED podcast about him recently where he's talking about reintroducing wool or reintroducing lions and even hippos to England. Because he thinks that at one point in time, and they found in London, they found ancient bones of lions. And he thinks bringing megafauna to areas of the UK, you know, millions of hectares. How do you say it? Hectares? Hectares. Hectares that are not being used and utilized, and they could turn into a wildlife park with fucking lions. And this is all the result of a self-admitted midlife crisis this guy had.

So he got interested in the concept of rewilding. I'm interested in the concept of rewilding, and I'm interested in the concept of rewilding in that if you can correct mistakes, if you can correct extirpations, or let's say scientifically you had the ability to correct extinctions, but just you can't, so we'll not talk about that for right now.

If you could correct extirpations, like regional extinctions of animals that were brought on by human causes, then I think we have a moral obligation to remedy those mistakes. Elk, okay, the American elk, only occupies 10% of its native range. Elk live in 10% of the land in the U.S. that they lived in at the time of European contact. No one talks about elk being endangered or near extinction,

even though they're absent from 90% of their range. Why is that? Because there are many areas where they abound. So we've come able to go like, yes, elk are missing from areas, and there's a number of groups, many state agencies, and most notably the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, work to, where plausible, bring elk back to areas in the east that used to have them that no longer do.

In my lifetime, elk have come back to Michigan, the east that used to have them that no longer do. In my lifetime, elk have come back to Michigan, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and on and on and on through reintroduction efforts. Okay, so we're working to repopulate elk. The biggest piece of resistance you get on repopulating elk is public approval. People don't want to be inconvenienced by big-ass animals that they're going to hit with their cars, and they don't want to be inconvenienced by big ass animals that they're going to hit with their cars and they don't want to be inconvenienced by animals that eat crops so that's the resistance the resistance is that it's just that we don't have the technology for it it's just that we gotta get public approval so we're trying to bring them back meanwhile we have hunting seasons for elk all over the place right i mean just down the line you got elk seasons Montana Wyoming Colorado

Arizona Utah Idaho California Nevada while they're gone from other places you know why is it that we can't extend the same logic to the wolf and say yeah the wolf's absent from much of its range. In some of its range, it's thriving. We're going to manage the areas that are thriving, and we're going to work toward bringing wolves back to the areas where they're not, the same way that hunters, by and large, not even by and large, solely, hunters are responsible for bringing elk back all over the place.

But I think the way the general public looks at things is very different from the way that you're looking at things. You're looking at these animals as a renewable resource. The general public looks at them as magical creatures that live in the forest that we need to bring back because we made them extinct because we're greedy and vicious. Yeah, because we're fundamentally flawed. And on top of that, we're talking about animals you eat versus elk versus animals you don't eat, wolves. Why do you want to kill these wolves? You must be a cruel person who wants to go out and kill something that looks like a dog.

Because to people, wolves are these magical creatures. You hear it, whoa, I hear a wolf. Wow, that's cool. And it is cool to hear a wolf. Yeah, but I like wolves more than those people do. Do you think so? Yeah. Why do you think you like them, but I like wolves more than those people do. Do you think so? Yeah. Why do you think you like them more?

I just have more familiarity with them. I go to more places where they might be found. I, like, spend more time looking through my binoculars trying to find them. I just am more interested in them. I like them more. It means more to me. Not every one of them. But your average guy that's never even laid eyes on one, I have more of an appreciation for the animal than they do. I'm sorry. That sounds like a bold, offensive statement, but

I just do. I would back you up on that. I think you do, but I think- I like grizzly bears a whole bunch, a whole bunch. I've been hunting for grizzly bears a lot. Never shot a grizzly bear. I've never found the one I want to get, and I will get one in my life. Are you going to turn it into pepperoni sticks? No. No, I'm going to eat it straight up. Really? I do get one. I just got back from spending 12 days looking for grizzly. Why would you decide to eat it straight up and not turn

it into pepperoni sticks? Cause isn't it going to taste like shit? No. Cause I hunt them in the interior. The areas where I go to look, you know, anytime I've gone out with the intention of getting a grizzly bear, I go to areas where they don't have access to fish. Purposely. Yeah. So that you can get a big one. Because I want a big one that you can eat. I want a mature male, preferably one who tomorrow will die of old age, and I want him to not be eating a lot of dead fish.

So that you can eat him. Yeah. Yeah, Cam Haynes, I showed you the pictures of the two grizzlies that he shot he's eating them he's chewing his way through them and i go how do they taste he's like they're fucking awful yeah he goes i just eat them and i'm like man see i'm not interested in that um unless it was for a legitimate wildlife conservation reason and i was going to eat it i don't think i would be interested in hunting something like that i mean i even if it was it's just if i'm going to spend my time hunting something i want to i want to eat it 100 that's the thing that that's that's my connection

to hunting well i grew up i told you about this a handful of times i feel like but i'll say it again like i grew up always hunting since before I can remember. But for a long time, I got interested in trapping. And that's what I was going to do for a living, because I was going to be a fur trapper. I caught my first muskrat when I was 10 years old, and I trapped until I was 22. So I trapped for 12 years. And the latter part of that, I was trying to do it where I was going to be a professional trapper. All right?

I eventually quit trapping because fur markets got so low um and moved away from home got more serious about college and started just feeding our me and friends my brothers by that point in time we were feeding ourselves on wild game buying no protein besides what we hunted for. And at that point was when I really sort of found my place in the natural world. That was like the relationship with animals and the relationship with the natural world and the relationship with hunting that really spoke to me and made me feel very good about my decisions, very good about my lifestyle. And I've lived that lifestyle now, you know, for 20 some odd years. But I did at a time, yeah, I did trap, you know,

and I would trap in order to sell the hides. So when I now talk about why I like to hunt and that I don't want to hunt for something I'm not going to eat, because that's what I like to hunt for, I think that some hunters will look at that and act like you're being divisive. That you have this holier-than-thou attitude that you're somehow condemning other practices. I'm just talking about my approach, what I like to what I like to do, you know, what to me is the, what to me is the value of an animal. I think in many, many cases, when it comes to predator management, I think there are many cases where you're, you're going to have harvests of predators that are just not going to, it's not going to be a food-driven harvest.

You know, it's just not. We're looking right now, like, in the same areas, in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem around Glacier National Park, you're looking at coming up on a thing where the same thing that happened with wolves is going to probably have to happen with grizzly bears. In many of these areas, they're getting way above objective. It's starting to have negative implications for prey animals. It's having negative implications for people who use the land. These bears, they're just not afraid of anything. You go up in Alaska where grizzlies get hunted, you can generally get upwind of the thing, it get a smell of you it's going to take off oftentimes typically the case in these areas they're drawn to the smell of humans no one can

touch them they have esa protection you know we had drawn out decades ago what recovery would look like we far surpassed what recovery looks like it's gonna happen it's gonna be ugly but they're gonna delist bears they're gonna put they It's going to be ugly, but they're going to delist bears. They're going to delist grizzly bears. They're going to put grizzly bears under state management. It's inevitable. They're going to put them under state management in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, and people are going to be killing grizzly bears, some limited amount, and there probably is not going to be a meat salvage requirement on those bears.

Am I going to now condemn that hunt? No way. No. Well, you wouldn't because you understand it and you know about it and you understand the importance of it. But to the average person, the average person has a very cursory knowledge, like very, very peripheral when it comes to wildlife management. They don't even consider it.

They think of trophy hunting as just being some evil person who wants to kill things again to make their dick hard. Isn't that what Jimmy Kimmel said on TV when he started crying? When he started talking about Cecil? He cried. I heard about that. He cried and he did the whole cliche.

We talked about, is that what you need to get your dick hard? I just kind of like that guy too, man. Well, I do too. I like him a lot. But I just don't think he understands. I don't think he understands. I don't think he educates himself about it. I think he works 16 hours a day on a show. And I think he has very little knowledge about what it takes to manage wildlife.

Now, this is coming from someone who doesn't agree with the lion hunting, that guy. I don't think the lion populations are low, or high, rather. I don't think it's anything where you have to manage. I mean, I don't think that's populations are low. I mean, or high, rather. I don't think it's anything where you have to manage. I mean, I don't think that's the issue that they're having in Zimbabwe. I think this is just a way that they make money. Yeah. And you can look at it that way, like it's sustainable. And if it is sustainable and these people use it to make money and they benefit from the resource of people coming over there and hunting them, I guess you could see a positive benefit of it.

You know, did you ever see the Louis Thoreau documentary on those hunting camps, the high fence hunting camps in South Africa? No. It's pretty good. I should say it's really good. You told me about it and I failed to ever watch it. Now I'm going to redo it. I'm going to rewrite it down in my notes.

It's excellent. You gave me a notepad. I'm going to write it on my notepad. All right. One of the craziest parts of it was the lions. They had this fenced-in area, and it's a small area where they have these lions, and they're throwing these cows literally over the fence. They're in the back of a truck, and they have this high fence,

and these lions are staring at them with these fucking ruthless killer eyes. I mean, they are right there. There's two sets of fences in case one of them fails. There's another fence behind it. And they chuck these lions, this cow, this calf, they throw it over the top like fucking Jurassic Park. And they just tear this thing apart. And then meanwhile, some guy goes and acts like he's hunting the lion. Exactly.

They're going to let one of those loose. They let him out of the cage. And lions are used to their territory, right? So when they let him out of the cage, the lions are going to get out of that cage. And they're going to go, where the fuck am I? I'm just going to sit down here and try to figure out where the hell they are, right? So they're going to sit down. And then they send this hunter out.

And the hunter finds the lion, shoots it, poses, does the whole picture with it. And that guy, Pigman, did that. They had a whole episode. And he's going. And you can tell these lions have just been released. But does he show what he was doing? Does not. That's the thing I don't understand about high fence.

This thing I don't understand about guys who like to hunt high fence. Why do they love the trappings of hunting, the appearance of hunting, the methods of hunting, the tools of hunting, the clothes of hunting, the photographs that come from hunting? Why do they like that so much, but they just don't like hunting, the doing of. Is that what it is? Or do they want guaranteed success and do they want to hide the fact that it's in a high fence environment? Because they're doing it on television and don't things like the Outdoor Channel, don't they have rules? They have rules like you can't

show high fences. You can't show fences on television. Whether or not you hunt inside of one. But if you could show, do you feel like they would show it? Because I feel like people are often doing non-fair chase hunts, but masquerading that it was a fair chase hunt. If you like to do hunts that aren't fair chase, if you like doing it, why do they have such a hard time just saying that's what I like to do?

