The Joe Rogan Experience - #760 - Doug Duren & Nathan Ihde

Episode Date: February 16, 2016

Doug Duren is a passionate hunter, farmer, land manager and conservationist. Nathan Ihde is also a farmer and conservationist living in Wisconsin.

In Creole, they would say Dubai. Ladies and gentlemen, Doug Duren. I always wanted to do that. I never get a chance. I always wanted you to do it, man. My man. And you brought your friend, Nathan Eide. Both of you guys escaped the winter of Wisconsin, which I'm representing right now.

Yeah. Hunt E. T-shirt. Hunt E. T-shirt. And Ma Ting and Giannis Putelis, this is their company, and Ma Ting sent me a code for people if you want to use this. If you go to hunttoeat.com, and I think the code word is just Joe Rogan all in one word. I'm going to find it in one second. And if you do that, I think you get 10% off.

Hold on a second. I'll find that real quick. Do, do, do. Yeah, Joe Rogan, all caps, 10% off. Hold on a second. I'll find that real quick. Yeah, Joe Rogan, all caps. 10% off. And it's what is, some of them are license plates. This one's the Wisconsin one. It's just a circle.

Shows the state. Little deer in it. Little deer tracks around it. Our friends, their company. Great guys, man. The best. They really are. Nice people. they work for steve ranella meat eater and uh we know them well doug duran of course is my friend from wisconsin and he brought his friend nathan yeah yeah and we're gonna talk about some stuff and well it's just good to see you anyway but uh we're also gonna talk about this one thing that came out today that i i tweeted

that uh they found that there's a huge difference, not just a little difference. Because people have always wondered, like, does it matter if you buy grass-fed food? Does it matter if you buy, I mean, does it really matter? Well, apparently it does. There's a new study that found clear differences between organic and non-organic meat and milk. And this is the largest study of its kind. An international team of experts

led by Newcastle University in the UK has shown that both organic milk and organic meat contain around 50% more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids than conventionally produced products, which is pretty fascinating because a lot of people have speculated that it's all BS, that you go and you buy grass-fed this or grass-fed that. It doesn't mean anything, but it means a lot. Well, you know what's interesting to me about it is so much of it for me is intuitive. I grew up with cattle, and it makes sense that a ruminant, a cow, it eats grass. That's what it eats. And you start putting all this other stuff into it, for instance, corn, soybeans, and that sort of thing.

That's not what they were made to eat. And so then you take that a step further and have it be, I think they're referring in this organic that they're talking about grass-fed. Yes. And so they're eating what they're supposed to eat, not what we somehow along the way decided, well, this is what they're going to eat, corn or soybeans, because they'll put on that fat that we all like so much. It speeds up the process. Yeah, it does. It speeds up the maturing process of the animal, but not in a good way necessarily. Yeah.

It does so many bad things. Yeah, it makes so much sense to me that just from a common sense level that this is going to be the best thing for the animal. And then down the way, it's going to be the best thing for us. We're not forcing stuff on that animal that they wouldn't normally be eating. They aren't going to eat it by choice. But I will tell you, the cows, they're not the ones that I had when you were out there. But if I go out with the cattle that I have now that I bought about a year ago, I bang two buckets together and they come running. Because they know the food's coming.

Well, because they used to be fed corn. Oh, so these are animals that you purchased that were already at maturity? Yeah, they were bred cows. So I was looking to get those cattle that I had when you were there, that we had when you were there, I sold. We had a drought year, and hay prices went through the roof, and I had a barn and shed full of hay, which was pretty valuable. And the cattle were still pretty valuable, so I was able to sell those and then take the winter off and spend some time in Mexico and whatnot because I didn't have any cattle. And then decided to get back into the game.

So now I've got a herd of Herefords that I bought last year. A herd of what? Herefords. What's a Hereford? Hereford is a breed that I think originated in Britain. And white face, red animal. So a lot of the ones that we had when you were there the last time were actually a Hereford cross. So they were a Hereford originally or their original brood cows were Herefords and then we bred them to

like a black Angus or a red Angus cross breed to get some hybrid vigor out of them and that sort of thing. What is the difference? What's the difference of? Between different styles of cows or different breeds of cows? Wow. Everything from how they put on weight to how they look to in the— Efficiency.

Yeah, the efficiency of how they'll put weight on. If they're dairy cattle, some of the, like, Guernseys and Jerseys and that sort of thing, they won't produce as much milk, but it'll have a real high butterfat content. So that's fascinating. With the same food, so feeding them the same thing, different cows produce different butter fats? Yeah. So Holsteins, which is sort of the traditional dairy cow, big black and white thing. You know, you've seen them on everything. They're a big animal, big bone, you know, really tall, big animal.

And they sort of have the ability to kind of eat. They're not as picky eater. They produce a lot of milk, but it'll have a lower butterfat. I can't believe I'm talking about dairy. I mean, I've been out of the dairy business since 1988. Well, it's fascinating stuff. Most people have no idea. I had no idea that different cows will produce a different level of dairy fat.

Oh, no, that's exactly right. And then butterfat is what a farmer is paid on. So 100 pounds, which is about eight pounds to the gallon, and in milk, you're paid by the pound. 100 pounds of 3.5% butterfat, for instance, is not worth as much as 100 pounds of 4.5% butterfat. So there's this whole calibration system they use to do that. So, you know, milk's being tested all the time, both organic grass-fed, managed pasture raised, and, you know, more modern, if you will, the confined animal facilities where they're milking, I don't know, a thousand cows in a real small area or very, you know, confining them in a very small area.

Where Nate and I both grew up, and you saw our farm, a lot of pasture, fields, that sort of thing. So the cattle are kind of walking around doing their thing out on pasture. They come in in the evening. You'd feed them sort of a supplement of it might be grain or it might be hay. It might be these various things. And it kind of depended. And that all evolved over time and in my lifetime. And you were always sort of aiming to get the most out of each one of those animals.

And you were always sort of aiming to get the most out of each one of those animals. And depending on how you looked at the science, you know, people spent their whole life studying how to get the most out of a cow. Depending on how you looked at that science, you made decisions about that. Well, when I was a kid, there was a lot more of, and I mean a kid like in the 60s, in the early 60s, there was a lot more common sense involved. And now it's much more, like in those big milking operations, that sort of thing, it's more science. It's like, here's how we can get the most out of them. So you remember this shift between what was like normal farming, normal dairy farming, normal meat cow farming, to this thing that we're seeing now that most people have a real big problem with, this factory farming installations

where you have these cows jammed into these warehouses and chickens and the same thing with pigs. And those are the things that people have a real issue with when they see them on television, they see YouTube videos. Do you remember this shift? Oh, God, yeah. So I'm 57 years old old i was born in 1959 by the time i was old enough to drive a tractor which is when you're about four years old where i'm from you're driving a tractor at four while you're sitting there

steering it anyway and you know going through the field and they're probably wisconsin i was six i was six when i when i jumped up so do you remember Oh, yeah. And so when I was a kid, do you remember where we shot, where we had that shooting range set up by my house? That little kind of, was an old foundation there? That was a chicken coop. We had chickens there. There was a granary in between. The little building that we fondly call the Keep Out Shed now because it's the security there. It just says Keep Out on the door.

That was a facility where we raised pigs. And then we had a rolling herd of about 40 milk cows. And they were Holsteins. And so it was a diverse farm. It was a diverse ecosystem, if you will. And, I don't know uh during the nixon administration uh earl butts who was the secretary of agriculture then came out and said get bigger get out and that was really the beginning of the end of the small family farm what do you mean like he said he said this like was it a statement

on the it was a television or like? How did this go down? Boy, I'm sure it could be found somewhere. But get bigger. I mean, that's just the part of it. Yeah, it was a press conference or something to that effect. That was going to be the move in agriculture, you know? And it was a long process. I mean, I remember our exit, if you will, from the dairy sector. Ours came in the late 90s.

So there was a big shift. You know, just for example, my grandfather was running the farm in 1977. And the milk price was like $14 or $15 per hundredweight. When my dad was forced to sell in, I think it was 98 or 99, it was like nine bucks. So you're trying to raise a family and continue a legacy, and you're getting paid dirt. What caused that shift? Big agriculture. Yeah, it was systematic.

It was a systematic shift to the corporate and there's some sense i want to say there's some sense in it but that's probably not uh completely i mean you understand that efficient getting you know it's the american way you get bigger you get uh there's efficiencies in the in scale but i'm trying to understand like what was the motivation was it that populations were booming because there's a lot more people today yeah i mean i think we looked at it up the other day i think in the night in 1970 there was something like 150 million people in this country now there's 300 million yeah yeah that's not that long ago i mean it's in my lifetime and that's crazy that's crazy that the population's doubled and the demand for food obviously doubled as well you know something that's really, if you look at that area where you came out and visited, the exact opposite has happened in population there.

There's half as many people in our area as there were when I was a kid. And it's a farm area. And it's a farm area. So the small farm, the family farm, is what's really suffering because it's so hard to make ends meet with these gigantic operations that are just – Yeah. Is that – Well, they can – I mean, it makes sense.

On a business scale, you can afford to sell a product cheaper if you're doing it bigger. But the things you lose there are the quality and the sustainability and environmental impact of the process. You've got these big farms. Well, basically, they make more product, but they also make more shit. Yeah. You know, and that's a water issue. Well, that was a big part of that documentary, Cowspiracy, where they were trying to talk about the methane that's produced by cows. The methane and just getting rid of the actual cow shit itself.

Like, you're talking about massive, massive quantities. And when I was younger, and even now, the manure that's produced on our farm, like now in the winter, I'm feeding hay. And they're confined would be kind of a strong word. They stay around where the hay is, you know, and we've got fresh water there for them, and it's spring water, and I can talk about that later. But they stay in that area.

And so that's also where they're, you know, shitting. And so I end up piling that stuff up, and I pile it up, and I compost it. And I put it on everything from a community garden nearby to our fields to people want to come by and say, Hey, man, can I get a load of shit? And sure as heck, I give it to them. Whereas for a big facility, it's where do we get rid of this shit? Right, right. Yeah.

One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about this is because I think that most of us, when I say us, like people that live in cities, have almost no idea of how all this stuff works. And when people examine it or they try to watch a documentary on it or try to figure out how cows are raised, one of the things we get confused about is how did it happen like how did these things become these gigantic sort of operations where it seems so so inhumane well it's it you know it is it's a business model it's a business model like uh corporations like banks like everything it's the same it's a business model. It's a business model like corporations, like banks, like everything. It's the same idea. Interestingly to me in our area, and Nate and some of the folks that he knows are an example,

and I am to a lesser extent because it's just a little bit different on our farm. It's not something where I'm trying to make a living at it, you know, that it's starting to go the other way. It very much has gone the other way. Things like community-supported agriculture and those sort of things are happening that people want to know their farmer. Right. So there's like a blowback. So people are realizing that there's something kind of crazy about these factory farming setups. And so now they're trying to get their meat more from organic farms.

But how much more expensive is it, say, like with one of your farms? I sell bulk, and I consider bulk anything over 50 pounds, for $6.50 a pound. So like a family could come to you and buy directly? Oh yeah, absolutely. And do you sell most of your stuff directly, or do you sell it to like a wholesaler, or how does that work? What I try to do is, and my whole goal with my meat production, I mean, we do a lot of other things we'll maybe get into later.

But the meat production, I try to take care of a certain amount of families, you know, and when they need meat, I have it. I'm not really, I don't market it. I mean, it's all, I have customers and they come to me when they want meat. So it's like a word of mouth type thing? Yeah, and some people buy a quarter, you know, which is like 100 to 150 pounds sometimes. And some people will come and buy 20 pounds when they need it, you know. Now, I have a buddy who is a fireman who does that. He has like a deal with a local rancher and he buys like him and a couple of the families that he's friends with.

They'll go in on like a side of beef. They'll go in on like a whole half of a cow. with, they'll go in on like a side of beef. They'll go in on like a whole half of a cow. And, you know, they save money that way. And then they know they're getting like real organic grass fed cows, like with that nice yellow fat. Yeah. Yeah. I have to tell you this story. Some years ago when we were raising beef, one of the things that I did for my uh my ex-wife and i did for my brother and sister-in-law was gave them a quarter of a beef for christmas and i thought i was being real clever you know the steers at that time kind of all had the same name they're the the heifer calves the female calves i give them different names for different numbers and everything because we keep them around

but the steers all had the same name and that was dinner and a steer for people don't know a cow that has its balls removed a male male that's right so eunuch yeah and uh and there's a lot of there's a lot of good reasons for doing that um and just so nobody says so you're knocking this thing down and cutting its nuts off well yeah that is what we're doing but when we knock it down we actually sedate it it goes to sleep um it wakes up and it's singing soprano i mean that's how how that works and they jerk a little bit though when you went well yeah well you were too i don't care what i would imagine i don't care whether you're sedated or not right but um but and so yeah that is what a steer is so i I'm sorry. The story was that.

So we gave Sarah and Art these this quarter of beef and we're making a presentation of it. And they had the neighbors over. And so everybody's sitting around the table. There's a couple of girls, young women, maybe 10 and 14, something like that. I don't remember their exact ages, but I had this Polaroid picture of that steer and said, you know, and I had it in quotations dinner and I made a presentation of, well, we gave you this meat and here's this wonderful steak that we're having and everything. And here's the before and here's the after. Apparently, I turned one of those girls into a vegetarian and i felt horrible about it well you're you've been there from the beginning

from the time you're really young you've been there from i mean it's a part of your life yeah right you've always been around cows you've always been around cattle it seems totally normal to you but to somebody that just is used to going to the supermarket and buying a steak that comes neatly wrapped in saran wrap, a nice little foam tray, you're kind of freaking them out with reality. And I learned something that day about it. But some of the folks that buy meat from me, they come out and they take a look at the place. And, you know, I i mean you've been there you've been there not maybe the nicest time of the year because it was cold and and all of that and the cattle weren't out in pasture we had them confined in the barnyard

um and they're out walking around they're laying on the hillside they're chewing their cud man it's just they're just happy as they can be and and they're looking at me and they're looking at the cattle and so i'm going to have some of that meat and it's just like there's that connection you know no if i don't get anything else across here during this conversation i'd encourage people to know their farmer know the guy who's raising that uh whatever it is yeah vegetables or meat or whatever for him well it's very difficult for someone who is not used to the idea of an animal being alive and then being dead and then cut up and then portioned into steaks and then cooking it people that are used to going to the

supermarket and buying it already done for them to be sort of uh forced to look at that whole process as an adult is it's a little disconcerting for a lot of people because we're faced with this very convenient world where we're completely detached from any of this stuff. Now, as a guy who's been around it your whole life, that's got to be kind of frustrating when you see the hypocrisy of people who eat the meat but really kind of don't want to know where it came from. Yeah, hypocrisy is the only sin in my world uh it's kind of the way i feel about it um but i don't know necessarily that's a hypocrisy hypocrisy as much as it's just ignorance

and um and i you know i also want to say i don't take it lightly at all we load up a cow or a steer or whatever i put them on there man it's just like when we shoot wildlife you know we kill wildlife something like that it is we did a thing and or you're doing a this is a big thing there's a reverence a reverence there is a reverence that's exactly the right word there's a reverence to it that um you have in these smaller situations i mean i could see where if I had 500 steers and I'm raising to 1,250 pounds, I might not have the same reverence to those animals, but they're giving me something. I'm taking it from them, but that's my deal. Well, that's a similar argument when you're talking about large populations of people, that there's sort of this diffusion of responsibility

that comes with interacting with 20 million people versus 20 people. When you're around 20 people, you have a talent of 20 people, you know everybody, and the relationships are kind of important. Whereas 20 million people, you give the finger to somebody on the road, what is the idea? You're never going to see them again. You hope not. But if you're in Casanova and you see that dickhead down the street from you that leaves the nasty voicemail messages.

You'll never forget that one. You'll never forget that one. You'll never forget that one. That fucking guy is crazy. You played that for us. That was seared into our head. But, you know, you're forced into a relationship with that person, and you have to manage that relationship. Yeah.

When you have, you know, how many cows you have now? I have 20 head running around. Yeah. So if you have 20 cows like what when you have to and even you know when you do the deed you're not you're you're really not saying i have to kill this cow like but you're saying when we load one up when we do the deed you know there's all these euphemisms for what you're doing you're gonna kill this cow yeah it's like it's a maybe that's because of the fact that there's so many of them, or rather there's so few of them that you have this, you know, this is like a, it's a big moment.

It is a big moment. You know, I sold a cow this fall that through no fault of her own had a prolapse cervix. And if you want to know what that is, essentially her cervix pushed out. And no matter how many times you push it back in and sew things up she's going to continue to push so she's not going to be productive um and her productivity is to have calves um and i felt terrible about it didn't mean i didn't do it i mean i know where i knew you mean do it mean kill her well i didn't kill her but yeah i mean let's do it, mean kill her. Well, I didn't kill her, but yeah. You had somebody else do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I'm not passing that responsibility off to somebody else from the standpoint of, well, I don't want to do it, so I have somebody else do it.

I'll do it when it needs to be done. But when Nate and I both are selling meat to people. There's regulations that go along with it. I mean, I can't just drop a cow in the driveway of the barn, hang her up, cut her up, and start selling Joe Rogan meat. There's USDA inspection and all that. So we both send our animals to very small uh family-run uh slaughterhouses butcher shops and so you don't necessarily kill them yourself no no no no never oh you know what you know something if you were doing one for yourself you will yeah yeah um and have so if you want to sell it then you have to go through these and sda. You have to have a stamp and the inspection.

Yeah. And there's a standard to that. Now, I would confidently never sell you any of my beef if I butchered it myself, but I would confidently give it to you and say, this is as, I mean, you've seen how we do it out there. So this is basically just government regulations that you have to follow. Yeah, but, I mean, there's a standardization, and I'm down with that. There's a pretty cool movement going on.

The place I go to is called Driftless Meats in Viroqua, and it's a really, like when they bring in a cow, like one of the big problems with these slaughterhouses, Joe, is a lot of them, you bring your cow in the night before, and there's who knows how many cows jammed into a pen, and they're stressed out. They're rutting around, bumping each other. These guys up there, I think the max they take in on a slaughter day is four. And so these cows got their own pen.

You know, it's very stress-free. It's very relaxed, you know. So the process, and that's what's so important about all of this and the sustainability and environmental impact, it's all about the process. You know, fortunately there's a really strong movement in that sector of the processing is going on, you know. Conscious Carnivore is a place near us, a facility near us, and I I think that's a very important way of putting it. You know, the guys from Cowspiracy, there was a lot that I agreed with with those guys. Me too. Yeah.

That's what I think is unfortunate about the exaggerations of some of their claims, because I think that if they just stuck with what's absolute and reality, it's very disturbing. The sustainability doesn't look good. But what's interesting is, look, here's some things that you disagree with strongly. It's one of the reasons why we got into this conversation. One thing, the amount of acreage that it takes to grow a cow, to raise a cow. I did – looking at my own cattle, one, but then also spending some time with our UW Extension. It's the ag people through our university, Land-Grant University. 1.4 to 14, depending on how –

Yeah. That's a big difference. And that's a huge difference. Well, these guys were saying 50 acres. Yeah, no one agrees with that. In certain places, it probably is, though. Well, it'd have to be like desert. But wasn't that guy?

The guy they said was from Wisconsin, was from South Dakota? Didn't you tell me? Yeah, he made a reference on this. I don't want to pick all their numbers apart or anything. They're not ranchers. So I think what happens is someone told them that. That sounds great. They went with it.

Yeah, yeah. And this is like, look look they made a great documentary but when you make a documentary you also have a great responsibility like they have an agenda it's very clear their agenda is to promote veganism it's because they feel very strongly about it whether you agree with it or where you don't agree with it that's their point of view that's what they're trying to get through in this documentary is that if you just grow vegetables and you live off vegetables you don't need as many many acres, you could feed more people, and it's a healthier way to do it. That's just their perspective and their point of view. So they lean towards that in a very strong way while highlighting some irrefutable facts that are very disturbing.

And that's the shame of it is because they're environmentalists too. That's obvious. But it kind of put off the vibe that, you know, people like Doug and I aren't, you know. And that's the problem is you look at the big corporations that are, you know, feeding off of all this, you know, misinformation really. What do you mean by the big corporations that are feeding off of this? Well, you talk about the big farms. You could talk about it in any industry, you know. It's kind of a disjointed effort. You know, you've got these

guys talking about this. You've got these guys talking about this. We're all concerned about the environment, you know, but some of this stuff came off as an attack on, you know, beef production, cattle, livestock production, but we all agree on certain things. I think if you really want to focus and you want to make a change in the world you find a way to work together yeah but their their changes don't eat animals oh i know don't kill animals so you got to compromise but they don't want to compromise they're not that's the problem yeah well there's there you there's very strong connections between

veganism and religion and if you look at a lot of their ideologies they're very similar in a lot of ways to religious zealots like they have these ideas they want to promote them that and only that and this is this is the way they want to go about it and you know some some of them say crazy shit like I've had these conversations with people on Twitter this guy was saying that human beings are not meant to eat meat where we're herbivores. I'm like, well, that's just not fucking true. Shrug your teeth, Doug.

Well, not only, forget about the canine teeth. That's absolutely true. But how about the fact that scientists have done very clear studies on ancient humans, and the reason why we became human in the first place is the consumption of meat. It literally changed the amount of brain tissue we have. And then hunting changed how crafty people had to be. It changed the innovation of these lower primates, these lower hominids. They had to innovate. They had to figure out tools. They had to figure out weapons, not just to defend themselves from humans, but in order to hunt animals. This is an irrefutable

fact. Essential part of evolution. Yeah, it is. So I think, if I could speak for them, if I could play the devil's advocate, their point of view is now we have evolved to a point where we don't need to do this anymore. We don't need meat anymore. We're very intelligent. We're also aware. We're also faced with this overwhelming amount of evidence, this overwhelming amount of information that we have now because of the internet, because of our access to it, we've never had before. So you can look at some of the statistics and some of the things they brought up and you can say, well, this is their argument for promoting a vegan lifestyle. See, I can go with that. The problem is that a lot of these guys, they say things like human beings can't process meat.

Or we had this guy that Rob Wolf was arguing on Twitter who said animal fat is toxic. What the fuck are you talking about? How do Inuits live? How have they been around forever? They just eat nothing but fat. These fucking people. And if you look at their diet and you look at their diseases, the only fucking inuits that are getting cancer are the ones that are smoking cigarettes that's true it's our nasty fucking western habit that we've passed up to these poor people that's how they're getting cancer and they're getting cancer in in higher numbers than they ever have before because they weren't getting

it before at all right these people were eating blubber and fat and seals and and whatever fish they could get and they can't grow a goddamn single vegetable and they weren't getting cancer. The cancer thing, that's a great issue. Because recently, I don't know if you've caught the whole red meat and cancer thing. And they came out and they said, you know, definitely your smoked meats and your cured meats. Like our meats aren't cured. What do you mean by cured? Let's talk about what you're talking about.

Like sodium nitrite? Yes. Like when you make bacon. If you took a package of my bacon and looked at the label, I think there's three or four ingredients in mine. What are those ingredients? Water, pork, and it's like celery salt. Which is how it should be. The problem is your bacon, if you sat on a shelf and asked Oscar Mayer bacon,

if you put them both on the same shelf and sat for a week, Oscar Mayer would look the same. Yours would start to fall apart. Mine would need to be frozen. Yeah. You know, that's the only thing. Which is fucking normal. Right.

Like, why do we think flesh is just going to sit around and not fall apart at 39 degrees or whatever your refrigerator is? It's not going to. That's not how it goes. So the cancer thing, and I get that. I mean, that stuff probably is linked to cancer. But they've pulled back on the red meat in general. They're not sure about it.

But the thing is, and I think the study is skewed because you talk about cancer and pH. Grass-fed beef has a neutral pH. Corn-fed, grain-fed beef, that pH. Okay. You know, grass fed beef has a neutral pH, corn fed, grain fed beef, that pH goes up. And we know that cancer thrives in an acidic environment, you know, and you know, there's other things that the cows that have a high acid guts basically is what it is. They're more prone to acidosis, which, which needs more medication. You need antibiotics. And it's also a prime harbor for E. coli. I'll find a stat for you. But the E. coli, I think it was 6,300,000 milligrams per.

I'll look that up. I'll chime back in. You guys talk. That's an important. Yeah, go ahead. Look that up. I'll chime back in. You guys talk. That's an important point. Yeah, go ahead. Look that up. But it's a very important point I think you're making about how these animals that are unhealthy, it's kind of unhealthy to eat an unhealthy animal.

That seems logical. That is. One of the points that I found really interesting about the documentary was how these guys spoke about cattle aren't intended to eat, and I couldn't agree with more. Corn. That was corn and soybeans. Couldn't agree with more. That's why mine eat grass, and right now they're eating hay.

And yours tastes very different, by the way. You gave me a couple of ribeyes last time I took them home. They were damn delicious and lean and a nice dark red meat. And that's how a cow's supposed to be. When you get these cows be when you get these cows that when you get beef from a store you're getting this really light red meat it's very light almost like a pinkish meat and you compare that to like like someone one of the elk steaks i have in back those elk steaks are like a red like a dark almost like a purple you know it's just fucking overflowing with testosterone and

and you know and an elk cum or whatever the hell they got in their bodies i mean that's a healthy animal well that's exactly right and that animal is choosing to eat uh an elk is choosing well it's obviously a product of its environment so it's eating what's available just like a white-tailed deer is i remember I remember when you and Brian were out, and I think Brian held up one of the backstrap steaks, and he goes, oh, my God, this is like sashimi grade. Yeah, nothing better. Two of those. Nothing better.

Oh, my God. When we cooked that on your kitchen, oh, my God. We just, butter, salt, and garlic. And we grilled up some of those, and we were all eating them, going, good Lord. it was from an animal that you shot what three hours ago yeah I mean it was incredible yeah you talk about fresh oh my god

I do have that count there it is um remember he's my numbers guy are you ready he brought Nathan here to know the flight information what's the hotel room what time's the podcast and I'm going to know this you know this is fun Doug but come on I've got a family bag oh know the flight information, what's the hotel room, what time's the podcast starting, what are the numbers.

And I'm going to help with this. You know, this is fun, Doug, but come on, I've got a family bag. So now we're talking cells per gram of meat. Okay. Okay. So in your grain fed, the count of E. coli, the grain fed in the count of E. coli, 6,300,000 cells per gram. In the grass fed, 20,000 cells per gram. In the grass-fed,

20,000. Holy shit. Yeah. Holy shit. And it's all about the environment that you're creating by what you're putting into this thing. It's unnatural. That is crazy.

It's unnatural. That is crazy. Crazy numbers. Wow. And so, these guys, and you know what? I'd love to have them come to the farm and talk

to me. I don't think they want to be around your house of murder. Doug or Doug. Doug during house of murder. Well, take them out around Thanksgiving. Right around opening day and they can hear the fucking war zone. We grow veggies too.

Where Doug lives, opening day, like in the morning, when we were out in the blind, and as soon as the sun starts peeking up over the horizon, you hear boom, boom. You hear it off in the distance. I'm like, dude, are we at war? Why is there a picture of me? That's gross. I got to sleep. I don't know man i kind of like it thank you very much um i'm sharing a room with this guy yeah the um that's that was a weird

experience it was the first time i'd ever been a play where like when i had gone hunting before uh it before that time it had only been in the wild in Missouri, in the breaks, where there was no people. When we were in your area, in Casanova, it's like everybody is so geared up for it. When we stopped at that sporting goods store and got tags and got some equipment, everybody was rip-roaring, ready to go. Tomorrow was like the opening day of a race. It was weird. Yeah. A deer per second opening day in it was weird yeah a deer per second

opening day in wisconsin shot a deer per second well that's a testament to how many there are well yeah we we read a statistic in about minnesota about how many car accidents are in minnesota was it michigan michigan michigan has a hundred thousand car accidents a year from people hitting deer. Just stop for a second, ladies and gentlemen, and you tell me you don't think they need to kill some fucking deer. There's 100,000 a year. I'm pretty sure that's the number. I should probably be careful if I keep repeating it over and over again.

There's a lot. There's a lot of deer. There's more than five a year. What's the number? 50,000. Damn it. I was so close. 80% of these crashes occur on two-lane roads between dusk and dawn.

50,000. What is the amount of animals that kill people? Oh, okay. Here, the state's two million deer. Yeah. Two million deer in one fucking state how many people are in michigan more than two million but not a whole lot more and i think in wisconsin cattle out and other folks they're dropping by the day with that 9.9 million holy shit that's insane so they're 20 deer so what that means is here's the reality you literally

could feed that entire state of the deer population that's real because one deer you fucking eat a deer for months and one deer is going to make more than one deer i think that is a really interesting point and it kind of goes along with some of my agreement with these guys uh we're not we're subsidizing the dollar meal or whatever you know the dollar hamburger and and uh and that kind of like quick meat you drive through you get the burger and off you go yeah um i'm not what i would advocate for is that I'm okay with eating less meat. They had Michael Pollan on it. He talked about eating less meat based on the numbers that they were using, which I think was like.

I think it was 0.6 something, I think is what they said on the movie. So like a half a pound of meat a day? Well, it was more than that. It was 0.6 something, I believe. Or what you're supposed to eat? No, that's what the average American eats, evidently. I would think average American. Well, I mean, that's like more than that, but sure.

Yeah, I balance that shit out. You bring the average up. Well, you got to think about the guys. You know, we've all seen these guys, you know, Charlie Chicken Fingers and Slobber McGee, you know, eating fast food every day. Charlie Chicken Fingers and Slobber McGee. You've seen these guys eat, right? You know, you're like, watch out. You're going to eat your finger, dude. Slow down. Well, people are addicted fast food every day. You've seen these guys eat, right? You know, you're like, watch out.

You're going to eat your finger, dude. Slow down. Well, people are addicted to food, man. That's a fact. That's what we're dealing with because the real sickness isn't that we're raising meat. It's the demand. You know, so farmers are rising to meet that demand, and people aren't demanding good meat. They're demanding shitty cheap meat that they can buy for 99 cents.

One of the things that these folks were addressing in that documentary that I think didn't get to the heart of it all. But the heart of it all really is the amount of human beings. The only reason why, look, if there was only, if Casanova was the world, you wouldn't need a fucking factory farm. You sure wouldn't. You wouldn't need it. I mean, Casanova is the world, you wouldn't need a fucking factory farm. You sure wouldn't. You wouldn't need it. I mean, Casanova is essentially a sustainable environment. All you need is some solar power, some windmills for electricity.

You got your own spring. You got your water you can get from a well. You got your cattle that graze. You have more than enough food for you. You could grow your own vegetables. You can what you don't have in the winter, or what you want to last through the winter. You know, what you want to last through the winter. And you're good.

But we have too many goddamn people. Right. Isn't that what often comes down to? People keep fucking and that's... Fucking is fun. I'm a fan of it. Where are we going, man? Can we get an early flight tomorrow?

Well, I have three kids. I should shut the fuck up, because I'm obviously making more people than I am. Are they all boys? No, all girls. My best friend, Gatlin, he's got five boys. It's one thing to have five kids, but to have them all be boys, that's like you're talking exponential.

They're just going to fucking shoot jizz off all the land and make more boys. The cool thing is, and Doug and I have been talking about this, and he mentioned earlier, we're sitting here talking about this really interesting stuff because we don't want to come off on this podcast as a bunch of knuckle-dragging mouth breathers. You're definitely not. You're definitely not. But we're talking about this. So let's be careful.

Settle down, fucker. We're talking about all this stuff in the middle of L.A. where you got a guy dressed like Spider-Man and all these women wearing, you know. Well, by the way, that's why we're way out here in the suburbs. I don't want to be around that. It's not a good place. Well, thank you for putting us down there. You've had a great time doing this.

No, it's perfect. Well, it's a good place to,'s a good place to come in and try. People watch, yeah. But one thing, we've been talking about a lot of awesome people and really digging deeper into this, but there's guys like, you know, Doug can expand on this more because he's read more of the book, but this guy Mark Shepard

and other guys, I mean, people contend that we can raise enough food sustainably, but part of that equation is and that's what maybe we could unify with these guys, like guys from Cowspiracy is, you know, let's not talk about ending meat. That's an unachievable goal. That's never going to happen. Let's talk about educating people to say, hey, let's not eat quite so much so we can sustain.

Okay, but just to play devil's advocate, because a lot of these guys, they love animals. They love animals. They're animal lovers. It's almost like... like that so are we but they do they do it in a way where they don't want animals to die they want those animals to die of old age only um the the problem i think there's there's an ideology attached to veganism where yeah once they stop eating meat they want everybody else to stop too well you're talking about 95 of the world eats meat it's 95 something crazy like that please always check my numbers off by 100 did you have the day off to those guys yeah but you know that why if if these guys this is to

play devil's advocate if these guys can stop eating meat and become vegans, why can't the world? And I think that's what a lot of people are saying. Well, other things I would agree with with them. Have a garden. Yes. Yeah. Grow some food on your balcony in the city. We have a couple of mutual friends who are growing stuff on their balcony in New York City.

That's different. Yeah. Well, I don't know. One thing I noticed in that movie was dude's hydroponic system on the rooftop was empty. My hydroponic system at home was full. The conspiracy guy's hydroponic system. He picked up on it right away. It's kind of fucked up.

And we're not here to throw punches. Well, they could have just started it and just set it up. Or go buy some plants and put them in there for heaven's sake. One of my favorite stories is these former FBI agents who were retired, and they were arrested because they were growing hydroponic plants and vegetables in their basement. And the DEA passes by houses, and they scan. These people bought hydroponic equipment. When you buy hydroponic equipment, they flag you, and they follow you.

It's so fucking insane that growing vegetables has become a crime. Because so many people grow pot, they assume that if you're growing a plant with some sort of a plant system, that you must be growing an illegal drug. So with no evidence whatsoever, two fucking former FBI agents, they break down their door, guns a-blazin', and they arrest these people and then find out they're fucking growing tomatoes. Yeah, it's kind of a hot-button deal going on in Reedsburg right now, where my hometown,

my buddy Gatlin, I already mentioned him, but he's got a, he on a whim. I mean, this dude is a, he's in a successful appraiser, real estate appraiser, but he's always looking for that home run, you know, so he's making a living, but he's taking his cuts. And so now his latest venture, he took his whole tax return and just turned this building that he couldn't lease into a hydroponic wonderland. For weed? No. Well, when it comes legal, he's going to be ready to rock and roll.

And he wants to do CBD oil extraction. The government's going after that now. Right. But you get these people walking by, and we've got these purple lights, and people are like, what are they growing in there? And everybody thinks we're growing weed, and it's like, if we're growing weed, the cops would have had the door kicked down two weeks ago. Maybe they should put a sign, we're not growing weed, you fucks. Well, he just needs to get a sign up. That is a sign that you should put up.

It's called Grow Lucky. You can Google it. I think it's growluckygreens.com. It's all pretty new. I would definitely assume that guy knows where the weed is. Yeah, Grow Lucky Greens. With that name? Yeah.

How lucky can I get? How much for an ounce of your lucky shit, man? Let's talk about this downstairs. Come to the special room. Anyway, that idea of growing a garden and people taking responsibility for their food is such a big deal. And those, the fellows that you had in here, that's, you know, where I'm joining at the hip with them about that. Yeah, I think we're all in agreement with that.

And there's a guy named Ron Finley that I had on before who was awesome. And he's a proponent of urban gardening. And what he does is he takes medians, like, you know, that you just see grass and bullshit in in L.A. Genius. Genius stuff. He grows plants in them. He grows vegetables and you just see grass and bullshit in in L.A. Genius. Genius stuff. He grows plants in them. He grows vegetables and foods.