Well, Ted Nugent does. I spend an enormous amount of time explaining what I like to do. Well, Ted Nugent does. I spend an enormous amount of time explaining why I like to do what I do. You know? Why don't... I would love for one of them to explain to me what they like about it instead of doing it and acting

like they did something different. Well, part of it is the network themselves. Right? The Outdoor Channel and the Sportsman's Channel, they don't allow you to show high fences. That's part of their bylines, right? I don't know if they say don't show high fences. They might not want... This is coming from Ben O'Brien.

Yeah, so they might... I can't say if they say don't show it or if they're saying don't do it. I think they say don't show it. Don't show it. Don't show it because Ted Nugent is on that program. He's on those networks. He's got a huge show on that network.

He hunts in his fucking yard. I mean, he's not on a big piece of property. I think he's less than 300 acres or maybe 300 acres. That's not that much. And in that 300 acres, it's all high fence. He's got African animals. He's got all kinds of shit in there, white tails, pigs, all in this one area. And he hunts high fence almost exclusively.

And when he's hunting on, you know, it says like spirit wild ranch. Yeah. That's his yard. I mean, he's essentially hunting his pets. If you really want to look at it that way, leaves his house, goes, sits in his favorite tree stand. Probably got a bunch of them all over his property. But I don't think in and of itself, I don't feel there's anything wrong with that because my brother raises sheep. Right.

And when he goes out to get the sheep, he goes out with a.22. He's got irrigated pasture. He runs lambs. When he goes out to get a lamb, he gives a lot of it away, eats some of it for himself, shoots a lamb with a.22. He gives a lot of it away, eats some of it for himself, shoots the lamb with a.22. However, he doesn't dress it up like he's hunting the lambs out on his pasture. Like it's a wild animal that he's going to sneak up on. No, I mean, he doesn't put a picture of him and his.22 and a dead lamb on Facebook. He's like, you know what I mean?

He's a hunter. He's a very avid hunter. And never once in his life, I wish he was here because I'd like to ask him this question. Never once in his life has he confused the act of farming organic sheep with the act of hunting wild elk. It's not confusing to him. No. But is it confusing when you fish the stockpile? Did you have a good hunting year?

He'd be like, so far he got an elk with his bow, a national forest land. He got an antelope with his bow, a BLM land. And he would never be like, oh, and I got 10 lambs in my yard. Yeah. It's very different. It's just so weird to me that I feel like we talked about this with Doug Dern, too. Doug Dern has to go out now and then and kill cattle on his farm. He doesn't get gussied up in camo and get a bunch of pink accents and put pink accents all over his gun and go out.

Pink accents? He's not a girl. And go out and shoot the cows on his property. He'd be like, no, I went and shot my cow. He wouldn't make a TV show where he's acting like he's hunting his cows. But his fence is only 20 yards, whereas Ted Nugent's fence is 300 acres. Yeah, I can't really speak to it because I'd have to just go see it. Right.

No, I haven't seen it. You know, you only see it on the show. You see him, he takes around one of those little ATV vehicles, you know, the little things, and drives around on his beautiful piece of property. It's kind of a cool way to acquire your meat. You know, if you have all these animals,

I mean, 100% guaranteed there's animals there. You know, it's not like there's a big search. You know, you're like, fuck, let's keep hiking. It's not like there's a big search. You're like, fuck, let's keep hiking. But it's so weird because if my brother all of a sudden told me, the one who raises sheep, and I want to explain the sheep thing a little bit better. This might be interesting to your listeners. He has pack llamas.

He uses llamas. He hunts backcountry for elk. Hunts very remote remote areas and elk or bacon he hunts by himself so he keeps llamas to carry his elk meat so he'll go in the mountains with his bow and he's going there for a long time sometimes and when he kills an elk he can put the whole bull on three llamas and pack the elk out of the mountains. He hunts some areas where he's nine miles from a trailhead. And he did that because he fucked his back up carrying it out himself, right? Carrying elk meat.

That's when he first got motivated to buy llamas. Now, because he has llamas, he bought irrigated pasture to keep the llamas on. It's flood irrigated. But he's gone a lot. So to incentivize his buddies to come over and check on the llamas on. It's flood irrigated. But he's gone a lot. So to incentivize his buddies to come over and check on his llamas and make sure everything's cool, he lets them run sheep

with the llamas. So they come over to watch to check on their sheep, thereby checking on his llamas. Now if he told me one day, if all of a sudden he said, hey man, let's get all done up in our camo,

and I'm going to put a blind out with the sheep, and let's sit in there and shoot arrows at the sheep. Right? I would just think it was weird. Yeah. It's not like, I think there's like moral stuff, right? We have things in our lives that are just like moral obligations. I feel like you have like a moral obligation to take care of your children. I think if you're not taking care of your children, I think you're like, that's an immoral move.

For my brother to go out and like decide that he wanted to shoot his bow at the sheep in his pasture would just strike me as just strange. Yeah, it is definitely strange. But is it strange to stock a pond with fish? No. You have a small pond. No, in fact, in fact, his neighbor just dug a big fish pond. Right, but isn't that strange? Because it's the hierarchy.

Oh, the hierarchy of animals. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, I can't explain it. You one time posed something to me that still troubles me now. We were talking about baiting. When I was a kid, we baited deer. I now realize that we would have done a hell of a lot better deer hunting

had we not gotten involved in that. But that was just how, when I was a kid, we'd go to this town, Grant, Michigan. They raised a lot of carrots in Grant, Michigan. You could buy, they'd size the carrots and sort the carrots, and you could fill the back of a pickup truck. It seems outlandish now. I'm 40 years old, and this was when I was 12.

You could fill, they would fill your truck with carrots for $5. I mean, the bed of a pickup. That's amazing. Yeah. The bed of a pickup would be full of carrots for $5. Wow. I mean, the bed of a pickup. That's amazing. Yeah. The bed of a pickup would be full of carrots for $5. How the fuck did carrot farmers make any money?

I never understood it. There was a time when they were harvesting, you'd go down there, and you'd pull up under a grain hopper type thing, and it'd fill your truck with carrots. All of a sudden, I want a carrot. We'd sit in the back, dude. We'd sit in the back eating carrots, man. You'd find carrots that look like humans. You'd find carrots with genitalia.

I mean, just carrots are crazy. Like, I have carrots in my garden now, and you pull up the carrots, you expect that you're going to pull up a thing that looks like a carrot from the store. One in ten. Yeah. One in ten. Most of them are like three-legged carrots. So they had it down a little better than I do, and they had better carrots.

But, you know, we'd get all these rejected carrots. We'd have a snow shovel, and we would go out to areas we hunted, and we would put down a canvas tarp. I can picture the tarp right now. We'd lay down a canvas tarp, and you'd snow shovel carrots out of the back of the truck onto the tarp or into what's known as a Duluth pack, a big canvas leather strap backpack. And we would hike, either drag the carrots onto the tarp if possible or load them in backpacks and hike them back into the intersections of deer trails typically where two big deer trails would come together

and you'd dump the carrots out. And then you'd do this a week week before season and then you'd hunt you'd sit in your tree stand with your bow you're picking an area that deer frequent anyways you're picking like a like i said usually typically like a confluence of a couple good deer trails or pick an area where deer might stage up in the evening before going out into ag fields to feed. You know, they kind of will mill around a little bit oftentimes before committing to a field at nighttime. You'd set them up in these areas. The problem is, as soon as you put down the carrots, you'd be creating problems for yourself because they would start to associate the carrots with hunters.

Like they knew trouble was brewing. Your smell was around. You got deer, you know, doe can be, I mean, they can get really old, but let's just be realistic. And you got all kinds of deer, does around that are five, six, seven years old. You accumulate a lot of knowledge in that time. So you put the carrots down, you're kind of screwing yourself. But you would get shots at young deer that would come in to hit the carrots. So I grew up hunting bait.

Now I look at it and I go like, man, I would have learned a hell of a lot more about deer and a lot more about deer hunting early on if I hadn't gotten, if I hadn't been involved in that practice. I now look back, I'm like, man, did I miss a lot of chances to get educated about what deer need and how to actually find deer instead of trying to manipulate their movement patterns, you know? So now I don't hunt, like I don't hunt bait anymore. I'm not even kind of interested in hunting bait.

And I was explaining this to you. This is a long ass story. I was explaining this to you because you were like, well, why is it okay to use bait when you're fishing yeah i don't know it is a weird why is it i just i wish i could explain it i don't know it's more sporting in my mind to use and i hate that word i don hate that word. It's more sporting in my mind to catch a fish with bait than it is to catch them in a seine, a beach seine. Don't you hate that argument, though, that people say, you're a real man, why don't you go fucking fight that animal one-on-one?

Why don't you, what, with a sniper rifle? Yeah. Why don't you sit around with a rifle? That's silly. Why don't you go hit it with a rock? Why don't you use your bare hands? Crazy horse had a rifle. Did he?

Well, he's an Indian. I'm saying like for- Indigenous or whatever. People have, yeah, I'm just saying like if someone was posing that argument to me, I would point out how people that hunt for their food have always gravitated toward technology. And if you look at our progression from rocks to hafted rocks to atlatls to bow equipment to flintlocks to percussion cap to paper cartridge to rifling, on down the line, I'm not doing anything that revolutionary

by using what an effective means it's a new idea yeah but it's not interesting to me right I'm talking about interest like I like knowing about animals right I'm not interested in there let's take the area where I like to hunt bears. I hunt bears in the coastal area, okay? And it's at a northern latitude. There's a lot of snow there. But because of maritime influences, you know, it's warm enough down around the water where the snow's melted off in the water. So when I go to hunt bears in the spring, 90% of the land mass is covered in snow and is of little use to a bear. Okay?