And he does it in abandoned lots. He'll set up gardens in abandoned lots. And he does it all throughout South Central. And he has people that live in these communities growing their own food. And he had this amazing point that I never considered before. He's like, you drive down this street and you see bushes, you see trees, you see all these plants, and you can't eat none of it yeah he goes we're wasting water on shit we can't even eat he goes you could have food growing

in the same places you have all of these trees why don't we do that and i was sitting there going why don't we do that yeah like an orange tree too lawns fuck yeah right an orange tree looks great well that's exactly right That's exactly right. Aesthetically pleasing on top of it all. And food! You've got to get them some of these pictures. Food! This guy, Mark Shepard, who's from our area, and he doesn't know me from The Man and the Moon, but

this is his book, Restoration Agriculture. Real world permaculture for farmers. Look it up. Aerial photographs of his farm. Artwork. And it looks exactly, it looks like a landscape architect was involved. Layering of plants, starting with the tallest trees down to annuals eventually. At the same time, he's pasturing through their three and four different kinds of animals.

They're cleaning up the nuts that they didn't harvest. Which is very important to clean your nuts. That's what I'm saying. Bar none. Most important. Unless you're in the weird shit. Some people like dirty things. That's where you get minerals. Alright. Nut butter?

Dirt. Whoa, is this his stuff? So check that out. That's amazing. Isn't that cool? That's gorgeous. And so this is, it says New Forest Farm, Mark Shepard, permaculture. What does it say? There's the words abbreviated there. Permacultural apprenticeship program. I think he does classes and stuff.

Oh, that's cool. And the amount of food he can pull off that, Joe. And they graze that then. And he talks about- What do you mean? Cows graze that? Yeah. And pigs and chickens. Oh, So, and he talks about. What do you mean? Cows graze that? Yeah. And pigs and chickens. Oh, so there's grass in between.

So he says, and maybe Doug can find this, but. I've got it. The amount of food he can grow on there. And he talks about just how many vegetables. He's like, but if you're only growing vegetables, you're going to have to mow this stuff. So it makes sense. And that's the whole thing. You've got to complete the loop.

You've got to complete the cycle. You've got to close that loop and find that ecological harmony. that's the whole thing. You've got to complete the loop. You've got to complete the cycle. You've got to close that loop and find that ecological harmony. That's the whole thing. Two photos ago, Jamie. Don't go through those so quick. Right there. Bam. Make that bigger.

Whoa. He's got little ponds in there, too? Yeah. And so the cattle graze in the grass area, and then in between the grass, he's got trees that grow food. Wow. That's beautiful, too. And then he brings pigs and chickens through and this is near you yeah Viola yeah Viroqua so go to it now it's a big fucking ice skating rink

yeah frozen tundra let's go his point being that when we grow one crop on a farm field corn soybeans organic or otherwise, or vegetables, that sort of thing, that in our area, in the winter, then that's a desert. I mean, once the beans come off, that's what it is. I mean, you saw it. The deer come out into the field and they eat a little bit of the stuff and all that. And guys will pasture out on that. But it really does become a you know it's sort of that one trick pony which to a certain degree vegetable gardening will be as well

although you can rotate crops through um but like on my place we're growing livestock we're enriching the soil we're um we're our pasture is getting better all the time because we're not over pasturing in any particular place um there's carbon sequestering going on what's that mean carbon sequestering locking up the carbon in the soil so like um with composting and things on those lines yeah there's there's people that can contend that that cattle and proper management in the pasture rotation that they can start to turn back the the climate change. How would that work?

By sequestering the carbon, starting to pull it out. And when we till, the constant tillage, that's a no-no. A lot of no-tilling, a lot of rotational grazing, that's up and up. I mean, that's where we need to be. Multiple benefits from one action. That's up and up. I mean, that's where we need to be. Multiple benefits from one action. So I'm pasturing, and you saw some of the pastures, some of the places where you hunted was pasturing. There's wildlife in there, and we've got good, clean water. When we went to a point on our farm where we weren't over pasturing, and it was just something that we sort of learned,

the streams were real wide when we were over pasturing. They were really wide. The water was shallow and it was warm. No trout. As time has gone by and we weren't over pasturing anymore, those streams narrow up because there's running water that's going to cut that. And it starts to fill in. The grass starts to grow. Now, you stepped across a creek that you used to have to walk through.

So there's trout in there now. The cattle are going in there and they're eating a certain amount of the grass. We keep moving them through. They're eating a certain amount of the grass. We're keeping some of the invasive species down. Deer are still living in there. Songbirds are invasive species down. Deer are still living in there. Songbirds are still living there. Gamebirds are still living in there.

All of those things are happening. And the plants themselves are pulling the CO2, you know, the whole photosynthetic process, pulling that out and putting it back into the ground where it belongs to counteract some of that. So, gee, I think I'm getting like three or four different positive results from having pasture, you know, hickory orchard with some bigger trees and that sort of thing. This dude, with permaculture, starts to add multiple other things, layers of, so if you think about an acre of land like this table, and if you're growing one crop on it, one vegetable crop,

you've got an acre of land, 43,560 square feet of that particular vegetable or those groups of vegetables. But with the idea of permaculture, you have your upper layers, trees, big trees, you know, big oak trees. And, you know, you might have hickory for hickory nuts and that sort of thing. Bush type things and berries. Well, to begin with, that upper level. So on that same, you know, chunk of ground, you've got this large tree. It's producing wood, which this looks like a good oak table here that we're leaning on. You know, it's the same sort of thing.

The next layer is the smaller trees like, you know, it's the same sort of thing. The next layer is the smaller trees like fruit trees and that sort of thing. Below that are shrubs that are going to be, you know, serviceberry, chokeberry, aronia, some of the antioxidant-producing fruits. And then you go down to the next layer, which is going to be things like asparagus and rhubarb, and it keeps coming down. So now instead of just that one plane of plants growing, you've got on that same acre, you've just grown multiple acres of food. And that is just something that needs to be thought about in the bigger thing. He's then rotating through four different kinds of animals. He's running beef through it. And they're not in there all the time because so it takes management um after beef he's run and it's called a leader follower grazing system um after beef he's running

pigs through it because pigs are a great cleanup animal um after that comes turkeys and turkeys are cleaning up the grubs and the whatnot the shit from the cows and the pigs. Run sheep in it, and last might be chickens. So the intensity of management is incredible, and the amount of layers of food that are coming off of that and then layers of acreage. Well, suddenly we're getting, you know, in his scenario, I'm getting three or four benefits out of it. He's still getting all that carbon sequestering and all that. But now he's built that up to 10 or 12 different positive results from the same thing. And one of them is from a wildlife perspective, which is one of the things that gets talked about all the time.

You grow up. Yeah, you garden at home. I garden at home. What's the one thing that every garden that has wildlife around it has? A fence. If you're going to grow vegetables for profit or for fun and put your effort into it, you can put a, you can put a fence around it. You're going to exclude wildlife from that. Exactly. Well, and that's one of the main contingents we had when we sat down. We're like, okay, this is going to be tough. These guys put forth a really good narrative and had some really irrefutable facts. But then one of the things we talked about the water, talked about the acreage, but the wildlife thing.

One thing that they said was, and where these livestock are living, that is area void of wildlife. I mean, I look at my pasture from the soil microbes and the worms to the bugs and butterflies to the, you know, field mice and moles. And we've got hawks and we've, I mean, we see a badger and a fox. I mean, that's wildlife. They had a very idealistic point of view. They didn't understand wolves. They didn't understand management of wolves. They didn't understand the reason why they're starting to open up hunting seasons on wolves.

They didn't understand the reason why they're starting to open up hunting seasons on wolves. They also didn't know that Idaho is one of the most wildlife-rich places in the country where people go and hunt elk and mule deer. I mean, Idaho is fucking filled with animals. And they thought that Idaho was like, you know, it's all farms now. It's devoid of... It's an idealized sort of hippie, vegan approach, which, you know, they're just leaning towards that. It doesn't matter, it doesn't mean they don't have great points. Absolutely. Oh yeah, no, that's

what we're saying. It was a tough thing to do, you know, to come out and be a counterpoint for something that you agree with a lot of. Their main bone and I think a lot of people, I mean it's the factory farming thing. What we're talking about here, I don't think it's sustainable for the population of Los Angeles.

And what you're talking about here with this kind of a farm, man, you would need a giant fucking farm like that to feed Los Angeles. Or a lot of them, a lot of smaller farms. Yeah, a lot of small ones. But you would mean so many of them. But you would mean so many of them. I don't know how much they produce if you compare it in comparison to one of these gigantic factory farms. Well, and I'm not – I don't know. My number guy isn't going to have those numbers either.

Well, no one is. And this is the thing. We can keep going deeper and deeper with this because people can say, well, hey, it's sustainable in Casanova. Okay, well, is it sustainable in Wisconsin? Yes yes this is sustainable on the entire eastern side of the country not really okay well what about what if we can get the united states sustainable we'll still got india well we're fucked yeah you know i mean you got a billion people living in a place a third the size of the united states what do you do then those numbers might be wrong the big thing here's and the bigger conversation I think is is and that's something that

gosh people that care should really you know shove veganism and and you know meat-eating aside and just let's say how do we how do we make this work you know I think it's education I think people need to understand that you you can't just go around eating eating meat you know, Charlie's Chicken Fingers. You can't be doing that. You've got to have a balanced diet, and you can't be eating pounds of meat a day. For health, you probably shouldn't overeat. I think we all agree on that.

Overeat anything. But this is a different subject, I think, we're talking about. We're talking about sustainability, and we're talking about feeding gigantic swaths of people yeah and that's what these factory farms have set up i mean through the method of uh collecting nitrogen from the oxygen i mean what from the air that the hopper method that they invented in like the early 1900s that's how they figured out how to extract nitrogen and because of that a gigantic population boom ensued that's that's how they figured out how to extract nitrogen. And because of that, a gigantic population boom ensued. That's the reason why there's so many people in the world today. This is widely accredited with the Haber method of collecting nitrogen.

Because before that, it was really difficult to fertilize soil. Once they figured out how to extract nitrogen from the actual air itself, things got a little easier to grow food. And the population boomed. And that's part of what we're dealing with here. What we're dealing with here is kind of, um, in, you know, when we talk about wildlife, we're talking about the 50,000 car accidents that are in Michigan every year alone because of the overabundance of deer. This is sort of what we're talking about with human beings. We have an over abundance of human beings. Now, obviously

I'm not suggesting we have massive hunts on humans. Searching the herd? But we would, if we were some sort of an alien, and we looked at, let's put it this way. If chimpanzees were overrunning Chicago,

like somehow or another chimpanzees like figured out how to get to Chicago. They fucking swang from tree to tree, and they moved in and started setting up shop and overrunning the place, the part where people were getting in car accidents with chimps. And would we kill them? That would be very tricky. I don't think we would, because chimps are way fucking smarter than deer, and we like smart shit. So we wouldn't kill chimps the way we would kill deer so people obviously are smarter than most people are smarter than chimps i know some people that probably

aren't smarter than chimps but when it gets to intelligent animals that's when we get weird like nobody gives a fuck if you kill a bug okay if mosquitoes contain zitka virus and malaria and all this different shit, you can kill mosquitoes all goddamn day long. And for whatever reason, nobody gives a fuck about mosquitoes because we've all agreed that mosquitoes are the enemy, right? Mosquitoes contain malaria.

Malaria has killed, this is a number I know is real, malaria has killed 50% of all the people that have died ever. How about that? Wow. Say that again. 50% of all the human beings that have died ever in the history of people have died from malaria.

How about them apples? Yeah, that's a thing you laid on me there. Take your breath away thing, yeah. That's some real shit because I've been fascinated with malaria for years. I've read a lot of shit on malaria. And I've had two friends that got malaria, including Justin Wren, our friend who was in here recently, who fights this weekend on Bellator. Good luck to my friend Justin

He's the best this guy is fucking him. You want to talk about an amazing human being this guy he gave up like Years of his life to go to the Congo and dig wells for these people these pygmies in the Congo He's just the salt of the earth like the nicest guy ever, but he got malaria. He's doing that and almost died So nobody gives a fuck if you kill mosquitoes. That's my point. You know, you could swat flies. Vegans will swat a fucking mosquito.

Right? You know, you don't go, please, namaste, enjoy my blood. It's the blood of a carrot eater. No. You fucking, you slap that fucker down. But there's a certain level. Like, okay, if an ant is on your food, a lot of times a vegan will kill that ant, and what do you do with the body? You throw it to the ground.

You'd ignore it because it's little. You just fucking kill an ant in my house, and if you went like that and brushed it off, I wouldn't say a word. I'd be like, Doug's doing some acceptable behavior. He killed an ant that's on his pants, and he dropped it on the ground. But if a mouse ran across my kitchen and you stomped it and then ignored it, I'd be like, hey, fucker. Where's this fucking splatter of guts and hair you've left?

Right? There's a weird hierarchy of living things. And the lion is clearly, I mean, one of the lions is fellow mammals. Yes. And, you know, I don't even know what to say about about that but but not rats fuck rats right rats have the black plague and all kinds of nobody gives a shit if you fucking

kill a rat in your garage if you if you're so hardcore you're not into killing rats i got a great rat story i want to hear a rat story i was living in the hills, and I rented this house, and I had a real rat problem to the point where I'd hear them banging around inside the rafters. They're big, man. Like, the hills around Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a very strange place because you have this city, and then you have just outside the city pretty abundant wildlife, including coyotes, a lot of hawks, and a lot of crazy shit. But this place that I lived had a rat problem. pretty abundant wildlife, including coyotes, a lot of hawks, and a lot of crazy shit. But this place that I lived had a rat problem. So I set out a rat trap, and I killed this fucking big-ass rat, like as big as my laptop.

It was huge, man. It was no bullshit. Like a snap trap? Yeah. Big fucker where you got to be real careful when you set it. Because it'll take a finger off you. Yes, definitely break one, right? I set it out, and I heard it in my kitchen. I was, whack!

I'm like, oh, shit, I got one. And I went out there, and I looked, and it's this big fucking fat boy rat. I was like, oh, jeez, look at the size of that thing. So I said, okay, in the morning I'll get up and I'll put that thing in the garbage and whatever and deal with it. I went to sleep. I got up in the morning, and'll get up and I'll put that thing in the garbage and whatever and deal with it. I went to sleep. I got up in the morning. That fucker was gone. They ate him down to almost nothing.

All that was left is the tail. So the rats apparently don't even like rat tail. But they had eaten most of his body. The rats had cannibalized most of his body. That's why we say fuck rats. Yeah, and if you see one rat, you got a dozen. Oh, at least. My house was overrun with them.

It was really bad. Yeah, it was real bad, man. It was like one of the first places I lived when I lived out here. I was like, what the fuck is going on? Because before that, I lived in New York, in New Rochelle, in my area. Although New York City has a huge rat problem. New York City's rat problem is crazy. I parked my car once.

This was back in the days of phones, pay phones. I didn't have a cell phone. I parked my car at this gas station. I was getting some gas, and I walked over to the pay phone. And as I'm on the phone, I saw three rats jump up in my wheel wells, climb up over my tires. Three big fat rats. Like this place was overrun with rats. They were looking to move or something.

They say that if you see one rat, I don't know, maybe check the numbers, but if you see one, I don't know if it's a hundred, there's a hundred or a thousand, something like that. Let's say 50 million. Yeah, if you see one,

there's 50 million around. Well, it's way more than you want. Have you seen this New York City pizza rat? No. There's a rat taking pizza home in New York. You were just waiting for this, weren't you? Well, this is cool, but here's something that a lot of people don't know. Rats are hunters. Why don't you, Jamie, pull up Rat Kills Pigeon?

Because there's not just one video of these. There's many videos of rats in New York City attacking and killing pigeons iPhone videos well, it's just fucking bizarre. I had no idea I had no idea they were predators Did you well no? Fucking rat is jacking this pigeon and the pigeon gets away and like almost almost gets free What's going on here? It's like they're a little laying prey so this rat has this pigeon by the neck so this is a different one than i saw the one i saw the pigeon gets away it's like near stairs and oh yeah here it is the pigeon tries to get away

and the rat chases it down look at this because he's already winged him yeah but look at this the rat chases a living pigeon well look how the camera guy doesn't want it he's already winged him. Yeah. But look at this. The rat chases a living pigeon. Well, look how the camera guy doesn't want to. He's like, not getting too close. Guy walking around with his iPhone. I know what I'm going to do today. But I would video that too, you know? Oh, why wouldn't you? Oh, fuck yeah.

What else are you going to do? But I had no idea. Did you know that rats were predators? No, I, you know. Opportunists, maybe. But this is a predator. It's chasing down an animal. Yeah, no.

Always a problem with, you know, when you had grain around. Look how strong he is. He just jumped that fucking curb with that thing in its mouth like it was nothing. There was one point he stood up on his hind legs with it in his mouth. Fucking monsters. We're so lucky they're little. Imagine if a rat was the size of a deer. Oh.

Look, there it goes again. He still tries to get away. And he's on it. Oh, he's got its back. That's good technique. He's got the hooks in. Joe, is that good technique? That's very good.

Look at the back leg. See how it's controlling? Very good technique. Oh, my God. Jiu-jitsu. Jiu-jitsu. I had to mention something like that because the only way my grandpa knows who I'm talking to is the fight guy.

That's how I explained it to my grandpa. Your grandpa likes watching fights? Loves it. Loves UFC. Like I said, he's the only guy in grandpa knows who I'm talking to is the fight guy. That's how I explain to my grandpa. Your grandpa likes watching fights? Loves it. Loves the UFC. Like I said, he's the only guy in the nursing home that watches. Wow. 93 going on 94. I'm freaking out all the other people.

Stop the fight! It looks like that's it. Rats are creeps. Wow. See, now if you caught that rat in a trap, nobody would get mad at you. But if you shoot a bear, they'll fucking protest. So I have a different story for you. I had a house up in Door County, an old farmhouse,

and no one lived in it for a long time. We had rats in that house. But the other thing that we had in that house were snakes. And my daughter's mother didn't like snakes at all. She opened up the back door of the place one time, and it was, I don't know, I guess it was a fox snake because it was a big-ass snake. And it's like knocking on the door, trying to get, you know, there was a spot where they could get in. When we started to remodel the place, you know, we put some beams up and we were taking some interior walls down. Snake skins.

Oh, jeez. Inside the wall. I would, she's just probably, if she's listening to this, she's hearing that for the first time. Because I didn't tell her. Man, she wasn't there. Oh, wow. Snake skin and they're like three feet long, you know,

where they molted or whatever the word is for it. Snake farm dog, yes. Oh, man. But those aren't predators, right? I mean, those aren't poisonous. Well, they're predators on mice and they're probably in there for the rats. It's probably good to have them, you know? Yeah.

Well, that's the thing about, like, in my neighborhood, I see hawks all the time, and they're the ones that keep the population of rodents down. You see them all the time, man. They're fucking beautiful. As do, in our area, this is a thing that I struggle with a little bit, is coyotes. People do coyote hunting around me, and we were talking about wolves before. And, I mean, I'm not physically, you know, I'm not worried about coyotes, like, taking us down or anything like that. And I have this, in fact, talked to Giannis Petelis about it. And his response to me talking about allowing coyote hunting on our place was,

he goes, oh, man, I just think they're trying to make a living, too. And, you know, they eat a lot of rodents. They clean up a lot of the weak and the old of deer and that sort of thing. But my buddy Greg, who you may or, Greg Kiefer, who you may or may not, big dude, Steve talks about him all the time, recently had a deer run into his yard by a pack of coyotes.

And they took it down and killed it in his yard. Whoa. It was a deer that had been wounded during the, well, we assume the gun season. It had a big scar on the back of its neck. I suppose it could have been a, you know, an arrow that had cut it or something like that so it was weak or whatever and uh yeah in the middle of the night this went down in the middle of the night he went out there i couldn't believe

it never seen anything how many coyotes well based on he didn't see how many but it was you know they they work in groups of two or three or four or five um so they right they have me right you know i have a chicken coop in my yard and and I went out in the middle of the night to shut the coop because I let the chickens out and they wander around and I closed the coop. And when I closed the coop, I was just outside enjoying the peace, looking up at the stars and I heard these deer running, like running full clip. And then something was chasing after them full clip, but it was dark and my eyes hadn't

adjusted. So I was trying to figure out what the fuck was happening, but these deer were running and something was chasing them. And I saw, I don't think so, I'm pretty sure it was a coyote, but it could have been a mountain lion. But I saw what looked like the silhouette of a coyote on the top of this hill. And I was like, this is so wild.

There's a house here and this fucking asshole over here is watching the bachelorette and like in his inside you know this guy pulls into his driveway his mercedes he's smoking his e-cigarette and some fucking tooth and claw shit is going on right there right there these coyotes are chasing down these deer yeah because there's uh there's a series of oak trees down the street from my house where these deer tend to bed i see them there all the time and there's like probably like five or six of them and but uh you know you'll see coyotes especially come in spring you know like when the fawns are being born you see these fuckers hanging around just looking for an easy meal you know guys who raise uh cattle around me will talk about and i don't know nathan

if you know anything about this, but to my knowledge I've never had a calf taken by coyotes or anything like that. I have had a calf that was born and died. It was stillborn or something that wasn't there the next day. So coyotes took it. But a cow abandoned it

too. The one thing you do not want to mess with is a 1,450 pound Hereford cow which just had a calf. She is not going to let you near that calf. Get kicked by a cow. I've only had pigs and chickens taken. And that's only when the dogs like we forget and leave the dogs in

for the night. A piglet or an actual whole pig? Piglet. A full grown pig would probably, especially if there's more than one, I'm sure they'd take care of themselves. They're vicious. They're so big. I got bit by one of my pigs. I mean, if I were to fall down in my pig pen.

You'd be fucked. And if I couldn't get up, I mean, my wife would come home and there'd be nothing left of me. Three, four pigs would have me done. Yeah, that's real. That's real. Well, that's the number one. Here's more statistics. He's your number guy.

He's my number one animal. Is that the other 50% of people that have died? It's another number one animal that kills people on farms. Really? Pigs. Yeah. People fall. Sometimes an old farmer will have a heart attack and fall into the pigsty, and they just gobble them up.

For the first time, I actually saw one of my pigs eat a chicken. Please Google that. I couldn't save the chicken in time, so I was like, what am I going to do? I don't want to save a half-mangled chicken. So I let them finish it. But they systematically cornered the thing, and I'm running over to try to, and then it was over. It was too late.

I had a coyote take a chicken from my yard or watch it hop the fence, but it's in its mouth. It was crazy. And I was going to kill the fucker, but then I realized it was a female, and then it had cubs. A lot of the yiping and hollering that you hear Like like people think there's a lot of misconceptions about coyotes and one of them is that when you ever hear that that there's like some sort of a party a

Lot of it is a mother communicating with her young and I was pretty sure that this was hat what happened because my dog had let this female near The chickens like the dog had like sort of like aided and abetted this coyote killing this um this chicken and then i realized like oh this is a female that has babies so that's where your soft spot was then yeah i'm a pussy when you hear that sound though i mean when my wife first moved down to our farm i mean it sounds like there are a pack of children being murdered. Yeah, it's weird.

I mean, it is just, and it's still night, like out where we are, and it just resonates. That's good. That's weird. That's what you hear, right? I have a relatively new friend out in Washington who has actually been emailing me and asking me for advice about coyotes, trapping coyotes. Do you know anything about trapping coyotes? Talk to Ranella. He recommends subsonic.22s.

Yeah. I'm more a fan of shooting them than trapping. Wildlife ecologists I know in Wisconsin, when people would start to talk to them about, you know, I'm trying to get rid of this animal or whatever happened to make a woodchuck or something like that, he would always recommend a small piece of lead at a very high velocity. Yeah. Well, that's what a buddy of mine does. He sets out cat food.

He puts cat food. He uses these coyotes that were targeting his dogs. So he would set out plates of cat food and sit on his balcony and just wait. Yeah. You can call him in, too. Yeah. You can call him in with predator calls. You might call him some other shit, too.

Depends on where you are. We were talking about this yesterday, that they just did this study of all these different mountain lions that they've killed. Here's some more numbers. I think they killed like 100 mountain lions in the San Francisco area, northern California area. And out of these mountain lions that they killed, most of them had cats and dogs in their bodies. Oh, yeah. That's a big thing. And finding out that this is what these things are eating.

Only 5% of them had deer in their body. Well, it's easier. But it's bizarre. I mean, they're targeting people's pets. I mean, that's their food. It's fucking weird, man. In Madison, Wisconsin, where I live, on the edges of town, and we actually live near two parks. We have coyotes.

And, you know, there's a certain group of folks who are like, well, you know, they're just out there trying to make a living, too, until, you know, mittens and fee-fee get eaten. Then we've got a little situation we have to deal with. Yeah, make up a story for the kids at that point. It's a bizarre thing to see your cat in the jaws of a coyote as it's running away. You know, there's the L.A. Museum of National History has this really cool exhibit on North American animals. And their exhibit, I had a picture of it on my Instagram, Jamie, of the coyote. Their exhibit of the coyote in Los Angeles is a coyote with a fucking cat in its mouth. That's in the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles.

The actual, you know, they have stuffed animals. They have buffalo. Sure. They show moose. And they have these, you know, so you can get to see, oh, that's what one of those looks like. Yeah. Well, they have these displays of these stuffed animals. So the coyote has a fucking cat in its mouth and it's on someone's porch.

Bring that home. Look at this. That's in the national history. That's the museum. Fucking dead cat. And my kids were like this. Yeah. They're like, um, daddy.

Well, honey. It's the only fucking animal that's killing something in the entire museum. This is the animal that's killing. For a minute there, I thought that was the notes from the museum. Then I realized that was the notes from the museum. Then I realized it was you had written that. Wait, really?

They're saying fucker? Yeah. No, but look what these people are saying. Look at this guy. My cat was just killed by one of these fuckers. I'll shoot a coyote for no reason other than it's a coyote. Fuck a coyote. Yeah, and they're right, man.

Those are little creepers. Little creepers. Look at this. What does it say? Swine likely kill fewer people than cattle do, but there's no reliable data. 20 people a year killed by cattle, it said. Whoa. Find out how many people are killed by pigs.

I couldn't find any but one story recently. One guy in Oregon. I would guess that that number is a little bit higher. I mean, personally, I know two people have been killed by bulls. Yeah, bulls, especially solitary bulls. You know, the old expression is you fuck with the bull, you get the horn. I would imagine that happens. I was milking for a farmer one time.

And one of the things with dairy farming, and I grew up dairy farming, but if a cow has a stepped-on teat, that's, you know, of the things with with dairy farming and i grew up dairy farming but uh if a cow has a stepped on teat that's you know we usually say tit but you know we're on the i guess it doesn't matter now but they have a step on time to clean it up uh or they get mastitis which is a sort of infection um it's it's very sore obviously um so you gotta you gotta you know strap up the milker and not put it on that one. And I was in a hurry. I was late for my other job, so I'm trying to hurry, and I forgot about this one cow. And this guy's cows didn't go in the right stall, so my head wasn't where it needed to be.

Anyway. I put the milker on the bad tit, and she kicked me so hard. She kicked me in the face, and then I flew back into the metal post. I mean, I was out for a good 20 minutes, you know, and you wake up in a daze. I mean, so that's one example of how somebody could easily be killed by a cow. But they're so big. You know what I mean? All you have to do is fall, and one stomps you, and that's it.

Well, again, it goes back to the calving thing. Our neighbor, the guy I used to, well, he still does some farming for us, cuts and rakes and bales our hay, was almost killed by a cow just fresh and just had a calf. And he went in there to deal with the calf, and she got him into a corner and beat the snot out of him. Eventually, he was able to crawl out and get under a gate. And this is normally a very nice animal, you know. out and get under a gate. And this is normally a very nice animal, you know.

So it's funny to tell that story when I've been sending you all this shit about how nice my cows are and I can scratch their heads and stuff. Well, we were talking about that because I said that when we were around your cows, they fucking panicked and they ran off. But you brought up an important point. We were shooting squirrels. No, we were shooting pigeons. They were shooting pigeons. So what happened? I didn't think we had shot anything yet was there a lot of you though too there's a lot of you guys a few there were four guys four guys okay

brian cow might have been singing loud he was singing already and you guys smell different i mean i smell i definitely wouldn't let strangers in with mine you know i wouldn't want that yeah what happened that day is what a couple of different things that happened. Factually, you were correct. What happened was you went into their pasture. Well, they weren't out in pasture. We had them in a barnyard because we'd been hunting, and I didn't want them out on the pasture where they would be and that sort of thing.

There is that video of that, and you see as you guys are walking in, and I never even thought about this then, Joe. I was like, I should probably go out there. The cattle would be a little calmer if I'm with them. But, you know, I was afraid that Brian was going to fall through the floor of the barn. It's a shoney metal. Here's where you can't buy it. Oh, good Lord.

And I wanted to throw rocks, too. But as you're walking out there, they all turn and look at you as you're walking in because it's on that outtake. And then when you start shooting, they're all down in the corner being very in a defensive position. And the analogy I think I use to you is imagine you're at home having dinner and four dudes walk into your house with cameras and guns, talking loud, doing their whole thing.

And then they start shooting. Well, I'm guessing that you're going to probably go to a corner of the house and get a defensive position. No doubt, once the shooting started happening. Jamie, I just pulled this up. There was more people were killed by pigs in 2014 than were killed by sharks. Sharks get a bad rap. 14, then were killed by sharks. Sharks get a bad rap.

Last year, it says there were 12 fatal pig attacks worldwide versus 10 shark fatalities. So, different stats, I guess, different websites. I was looking up on-farm specifically, I suppose. Okay. Some of that might have been on-farm different stuff. Yeah, I think they're talking about wild pigs, actually, which I didn't know wild pigs killed that many people. They're fucking creepers, though. Have you ever been around wild pigs?

Actually, I've not. Man, I was in Tahone Ranch with Rinella, and we were walking down this road, and we were pig hunting. And we got close to these pigs, and they didn't know we were there because there's a really thick brush and grasses. And we heard them fighting, and they were less than 20 yards away. And they're going to war. And I'm like, these are demons, man. They're fucking demons. They sound like monsters It's not like something from the Lord of the Rings And they're attacking each other for whatever reason like right there

I'm like God there's fucking creepy things with their giant tusks and their black hair, and it just they look like demons Yeah, you know they sound crazy you hear one you go. Okay? You know that's how the the king in the Game of Thrones died remember Like demons. Yeah. And they sound crazy. You hear one, you go, oh, okay. That's how the king in the Game of Thrones died. Remember? Did you ever watch that show? No. How dare you?

How dare you say no? He was killed by a boar. Wild boar. Spoiler alert. Season one. That's not what I watch at all. Yeah, well, it doesn't matter. They don't have to, Doug. He dies quick.

He dies early in the show. But he was killed by a wild boar. And that's not uncommon They're big animals man They get real big Fair enough You're not going to refute that They're a very different animal

Deer have killed people Not just car accidents But they have gored people It is possible It's very rare, obviously. Usually they just want to get the fuck away from you. But, you know, they're wild. They're animals.

They don't play by our rules. And I think we have a real problem in this world with our idea of what an animal is. We anthropomorphize these things. We think of them the same way we think about our pets. When you have a dog and you think of your dog the same way you think of a wild bear like boy they're playing on some fucking completely different fields yeah they have completely different rule book yeah you know and we like to think that we're not animals and that kind of disconnects us and that that's where the disengagement and the disconnection with our our

food supply comes from yeah we're so you know we're above it. You know, that's our psyche. Well, we're also, we're just not used to being around them. Most people are not around wild animals ever, ever. The great majority of people that live in cities are virtually never around anything other than pigeons and squirrels. They're just not around them. So our ideas of wild animals are like these beautiful things that you rarely see. Why would you want to kill one? Yeah, you know, interesting point about squirrels. Urban squirrels versus wood squirrels.

We shot a couple more episodes of Meat Eater that will be coming out here in the next couple of weeks. And we took Helen and Brittany squirrel hunting. And their experience mostly with squirrels was urban. Yeah. Helen had this, wow, they're way different than. Oh, they know what. Squirrels are like not coming down. And of course, Brittany was talking about like rubbing acorns on her body and maybe

they'll come out and stuff like that. But, but completely different. Wild animal. They're out there making a living. They're out there surviving that, that whole thing. They aren't going to react the same way to human beings walking through their woods. Well, animals are pliable. They're flexible, just like people are.

And if you start feeding wild animals, they kind of become domesticated. There's a park right down here in North Hollywood. You can sit down in the park, and if you bring a bag of peanuts, the squirrels will literally come and take them from your hands like a little baby. And it's cool. I i mean those are different animals you know like like like the deer in my yard like uh my buddy came over uh one day and there was this deer standing there just standing and he's like dude i didn't think that was a real deer i thought you were fucking with me because uh he came over my house we're gonna work out and uh there's this deer standing there

look at that and he goes what the fuck is that i go it's a deer he's like that's a real deer cuz he's a he's a buck and you just stand there looking at us and and he goes okay would you shoot that buck I go fuck no that's a dead thing might as well be a pet yeah like in a boss starving I'd shoot it but that thing is not worried about me at all it's it has never been attacked by a person it doesn't associate people with danger they're just standing there staring at me you can't you're hostage yeah you can't kill them that's fucked up yeah like that's you can if you have to survive but that's not a game

animal it we have a a rule um i don't think that you were up by my cabin, but Brian was. And my wife said, you know, can you not kill him right here by the cabin? You have a rule. We have a rule. But you had a beaver that you guys killed right there, right? Oh, that beaver that we ate? No, that was up on a creek not far from there.

That's okay? She allows the beavers to die? Well, yeah, she allows the muskrats to die, too, who burrow into the dam and cause all kinds of damage. Oh, so you want them to die. Yeah, you get rid of them because they're causing the issues. By the way, how good is that goddamn beaver taste? Absolutely, bar none, best wild meat I've ever eaten.

Really? It's fantastic. Well, the way Rinella cooked it, he braised it and then slow cooked it like a stew. And I'm telling you, man, it was like the best beef stew you've ever had in your life. Like rich and flavorful. And again, just like we're talking about with organic beef versus regular corn fed, this is a wild animal with a wild natural diet and and a real healthy, big, fat beaver. Yeah.

So texture-wise, I mean, I've ate raccoon. Is it like beef? Oh, slow down. Raccoon's a whole other ballgame. You ate raccoon? Well, it's a wild game thing. I mean, bear. I mean, people.

Seriously. One of the worst things. Oh, hell yes. What? Yes. Fucking Wisconsin. I'm taking the shirt off. I noticed there's not a beaver in the middle of it.

Yeah, it's a beaver farm. There you go. Sustainable beaver. When did you eat a raccoon, man? Just at game feeds. You know, they do it. We have bear feeds like Packers Bears Weekend. They'll have a bear feed at the local tavern.

People bring in all their stuff, too. Wild game, snake. Hold the fuck on. First of all, let me just explain to people that are only listening. I asked... I asked Nate, I go, when have you eaten a raccoon? And Doug throws his hands up like I'm like, when have you had french fries? You've had french fries?

Like, it's a fucking raccoon, man! It's been a long time. It's been a long time. So, what is... you have a bear what? Well, every once in a while, when it's Packers-Bears, you know, big rivalry. You eat a bear? You know, they'll have a local tavern. They'll have Newman's Bar and Grill.