When they come out of hibernation, they're going down to the waterfront. Because on the waterfront, they're going to find beech rye and some other grasses they like to eat. They're going to find blue mussels, and they like to eat crabs under rocks and logs now so i know about mussel beds and grass flats where bears are going to go to all the time i can tell you when we go out at night i can tell you i'll be like we'll see more than one probably less than five and i'll tell you and i know where and i know some mussel beds where some are going to show up And I'll tell you, and I know some mussel beds where some are going to show up. I like that.

I don't like, I've never done a baited bear hunt. I have no desire to do a baited bear hunt. Does that mean it's super hard to hunt bears where I hunt bears? I can't tell you that it's super hard to hunt bears there. Because once you learn the rhythms of the land what they want why they're coming there what they're coming to get it becomes easier and easier the more you understand bears and the more you understand why bears do what they do but i like having that knowledge but i can't say it's like super hard it's not super hard hard. Once you know it, it's pretty easy. So when I say I don't want to go hunt bears over bait personally,

I'm not saying, oh, because it's so easy. I'm just saying because it's just not of interest to me. It's like it's not interesting to me personally as a hunter that bears will come to donuts if you put them out in the woods. It's not an interesting phenomenon. What's interesting to me is they like mussel beds. Like, for whatever reason, I find that interesting. When I lived in Michigan, my brothers each drew a black bear tag in Michigan. You could live your

whole life in Michigan, which has a lot of bears in the north, and never lay eyes on a bear because the landscape's flat and it's thick. If you want to hunt a bear there, you're going to either have to use dogs or you're going to have to use bait because that's the way the landscape is. So when they drew bear tags, I helped them run baits.

I helped them collect bait. We shot carp and all kinds of stuff and froze bait and trapped beavers and baited bears for them. It was the only way to do it. I had a blast doing it. But right now, no, it's not interesting to me. Well, in Alberta, they have two places that they hunt bears. They hunt bears over bait in the spring.

And then in the fall, they go to these open fields where they find blueberries. And the open fields is rifle hunting most of the time. And then in the baits, they most of the time use archery. Yeah, because you can bring them in close and figure out what size they are. Exactly. Not kill, not kill sows or cubs. I understand it, man. Yeah. No, but I understand what you're saying too. It makes total sense because what you're doing is you're going to places where they would be no matter what, without human influence whatsoever, they would be there for those mussels. They'd be there for those grasses. And so you are, you're experiencing the actual natural progression of them waking up from their

hibernation and heading down to feed. You're just going where you know there will be. Yeah. And it's not, there's no donuts, there's no cookies, there's no bullshit, no fucking big blue jugs that are set out for them to pot and try to get their oats out of. Yeah, there's something less cool about that. Like elk hunting. When elk hunting in Colorado or over here in Tohon Ranch, when you're out there, those animals would be there whether you existed or not. Yeah, they're out doing elk type stuff.

They're out breeding and eating and you're just trying to find them, locate them, and then put a stalk on one and get one. That's a pure way of doing it, for sure. But then there's people that would argue, you know, like the argument of, well, you're using a rifle. How hard could it be? You know, and then there's also people would say, well, you know, I prefer to hunt with a bow because it's more difficult. Like what you're talking about is more difficult. prefer to hunt with a bow because it's more difficult. Like what you're talking about is more difficult.

But then there's also people that will say, well, if you hunt with a bow, you have more of a chance of wounding an animal and not killing it. You should use a rifle. I mean, you're not going to make everybody happy no matter what you do. No, the difficult argument is it gets really circular and hard to pin down because if you say, you know, I hunt with a compound bow because it's harder than hunting with a rifle. Then you have to go, okay, well, then by extension, hunt with a recurve. And if you're going to do that, you should hunt with a longbow.

And then if you're going to do that, you should hunt with an atlatl, which is certainly more difficult than a longbow. What the fuck's an atlatl? Like a throwing board with a dart oh jesus yeah predated the predated the bow the bow's only like here on this continent they've you know the bow's only been around for people debate it but somewhere between four and six thousand years so you had ten thousand years the human history or more here where they were hunting with atlatls i bet they were skinny as yeah guys hunting woolly mammoths, they weren't hunting

woolly mammoths with bows. Wow. They were hunting with atlatls. So that's that thing where you put the spear on it and it's got like a cup and then you throw it like that? Exactly. You put a couple fingers in there or some kind of holding board and you fling a spear. It makes your arm... Jamie, I'm a ball.

It's an extension of your arm. It makes your arm essentially longer. You know when you go to a dog park and they're hucking tennis balls, that little? Yeah, same thing. It's like an atlatl principle. Oh, right. So, yeah, there was, for 10,000 years, people hunted here with atlatls. How accurate are those things?

I've seen guys get good, man. Really? Yeah, I've seen guys get good. How much distance can you get? 15, 20 yards? Tops. Tops. Yeah, I'm sure some guys like oh i did it but yeah guys that kill stuff with addle addles kill stuff so is that a thing that's going on right now like people are doing that yeah but the problem is there's that's why guys that hunt with addle addles will tend to hunt wild pigs or other things like that because most places you can't use them oh okay so okay. So you can do it with wild pigs because they're considered a nuisance animal.

In some areas you can use other means to kill them. But in most states they don't. All states have somewhere they spell out legal method of take. It is. We looked into this once. I think that, like, in Alaska, I think for the most part, like, yeah, you can hunt caribou with an atlatl. I could be wrong. Don't no one go out and do it because of that. But I remember looking the most part, like, yeah, you could hunt caribou with an addle addle. I could be wrong.

Don't no one go out and do it because of that. But I remember looking at the way it's worded, and I think you could hunt caribou with an addle addle. But states spell out legal method of take in exquisite detail. For instance, hunting waterfowl, which is waterfowl is federally regulated and state regulation because they're migratory. They move across state lines. So the feds step in to try to make sure the states aren't taking more than their equal share of the resource. Now, they'll spell out the diameter or bore of the shotgun you're allowed to use. You can't use an eight gauge, you know, and then they'll spell out you can't use anything bigger than a 10,

and you can't use anything smaller than a whatever, you know, 410 or something less than that or not allowed to use a 410. So they'll spell out in exquisite detail what you can and can't do for legal method of take. So a lot of what I'm saying about if you want to go back, back, back, back in time to have things get more and more and more difficult, it's hypothetical. Because the guy that is doing, as far as weapon choice, the most difficult thing you can legally do for general big game hunting in the U.S. for weapon choice would be that you'd hunt with a longbow.

Because you're still legal. It's still a legal method to take for most archery seasons to hunt with a longbow. So if you want to cripple yourself or handicap, I don't want to say cripple, if you want to handicap yourself equipment-wise in space age dress with a longbow. So we all, it's a hunting clothes ad. Okay. So we all find our little ways of mental masturbation. And this isn't just something that happened.

This is like an image that they thought is cooler than hell. Yeah. Like it's so cool, it'll be the front of the catalog, is climbing out of a helicopter with a longbow. So we occupy the, and in the U.S., for the most part, like in Alaska, for instance, you can't hunt with a helicopter. You can't use the helicopter to supply a hunting camp. You can't scout for animals from a helicopter.

We decided it's just not fair to use helicopters because you can land them anywhere you want. And you can't hunt, for the most part, you can't hunt and fly on the same day. Just not fair. But here's like a longbow and a chopper. So we all come up with our ways of of of finding comfort yeah you know our ways of finding that right mix of challenge not challenge i heard a guy say people have really struggled to define fair

chase and i heard someone recently i don't think it's a new thing but i heard it recently where he was saying that in fair chase the animal has a better than 50% chance of escape or something to that effect. My brother is a statistician. He's an ecologist, but he specializes in statistical modeling. And I asked him what he thought of a statement like that. And he couldn't even find the language to begin telling me how stupid that was that it has a 50% chance escape like under what requirements right or like like he like it made his head like smoke come out of his ears when he heard that

but what the guy's trying to get at is this idea that you have an un that there's an unknown element right Right. Not guaranteed success. There's not guaranteed. When my brother goes out to shoot his sheep, he knows that it's time to shoot the sheep. Right. Now, this is the same guy that recently spent 21 days hunting elk with his bow on National Forest Land before he finally got a bull. And he's a very good elk hunter. He uses a recurve, though, right?

No, no, hunts with a compound bow. Which brother? Matt. So does Danny use a recurve? He shoots a recurve, but he generally hunts with a rifle. Did Matt decide at one point in time he was going to use only a recurve? No, I don't think so. Which brother was the one that.

Danny. Danny. Is more and more interested in hunting with his recurve. He does hunt with his recurve, but he all, I mean, he just, he drew the same Copper River Buffalo tag that I drew in 2004. And two days ago, he got a buffalo up there and he shot it with it. He got it with his rifle. So did he go by himself for 21 days? My brother, Matt?

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And it was a couple of different trips added up to 21 days? My brother Matt? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And it was a couple different trips added up to 21 days. So it was just trying to locate the right bull or trying to locate any bull? Just hunting, man, a bull.

Yeah. But he hunts in a very, he hunts in an area where there's about, the herd, when we started hunting that area, this is in Yellowstone, it's kind of funny now looking back at the return to this whole wolf thing.

It's like, you know, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, okay, the GYE, let's say, the area surrounding Yellowstone and Wyoming and Montana. We started hunting that area in 97. Now it seems like this, like, you know, it's prophetic, the right word. Now it's like this watershed moment because it's right when wolves, right? It's right around the reintroduction of the wolf. There's now less than half as many elk in that area as there were the time we started hunting it but he's way more than twice as good at hunting them now so how he's grown and developed as an elk hunter he has a

higher success rate now hunting half as many elk as we used to hunt that's fascinating so because he's just knowledge yeah because he just learned it he's one of the great he's one of the best hunters that i know and it's not because of any particular like thing it's just a tenacity thing he's tenacious well speaking of tenacity you that's one of your qualities as well and one of the things that i found fucking unbelievably ridiculous about your show was when you made a decoy of a grouse. Yeah. And you tried to figure out whether or not you could – you had someone make a reed. I mean, a grouse, for people that don't know, is a very small bird.

A blue grouse, though. Blue grouse. It's a big, small bird. Well, big. Like, what is it? Half-pound? No. Is it even? No. No. I mean, a dove's almost big, small bird. Well, big, like what is it, half pound? No. Is it even?