We'll plug those guys down in Hill Point, you know. They've had bear feeds, you know, for the Packers, or Bears game, you know. There's a connection. And they'll, you know know people bring other stuff you know They're gonna have a game feeds. I did rattlesnake Yeah, a fee, but you're calling it a feed You know like a steak feed or you know it's just a you feed a bunch of people and they sit down and get drunk Well, how are they cooking? How they cooking the bear? What are they doing probably roasting it? You know I mean the big

Yeah, yeah, they just have a gigantic bear I mean, it's parted up, and you know that's where it's good. It's good. I've never cooked one, yeah. So they just have a gigantic bear. Barbecue, yeah. Well, no, no, no. I mean, it's parted up and that sort of thing. It's good. It's good. Well, bear is real tricky, right? You've got to make sure that you cook it to the right temperature. In Wisconsin as well?

Oh, yeah. It's everywhere, isn't it? Trichinosis? It's a concern. Yeah. So, yeah, it's sort of a Wisconsin tradition. I saw your eyes light up when you heard raccoon. Game feet.

I mean, there might be, and it could be bear, it could be. Back in the day when there was more, when the raccoon hides were more valuable, and there's an ebb and flow to that market, of course. Well, you got all these hides, and what do you do with the carcasses? Right. And so a certain amount of them are being eaten. What does it taste like? It's pretty greasy. Yeah, it's really greasy.

Was it a good grease? Is it good for you? It's one of those things, there's a little gaminess to it, you know, it's one of those things you gotta get used to it. You know, and I don't eat enough bear meat to get used to it. I like bear. No, I've had bear. I'm talking about raccoon. Oh, raccoon. Oh, I'm sorry. Are you talking about bear or raccoon? Oh, I way prefer bear. No, I've had bear. I'm talking about raccoon. Oh, raccoon. Raccoon. Oh, I'm sorry.

Are you talking about bear or raccoon? Oh, I way prefer bear. Yeah, raccoon is super gamey. It's kind of nutty in a weird way. I didn't think that bear was greasy at all. Bear to me tasted almost like a beef. Where did you- Alberta. Yeah.

So what's that? In Wisconsin, in the Midwest, where there's hunting going on they're doing a lot of baiting of them with you know like old donuts and stuff like that um and and i remember steve talking about um i've never i've never bear hunted anywhere um how he doesn't like taking like is it spring bears or because uh they're eating old, whatever the timing is of salmon. The blueberry bears or whatever. He loves the blueberry bears, but not the salmon. Their meat tastes like what they ate.

Right. Holy moly. That's what we're talking about. Isn't that crazy though? Ronella's show, have you ever seen that show where he shot? I haven't. I haven't. I don't watch much TV at all.

Well, he shot a bear in Alaska in the fall, and it had been just feasting on blueberries. And he was saying that this is the best meat bar none in the world. Bar none. And he was saying that you open this bear up and you smell blueberries. And it's like a sweet-tasting meat. And it just really, I mean, you eat a burger, you don't think about it. You drink a soda, you don't think about it. You drink a soda, you don't think about it. But that is your cells.

You are literally supplying nutrients to your cells, to your food. Yeah. And when you eat, like, I used to work with this dude who used to drink a lot of carrot juice and his fucking hands turned orange. Like, his skin started turning orange because he was eating, like, three or four glasses of carrot juice a day. How orange are we talking? Orange is fuck, like, weird, like spray tan, like Jersey Shore. Cheetos, orange, or? No, like an orange like a carrot juice a day. How orange are we talking? Orange as fuck. Like weird. Like spray tan. Like Jersey Shore. Cheetos? Orange?

No, like an orange like a carrot. You know? He made a jerk off motion. I don't know why you jerk off with Cheetos. I don't know why that was either. I saw that in front of my eyes. How do you connect jerking off with Cheetos? Well, that's a joke.

You know? Okay. It is? I don't understand. The Cheetos and jerking off? Like, what do you mean? It's kind of one of those things, you know? Is it like a bear feed? Like you gotta be in Wisconsin to understand it? Yes. You know? Cheetos. I give you a bag of Cheetos and jerking off? Like, what do you mean? Well, it's kind of one of those things, you know. Is it like a bear feed?

Like, you got to be in Wisconsin to understand it? Yes. You know, Cheetos. I give you a bag of Cheetos. It's one of our pastimes. You go in the bathroom and I hear grunting. I don't know, man. There's some stuff about this guy I didn't know before I got him on.

So, yeah. Well, Cheetos. Oh, forget Cheetos. Forget Cheetos. Forget the Cheetos. I mean, if you're eating Cheetos all day or potato chips or whatever the fuck it is, that is literally supplying your cells. And we don't think about it that way.

We just think about this tastes good. I am me. I am Doug. Doug eats cheeseburger because cheeseburger tastes good. But a cheeseburger literally is supplying your body. You know, I started this diet recently. This is called the Primal Blueprint Diet. This guy on the podcast named Mark Sisson, and he is an advocate of no grains, no bread,

no pasta, no rice, no nothing. Mostly fats. You get your fats from avocados, from healthy fats from beef and chicken or whatever the fuck you eat, and coconut oil, things along those lines, MCT oil. And I've been on it now for two weeks. And it's pretty fascinating. Pretty fascinating. First of all, it took me a while to adjust from going on a carbohydrate-based energy to a fat-based energy, getting my energy from fats.

My body fat's decreased pretty significantly. I lost at least six pounds now. And I'm eating like normal amounts. But I'm just eating fat and proteins and a lot of vegetables. And no sugars at all. None. Zero. I'm not eating any processed sugar.

I eat occasional piece of fruit, blueberries and things along those lines. But it's mostly vegetables and meat that I'm eating and a lot of avocados. Wow. But my cells, obviously, are getting nutrients off of this, off of healthy fats. And what he found is he had arthritis. He also had irritable bowel syndrome. Those things went away when he cut grains out of his diet and we stopped eating processed sugar. So it was like inflammation.

Yeah, inflammation. Yeah. and we stopped eating processed sugar, those things went away. So it was like inflammation. Yeah, inflammation. And that these healthy fats, like healthy fats for your body, like coconut oil, things along those lines, is really the best fuel for your body. And your body gets into a state of ketosis,

which takes about two weeks, which I just started getting into. I just started getting into the state of ketosis. And your body, once it reaches this state of ketosis, gets its energy primarily from fat. And it's a more normal, natural way for your body once it reaches this state of ketosis gets its energy primarily from fat and it's a more normal natural way for your body to respond and your body can shift like you know your body's very flexible can shift from a glucose-based carbohydrate-based fuel system to a fat-based fuel system so this is what my body has just started to do and i committed to this i was going to do a month but i just decided to make it two months. So I'm committing to this for two months and I'm going to talk about it and see what

it's like, but I'm sold two weeks in. I don't like it in the fact that if I go to a restaurant and someone's got a spaghetti and meatballs next to me, I'm like, fuck, I can't eat the meatballs. Fuck, I can't eat spaghetti. Like I have, I can't eat any sugar, no desserts. Does that seem different to you? Uh, and what I mean is when you smell like a carbohydrate like that. Like a craving? Is it all of a sudden, whoa, whereas maybe not so much before? No, it's the opposite. This is what's really strange about it.

What they've said, what people have hypothesized and the theories are that your gut bacteria controls a lot of your appetite. and the theories are that your gut bacteria controls a lot of your appetite. And this is one of the reasons why I used to be stuffed, like stuffed at the end of a meal, and I would still want sugar. I'd still want some candy. Yeah, right? That's me, man. It's awful, right?

You still want some pie. Oh, bring that fucking pie over here. Well, now I don't. It's weird. Because of this shit, my body, taking plenty of probiotics, drinking a lot of kombucha, things along those lines, taking some probiotic supplements, you introduce healthy bacteria into your stomach and your gut. And because of that, your shift, it shifts what you're hungry for. It's very strange.

Bread, to me, looks like, why don't you eat stuffing out of a mattress like it looks like nonsense to me it's very strange because i used to see like bread someone bring out like a restaurant nice loaf of bread and butter i'm like oh give me that yes i'd be all excited slap some butter on that bitch and eat it up now i look at him like that's not even food like it said it doesn't register to me as in a two-week period of time two weeks two weeks and you were such an unhealthy son of a bitch before that. I'm saying, I mean, I think part of it must be psychological that I've decided that this isn't food, that I've made a shift in my mind because I'm not eating it.

I haven't eaten it in two weeks. But I think there's a real good argument that it's gut bacteria. That's a big part of it. Because the sugar, like they had like a dessert tray thing and they brought it out at a restaurant I was at the other day. You know, like a fancy place. They bring you like, would you like this? Is this one here and this one here? The apropeline.

None of it looked good. It all looked like nonsense to me. Whereas before, I'd be like, what am I going to fuck my body up with? I got to figure this out. I got to take this home with me. Very interesting stuff. And I wanted to experiment with it because the guy was fascinating. He's very intelligent.

And I said, well, what does it hurt for me to try this out? I thought it would be an interesting topic of discussion to do it for 60 days or so and then maybe even have him back on or have someone else on that advocates it. And I've read people that advocate carbohydrate-rich diets. And it seems to me that your body is pretty flexible and your body can exist on a bunch of different types of fuel. And people get really dogmatic about it, like you have to do it this way, you have to do it that way. And I don't think – I think there's also biodiversity, right? There's different people come from different climates.

They come from different parts of the world. Originally, their ancestors did. And I think their bodies have become more acclimated to those types of foods. And that was like the big issue with Native Americans when the Europeans showed up with alcohol. And they literally didn't have the genes to process this stuff. Whereas Irish people process that shit like that, you know. Italians. It's interesting that you said that about probiotics because I've been taking a probiotic for about 18 months now.

All the places where I got this advice was from my accountant. Wow. Yeah. How weird. He's a buddy? Or he's like, I went over your taxes and what you need is a stopwatch. No, it's one of her clients. But I had been sick and she said something about probiotics.

And honestly, God, 18 months, I've been taking a probiotic every morning, and I haven't done anything else different. But I've been not necessarily healthier, but less ill. Not ill at all, really. There's an article I read once about skin flora, and it was in regards to grappling. Because with jiu-jitsu and with wrestling, a big issue is ringworm and even staph infection. I've gotten both. Really? Yeah, man.

It sucks. The staph was real scary because my friend Tate Fletcher spotted it. We were at an airport. We were hanging out, getting ready to go on a plane, and I just had my foot sitting up on my my knee and he was looking at the bottom of my calf and he goes hey man what's going on with your leg i go what he's like what's going he's like what's all this i go what is it it's like these little pimples on my leg i'm i don't know he goes dude that looks like staff like are you serious and he goes yeah i don't like that man go get that checked out because he you know he uh fought has been grappling his whole life and, and he had caught it before.

I had never caught it. I had caught ringworm before, and I knew what that looked like. And so I was like, this is fucking pimples. Like, what is it? He's like, I'm telling you. I think that's staph. So I go immediately to a dermatologist, take his advice, and the guy goes, yup. Get on some fucking antibiotics.

And he gives me these horse pills of death. This stuff's awful. on some fucking antibiotics. And he gives me these horse pills of death. This stuff's awful. First of all, antibiotics, when you have staph, wrecks your entire system. Because it doesn't just kill the staph.

It kills all the healthy flora, too. You've got to start over. What they say to counter that is to take probiotics once you're done with your whole cycle, but also to prevent it in the future, you take healthy bacteria like a lot of acidophilus, different forms of probiotics, and you are essentially giving your body soldiers to fight off infection. And the skin flora changes when you take high doses of healthy acidophilus and things along those lines.

It's also like for people that are vegan, there's some different probiotics like raw sauerkraut. your skin it's also like for people that are vegan there's uh some different probiotics like raw uh sauerkraut like raw sauerkraut is really good kimchi is another one that's really good fantastic probiotic you're essentially taking in live organisms that become a part of your body and they're soldiers and these live organisms fight off against shitty bacteria it's amazing stuff well part of the reason I was convinced, other than I get my medical advice on the cheap, is in the other work that I do,

I build and manage athletic fields. And there's a huge movement to go towards organic fertilization or cultural practices on athletic fields. You know, this one facility that I manage, before every tournament, we'll get emails and calls from parents who are bringing their 8-year-old and say, well, we're coming in from wherever, and we would like to know what's been applied to your fields. My son or daughter has an issue with herbicide intolerance or whatever. And I'm real, I take that shit really seriously. We started using

compost from both a facility nearby from the county, but also from a supplier and applying that as a part of our regime. We're able to cut back on fertilizer. And the other thing that was really interesting is that a lot of the pathogens that we have issue with, and you see them on golf courses, they get different kinds of fungus that affect the grass because you're putting water on it and you're feeding the shit out of it. And by putting that compost on there and providing, you know, essentially the organisms that are good for the soil, we're feeding the soil, not the plant, which nitrogen that they, you know, synthetic nitrogen or does. And so what ends up happening is we're feeding that soil. And so now we've got a whole environment there that that turf grass has got an opportunity to utilize everything that's in that soil and

it's healthier um you know we're kind of going the other we're going the other direction in in everything from farming to growing grass for kids to play soccer on well i know a guy who lived near a golf course growing up and the pesticides that they use on the golf course infected the water supply and he got bone cancer and cancer throughout his neighborhood everyone in his neighborhood was affected someone they knew got cancer it was rampant and it was just people that were drinking the water that came from this area where they had been contaminated because of a fucking golf course yeah leeching in and the one company that i work with uh has built, been part of a construction of a golf

course that from day one was, and it's actually certified organic, but it's been a part of their process all the way along. And they control the amount of traffic on it and all of those sort of things too, but it's a beautiful golf course and they haven't used any uh pesticides um or synthetic fertilizers on it one of the things that they had brought up in that same article about um organic meat being healthier was the incorporation of clover in with grass and then somehow or another clover helps it helps sustain like a nitrogen balance with the grasses like it's a nitro A clover is a nitrogen-fixing plant. So if you, you know, in a pasture, we introduce clover into our pastures.

And so it fixes nitrogen into the soil that's then available for the grasses. And the white clovers and a lot of the things that I actually plant in some of the food plot stuff that we do for wildlife. For deer, yeah. Yeah, for deer. It's sweet. it tastes good, and it's also providing nitrogen to the plants that need it. And that's a big problem with things like gigantic fields of only grain, of only corn, or of only wheat, that it's not natural for one plant species to be... Monoculture. Yeah, that's not normal right that's not natural

and it's kind of like what you were talking about when you're talking about these really interesting diverse ecosystems that are created by these organic farms like this one that you were you were highlighting earlier yeah yeah and and so it is it's a it's a complete ecosystem it's a closed circle that's how it's supposed to be. Well, the thing that gets me is that, you know, this Mark Shepard, I mean, I've just paged through it. You know, Doug's read more of it than I have. But I mean, you look at this and you read it and it makes sense.

And you're like, wow, this guy's a genius. But then you think about like ancient civilizations were doing things along these lines. Where did we lose that? You know, where did that go away? Well, it seems like we lost it with this factory farming and we also lost it when we started putting people in cities. I think cities are a real big part of our disconnect and also awesome.

I love cities. I love to be able to go to the movies. I like getting on the highway. Like the guy you mentioned, the guy you mentioned, Joel, that grows this shit on the medians. Joel Salzen. Yeah. I mean, that's... mentioned, Joel, that grows this shit in the medians. Joel Salatin? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that's- Oh, no, that was Ron Finley. You know Joel? You've heard of Joel Salatin? He's been on the podcast. Oh, really? Yeah.

Yeah. He's awesome. Yeah, I was going to reference him. Oh, yeah, he's amazing. He's got some amazing books. He's got a lot of books out there. He's got a really interesting strategy for letting pigs and all these different animals graze.

What he does is he sets up this perimeter fence, this large, like mildly charged fence. So if they go to it, it irritates them so they don't run over the fence. And then he moves it. He moves the fence and they graze in a new area. So they don't just destroy. Rotational grazing. Yeah. And they're living as if they were wild.

They're essentially grazing off acorns, things along those lines, and just giant areas where they roam and forage. And they eat just like a wild pig. And because of that, their flesh is very different. That's what you got in your freezer now, dude. Well, this is elk, but I have a wild pig in my freezer at home. From us. We brought you. Oh, okay. Absolutely. That's how we pasture them. Oh, okay. Well, that's the way to do it. I mean, it's a different kind of meat. It looks different. I mean, it has a deeper, darker, richer color. And that's one of the things that I noticed when we shot, when Ronell and I shot a pig at the Tohon Ranch.

It was thick with fat from acorns and its texture. The meat was like a dark red and it was delicious. It's a different animal. Isn't it interesting, like with beef, I still eat the occasional beef that I might not know where it came from. Right. Not very often, but there's one place, one restaurant nearby our place that I go to,

and he finishes his beef with corn, but it's mostly grass-fed, but he's still sort of old school he does that to marble it yeah yeah yeah i taste the difference between of course you taste the difference between venison because really again i don't have this wide experience of hunting and in different areas and having meat from different areas so i am excited about your elk but so the venison to grass-fed beef to corn-fed beef. And it's been a long time since I've had something that I, like I said, where I didn't know where it came from.

But I can tell you when it was fat cattle, they call them. I feel like after I get done eating a piece of meat like that, like I have a little prime rib or something, when I go out on a Saturday night, I feel like I should take a knife and scrape that fat off my tongue. It just has a completely different taste and i just i'm not interested in it anymore just yeah and so my you know taste has changed that way um so it's very tender you know but it's also because that animal's dying that animal you're eating a sumo wrestler you're eating a slob what's that

where they massage them yeah Kobe beef yeah or Wagyu it's the more common is that how you say it just big

Wagyu I don't like that stuff man I've had it before it's okay but it's just it's so fucking soft and weird yeah

it's like why how the fuck is this muscle carrying this animal around it's gelatinous yeah it's like why how the fuck is this muscle carrying this animal around it's gelatinous yeah it's weird i'll take it to even more of an extreme and and uh and that is uh veal there was a down the road from our old friend who had the issue with us when we were hunting and he would call and leave me those crazy messages uh before uh before he owned that place it was owned by another guy who raised veal. And when I was younger, I helped out up there once in a while.

And how you helped out was to help them load the veal. Those animals are in a cage where they essentially can't, or a box where they can barely turn around. And they're being fed, you know, a milk replacer, a powdery that you mix with water and it's kind of a liquid and that's all they're getting and the best looking veal calves were the last animal i ever wanted to eat i mean and it smelled bad it well there was nothing good about it your muscles aren't developed they're not they don't want them to develop it's a crazy thing i don't

i don't understand it i don't understand how it got started and i don't understand why people keep eating it well people eat lutefisk i mean that's weird lutefisk what is that it's like well it's like ludicrous i was like what did you wrote it fish in uh in uh what is it uh lie yeah well i mean yeah it's a norwegian thing it's a survival survival thing. The Vikings did it on ships and stuff, but people still, it's a tradition thing, but it's literally soaked in lye. It's lye? Yes. I mean, it...

But isn't lye poisonous? This is real. What in the fuck is this? And it's weird. I mean, you want to talk gelatinous, do it. My friend, Lauren Hansen, is standing up with his hands in the air right now. He's an older Norwegian. Oh, Norwegians are awesome.

I just got to say that. Oh, my God. What is this? But that's weird. Pairing wines with lutefisk. Oh, God, it looks like jizz. Look at it. It's like slime.

Yeah, it's weird. It's like snail slime. I've never had veal, but I've had this. What is it like? What is this like? But this is just a way of preserving. It was something they did to survive. It's just tradition now.

What does it taste like? I can't even describe it. I think I blocked it out of my mind. Is that bad? In the Norwegian areas of Wisconsin, they have these dinners, you know, lutefisk dinners for fundraisers and such, but they also have, they have other things.

So you try, you know, my thing was, out of respect, I'd take a bite of lutefisk and then, and then I wash that down with some like, you know, Swedish meatballs and, and, you know, lefse, you know, and just soak and just get it out of your mouth. It's one of those things like. What's the other thing you wash down with Swedish meatballs and Lefse. Just get it out of your mouth. It's one of those things. What's the other thing? You wash down with Swedish meatballs and what? Lefse, it's like a little, isn't it a potato bread type, almost like a tortilla. It's like a Norwegian tortilla.

Is this a secure food show here? You guys are eating raccoons and fucking ludicrous. Smelt feeds? A smelt feed. Little itty bitty fish. They're like little tiny fish you scoop up in giant nets, right? Deep fry them, yeah.

You eat the whole thing, right? Guts and all. Pretty much. What is that like? It's really good. I mean, our wrestling club. Oh, not so good, says Doug. I like it.

He made the shrug. It's not the favorite thing, but I mean, you fry anything and it's pretty good. You know, I mean. Oh, deep fry, like bread and all that shit. Yeah, I guess they do. Tartar sauce. You put a dozen of them on a bun and you know, chow down and make some money for the wrestling club.

Well, you got to do what you got to do if you're hungry. Ho beavers. There's a TV show, I think. How do you get some money from the wrestling club? From fucking. How do you make this connection? It's a fundraiser. That's what we do.

That's how we make money. We have feeds, lutefisk feeds, steak feeds, bear feeds. Not real creative when it comes to raising money, I guess. Although we have the Cazenovia. This is one plug I do want to put in. The Cazenovia Turkey Busters Fishery coming up this weekend. A Turkey Busters Fishery? What is a Turkey Buster? Well, first first of all it's a sportsman's club i don't think i don't think we have a website or anything

so i wouldn't look it up but uh uh so it's a sportsman's club and in casanova which is you know 250 people it's sort of the lions club the knights of columbus the every you, the Knights of Columbus, the Rotary. It's everybody put together, and it's just this group of dudes who are really into turkey hunting. Okay. They call themselves the Turkey Busters? Turkey Busters, yeah. And why do we have a fishery?

Well, we have this little lake, Lee Lake, there in Casanova, and one of the things that we do with the money that we raise is stock it with walleyes and other game fish. And so one of the things that we do is have this fishery, which is on the ice. So it's essentially an ice fishing tournament would be the wrong word. Although there are prizes for, like, the biggest bluegill and the biggest bass and and that kind of thing but mostly it's a thing where people come to and you have raffles and it's the social event of the season in casanova really oh yeah oh yeah jesus

just fyi dog they are online but all they have is all, but all they have is the phone number. And contact, this is at Casanova Memorial Park, contact Chuck Keller. Don't put the number online. No, no. Whatever you do, we've already said too much. If they have a website, they're getting dick pics right now. As you speak. Wow.

Yeah, so those are different ways that, and some of the stuff that we've also done is donated, bought and donated Hoyt Archery bows or Matthews bows to the school's physical education program. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. That's awesome that they still do that. That's very cool. Yeah.

So this is a little organization of a bunch of guys who get together once or... It depends on the time of year. Once or twice a month. Well, there's certainly a benefit to having a small community like that where everybody really does care about the welfare of the community and cares about all these different

things like wrestling team needing money for uniforms and things along those lines. we lose a lot of that when you have big cities there's so much to gain in a big city but there's so much to lose too and it's like we were talking earlier about the diffusion of responsibility that you have when there's 20 million people you see somebody with their fucking car broken down the side of the road i don't even think about stopping yeah i hope this asshole is triple a you know pass by but if you're on some

country road and you see someone broken down, you think one of two things. I hope this guy's not a serial killer and I should probably try to help him. Those are the two things you think. And the other thing out in our territory when you're driving around is you wave to everybody. So you're driving around. It might not be putting your

hand up like this or anything, but at least you're driving around. Give a little nod. And you go like this. Yeah. It's just the one thing. Well, that's nice. That is. That is definitely missing on the highway, because otherwise you'd be fucking. Yeah, you'd still get the one-finger sign on the highway right here.

You're fucking waving to everybody that passed you. Your hands would break. Cities are weird. Yeah. No, it's all weird, isn't it? It is weird. People are weird, but... Cities are weird. Yeah, yeah. No, it's all weird, isn't it? It is weird. People are weird, but cities are especially weird because I don't think this is a normal thing. We've only had them for the last couple hundred years in this sort of magnitude that we have now,

like with New York and L.A. and things along those lines, just to have so many people jammed into an area like this. And as we started this conversation conversation have a complete disconnect as to where your food comes from and that the food is coming from life whether it's plant life or whether it's animal life your food comes from life life eats life and that is reality jack london is that yeah and it's uh what the seawolf we were just talking about this yeah what do you say um well it's a this character it's this old pirate in this book called the Seawolf. I knew he was going to get a pirate in this conversation.

Are you a fan of pirates? Arr, yeah. Who isn't, man? Pirates are awesome. But, I mean, maybe not the New Age ones, the Somalis or whatever. Oh, yeah, they're a little different. But, you know, those are not without my sympathy as well. Yeah, oh, no, everybody's got an agenda and everybody's got a reason to fight you

know uh well they have a very we'll get into that there's uh this specific pirate his whole you know he's a loner and his whole thing in the conversation throughout the book is he talks about it as a yeast you know life eats life and his whole contention is what the fuck matters life eats life i mean you could make an argument like you're gonna be dead you're gonna be dead you're gonna be and his whole contention is what the fuck matters. Life eats life. I mean, you could make an argument like you're going to be dead, you're going to be dead, you're going to be dead. Who gives a fuck? Who gives a fuck what happens?

You know, I mean, that's not a very nice way to look at things, you know, but it is, I mean, it's a fact, you know. It is a fact, but also this moment right now is enjoyable. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, no, no, I'm not. Well, I have a problem with that sort of absolute sort of, you know, worrying about the end. No, absolutely. Yeah, no, no, I'm not. I have a problem with that sort of absolute sort of worrying about the end. No, absolutely. How about the moment is enjoyable.

Nothing else at all. Camaraderie and friendship and a good meal with friends is one of the best things you can have in life. Adventures and things that you enjoy, activities that you like to participate in, those are very enjoyable. And I think that's what life is about. Life is about these friendships and these enjoyable moments that we have with each other. So there's absolute ideas that people have about what is the point, man? It's all going to end, man. Well, okay.

You could look at it that way. It's like, what's the point in playing the game? The game's going to be over one day. Do you not enjoy the fucking game? Enjoy the game, man. These are some of those kids we saw sitting on the steps today. You know know just sitting there in hollywood yeah they're poisoned these poor fucks they're poisoned by the brake dust that's fucking flowing through the air everywhere that's just terrible for you there's definitely different smells out here man fucking brake dust is terrible

it's one of the one things that people don't talk about about living in urban environments that you don't you go to your car you know that shit if you have a wheel and you see that stuff on the outside of your wheel? You're breathing that. Yeah. You're breathing that everywhere, especially if you live in New York or if you live in LA and there's constant traffic going by you. Every time they hit the brakes, a little bit of fucking dust gets up in the air and that

stuff. You're dealing with millions and millions of cars. This stuff permeates the environment. It's terrible for you. The Voluntary Coast Guard of Somalia, that's what the pirates called themselves. The reason why they started doing pirating in Somalia is because they were fishermen. They were fishermen

and these assholes from Europe and Russia were dumping toxic waste off their shores. Nuclear waste, toxic chemical waste, and it was killing all the fish. So what they started doing was kidnapping the the people that were in the boats that were doing the dumping so these fishermen who were fucking starving to death because they all of a sudden their their waters

were polluted they started going after these guys and kidnapping them then they realized hey we get way more fucking money from kidnapping people than we do from fishing they became pirates yeah and so they also started taking this stuff called cat and this is a it's it's a narcotic it's a stimulant that they uh they take it's like a plant that they chew and it gives them like like it's like a fucking meth type plant i don't know the exact uh pull that up i think it's k-h-a-t but it's a stimulant that they chew all the time it's one of the reasons why these people are so, there it is, cat to be banned in the UK. You see like this guy's eating, chewing on these leaves, and it produces, pull up a website or a web description instead of an image, and it'll find out what is the actual, go

to all, instead of images. Look at the guy's jaw. He's got a big league chew in there. Yeah, this is, oh, I've seen it in that movie Captain Phillips. Yeah. So this stuff is, it's a drug, and these people take it. It's an alkaloid. Here it is.

Caffeinone, or it's an amphetamine. Amphetamine-like stimul stimulant which is said to cause Excitement loss of appetite and euphoria And so these guys take this they get Jacked on this cat K-H-A-T And um they would go out And fucking kidnap people

Well that's the thing too you know I mean my initial reaction when I said Except Somali pirates I mean That's how we tell history is from, you know, Captain Phillips' side. You know, and that's like the Howard Zinn thing. Howard Zinn tells it from the other side. You know, so let me retract that. I like Somali pirates a little bit, too.

You know, everybody's got a, you know, they've got a reason to fight. They got fucked. For the longest time, they were incredibly peaceful people. Somalians were very peaceful. They, you know, they weren't out there robbing and trying to jack people. They were fishermen. And when the Europeans started dumping that stuff off their shores, they had to take a new approach.

They had to just adapt, improvise, overcome. Yeah. But again, where's that coming from? Coming from, you know,

large scale human beings living in these giant civilizations, creating waste. They don't know what to do with. So some dick hole decides to dump it off the coast of africa because they don't have any say in the matter you know they didn't want to dump it in the in the london bay backyard yeah so they decided to we do that here too you know they they loosen standards so that companies can put more in you know that's a big deal with new york city well. The Hudson River is fucking deserted wasteland. It was at one point in time.

They're dredging it up now and starting to clean it and trying to really impose very strict regulations on the amount of waste that gets in it. And these large animal facilities, same thing. Yeah, exactly. Where do we put this stuff? And you see these trucks going up and down, these big tank trucks full of shit. And they have to haul it really far because they don't have enough. They're renting land all over, so they're hauling it. That was a big issue in our area is the weight on the roads.

Oh, yeah. And so then, you know, and the farmers, you know, they didn't want to be taxed or anything. So I believe there was a compromise where it wasn't a road tax, but they made them have another axle. So it spread the weight out and wasn't tearing the hell out of the roads. Oh, so the actual physical weight on the road. Is that why they go to a weigh station? Oh, these giant tankers do it. And they have to weigh their...

I always wondered why they weigh them. Well, out in our neck of the woods, again, a lot of the roads were just gravel roads. And then over time, they did this thing called tar and chip. So a gravel road is not built... It doesn't have any particular engineering... Well, I suppose it has some engineering standards but not as possible yeah um and there aren't any engineering standards but gravel roads are a bitch to to keep up so they started to tar and chip them so it's you know what does that mean poor man's blacktop so you put uh or asphalt so you put this

tar down and then go over the top of it and i could have a pea gravel type thing with pea gravel stuff and it all binds together and then over time people keep driving on and over time it actually seals it up and if you're just driving over it with cars and pickup trucks it's okay but now here comes you know a big tanker truck or a big tanker uh with you know behind a monster tractor and you know it's breaking down the sides of the roads and it ends up being an issue for us and as as Nate said, they're having to haul this stuff further and further because you can only put so much shit on so much ground and the shit that they are putting out there is liquid manure that's going into these tanks or into these whole facilities.

Liquid manure? Liquid manure. Oh, it's nuts. I just found a new way to torture terrorists. And there's a double standard with it. So you've got this massive amount of liquid manure, and they're not going to store it. They're not going to compost it or anything like that. So right now, we've got a nice snowpack, 12 inches, and they're sprinting on top of the snow.

And just to illustrate the double standard, I've got family that is in the septic business. And just to illustrate the double standard, I got family that is in the septic business. So if they go out, if they spread this shit on a certain slope. Human shit. Human shit. From like holding tanks or pumping out. They spread it on the snow? Well, see, here's the thing, though. They spread it on the snow.

And if they do it over. I love you. If they do it over. He said that because Jamie just pulled up liquid manure spreaders and toolbars for the people that are listening. And see how they've added axles? That's a new thing. They used to have one axle, and it was just too much on the road. So a septic dude, he goes out there to get rid of this human shit.

And if he does it on a certain grade, he'll get a giant fine from the DNR. But a farmer goes out and does it, and it's like, eh. Human shit? A farmer can dump human shit? No, no, no. A farmer can go dump cow shit. And the thing is, in the end, I mean, shit is shit is shit. No, but it's not, though, right?

Because cow shit is just they're eating grass. So manure is- Not in those facilities, they're not. There are all kinds of different proteins. Right, they're eating- So obviously, when the snow melts, a lot of that shit is going into the stream. So, like, where Doug and I, you know, we really value our shit. You know, we keep it.

We compost it. We turn it into something with value. That's a waste. It's going into the water and polluting, and it's a waste of money. Did you ever see the drone footage they did of this pig farm? I've seen some. I don't know. First of all, I think some that you would probably agree with and i agree with and those those people in the

cow conspiracy documentary certainly agree with is that there's something evil about these ag gag laws oh yeah yeah that's crazy shit where you're not supposed to film atrocities that are being committed in these factory farms well this guy got drone, and he flew it over this pig farm, and they have a goddamn lake of pig shit and piss. It is gigantic, and they have these things where the pigs live, these cages, and then here's a guy. He's going to do it right here. For people that want it, Spy Drone exposes Smithfield Foods factory farms.

So Spy Drone exposes Smithfield Foods factory farms. The lagoon is a good word because it sounds dirty. The lake of pig shit and piss. It's like a red color. It's disgusting. Imagine how many animals are in one of those sheds. And they don't see sunlight. piss and what yeah it's it's like a red color it's disgusting and look at these i mean imagine how many animals are in one of those sheds and they don't see sunlight you know it's fucked it's fucked it's not it's not it's not human it's not humane it's not ethical it's not right

but to bring it all home all right look at this it's the lagoon or the color does it just sit there do they ever do anything with it or does it just sit there and bubble, bubble, bubble? What did you say, Jamie? They spray it around the house so it's going to try to find a picture of the thing. Oh, and the person, and they talk to the neighbor? They spray it. In the air? Yeah.

Oh, my God. It gets in the air and goes into people's houses, and I think some of the neighbors are saying it gets in their house, and their house and they can't even breathe and they need to leave the area. There's a fear factor thing. Can we hear this guy? Former pig factory owner. Let me hear this guy. Come on, Donald Webb. Something wrong? There's no sound? You can just see the way it's moving within the facility there too. Oh, there's an issue with the computer. Strange. Yeah, man, it's dark. It's the way it's moving within the facility there, too. Oh, there's an issue with the computer. Strange. Yeah, man, it's dark.

It's evil. And it's when all of a sudden these things don't get treated like a life, they get treated like a commodity. And I think, I guess there's levels, right? To people that are vegans, they would say, well, any animal that you would be willing to raise and then ship off and sell, like, why are you any better than this guy who's got these things stuffed into this thing i mean yeah your animals are living a normal life but then eventually you're going to kill them anyway you know whereas you know i'm saying yeah you know that and i i have a a friend who's a vegan and in fact one of my heifer calves is named after her and she's honored by that actually because she knows that that one's never going to be or probably won't be butchered.

Probably is a good word. Probably won't be butchered. But unless she gets a prolapsed cervix or something like that. So if your pussy's broken, you're done for. Cows. Cows, yeah. You've got to be specific there, Joe. So to say that there's not a difference is just not paying attention.

But no, I mean, if that's what the argument is, then you're not paying attention. And we can't have a conversation about it. I just think they think that the ultimate goal at the end is definitely death. Or the ultimate result for these animals. The ultimate goal is life. I mean, these same people don't want you to be shooting wild animals either. That's, yeah. Well, and even wolves, which is hilarious.