No. No. I mean, a dove's almost a half pound. No, not quite. How much does it weigh? A few pounds. Oh, it does weigh a few pounds. A couple pounds.

A couple pounds. Okay, so a football size? How big is it? Yeah, the body. But I mean, yeah. Okay, that's a decent size. It's big. You know what it'd be?

If you plucked one out, it'd be like a not-fat Cornish game hen. Okay. So a very small chicken. Have you seen my chickens? I got some really, some of them, we've got a couple really tiny chickens. Yeah, but they're like a sinewy, a blue grouse is a sinewy bird. Okay, you know what? They're not as heavy as a pheasant, let's say.

Okay. They're not as heavy as a cock pheasant. But meanwhile, you spent fucking days trying to figure out how to more effectively hunt this one little thing yeah i i became obsessed with like i use that word with such hesitation man yeah it's like that's a good word because it we used to Because we used to fully concentrate upon. Yeah, so there's this bird called a blue grouse. Now, blue grouse used to be, people used to know blue grouse as dusky grouse and sooty grouse. And then for a long time, they lumped them together as blue grouse.

And then a decade ago or sometime, maybe 97 or sometime around there, no, no, I'm sorry, 2007, the Ornithological Society realized that there is a difference between the different species, the different types of blue grouse, and they re-split them, or they suggested that they be re-split into sooties and duskies. So you have dusky grouse in the interior mountain ranges and sooty grouse from the coastal ranges. And they're just a normal bird. People call them fool's hens, and they call them, like, dumb birds

and all this kind of stuff because they don't, when they think of the things that they're afraid of, they're just not afraid of people. They don't have much exposure to people. They live in places where most people don't go. So when a predator approaches, when a human approaches, what they typically want to do is just jump into a tree. much exposure to people. They live in places where most people don't go. So when a predator approaches, when a human approaches, what they typically want to do is just jump into a tree.

They want to get off the ground so they can't get nabbed by a bobcat or a fox or a coyote. And they get under some limbs in a tree so that avian predators can't smack them. And then people walk up and there's this bird sitting in the tree,

and they shoot the bird, and they're like, oh, that bird's stupid. When, in fact, the bird's not. The bird has his way of surviving his typical threats, and they just haven't adjusted to human predation because there's just so little of it on them. We used to hunt bears, black bears, in the spring on avalanche slides. When the mountains are all snowy, you on avalanche slides, because when the mountains are all snowy, you get avalanche slides that are swept clean of snow. And those areas are

the first to green up because the snow slid off and it doesn't need to melt off. And so when bears come out of hibernation, they'll come and find those avalanche shoots and feed on them. And we used to sit just at the base of an avalanche slide all day waiting for bears to come out and doing this now and then in the spring you'd hear this noise that would go and i can never figure out the hell it was because i was brought up in michigan where there aren't these grouse don't live eventually realized that it's it's a blue grouse and that's their mating call in the spring is that hoot. It's haunting. What's haunting about it is you can't tell what direction it really came from. A couple years ago, I was out on Reveille Island or Reveille-Gagadoe Island in southeast Alaska, and we were messing around there one day.

And we got up on this big high ridge, and I could hear five or six of these things going off. You know, the whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop. And I just thought, man, we'd come back here and pound them. Because Alaska's the only place you can hunt these birds in the spring. They call it

the spring hooter season. I thought it'd just be a matter of going up there and hearing it and walking down and getting it. So, we even talked about

doing an episode that was 22 minutes long with no tape, no cuts. It would just play straight time from the time you heard one to the time you shot it, time it out. So we would just run a continuous loop of film.

Now we went out and started looking for the first bird and about like 10 hours into trying to find the first bird. We realized you were not going to do that. Can't find them, but you can. I learned how eventually very difficult to find the first bird we realized you were not going to do that can't find them but you can i learned how eventually very difficult to find because it's just a ventriloquist sound it's just like you can't locate the sound i had a guy there's a game call company where i knew some guys called down and dirty game calls and i sent them a bunch of sound recordings that are on

the cornell university website they have this macaulay library of bird sounds i sent them sound recordings that are on the Cornell University website. They have this Macaulay Library of Bird Sounds. I sent them some of the sounds that the females make, and the females make a noise that sounds like, it's almost like, and they made me a call that sounds like that. And I played the other, the male sound, the woo-woo sound to musician friends and people and i've

been like what in the world would make that sound and people talked about this australian instrument that might a diggory dude yeah they said that might you could maybe use that we tried beer bottles all kinds of stuff like blowing over the top yeah could never make a satisfactory sound but i got to where i was making a female sound and then this guy i know in utah named shad brunson um got me a female blue grouse and i had to go to a taxidermist named colton in montana and he stuffed that blue grouse for me just a real rudimentary stuff job and i took that thing out and i would I would hear where I could hear a bird I couldn't tell where I was hearing it from but I'd get

where I kind of knew I was in the area he was in and set that decoy out the hen and then make the call like attending call that they make to their young and nothing nothing they didn't give a shit couldn't couldn't call him in uh yeah and uh man it was just really frustrating and then i wound up finding i was so pissed about how this was going and so like baffled that i couldn't find these birds i called my brother who put me in touch with a buddy of his who put me in touch with a buddy of his who knew a guy who knew a lady who was very very good at finding blue grouse and she's out of juneau alaska and uh i went hunting with her and we were standing under a grouse in a tree by 9 30 in the morning the first

day after spending four days and found a bird one bird yeah she and i we were together three days i think we found 15 of them she just knew how to find them when she hears that noise she's hearing something that i don't hear wow well that's the tenacity I'm talking about. Yeah. She's got it. Bad. Barb is a tenacious, tenacious hunter. You know, my older brother who I keep talking about, he's got this term. He talks about people having grr.

Grr. Like, grr. Yeah. And, like, he's got a lot of grr when it comes to hunting. I got a lot of grr. That's my only thing. I'm not actually, like, I'm not a bad hunter. I'm definitely not a good hunter.

But what I have going for me is I like to stick with it. Yeah. Well, how could you possibly say you're not a good hunter? Because sometimes I go out with guys who are just so good. Just good. But are they good at a specific type of hunting? Yeah, they get really good at specific things. You're a broad spectrum guy. Yeah, no, I'm a good generalist.

I'm a good generalist. But then I'll go out with guys who just know their stuff, man, you know? And it's a little bit, it's almost a little bit shocking when I'm with someone who really knows what they're doing. And it just, yeah. Well, doesn't that make sense to them? If you're going out with a guy who only hunts mule deer in Utah, and this guy just patterns mule deer every year, he knows all the trails, he spends time in the spring, like, searching for them, he spots them,

he keeps an eye on them, he's watching them, he's getting ready for the. He spots them. He keeps an eye on them. He's watching them. He's getting ready for the season to open up. I mean, that guy is obviously going to have a greater database of information about mule deer than a guy like you who just got back from Bolivia eating a monkey. And then you arrive and you did eat a monkey. Yeah. I want to talk to you about that, too.

That was a crazy fucking episode. That's a fascinating episode, too, because you're talking about, like, ancient stuff and ancient methods and the difference between people that are eating or existing primarily just they're subsisting hunting. I mean, there's no sport involved in what they're doing at all. They're just trying to survive. Yeah, man. They love the—well, this was, I wanted to point out real quick, one guy that I hunt with that's just, like, good, and you know him, Remy. Oh, yeah.

Remy Warren's very, like, I don't use this word very often to describe hunters. He was what I would call a talented hunter. has talent like it's just he gets it you know um so we were down in bolivia have i not i have we not i haven't been on your podcast talking about this i don't believe so i don't think you've been on the podcast since you got back from bolivia have you i don't think i mean don't think so. So we were down in Bolivia, and we went down there to go up a river, the Quesare River, and travel with the Chimane, which is an autonomous indigenous group in Bolivia. A way to approach thinking about it would be to think about the reservation system that we have here in the U.S. where there's a fair bit of autonomy on reservations.

They might be able to have a casino and other stuff that violates state law because they're sort of a nation within a nation. In Bolivia, you have these huge areas of jungle that are autonomous zones, and we were in like the chimane area so they they're self-governing um we went and traveled up a river just doing like a basic river trip at the surface level we were going down there to fish a type of fish called dorado but the main thing i was interested in was just traveling with and hunting with these guys and they hunt with bows for the most part firearms are starting to come into their area but they hunt fish with bows

homemade bows and they hunt birds with bows and they do some big game hunting with bows but they're but 90% of their protein comes out of the river in the form of fish and they poison fish with a plant so we went out we went into a village and they were they were cultivating one of these plants there's a handful of plants down there it does like we use a fish poison here in the u.s when we're trying to get rid of invasives or whatever called rotenon rotenon's a root is derived from a root of a South American plant. And these guys had leaf. They had a tree that bore just like a green waxy leaf,

and you'd pound that into a pulp, and they'd go out into a river, and they'd try to find a little channel, like an isolated channel, a river or a pool that doesn't have a lot of current coming into it, and they'll pulp that plant and put it into a woven bag and just go out in the water and stir the pulped up leaves in there and pretty soon all the fish come up and the fish are suffocating it somehow affects the fish's ability to pull oxygen from the water so the fish come up and they're gasping for air at the surface and then they just shoot the fish with their bows. They do some netting for fish, but most of it's bow hunting. And I fell in with a couple older guys there, and we did some hunting,

and one of these guys had only ever hunted with a bow. But a year earlier, he had gone into some town and somehow got a Russian-made 16 gauge single shot shotgun um that was on it was held together with wire i was nervous about being around him when this gun went off and they like to hunt at night because now they have flashlights so they got flashlights and they got a shotgun and they got their bows. And they would wait till dusk and then we would head off into the jungle. And these guys only speak their native language. They know a teeny bit of Spanish, but they speak Chimane.