Right, right. The wolf one is hilarious because there's so much ignorance involved in people's idea of what a wolf is and why there's so many folk tales and stories that involve bad wolves killing people. There was two, I just read this, two wolves, I believe it was Idaho, we can check in if we want to, but two wolves killed 176 sheep or something like that in one night? Oh yeah, for fun. Well, that's the thing that wolves do, and then they're having a real big problem with

this in Yellowstone and a lot of places that have elk, is that they don't kill, like a cat will kill a wolf, or a cat will kill an elk, rather, and he will eat that elk for a long period of time. He'll bury it, and he'll eat it. A wolf kills it, eats a little bit, and then kills another one, and then kills another one, and kills another one, and they do whatever the fuck they want. And one of these guys that I know at Hoyt was telling me about this wolf that had killed this cow,

and the way it did it was it attacked the cow elk, attacked it, tore its guts apart, and then this thing, and then backed off and just watched and sat and didn't eat and watched this thing struggle and try to walk away and try to walk into this river, try to get away, and then it would go after it again and tear it apart a little bit more and then back off again.

They do it for fun, and it's what they're designed for. They're killing machines, and they enjoy it. And they're beautiful, and I'm not saying that they're evil and we should kill them all and eradicate them from the face of the world, but there's something strange about that kind of animal. They're not environmentalists. They're not conservationists. They're not conservationists. They're fucking wolves.

And wolves are dangerous. They have an essential place in a very diverse ecosystem. But the top of the food chain is fucking human beings, period. And when human beings decide, you know what? There's too many of these goddamn wolves that are killing 100-plus sheep in a night. what there's too many of these goddamn wolves that are killing a hundred plus sheep in a night or my friend um mike hawkridge who lives uh up in um in bc his neighbor their fucking cow got taken out a cow got taken out by wolves and you're in in bc where he lives there's no tag limit for wolves you can shoot as many as you want you can shoot wolves it could be your hobby you know what do

you do i go bowling i shoot wolves like they're fucking trying to take out as many wolves as they can and when we were talking about coyotes before and personally i don't you know i've shot a few coyotes in my day how dare you and uh yeah uh but it's not something i go out and go out and pursue uh you know necessarily it's more opportunistic or whatever. He's fucking with a roadrunner and you've got to take him out. Yeah. Anvil. Acme. Doug's just like.

And it's sort of like the deer thing. When I was listening to various arguments about deer, one of the reasons we have so many deer in Wisconsin and in other agricultural areas is because of agriculture. And they are highly adaptive. adaptive yes and that's a really big point because they're not even essentially wild they're really kind of like a farm animal in a lot of ways and it was one of the the things that steve brought up on the show that we talked about you know i don't know if it ever made the air did that make the air we were talking about

how these animals are essentially in a lot of ways they're like a livestock almost. Well. Non-fenced in. Oh, yeah. You saw the trail camera pictures that I sent you of different deer that I had, you know, different bucks on things. Well, you're not going to see that out in Idaho or Utah or whatever. Or maybe you do. But, no, I mean. Well, they're very different than the mule deer that we were talking about before the

show started that Rinella killed that was on a show recently, which is enormous, beautiful, majestic public land mule deer that he killed. Mule deer, they've found, will travel 150 miles during a season. They really migrate in incredible distances. And again, probably for a lot of the same reasons, because they have to. For food, yeah. For food and for whatever. Whereas an older deer gets in our area, at least my experience has been. So the older a deer gets in our area, the less it moves.

So if you have a buck that you're managing for bigger bucks and you start seeing one that maybe has a distinctive antler or something so you can tell it from other ones, you'll begin to realize, you know, that great big one that I shot, I saw that deer for two years. He lived in about a 40-acre area. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah. You're just waiting for him to slip up. And he did. There's a lot of these hunting shows where they name the deers.

Yeah. You know, they'll call this one. Make a book. Yeah, you know, old forky and whatever. They'll have names for these animals, and they'll target them. We're looking for lucky. We're trying to get lucky. They'll have these shows.

I'm like, this is so bizarre because it's in a lot of ways you're kind of farming because they have these gigantic pastures that they call food plots. So what they'll do is they'll plow the land, and they'll grow a lot of clover, a lot of different types, alfalfa, different things that they know deers will eat. Deers? No, deer. And so then they set up a tree stand and whack them out. Yeah.

And I do it too. I mean, part of what I do in my land management service for people is to help their property become more wildlife friendly. One of the things that I try to push to people is that when we're doing things like timber stand improvement or invasive species management or providing wildlife food plots, we're planting wildlife food plots, just not deer food plots. And a lot of those guys, you know, what I really want is deer. But you need it all. Yeah.

And what's good for deer is generally good for a whole host of wildlife so it's a little bit different but yeah no i know what you mean i tend to name them afterwards like that big one that that big one that i killed uh you know we called him the standard um and because it's the standard by which all after this will be judged you know right and uh but yeah i mean that part of the relationship is is complicated, complicated, man. It is complicated. But like all things involving life, they become complicated. There's it's not it's not as simple.

Yeah. Can I talk about meat eater a little bit? Yeah, please. So we did we shot starting this Thursday. There'll be there'll be three episodes in a row that were shot on the farm. The first one's actually Steve taking apart a couple of the deer that he finally shot a couple of deer on our place. And technically, he'll say something else. But during our hunt, he killed two deer.

But he took them apart. So it's a really informative episode about the different kinds of cuts. Well, one, how to just do it. And then the different kind of cuts how well one how to just do it and then the different kind of cuts and the methods for doing this stuff just really um i just watched it and i just just really impressed by it he's amazing he really is so he's so goddamn important because in my my mind on television he is the most prominent intellectual voice for wild game management, wild game conservation, and for hunting. He's a true conservationist. He's a guy who really, truly believes in public land hunting and goes way out of his way.

I mean, he gets plenty of offers to hunt on private land. He prefers to hunt on public land, and he prefers to do his best to try to do whatever he can to help keep those lands public yeah and to promote that and and uh i think one of the things he likes about hunting on my place is that he knows that after the fact we you know like when you were there and just like when this past year and every other year there's a small group of people that hunt opening weekend after that i start letting other folks come in i mean it's our private land we're able to do but it is the public's animal and yeah i put restrictions on folks you can't shoot a buck or you know it's got to be this big or whatever it is and uh and and he's applauded that in the past and i and you know

that's really important to me um because I struggle with that a little bit. But the alternative isn't very good where your land is just wide open to anybody who wants to come in on it. No. Experience that. No good. Well, the problem is you can't really count on everybody to be ethical. You can't really count on everybody to take care of your land with reverence and dignity and the way you treat it yeah it's one or two you know liability you can't let every yahoo yes you know very important very

important like like the the animal that got winged in the neck because he's going by that that the coyotes took a part you know who knows who shot that whether or not it was an ethical shot or and that's just a bad shot yeah and that's that's a big part of it. Well, so that's the first episode. The next two are two people that I hunted with us that I know and love. And we actually did a very similar thing to what you and Brian did. The first time Brittany and Helen hunted was in Montana. That was a year ago. And sort of like Steve did with you and Brian,

the next hunt was to bring them to our place. So they went from hiking and working hard and freezing and not seeing deer very much to freezing their ass off sitting in a blind. And the weather cooperated. It was not nearly as cold as it was. It was super snowy though.

Coincidentally, I was in town the night before opening day. And I was so bummed out that i had scheduled it where i had to be in colorado the next day and i barely made it out of madison oh yeah it's not like i was in your town man yeah i know you were fucked up well that can't happen again yeah we were thinking about cal and i were thinking about flying in on sunday but schedules didn't permit. Yeah. That would have been great. Next year. Yeah, good. I'm counting on it. Next year we're going to manage it.

Callan and I, we made a commitment to it. We were talking about it. We had so much fun two years ago. I can't believe we missed it. I'll do what I can to make sure the weather is not as bad. We don't mind shitty weather. People ask me, what was it like with those guys? They said, you know, as... That's us.

Yeah, that's shit on a stick, which is still, I think, is still the number one meat-eater viewed YouTube video. We had so much fun, man. It was so fun just hanging out, just laughing. And now I am trying to interject some, you know, conservation wisdom into it. It was so fun, hanging out, just laughing. And there I am trying to interject some conservation wisdom into it. It was so fun, man, so fun. That's one of the things about these experiences. The camaraderie is almost as important as the hunting itself.

Just to have a bunch of guys hanging out, having a good time on your farm, and you have such a beautiful piece of land. We were talking about earlier that we use the term driftless. Um, and what that means is that this is the area where the glaciers passed over. They didn't go through this area. So you have beautiful rolling Hills and people think of Wisconsin as being

like sort of a flat area, which it is in some spots. Yeah. But where you guys are at, it's amazing. It's fucking gorgeous. So much wildlife, too. Turkey.

We saw turkeys. We saw... We almost hit a turkey on our way to the airport. There was three of them. Big ones. Right in the road. And that would have messed up our day. I mean... I don't know if we'd have made it if we'd have hit one of those turkeys.

We would have made it. We would have made it. I would have knocked the glass out. We would have put our goggles on. We would have drilled. We would have made it. Don't worry about us. Don't worry about us. Another part about us another part of the reason i did

i know i got the fire in the belly dude you said that yeah that's what i'm here for drive all the way they can take out your windshield though right big birds man so uh uh so we had such a good time with that and uh i think when helen and britney who were beginner hunters, they wanted to have that experience similar to what you and Brian had in Montana. You know, we don't take it easy on us because we're, you know, whatever, women or whatever it happens to be. And I would not take it easy on either one of those two for any reason because they're just, they're badasses. Those are badass women. Helen's addicted to jiu-jitsu. Oh, yeah, yeah.

She's been doing jiu-jitsu with Anthony, with Tony Bourdain. They've been going fucking crazy. She takes it all the time. She's lost a ton of weight. She looks fantastic. So we did a very similar thing. Although this time, if you recall, when you guys were there, we had these blinds set up. They were like pop-up blinds and stuff.

So Steve says, you know, I think we have to have them do ground blinds and you know how hard that was when we were inside those blinds and they didn't really offer any heat or anything so it made complete sense well we built these beautiful blinds um the one that steve built will be there after the apocalypse oh so you guys built them while you were there yeah yeah how did you do it just get some plywood and stuff oh no no no, no, no, no, no. Just with what was there. I mean, of course, Steve had to take some wire and baler twine and stuff along, and Brittany and I just went up where I was.

We would just pull stuff together and kind of make a little bit. How many days did you do this for? The blinds? Yeah. Oh, a couple hours, one afternoon. Okay, so like you say, well, what was there? You mean like wood and boards? Yeah, branches from trees and that sort of stuff.

Stuff that was just laying around. What did you do with the one that I got, that I bought you? Oh, that's up on, we call it shit on a stick, right up on. That's what that area's called now? Oh, yeah. You know what? We name them all there. So I put four round bales on end.

There you go. And then I set it up on top of it. Oh, nice. And actually, the second day, I went up there with my cameraman and sat, and it didn't make the show, thankfully. But I will admit on the air that I took a shot at a deer and just clean missed her. And I tell you, I spent a couple hours that afternoon because I just couldn't believe I missed. Well, when we were there, I fell and fucked up my rifle scope remember and you actually helped me sight it back in because i didn't know that was um we had an issue with the scope being

loose when it was set in whoever set it in um just because we changed scopes i had a leopold and we put a vortex on and when we changed the scope unfortunately it wasn't done right and uh there's some such as some steps weren't taken to secure it correctly and just a slight fall on it real hard how do you guys falling at that hard man because i i was in a second it was off bad yeah like more than a foot or close to a foot at a hundred you know 100 yards well i wish i had that excuse i just just clean missed that deer. It was a poke, but she was standing still. How many yards? About 400 yards.

It was a poke. That's a long fucking shot, man. And I just clean missed her. Now, do you use one of those iPhone calculator apps where you have to figure out how how far it is the velocity of your gun You know what are you shooting a 30-odd sex? I actually had a Savage through some wind Meg. Oh Jesus Christ for me to oh, yeah Savage is the sponsor of the show now, right? Yes, excellent guns. Oh Wonderful, so you have that special trigger to yeah, it's like the one step two step process

So they have a very light trigger, but it won't go off accidentally. No, and it was, you know, the rifle was dead nuts. Yeah. And by the way, I should say, these guys, I know about this stuff because of Steve Rinella's podcast. It's called the Meat Eater Podcast, which I talked him into doing. And now he's addicted to it, too. Yeah. It's great fun.

Doug's famous. Great podcast. I've done three or four of them. Yeah, yeah. It's a great podcast. addicted to it too yeah it's great fun Doug's famous great podcast yeah yeah it's a great podcast he's so good at it and yeah you had the guys from Vortex on there talking about different things and um I learned a lot that day um so anyway I clean mist and um I know I've talked about this before on maybe the podcast. I said I've never regretted a shot that I didn't take. And Steve's like, really? Because, you know, he's incredulous about most of the things that I say.

And most things everybody says. Well, he challenges you, that's for sure. But I took that shot, and I kind of regretted it because it was a long poke. It was a rifle that wasn't my rifle. I would have made that shot with my own, but right over her back. And she ducked in the whole thing, and I sure i hit her i went down there and i'm did she jump the gun like did she drop down no it zinged over her back and uh we watched it uh my cameraman and i kept watching it on the thing and so i went right down to the spot where i marked exactly where the spot was we had snow and everything. And I just clean missed.

And it was a shot that, in retrospect, I kind of wish I wouldn't have taken, especially with what was happening right then. Deer were starting to come to the field and all that. But anyway, and the point was it was from that blind that you sent me after that hunt. And so that's where it lives is up there on top of the hill. It's a great spot. You'll love it when you see it. Have you ever seen those bale blinds that are, they look like a bale of hay?

Yeah. And you sneaky go inside them and you're like, hey, can I get some hay? And we've actually, nothing happened in here, just a bale of hay. Just some hay. Oh, we used to make some cozy blinds. My old man would, he'd take three, four round bales and then put a little cover on top. And you're in there toasty. He'd take three, four round bales, and then put a little cover on top,

and you're in there toasty. I missed out on the biggest buck opportunity of my life because my old man let me get out of chores in the morning. He said, you go out in that blind. He's like, me and your brother are going to kick one out of the swamp. 10 o'clock rolls around, and I'm so cozy, and I'm passed out. And all of a sudden, I hear my old man. He's like, hey, what are you doing? I get up.

I'm like, what? He's like, didn't you are you doing? I get up. I'm like, what? He's like, didn't you see that thing? I'm like, oh, it was too small. And I can't remember what he was calling. He had a name for it, and he's just like, that was, you know. Old swampy. That was a megabot. You know, and oh, my God.

You thought it was too small? Well, I was sleeping. Oh. So I was trying to make an excuse. I never lived that down with my old man. Oh, that's so funny. Because I was such a, and we were watching that guy. You go out shining at night. You ever been shining? No. make an excuse. I never lived that down with my old man. We were watching that guy. You go out shining at night.

You ever been shining? No. You need to do that sometime. Is that like moonshining? No, you go out with a spotlight. You just drive around the country roads and shine the deer that are out in the field. Just kind of monitor where they're at. That's what people use

for poaching, right? Yeah. It's legal to do during certain hours. As long as you don't have guns and you're at. Well, that's what people use for poaching, right? Yeah. It's legal to do during certain hours. As long as you don't have guns and you're not. You can't do it during season. But it's legal. Oh, you can't do it during the rifle season, during hunting season. No, no, no.

That's right. It ends at a certain date. Well, anyway, but what we did, because the other problem with those blinds, as you might remember, is you're pretty damn crowded in them. And I actually sell a blind now called Shadowhunter Blind, which is a different they're great yeah yeah um and so i have a few of those around um and and they are they are great but we couldn't it didn't make

sense to do that we had too many people filming and you know the filming thing so we built cool blinds for four people you know two people two hunters and two cameramen but they weren't insulated then oh they sure weren't and the day before well you were there you know what happened it was beautiful yeah before we were out squirrel hunting in the morning just and these girls were shooting squirrels man just wait till you see this uh that they did such a great job they were so much fun and they were just so into it. Such good squirrel murderers. Yeah. Anyway. And just like you and Brian, man, they gutted them, they cleaned them, they did the whole thing, you know, to the point where I think Helen was maybe a little regretful that she had, well, they had three deer.

They broke down completely by themselves. So did everybody shoot a deer? Was everybody successful? Everybody but the guy who hosted it. You? Yeah. Oh, man, that's crazy. You got a big one last year, right? Yeah, I got a nice one last year.

I filled the freezer this year. Later on, you know, the season goes on. What are the—keep going. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, so we did much the same. We set up, and it was really interesting. We had a Marine sniper trainer. Steve knows.

He's actually from our area there. He came in and talked to us about shooting a little bit, you know, specifically for Helen and Brittany. And I'm just so proud of those two. You know, they take it so seriously. As seriously as you and Brian did, okay, you take it really seriously. And Brian always took it seriously when he needed to take it seriously. And very into it, very respectful, wanting to know about it and all that. And I hope that – I think it comes out in the episodes.

You know, I'm so close to it I can't necessarily say. But we were very successful. Well, I don't want to spoil it for everybody, but, yeah, there were – we put some deer on the ground, and they did a terrific job. And I think it makes for compelling episodes as well. That show's always awesome. What I wanted to ask you is, with all the wildlife that you have in your area, what are the seasons? I mean, I know you have more than

one season of deer so what when does the season start there's an archery season first yeah archery season starts when's that september 15th or the second saturday and in september how many archer do you have a lot of archery hunters come out there yeah a lot um on our place no no no but i'd be happy to have one or two i don't even like rifle hunting that much anymore um well the thing about archery hunting for deer in our area is you know it's a very well but you've learned all this too um with cam is that it's it they've got to be closer and i don't care how many of them there are yeah they've got to be close and they've got to come and you're going to spend some time out there and not much is going on.

But our archery season coincides with that first part of November, end of October, first part of November, where the pre-rut and rut is going on, so there's a lot of deer activity. And so there are, you know, you can call and you can use scents and all that stuff and they're coming in. As you know, it's a completely different relationship with the animal. We actually have crossbow hunting. Now you can use the crossbow not a longbow and personally that's what i use um that's cheating yeah whatever that's not archery that's a shitty gun

it has a fucking scope on it yeah it sure does that's great it's a magnification scope you put the crosshair on you pull the trigger you'd sit it on a rest you can rest it down like you can that is not archery god damn it you can drink beer while you're doing that you can you can smoke shoot heroin shoot one of those fucking things well you don't have to practice with them much yeah at all and uh and it is certainly different than shooting a rifle um i'm comfortable at 50 or 60 yards with a crossbow yeah and i know people can shoot further than that and then i just ethically i just i'm just not interested in that but i am interested in i don't have uh boy if cam was here he'd you know drag me outside or maybe you will i always say that

that bow hunting is for people who don't have enough to do. It's true. And that it takes so much time to be an ethical bow hunter. You're talking to a guy who shot 200 arrows today. Yeah. I shot all day today. I had a Hoyt representative come to my house and we're shooting arrows. I have a whole 3D setup in my yard.

Yeah. We're shooting a rubber elk all day today. My arms are sore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you got to be an asshole. Well, you have to be committed to it. Yes. And the hardest thing for me during that time of the year on the farm is to sit in a tree and wait for a deer to come by.

I've got all of these other things that I need to be doing during that period of time. Not at my work in Madison or something like that, but on that farm. So I'm actually moving a little bit more towards during archery season because I've not had a whole lot of archery season. We've had a couple of guys over the years, but to start to host people, because I'm going to be there anyway. I might not be partaking in it myself. Well, that's actually more attractive to me than even coming on an opening day. Now, how long does the archery season last? Until the 1st of January.

Until the 1st of January. So it goes straight through? Well, yeah, you can bow hunt during the gun season. So I could have come down and bow hunted. When those girls were shooting squirrels, I could have bow hunted. Yes. And when they were shooting deer, you could have bow hunted. You just had to wear an orange jacket rather than camouflage.

Right. But before that, I could wear camo. Yeah. So I could archery hunt and then bail. Yeah. And then take off right before. Hmm. Oh, that first.

It's so much more exciting. End of October, first part of November, when the active rut is going on, that's the time. What's the deal with the black powder? Is that still separate? That's after the gun season. Black power? Black power. I'm just kidding.

You got me. You got me, dude. People don't know what we're talking about. We're talking about muzzle loaders. For some strange fucking reason, it's okay to use a primitive, stupid weapon that you should never use in real life. You put a ball and you pack the powder in like you're living in the fucking 1800s and you shoot this stupid thing.

And here's the thing about muskets. This is the weird thing about them. They're real fucking accurate now. Like, real accurate. To like 200 yards. Yeah. So they're basically a rifle that you can't make a good ethical follow-up shot on. I don't like them.

The aerodynamics are old. I get it. Not only that, you shoot and this fucking giant cloud of smoke's in front of you and you don't know what happened. Boom! Where's the animal? I don't know. Did he hit it?

Well, fucking I don't know. Well, there'd be plenty of people who you're going to hear from about that. I know. I know. Listen, it is definitely more accurate and better than a bow, but my point is use a fucking gun. If you're shooting one of those things and it's accurate to several hundred yards, I know people that have shot a deer at 250 yards with a musket. Wow. So with a muzzleloader, when you're getting to that kind of a distance, what is that really?

You've got a rifle. It's a shitty rifle. Yeah. If you're talking about a bow, if you shot something at 200 yards, you're basically closing your eyes and shooting up at the sun. Yeah. You know, who the fuck knows where that arrow's going? You're shooting 250 yards. But with a musket or a muzzleloader, you can put the crosshair on that thing.

You can accurately judge just like you can with a rifle. The problem is it takes you, like, 15 to 20 seconds to reload, as opposed to just going, if you want to make a follow-up shot with a rifle. Or there's a lot of people now that are hunting with semi-automatics, where you're going, bang, bang, bang. You can shoot a deer three times in two seconds. The thing about the Black Potter is you've got to have your bayonet for the finish. Ah!

The Civil War! Boom! And then you're on the run. Do you've got to have your bayonet for the finish. That's the... Ah! You know? The Civil War! Boom! And then you're on the run. Do you have to have a flint? It hits the thing and makes a spark. Johnny Reb. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, everybody has their preference.

Yes. I guess the thing on my family's farm, you know, I'm the captain, and the captain gets to decide what happens. And so, you know, and it's like, oh, this is the way it's going to be. I'm not absolute about anything, you know, over time, things kind of ebb and flow and change. And, and, uh, you know, for me, well, I still want to, I want to be out there in that, you know, that part of that first part of November, I don't have to practice every day. I can't where I live. Um, I don't have to become, uh, and I readily admit it. I, you know, I have an old

Hoyt, um, and, uh, I like bow, and I'll shoot it once in a while. But, man, 20 yards is about it where I feel like I can make an ethical shot. How dare you? We need to get you a new Hoyt. What year Hoyt do you have? Oh, man, I'd have to check with Shane. The guy I bought it from, I bought it from him used because he was upgrading. So it's like in the 60s, like one of them bamboo ones?

I think it's like a mid-80? Like one of them bamboo ones? Fucking. I think it's like a mid-80s, maybe a late-80s. Laundry wheels? Like for fucking laundry ropes? Yeah, yeah. Mid-80s, for real? Mid to late-80s, yeah. Maybe it was early 90s. I'm sure I'll hear from him.

Why don't you just use a slingshot? Do you have any rocks you can throw? The fuck are you doing, man? Spear. Jumping on the tree. It's just not my priority. And I have a lot of respect for bow hunters who spend the time to become that proficient at it. And then you end up spending a lot of time.

Whitetail hunting, there's guys who spend a lot of time doing that. And like I said, I just don't. I totally understand. I totally understand. I'm totally busting your balls. It's not something that I would, I don't think anybody should do it. How about that? Don't do it.

Don't go bow hunting. It's too much work. And it's too addictive. And forget about bow hunting. If I never hunt again for the rest of my life, archery is massively addictive. I love it. I shoot every day. It's so much fun.

To me, it's a nice, peaceful meditation type of a thing. Do they have ranges out here? Yeah. There's a bunch. There's a bunch. There's a big one off of the 210. It's a fucking huge, long-distance range. But I think that it's a nice meditation.

It's nice fucking huge long-distance range. But I think that it's a nice meditation. It's nice to do. But when it comes to compound bows, man, it's really the difference between a bow from the 1980s and a modern, like, 2016 Hoyt Defiant. You might as well be shooting a musket versus, like, a modern Savage Arms rifle. It's not that much difference. I mean, the amount of power that these things have now and the speed in which they shoot arrows and the accuracy. There's so much technology and engineering going into bows. It's really kind of amazing because it's one of the few pieces of hunting equipment that literally changes and improves every year. And so I think about that when I hear the bow hunting purist friends who are just cackling right now about you giving me shit about about bowhunting which is great i mean they're gonna well there's a real purist thing i'm a pussy because i use a

compound bow they use recurve because they like not being accurate at all they're like they're like fucking hoping they hit shit uh sorry and they're they're getting mad at me right now. Fuck you, you pussy. Shoot a real bow like a man with your fingers. Go and make it yourself, too. Get some leather from the last animal you shot and wrap it around your fingers. I actually think that Steve was talking about on this upcoming butchering one about how they used to take the silver skin off of meat and they'd get the long strips of it and that's what they made their bow strings out of. Yeah, sinew.

Yeah. That's amazing. They used to dry it out and roll it and turn it into, I mean, did you see his thing from when he was in the jungle? Was it Bornea? Where the fuck did he go? Bolivia. Yeah, Bolivia.

God damn, that was an amazing show. Two-part episode where they went to Bolivia and the traditional bows those they went to Bolivia, and the traditional bows those guys used to kill animals, they had these really heavy, really long arrows, and these stick bows that they had made themselves, and he showed up with a Hoyt carbon spider, and he's drilling.

Yeah, there's the bows that these guys had. Well, look at that arrow. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. They had these really long, really heavy arrows. And notice how there's no fletchings on the arrow. And he's got the follow-up arrow right there in his hand, too. Yeah, they keep them in their hands. And I remember on this episode how he struggled to hit the fish because of how the water would deflect the arrow, deflect the arrow, I should say.

And these guys are just like nailing them one after another. Well, it's not just that. It's not the water deflecting. It's the image. It looks different. The fish is actually, it could be as much as six inches lower than what you think because the refraction in the water, you're looking down at almost like a lens.

So it's like distorted where the actual fish is. So if you shot right at the fish, you would never hit it. You have to shoot like below it so it's like distorted where the actual fish is so if you shot right at the fish you would never hit it yeah you have to shoot like below it it's real weird you ever you ever see the the ones that people use in america the it's like a trident yeah it's like a big you know there you're kind of yeah making up for that you know you got some more we have all these prongs yeah and they they shoot these arrows that like. Or like a long spear when they're doing Sturgeon. The shotgun version of an arrow. The shocker.

Spearing. When I was a kid, we used to shoot carp up at the end of the lake. But the water's real shallow, and they'd go up there and just raise hell, and their backs would be out of the water. So you weren't dealing with it. Right, right, right. Yeah. I used to live near um lake charles

in boston and there was a area by the waterfall where the carp would pool up and it was incredible i mean you're looking at like these 20 30 pound fish and there's dozens of them just stacked together and you see them on the surface of the water you know but it's a junk fish to us but a delicacy to people in the uk.K. and in Asia. It's very interesting. People smoke it. Yeah, when one person decides it's a good fish. And the problem was they were an invasive species in a lot of the North American rivers and lakes,

and people don't like them for whatever silly reason. But they're a very good fish to eat, apparently, if you prepare it properly. Yeah, a lot of things i mean you know one of the things about grass-fed beef is um you know a lot of times it doesn't have the fat so i mean you gotta know how to cook it you can't overcook it right that's a big point and i mean you can say about any kind of meat i mean people can fuck up a really good piece of meat you know well especially a real lean piece of deer venison or elk or something like that moose same thing i mean you want you want to barely like singe the outside of it almost and just

and you know and knowing like how to prepare it is is a big part of the responsibility of hunting you know you don't want to have this meat that you've got from this animal you have so much reverence for the death of this animal and then you just prepare it like an asshole yeah like you have to put almost as much thought into the cooking. It's one of the things I really love about Ronello's show. Yes, sir. The episode that I watched last night about that Idaho mule deer that he shot, this enormous deer, was really focused on, at the end of it, how he prepared it.

He showed you how to prepare it and how to cook it properly and how you can tell when it's done and all this different stuff. He'll go through the butchering process. He'll go through the cooking process. And that's something a lot of these shows, they don't even touch, man. They get the deer, look at him. He's a real Iowa giant. And they take a picture with this animal.

They show the antlers. Look at his fourths and his fifths. And look at this brow tie and it's sticking up like this. Or down in Texas. And then they donate it to someone. Or they're in the tower. They're in the tower down in Texas. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of that a lot of donating a lot of donating and this i suppose that's a good thing but yes it is a good thing but there's also shows where they

pretend you know we're out here hunting you know you gotta use fucking piles of corn out there that you're waiting for these animals to come to and you're you know you're just kind of shooting at these spots where you know they're going to be isn't that always an interesting part of any discussion about hunting, about where are the ethical lines. Yes. Because guys will say, well, because baiting is illegal by us because of chronic wasting disease. When you put a pile of corn out, they're exchanging saliva, and that's how it spread.

That's interesting. But you guys do have some deer farms, which is where people think the origins of chronic wasting disease are from. Yeah. I heard an interesting discussion about that recently. And one of the things they talked about is that there were these protein blocks being put out and that may have been – they've never – there have been a few different ideas of where it came from. different uh ideas of where it came from and um one is uh uh from the deer farms another is these protein blocks that maybe got put out and it's got animal byproduct in it and maybe that's how it jumps so is it like a prion thing is it something that's exactly what it is is a prion so it's similar to mad cow disease that's exactly right oh so would that have come i don't know um

you know and i've even heard it uh said that um there are places where they're trying to improve the genetics of the deer herd so they were bringing in you know bigger bucks and releasing them i don't have any proof of any of it so those are the things you hear that could be the case that they are they are very concerned with people that release these animals from these farms out but But there's some fucking place. Like, I got contacted by this guy. Hey, man, come hunt at my place. And then I looked at his Instagram page, and I'm like, that's not even a fucking deer. It's a big cage.

Well, I don't know. I don't want to talk shit because I don't know this guy, and I don't know why. But it's a high fence operation. Yeah. I don't even want to say what state it is, but they're barely deer. There are these deer that have these fucking bushes growing out of their heads. If you see what their antlers look like, you're like,

okay, that's not even real. Jamie, pull up this. Ridiculous antlers in a deer farm. They're growing these animals and they're... I've seen it, man. Trophy. You call them trophies, but essentially, they're manipulating the genetics of these animals. I've seen it, man. Trophy. Trophy deal. Well, you call them trophies, but essentially they're manipulating the genetics of these animals so that they have all these antlers so that these rich assholes can go and shoot

these things in this 100-acre fenced-in area where they're letting these animals out of their pens. Look at that. What is that? What are we looking at here, man? And you're killing that deer for one reason. Just so you could put that on your wall. I mean, I'm sure you could kill it and it would taste just like a regular deer.

I'm sure they're delicious. But look at this, man. So they're growing these insane antlers by feeding them supplements and feeding them the shit that makes their antler steroids, that makes their antlers grow. They don't look like antlers, man. It looks like tumors. It looks like nuts.

It looks like walnuts. But like Doug said, we were talking about this, it's criminal. I mean, Doug's very strongly opinionated about that. I mean, that's weird. Be careful what you say. Look at this fucking antler. Caging a man. Caging a man and having 300 acres isn't that big,

and you've got this 300-acre cage. That's not hunting. That's fishing a barrel. That's fishing a barrel. But I said earlier that on 40 acres, that's where that deer lived. It's true. But you know what? He could leave that 40 acres whenever he wanted to.

If he wants to, and that's a big part. And he wasn't coming to a bait pile or any of that kind of stuff. That's a big part of ethics, right? And I figured him out. Yeah, and I guess that's where I was getting to is where those lines are. Well, this is the hunting that I grew up with. I've never hunted outside the Midwest. I've really only hunted outside of our farm twice.

Well, I have a friend who hunted in Texas at a ranch that has 10,000 acres fenced in. I'm like, well, as far as I'm concerned, those are wild animals. Yeah. 10,000 acres? Yeah. I mean, there's not a fucking animal on earth that's going to travel that far other than a mule deer there's not they're not an animal on earth that's going to migrate further than that in its lifetime you essentially have this gigantic fenced in habitat and their idea about it is look we can manage the wildlife sustainable wildlife inside we're not feeding them anything they live

off this land but we're just keeping people out. We're not keeping the animals in. We're keeping people out. I'm like, okay. I can buy that. A line in a song, I think, yeah. Is that a line in a song? A line in a song.

Put up the fence to keep me out or keep all the nature in. Keep all the nature in. If God was here, he'd tell it to your face. Maybe some kind of sinner. That's hippies, though though that's hippies who want to fucking get on your land you ever hear that the uh that bit where they're like uh the part

about the sign uh the sign said um anybody caught trespassing will be shot on sight you know it's it's like a radio bit you know right and then it ends that's the end of the song It's complicated business It's all a complicated business And these ethical lines Are difficult It's something that you have to think about It's something you have to talk about And you've got to be willing to

Change your mind sometimes Well baiting bears is a big one Baiting bears is a big one Because there's a lot of places where the only way Especially in spring, you're ever going to kill a bear is if you bait. So they have to control the population of these bears because the bears are killing moose. They're killing calves. They're killing fawns from deer. They're killing all sorts of things.

And they're killing cubs. They're killing each other. I mean, the bears are killing machines. So when they have these environments where they have to control the population they allow baiting. The reason why they allow baiting is to make a successful hunt and recently I think in Maine it was, I don't know if they passed it but they were trying to pass no baiting

on bears and the reason why they were doing it is because anti-hunting people were trying to stop people from hunting bears. So the way they would essentially make a hunt completely ineffective was saying no baiting because as soon as you can't bait you can't find them yeah you're not gonna have any success you don't have any chance for any success yeah no i have friends who live in michigan and they were telling me listen

man you could go a fucking decade without seeing a bear in the woods meanwhile they're everywhere yeah you just don't find them you go near them that you hear they hear a snap and twig like fuck this guy yeah and they walk so quiet those pads it's one of the weirdest thing about bear hunting is when you're out there and you're waiting they walk you know like you stand by like a trail where you know they head by you'll see one before you hear it like they'll just be right there you're like oh shit he's right there they're just so goddamn quiet amazing so that such a big animal could be so quiet. With slippers on their feet. They have slippers.

Like moccasins. Yeah, I mean, the pads. Have you ever touched a bear's pads? It's weird, man. And it's designed to creep up on shit. You know? I mean, that's why cats have them, too. They have those pads at the bottom of their feet. Why don't they have hooves? Wouldn't hooves be better? Yeah, well, hooves make too much noise. You can't be

jacking shit with all that noise. So they come creeping up on you, but they're like little ghosts, man. Weird. Cats and bears, they're ghosts. Pad, slipper-wearing fucking ghosts. No. Oh, good stuff. Listen, I think we're done.

I think we should wrap this pitch up and bring it home. This was a lot of fun, man. Thank you. Absolutely. Hey, I appreciate the opportunity, man. I would say a little bit about, yeah, thank you very much. And to steal a line from Ray Wiley Hubbard, the days I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations are really good days.

And today is about as good a day as you could get. Well, I really enjoyed it. I appreciate you guys flying out here and doing this, and I'm glad we could have this conversation and get your perspective on things, because I think a lot of people have... Listeners, continue the discussion, man. I mean, never stop learning.

That's what it's all about, really. I mean, this is all about just trying to figure out other people's perspectives. Work together. Work together, man. Okay, man. Just stay the fuck off Doug's land, you hippies. Yeah.

All right, thank you, friends. We'll be back tomorrow with the great Boss Rootin' and Mauro Ranallo. Should be a lot of fun. And then on Friday, Robin Black, my pal Robin. And then on Sunday night, Fight Companion. All right, so we'll see you soon. Much love, friends. That was cool!