I would go out with them and I would have no idea what they're talking about. And we would leave at dusk and just go into the jungle. And the noise of the jungle at night, it's just deafening. If you've never experienced, I mean, it's like, it's to the point where,

I mean, have you ever been like out in a windy area for a long time where you start to feel like it's like affecting your sanity or affecting your ability to think clearly, you know, or when you're on like small aircraft, the engine noise, you don't realize how agitated it's making you until

you get away from it. And you all of a sudden it feels like relaxing in some way. The noise of the jungle is so loud. It's almost like that at night with the bugs and stuff going off. And we go out into the jungle and I knew from going into it that their favorite food, even though they drive 90% of their protein from the river, their favorite food is spider monkey. Their second favorite food is howler monkey. And before it even gets dark out,

we go down this trail for a while through the jungle, and they come to a date tree, and dates will fruit periodically throughout the year. And, you know, you're getting closer to the equator there, so there's not like, you don't have the season seasonality as much so plants will fruit all the time rather than just in the summertime and they get this date tree and his date tree is fruiting and he's looking at these dates on the ground and he finds some shit that i now realize must have been monkey shit and they got real interested in what was going on up above us and pretty soon he sees a this howler monkey

starts going through the treetops and he shoots it down out of the tree with a with that shotgun he had with him and first thing he does he takes the tail and cuts the tail off the monkey the tip of the monkey's tail and buries it in the ground i couldn't even ask him why he was doing this but later i learned it's you do that so the next monkey you kill he doesn't get hung up in the tree by his tail then just like a belief you know then he cuts some bark off a tree and makes a little harness so he can carry the monkey over his across his chest so he's just got the monkey slung on him like a baby carrier and uh we just head off in the jungle and hunt for several hours that night and then the next day well we got back and they uh gutted the monkey out

and kept all the intestines and everything out of that monkey. And eventually they burned the hair off it and trussed it, like how you truss a turkey, and smoked it over a fire. And I did not want to eat a monkey. Like I did not want to eat a primate, you know. But at that point I'd been out with them and, you know, I was going to eat it, but it was very difficult for me to enjoy psychologically. I was going to eat it, but it was very difficult for me to enjoy psychologically. I had the same problem being in Vietnam and being served domestic dog, where I ate domestic dog seven nights in a row. And just was never, people go, what did it taste like? I was like, I can't even tell you.

It was like something, I would get so hot. Like my body would feel so hot eating that. It's like wrongness. Well, is it because of nerves? Yeah, man. I couldn't tell what it tastes like. Psychological heat. Yeah, very hard to eat the monkey.

If I could say what it tastes like eating that monkey, it tastes like if you took steel cable and put liquid smoke on it. They loved it. Why do they, well, they have a specific preference. They like howler over spider or spider over howler?

No, they like spiders then red howlers. why? A couple nights later, we're coming back from fishing one night and we had,

we had a giant catfish with us and a handful of other fish with us and we're coming back to the jungle and it's just getting, starting to come on to darkness. giant catfish with us and a handful of other fish with us. And we're coming back to the jungle and it's just getting, starting to come on to darkness. And they see another kind of monkey.

I can't remember like a capuche or capiche or something. That's not what they call it in their language, but another kind of monkey. And I'm like, surely they're going to go after this monkey. No interest in that monkey. Not a good one. The same night they got the red howler monkey. We go down the trail and it's just getting dark and I see a possum.

Same marsupial, same possum we have here. And I'm like, surely these guys are going to want that. If they'll eat a damn monkey, they're going to want a possum. People in the U.S. eat possums. They look at that thing and just walk by like it doesn't even exist. And later I was able to ask them through, like, by asking them,

by asking someone who speaks some Spanish, he was able to, so it was like a three-way translation. I was like, why didn't you guys want the possum? And he explained to me that you'd only eat a possum if you were real hungry. But meanwhile, they're after monkey. And when they get a monkey, it's a party. A party. Yeah.

Everybody comes, and they're real excited. And the thing I say in the show, we did a whole three-part series about Bolivia and the Chimane. But the thing I say in the show when we're talking about this is think of the, there's only two things I know about that get the kind of enthusiasm from a culinary perspective in the U.S. to get the kind of enthusiasm these guys had for monkeys. It'd be someone who has homegrown tomatoes and morel mushrooms are the only things I know about that people have that level of love for. They were more excited about eating that red holler monkey than you've ever been about eating anything you ever ate, I promise you. And they eat them on a regular basis. No. No. They rarely go up to this

area. And that's one of the reasons they like to go up to this area is because you can get monkeys. They hadn't had a monkey for eight months, I think. I remember, I think it was eight months. That was the last time they had gone into an area where they would find the monkeys. So did you specifically ask them to go to this area where the monkeys were? No, we were just going to an area that's like the happy hunting grounds.

Wow. They were very excited to go, and it was several days upriver. It was like apocalypse now. They were very excited to go up this area because it's the area they like to go to to hunt and fish. So this monkey thing tastes like steel cable. Like it was just unbelievably chilly.

You know, have you ever had a smoked turkey drumstick? Yes. Okay, imagine the lowest part on that smoky turkey drumstick where you're getting close to the joint. Just pulling it off. Yeah, that's what that monkey's like. But I'll tell you something that's like, well,

they had a baby monkey at one point, okay, a very young baby monkey at one point, and they just cooked it in a wok. And I wasn't even offered any of that. They just saved that for themselves. A couple of the guys had it. I remember one of them had like a head in a bowl,

loving it. Jesus Christ. And what's funny about it too, dude, what's funny about it it. I remember one of them had a head in a bowl. Loving it. And what's funny about it, too, dude, what's funny about it, is I remember being in a – I don't know why I'm saying this now. I hunted with another indigenous group in Guyana, and I remember this guy had a shirt with Muhammad Ali on it, and I was trying to ask him about it. He had no idea. And another one had a shirt from a pizza place. He had no idea what pizza was.

Not that they have a responsibility to know about Muhammad Ali and pizza, but just saying, like, for them to hear from us, be like, dude, it is very rare to eat a monkey, you know. It was just to them. It was just baffling. It was like they weren't like, yeah, I know some people don't like it. You know, like if you go down and someone gives you squirrel brains, they're like, yeah, man, it's kind of fucked up.

We eat squirrel brains. Like, no, it was just in their mind, it was like their fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, great-grandfathers like howler monkey. How would you not be excited about this? Like no idea of it being like globally fringe. It's just so strange that you don't have their language available. So you can't have like a real conversation about it, like what is it about this that you enjoy more?

Because you guys shot a deer too. But they wanted the monkey more than the deer. They liked the deer more than the monkey, and that deer was phenomenal. They want the deer more than the monkey. No, no, no. They liked the monkey more than the deer. The deer was very good. They were very glad about the deer, but they liked the monkey more than the deer.

What do they think about your bow? Because you brought a modern Hoyt compound bow. Yeah. Did you feel like you wanted to leave it with them? You know... But if you did, they wouldn't be able to get arrows for it anyway. Yeah, there's that. You have all these weird...

Hanging out with people who like that. You have all these weird hang-ups, or at least I do. All this colonial-type guilt or something where you don't want to i'll put it to you this way i was bummed that that guy had that shotgun really he's glad as hell right it's the greatest thing ever happened to him he's got a damn shotgun right he couldn't be happier but i was like man know, I just wish you didn't have that shotgun and you started to hunt with your bow. So it's like me, you're exercising some kind of weird,

I don't want to call it like racism, it's not racism, it's something, it's just like some kind of the new colonialism. There's a Puritan aspect of it. Yeah. Like, for instance, there's these guys down there, there's these Bolivians who are from the urban area down there like of Europe like of mixed European

indigenous ancestry and there's they're very like in Bolivia the ruling class the urban people are very different than the indigenous people okay there is they have it I don't want to say categorically but there's a view of the indigenous people that would have seemed more like the 1870s here in the u.s in some circles the way they view the backwardness of the indigenous people and trying to bring out missionaries to you know help them find religion and get them to settle down and stop being nomadic and you know there's all this kind of stuff that we were having that conversation 150 years ago here um there's these

guys are doing these trips who we orchestrated our trip through who are trying to introduce these guys to they're trying to get these guys hip to the idea of not eating one of their favorite fish which is the dorado because rich white guys will pay a lot of money to come down and catch dorado that was kind of our end to go down here was to go up to this area where they catch Dorado. So they're trying to sell these dudes on not messing with Dorado. I was bummed out about that. Like I hated seeing that because like that's their favorite fish, man.

What are you telling? You're trying to tell them that like, now we want to tell them to not eat their favorite fish. Cause guys like me, me might want to come Down and catch the thing and it's not even gonna have a negative implication the ramification anyways You're not gonna like over harvest them with bows and arrows, you know, right? But it's just like this weird thing So yeah, I didn't like that the guy had the shotgun even though he was glad about the shotgun

I had my bow and when I brought my bow down that my main goal and have a bow Yeah, you're not gonna to bring a firearm down there. They can't have firearms. Not supposed to have firearms. So I wasn't going to bring a firearm. I would never be able to get it in there anyways. It would have probably been very bad to bring it. But I could bring a bow, no problem.

My main goal in bringing the bow was that I would have like some, that I would establish some credibility with them. And it did. When I, we got up and I was shooting their bows and doing some credibility with them. And it did. When I, we got up, and I was shooting their bows and doing some fishing with their equipment and stuff. When I got out my bow, they were like, yeah, very, very surprised by a compound bow. Well, they see how fast the arrow shoots, right? They couldn't believe it.

A lot of them, they didn't want to shoot it. Some of them wanted to shoot it. A lot of them, they didn't want to shoot it. Some of them wanted to shoot it. A lot of them were like just deeply, not impressed with me, but just impressed by the technology. Did you let them shoot it? Yeah, I let a couple of them shoot it. Did they use a wrist release? Yeah, but it was just like they'd, you know, it's hard to keep them from dry firing. I mean, it's just like, because you can't tell.

Like, I can't explain to them. So you're trying to demonstrate things. Someone was going to get hurt shooting the bow. Right. And it was funny. These guys had beat my ass all over town. A lot of them couldn't come close to pulling the bow back. How heavy is the bow?

70. They couldn't pull it back? No, because you develop a muscle for pulling those bows back. And these guys had beat my ass. They couldn't believe how hard that bow was to pull back. And I just wanted to be like, I just can pull it because I pull bows. You know? Hmm.

Yeah. I'm sure if they would have spent a day at it, they would have gotten the pull down, but it's just different. They're going about how they pull their long bows. Right, right. It's just a different kind of thing, you know? Yeah, their bows didn't seem very strong.

No, not at all. Not at all. So it's just about, and they had really long arrows too, which is very strange. Yeah, they're super long arrows and they would carry three kinds of tips. They carry a big game tip,

a bird tip, and a fish tip. So every guy's got three arrows with his bow. But they loved that bow. But I wound up being, I just really wanted to be able to hang out with them and have them not like stop. Like when I would walk up into them

where they'd be standing around eating some fish around their fire and I would walk up and they'd all quit eating. And I eventually got where we were comfortable together. Like they would kind of show me stuff and they kind of, you know, I don't want to say they liked me, but they sort of accepted me. And I eventually got explained to them through actions and otherwise that I was very interested in their food. I was very interested in how they hunted. I would go out into the jungle at night with them.

You know, I got stung by a bullet ant, and, you know, that's excruciating, and they watched me kind of like suffer through that and come out of that. And eventually we became friendly, you know. And I had the bow just so because I wanted to go out and hunt with them. And because I had the bow, they were impressed by the bow, and it was just better. better it just worked better me having a bow so they took you in yeah once they saw that they were like yeah they felt that um you pulled your weight yeah they wound up kind of liking like you know and the guys that we were traveling with those down there with uh yannis was there and dan was there and a guy named phil was down, a camera operator named Phil was down there. And we all wound up being, like, cool with these guys.

You know, like, we got along well. But it took a long time to get kind of in with them and have them start sort of showing you their world a little bit. Because you realize that they're used to being viewed. They had enough exposure to the outside world to realize that the outside world usually carried a certain amount of disapproval for their food and

dress and other things I gathered that was my impression but after a while they were like oh this guy's cool you know we would just hang out did you guys have to pay them like how did they accept you into their fold? We paid the guys. These guys are trying to develop a recreational fishery in this area,

but they're going into places no one goes into. And they're trying to establish. They were in the process of trying to establish a thing where they would have paying clients come down and the paying clients would go on these river trips up to fish in these areas. The only way you can do it because it's Chimane land, the only way you can do it is by going through the Chimane. And the only people you're going to hire to get the boats up the rivers and paddle the boats and run the boats and run the engines and get them stuck out of the rapids and all the difficult traveling that involves you to hire Chimane guys to do it. So we hired the guys that hired the Chimane with the sole goal of, I was just interested in traveling with the Chimane.

How did you get this in your head? Like, what, is this something you researched in advance? I mean, how do you make a decision to go to one particular indigenous tribe? I did a similar thing. I did a similar thing for TV down in Guyana. I was just blown away by it. Just traveling with guys. And the guys in Guyana, you know, they were still actively hunting with bows. In some ways, they were a more modernized people, but they were still avid bow fishermen, hunted with bows.

I took my bow down there and hunted. I remember I shot a big game bird, a big turkey-like game bird, out of a tree with my bow from about 40 yards, and they were blown away, man. It was just, it's like fun. I learned more about hunting and about looking at the landscape and about indigenous food paths in those weeks that i've been fortunate to do that kind of trip then then i would learn in years of hunting with american hunters because you gotta understand these guys don't let's say you're with someone who's 35 years old, 40 years old.

He's hunted probably five, six days a week for his entire life within a 100-mile radius of his home. The level of understanding that you get, but it's raw jungle. It's like undeveloped jungle. The level of understanding you get about what's going on around you is just different than what we're able to achieve today. Especially someone like me who I travel around a lot and experience a lot of different things, but what I lack, what I miss out on from the way I do things is I miss out on that level of detailed local understanding that I had as a kid.

For instance, for the lake where I grew up, the lake I grew up on, I knew it well, right? Better than anybody or as good as anybody. They have that about the jungle. So to go out with guys like that and just watch how they interact and what noises make sense to them, you know, it's just, it's really informative and it just helps you kind of understand humanity better. I remember going out in the jungle with them one night and it's, I remember I was talking about how loud it is. You can't even believe how loud it is. And all these noises, you're like, what is all this stuff?

It must be whatever. And then one time I hear a noise that sounds like this, off in the jungle, everything, they just stopped. off in the jungle. Everything, they just stopped. It was like, oh, so that noise, of the thousands of noises going on, this is very interesting to them, you know?

And what was it? I have no idea. They didn't go after it? No, but they were real interested in that noise. Like, something made that noise, and they're like, of all the sticks snapping and things dropping and birds going off and insects, you know, getting bit by bullet ants. They hear what sounds like a stick way the hell off.

And it just means something to them. Was the bullet ant as bad as everybody says it is? Dude, yeah. You ever see that Schmidt Pain Index? Yes. The Schmidt Pain Index, he scores all insect bites. And the bullet ant's the only one that gets a 4 plus rating. Like a 5 star

hotel. It's the highest rated. He has found, and he studies insect toxins and insect stings. He's found nothing else that's as painful. So what does it feel like? It feels at first like you got zapped by a wasp or

hornet. And maybe 10 minutes into it, a minute into it, it becomes something very different than that. 10 minutes into it, you feel like something's really wrong. Like arthritic pain. Throbbing, throbbing pain that goes way away from the source. And we couldn't speak. And we're out in the jungle at night. And first they go and find a vine and pulp up some of the vine and put the vine where I got hit.

I don't know what the vine was. I couldn't tell that it had any difference. It didn't mean anything different. But it was a bit on my ankle. And the camera guy, Phil Baraboooo was bit on his hand at the same time and he kept pointing to phil's hand but then running his finger the chimane guys pointing to phil's hand and running his finger up his arm like to his heart he keeps doing that to phil and he keeps taking to me and pointing his finger to his ankle and then running his finger up the inside of his leg to his

groin. And I thought that means that the poison or toxin or somehow is going to travel up and get you. I couldn't tell what he was talking about. And all I knew was it was bad to get bit by a bullet ant. Pretty soon it was so bad I couldn't even we weren't even able to walk. I wasn't able to walk. I just had to lay there

and just like writhe. For how long? Well, I'll tell you this. An hour and 45 minutes later i couldn't remember what the hell ankle it was really no mark no mark and you couldn't figure out which ankle i was walking under two hours later i remember thinking like i never realized that i couldn't think of what ankle it had been on do you think that's because the medication that they use because of the plant i've read that from a lot of other people. Really? Yeah.

Well, I thought it lasted for like 24 hours. For me, now they do a thing where they take like some kind of mitt and fill it full of them. Yeah. And you put the mitt on. It's like an initiation. Right, the passion. And you get bit a lot. And then it's a whole, I guess it's a whole other world.

But for me, I think it was, I could be wrong. No, I don't think I am, man. I think that it was, the peak was 30, 40 minutes into it. And then it just tapered, tapered, tapered, and then gone. Now, if I got hit by one now, knowing what I know now, I don't want to say that I would enjoy it, but I would be more interested. I would be interested in what was going on and watching the progression. But I was so scared because I didn't know what it meant.

I didn't know if it was like getting hit by a rattlesnake where you need to go and figure shit out or what. And they weren't able to tell me what was happening. Also, traveling to your dick. what? And they weren't able to tell me what was happening. And they were doing that weird Yeah, what I later learned, what they were saying was make sure they don't have any in your sleeves and make sure you don't have any because they'll come up and get you on the chest

which might be bad or they'll get you on the balls which is bad. Oh yeah, I would imagine. So he's saying like, not that it's traveling up to your not that it's traveling up to your groin but that it ain but don't let an ant get up your pants and get you. The Schmidt pain index. Oh, there's the Schmidt pain index. 300 MINs?

300 minutes. 300 minutes. Okay. Wow. Boy, he's really souped that index up recently. I got stung by a wasp recently in Colorado, and it was the most fucking painful sting I've ever felt in my life. And I don't know what happened.

I was walking, and all of a sudden I go, ah! Like it was unusual. It didn't make any sense. I was like, what the fuck just bit me? Like I've been stung by bees before. I think I've been stung by hornets. I think it don't know. I think I've been stung by hornets. I think it was a wasp. It was a wasp or a hornet.

I didn't even see what the bug was because I was going through this heavy bush. And my fucking arms swole up like Popeye. It was so weird. Like, it was hard. Like, the bottom of my forearm turned. Ronnie Bam got hit by something like that down in Virginia the next day. Turned into a big, hard knob. Like he had a softball stuck under his skin.

Yeah, and it lasted for like five or six days. And it was so itchy. Like I had to do everything I could to keep from clawing my arm apart. Where I would go under the shower and I'd turn the shower up really hot. To the point where it would be painful with any other part of my body and just shove that arm underneath the super hot water like I was scratching it with this insanely hot water. It was burning my arm. But nothing like a bullet ant.

I got hit by a lionfish. Oh, I've seen those things. Yeah, and that, again, scared the shit out of me because i didn't really know what all it meant we were spearfishing and i got hit by a lionfish and the thing you do is you heat water up to boiling and let it cool and the minute you can even kind of stand to put your water your hand in there you dip your hand in there and it takes the pain away wow that was that was another thing it's just like my hand swelled up like like like not really usable like an old mickey mouse hand for how long a couple hours again we were

out i had gone down we were spearfishing the bahamas and and I had gone down and shot a lionfish because they're good to eat. I mean, we were doing them like ceviche. They're very good. Really? White flesh, yeah. You've got to be real careful with them. I'd gone down and shot a lionfish.

Careful how so? What's that? Careful how so? You have to avoid the stings? Oh, so what we would do is when you get a lionfish, we'd take the lionfish and leave it on the spear and then open the cooler up and stick the spear and the lionfish into the cooler and shut the lid and pull so that your spear would come out and the lionfish would fall into the cooler.

Now, lionfish, just for your listeners, it's a non-native that has been introduced into the Caribbeanbean is wreaking much havoc from florida southward and they're you know they're doing a lot to try to get rid of them you see why because they're so viciously territorial and out there in the bahamas you have these small little coral heads and a couple lionfish would move in there and they would just move out other fish so there's no regulations on lion. You're allowed to kill as many as you want. They encourage you to kill as many as you want. So were the people, let them loose from aquariums or something?

Yeah, I think somehow they escaped through the aquarium trade. Fucking Florida and aquariums, man. I don't want to say for sure. Maybe your internet whiz over here, Jamie, will tell you the answer to that. But how they got in there in the first place. But anyhow, then later would take poultry shears and just get big rubber gloves once the fish is dead and take poultry shears

and cut all the thorns off it then flay it. So the thorns are where the toxins stored, not in the glands underneath it? Yeah, they got injected in you with the thorns, or the spines, you know. Right, and these spines, is the toxin in the spine itself or is there a gland underneath it?

No, it's on it. Huh. That's my understanding. Huh. Now, I ran out of breath and left my spear stuck in a lionfish down on the bottom. Came up, got a breath, went down. And as I'm trying to get my lionfish out of this area he was in without pulling him off the spearhead, I noticed a grouper in a hole.

So I went up and I got a lionfish on my spear. And I'm waving to my brother to come over because I can't take the lionfish off my spear. I'm waving him to come over about the grouper. And he comes over and he's got a snapper on the end of his spear. So I take the snapper off his spear and i'm holding the damn snapper in my right hand and i have a lionfish on my spear in my left hand and i'm going underwater trying to point to the hole that has the grouper in it and somehow swung that lionfish into my hand and it got all weird and puffy and i crawled up into the boat and was just kind of like writhing in the bottom of the boat.

And I started getting really scared because my hands started to feel hot and all bloated. And eventually waved my brother and our buddy Eric over, and we went in. We were 45 minutes from the shore and went in, and by then I was really scared. My buddy Ronnie Bain was there, and he's like saying I should put it under cold water, and I went and typed in the Internet.

It's like, do not put it in cold water. Dude, yeah. It was something, man. Here it goes. Speculated the root of the problem was only six lionfish accidentally released from an aquarium during the Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Wow. That's crazy.

Genetic research supports this finger pointing, but it's likely many more have been intentionally released by retired aquarium enthusiasts. Retired aquarium enthusiasts. That's a funny way of looking at it. But Florida has a gigantic issue with invasions. Yeah, man. It comes from aquariums. It's amazing.

Whether it's pythons or, you know, they found Nile crocs in the Evergates now. Yeah. God. I was reading a whole article how they have just a kill on site for Nile crocs. They're just terrified these fucking giant crocs are going to grow to be these 28-foot-long killers like they have in Mozambique or wherever the fuck it is. Florida is the future of wilderness. How so? Because as we move species around with reckless abandon,

intentionally, unintentionally, and we eliminate biodiversity in some areas through habitat destruction and if current trends continue and the earth continues to get hotter and we lose a lot of the climatic

diversity, different climates that we have, different places, if that continues I think that you will have we'll continue to see like the great mixing you know and you and we'll just wind up with a situation where there are certain every animal is going to get a shot at every biome and you're just going to have it be that certain ones that can thrive are going to thrive and you're not going to have the levels of endemism that we have now and i think that yeah in the future you know just look

at what the wild pig has managed to do here in the us you know it's the dominant large animal on some landscapes it's a non-native um the in my lifetime in the great lakes the round go you know gobies zebra mussels if you go now and drop a baited hook down in places that i grew up fishing the first thing you would pull up is a goby they were not there it's just certain things are winners and certain things are losers not all the winners are going to be non-natives because white-tailed deer do well around people. Crows seem to do well around people. Canada geese do very well around people. It's just going to be more and more and more aquarium-like.

Isn't it weird how people have this desire to manipulate and manage all the other wildlife? I mean, it is strange when you think about the evidence that points to the contrary, the evidence that points to, I mean, there are, like you said, more whitetail deer in the United States now than when Columbus landed. So they've done a great job in bringing back healthy populations to certain animals. But then you see, like, the shit they've done in Florida where the pythons are fucking eating alligators. I mean, have you seen that image?

Yeah. That's a famous image. That is a crazy image of 20 foot long Python that ate a fucking alligator. I mean, they have, there's a crazy system going on down there where these non indigenous animals are just crushing all these other animals and, other animals and surviving and thriving in an environment that's pretty compatible for them. You know, as far as, you know, tropical, hot climate, moist, plenty of things to eat, plenty of life out there for them to snuff out. In some areas they're finding, a friend of mine, Robert Abernathy, who's a biologist and conservationist big hunter he uh he was working with some guys that are going down there and there's a whole class of mid-sized animal that's just missing from those python areas now whoa basically like

possum raccoon sized critters are just gone you know you will see it like that's why to bring this full circle back to some things we were talking about a lot of the conservation groups that I get involved in things like you know National Wild Turkey Federation Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation

they pick you know they're they're powered by hunters and powered by hunter money in the in the effort to preserve habitat for certain species but like native animals that wind up by helping those you know you're helping all other creatures because you can't fix elk like if you fix elk habitat you're fixing everyone's habitat you know, you're helping all other creatures because you can't fix elk. Like if you fix elk habitat, you're fixing everyone's habitat. You know, it's like a keystone thing. If you help elk by salvaging riparian areas, you're helping all critters across the board.

You know, you're enhancing wildlife. And a big risk that you have if you look at native wildlife and you cherish native wildlife, and I do, one of the big risks we have coming down the line is just the non-native stuff. You know, I mean, as far as even just vegetation, we have a lot of areas that we're seeing those high-quality plants being displaced by, you know, plants that make native wildlife sick that they can't live on. It's a big, big problem. And in some ways you want to look at Florida and it's almost like the wildlife situation in Florida

has almost kind of become a joke where it's so outlandish. It's like this like Jurassic Park environment. Yeah. But at the same time, it's also, you look at it like, God, you know, it's like this wild place and it's, you know, it's the new wilderness in some ways. But in some ways, it's just like it's really sad what that's going to mean for the endemics. Well, Florida sort of attracts that even with human beings, though. I mean, those are non-native human beings that went down there and took over, too.

It's all people that escaped from the mob from New York and weird people from Cuba that came up in rafts. Yeah, you gotta read the books of Carl Hiaasen, man. And then the cocaine thing. That's also a non-native plant. It's main byproduct introduced to that area that changed the entire ecosystem financially. There's more banks per capita in Miami than there are in the rest of the country. And the reason being is because that's where they fucking laundered money. I mean, it's really clear.

I grew up with just a tremendous affinity for Florida because in Michigan, that's, in my area of Michigan, like when you went on vacation, you went to Florida. Sure. It's just like you didn't go, it was just where you went. It's a great place to vacation. Yeah. But it's madness. And now in other parts of the country, people are like, you went where?

I'm like, yeah, man, Florida. Why? I'm like, because it parts of the country, people are like, you went where? I'm like, yeah, man, Florida. Why? I'm like, because it's Florida, man. It's amazing. You know, it's a great fishing. But a lot of people, but yeah, it's just like we associated so strongly with Florida and the fishing in Florida that I do. I have a soft spot. And I was down there, and I was talking to this kid who likes to hunt down there not long ago, and was telling me this is the hunting and fishing capital of the world. Florida. Yeah. Well they have a lot of game

down there. Yeah they do. He was a wild pig hunter. A lot of wild pigs right? Yeah. Isn't that where you shot the wild pig with the Brian Gumbel in that episode? Yeah. Florida's a nutty spot and you know they're saying that it's not even going to be there. If the water rises the way it's rising right now, they're thinking Miami won't even exist in 30 or 40 years. Because it's all very porous. Porous limestone. It's not going to be like New Orleans where they could dam it up. It's just going to come right through the ground, and that's going to be a wrap.

There's a thing I like to fish called flats. There's going to be a lot more flats. You're going to be flats near the Miami Hotel. Yeah, knee-deep water, man. How strange would it be if you... It's going to be like a lot of redfish, hopefully. Taking a fucking boat ride for fish around the Miami Hotel. What time is your flight?

I got to get going. Right now? Well, I think he was saying I'd be stupid to leave after 3.30. Okay. Well, it's 3.13. Don't be stupid. We'll get you out of here in a few minutes. What else did I want to ask you about?

Oh, one of the things about Bolivia that I found fascinating was that the people seem to have adapted physically to that environment. Like you were saying that you were traveling with those people and they didn't sweat. Yeah. Like you're sweating like crazy. It's pouring out of your pores. We would go out at night, and well, first off, these guys chew coca leaves, which we all got into big time. I could never tell what it's actually doing. It's what they make cocaine from.

They take the coca leaf, and they put lime on it. Was it lye or lime? No, baking soda. That's what they put on it. Lye, that's leaf and they put a lime on it. Is it lye or lime? No, baking soda. That's what they put on there. Lye is what they use with that betel nut. No, they take a leaf and you pack your cheek. They call it a bola, a ball. I mean, to the point where your cheek looks seriously puffed out and inflamed, full of leaves.

And then you put baking soda in there because it somehow activates the alkaloids. And it's supposed to give you a boost and keep you going at night. So I'd be out there and I'd have a couple water bottles and I'd just be slamming water and just pouring sweat

and I'm not like a sweaty dude but I'd be sweating so bad out in the jungle drinking all this water and these guys each got a bag. They wear these little shoulder things. It looks almost like a woman's purse but it's like a handmade bag they carry. And it would have a kitchen knife in it, like a paring knife, which would be their hunting knife.

Or they just have that in their back pocket. They don't wear shoes. They have that bag. What? They don't wear shoes? Yeah. You know what? One of the guys put shoes on when we were going out, and he couldn't get used to them because he never wore shoes.

But he wanted to try them out. They go out barefoot. And they got this leaf. They're coca leaves. They got a bag of baking soda. And then they had one of these water bottles. And I thought that they were somehow able to get through all night, two of them, with one water bottle of water.

And I was impressed by that. But later someone told me it's a distilled spirit so it's not even water no it's like vodka but not so they're drinking vodka and doing coke chewing coca leaves it's not vodka but it's like a

rice it's like a some kind of thing like you take rice wine and somehow distill it I don't understand how they did it the guys I was with remember what it was and it was real strong and uh like a moonshine almost yeah and they would be out there with a mouth packed full of coca leaves stick and bake and soda in there drinking that stuff out of a water bottle and they wouldn't drink water all night wow i was dying yeah they're accustomed to it but the thing. Like, when you want to get into that, if you took those boys, because they've never experienced. They've never experienced a temperature below 40 degrees Fahrenheit, you know, in their life.

Right. So, if you took those boys and I was like, hey, man, we're going to go hunt in the Arctic for caribou. And there's going to be snow on the ground. You know, they would go home and talk about how we are some kind of Superman heroes. Sleeping out in the snow. You know. Right. It would blow their mind.

What if you took them to Nunavak? It would blow their mind what if you took them to nunavak they'd blow their mind took them to that you just get really like you get set in your remember how everybody always likes to make that big deal about how in the like in the inuit language they have like 24 words for snow all right i just don't think that we have a difficult time describing people who like to ski have many ways of describing snow it's kind of a it's like a little bit it's almost dishonest we have like yeah we have like light powder heavy powder slushy snow you know on and on and on like we have ways of describing snow and it's easy to sort of mythologize people. You go down, you get the feeling that there's like these super, I do, these superhuman beings.

But then, you know, I look at it, it's just like they're just used to a landscape that's baffling to me. You know? Like, look, there's four of us out. Two of us got hit by bullet ants. Who got hit by bullet ants? Me and the other white guy. Right? Those guys didn't get hit by bullet ants. And they're barefoot. Yeah. Why did they not get hit by bullet ants? Me and the other white guy. Right? Those guys didn't get hit by a bullet ant.

And they're barefoot. Yeah. Why did they not get hit by a bullet ant? Because they walk through, they just know the risks. The same way if I took them and we were walking around somewhere in some urban environment, they might not know when it's a good time to cross the street and walk off the other one. I'd be like, what are you dumb? Like,

no, he just doesn't know. I don't know. Like I wasn't tuned into the threat of bullet ants. They would notice snakes that I didn't, you know, they would see a snake. They would notice that I didn't notice.

They would always, when they got to a log, they would inspect the log very carefully. If I had a bullet ant on it, they would kill it very delicately with the tip of a bow. But they just had a way that they'd like to like press and kill the bullet ant and like this very like dainty fashion um why is that i don't know i could never figure it out man they just had like a little way that they would crush

bullet ants it was interesting would bullet ants go in these large groups or maybe they didn't want to disturb it because of pheromones would get other bullet ants excited you know i'm saying like if you got a bunch of hornets around you start flailing wildly i don't know i just noticed they would do it they just walked through and they knew their area and yeah i was tempted to be like man these are like gods they're so aware but then i feel like had i been brought up there hanging out i might have not got hit by bull i might have not got hit by a bullet well they probably all been hit right i asked them and they couldn't. I later was able to ask them, and one guy was saying he had probably been hit maybe,

I remember I thought he had said somehow around nine times. And another guy was saying he had no way of even recollecting how many times he'd been hit by a bullet. Wow. It's just crazy that they walk around barefoot. Yeah. They do things barefoot that are... What do their feet look like not like yours just flattened out yeah they get your feet get real flattened out your toe your thumb toe

let's say starts to move away like a monkey starts to move away from your other toes i've never seen anything so like it quite as much as i was in the Philippines in the highlands. And the guys there, they're in the mountains, like in serious mountains, barefoot, growing up hunting their whole lives in the mountains barefoot on just bad rock and everything all the time. And their feet, you wouldn't have been able to put that foot in the shoe no way now. Wow. Their toes are so spread. You can find pictures of that stuff online.

It's kind of like a famous sort of thing that happens to those guys in the central highlands and Luzon Island. Their feet are just incredible. Makes sense. But I think it's just like your feet, your toes are held, you know, inside your shoes, your toes are held in a way that they just, if you're walking on a rock and in mountainous landscapes all the time, your feet just fan out. Wow.

You know? Like hands. Yeah, man. Like creepy. Yeah. Creepy. I don't want to say creepy in a bad way, but it was like. But it's kind of creepy to you.

Yeah. And when I was there, I spent more time looking at people's feet than I did their faces. Just to try to figure it out. Yeah. at people's feet than I did their faces. Just to try to figure it out. Yeah, and some of these old guys had these tattoos that recounted when they used to headhunt for the Japanese after World War II. Whoa. These guys were, you know, they were pretty hardcore fellas. Wow.

Because after, you know, when they took the Philippines, some of the Japanese went up and just hid out, you know, and they would make a big sport out of finding them. Wow. Because the Americans wanted them, you know, and they had to get these tattoos that are exploits. We met old people, and they were introduced to us as such, but who'd been headhunters, you know. And they would have their tail narrated on their thing,

and they would go out in the jungle, and they had these souped-up air rifles, and they'd go out in the jungle with air rifles, and then they air rifles and they'd go out in the jungle and hunt with air rifles and then they had these, you ever hear of electro-shocking for fish? Yeah. They would have homemade electro-shocking kits. They would have a car battery. I saw this guy that had a big, huge detergent bottle that he turned into a backpack.

And in that detergent bottle he had a stack of batteries and he had a negative and a positive wand and he would stand out on rocks in the river we're doing we're floating down the river with these guys he's standing on a rock in the river and put those under put those wands under rocks and under logs electroshocking fish and shrimp freshwater shrimp and how was he grounded you just stand on a rock and stick them in there same way when you're electrofishing for fish and shrimp, freshwater shrimp. And how was he grounded? He would just stand on a rock and stick them in there, same way when you're electrofishing for anything doing a survey.

And he would shock them up, then run down a river with a net and net up all the stuff that he shocked, and he'd get a log burning and roll the log over and lay the shrimp and crabs on the log until they turn red and eat them. Wow. My brother was shocking fish one time and got done shocking fish for a fish survey, was walking back from having shocked fish, and he had the fish in a gunny sack, and a bolt of lightning came out of the sky, hit the ground next to him,

and a shot of that electricity shot up into the sack of fish and shocked him. Whoa. I'd like to end on that because it's some kind of cosmic retribution. Yeah, I would imagine. Holy shit. Well, Remy got hit by lightning. You know that story, right? Remy's got some good stories.

He's got some real good stories. He's got a story about that they were burning brush one time. Someone burned a big brush pile, and it was dry conditions. brush one time. Someone burned a big brush pile in those dry conditions and they burned a big brush pile and all kinds of rodents started running out of the brush pile on

fire, starting little fires all over the place as they ran away. Oh no. It's a horrific story. Oh my God. I want to end on that. Let's end on that. Well listen, this book is fucking excellent.

The complete guide. Can I say one last thing? Can you turn off the fade music? Yes. I forgot this thing I got to talk about. We got seven more minutes. Yeah, this is important. Okay.

Because if you have Verizon Files. Oh, yes. All your listeners. Yeah. Verizon Files is in some kind of, there's some kind of piss and match. I don't really understand it. But they've pulled, for now, they've pulled Outdoor Channel and Sportsman Channel off their lineup. And they're suggesting that you go and watch, like, they're, like, suggesting alternative content.

They're pointing people to, like, reality-ish shows that deal in hunting in some way. It'd be like if you told people that we're not going to cover the UFC anymore. So watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. No, go watch WWF. WF, right? Okay. It'd be like, that's like, so if you have Verizon, if you use Verizon in any way, shape, or form, do me a favor and just do people a favor. And make sure to go and complain about that.

And what is this? Because how it's been explained to me. It's a contract dispute of some sort. So the way it was explained to me was that there's some sort of an agenda to push out outdoor programming. You don't believe that's the case? I don't know if that's true or not. You think it's just a contract issue? The reason I do wonder if there's something like that is it could be that it definitely came about.

It seems to have definitely come about at the time of the Cecil the Lion deal. For sure. And they also said, oh, it's low viewership, but they carry networks that are lower viewership, Al Jazeera. They carry a lot of networks that are lower. I think with some pressure, it'll get just pressure from viewers who want to explain that they want the show, what the shows mean. I think that if someone, if they are making some kind of stand,

and it is like, oh, we don't approve of hunting, I would say look at my show and ask yourself, is my show a negative or a positive for wildlife and conservation? I think the answer is pretty clear. I would like to see them really change their mind about that. And how do people get in touch? There's a website, right? There is a website. Also, just go and let, if you use any kind of verizon product man your phone i've i use verizon for my phone and i've definitely let them know um yeah i do as well i hope people

can get in there and and demand access back yeah i'm trying to find the website because i think it was explained to me did someone send it to me you know you, you can all. Yeah, it might have. Here it is right here. Okay. You can also. Here it is. I'm sorry. It's keepmyoutdoortv.com. So go to keepmyoutdoortv.com. One word, TV, the letter T, letter V.

Keepmyoutdoortv.com. And a link, there's a link to call and write their representatives in Washington, and there it is right there. So that's the issue, and this is a way to voice your disapproval of this issue. There's handsome Steve Rinello right there. Yeah, man. Now, you can always get my show at meater.vhx.tv. But it's important, man.

It's like the network, Sportsman Channel, has been so good to work with over the years because they never, ever mess with us about content. We do the kind of show we want. We put out the kind of message we want. It's like, it's just the more, it's just so nice. And they just allow you to do authentic stuff that you think is best. It's just, they've been great, great to work with. And I hate to see them crippled in any way, whatever the reason is.

We'll put the word out. I'll put this out on Twitter and Facebook tonight. And hopefully we can make some sort of an impact. In the meantime, you got to check out the Meat Eater podcast because it's fucking excellent. I've been binge listening this week. It's no Joe Rogan experience. How dare you? It's excellent.

It's very good. And if you're interested in hunting, it's very good. And if you're not interested in hunting, you might get interested in hunting from listening to it. But it's excellent. And then the book. The book is The Complete Guide to Hunting, Butch it, but it's excellent. And then the book, the book is the complete guide to hunting, butchering and cooking wild game. It's available as of August, right? It's available right now.

Volume one, big game is out now. Volume two, you can pre-order. All right. That's it. And when are we going hunting again, man? We got to figure one out. Let's do it. Let's figure it out. You got to figure out what you want to go for. Okay. We'll figure it out. I want to do pandas bad. Panda bears?

No joke. Fuck Jesus Christ. All right. We'll figure it out. I want to do pandas bad. Panda bears? No, I'm joking. Fuck, Jesus Christ. All right, we'll end on that. See you later, folks.