The Joe Rogan Experience - #987 - Ben O'Brien

Episode Date: July 13, 2017

Ben O'Brien is the hunting marketing manager at YETI Coolers, he was also the executive editor for Petersen's Hunting.

Still out? Okay Two one oh and we're live ladies and gentlemen with the creator. Are you the creator of this? No, no Oh, Rye brain. Yeah, not a thing in Yeti as a guy. I don't go that far Rye brain Rye brain Cheers, sir Thank you, sir. The clink the famous Yeti jingle a rambler clink What a great invention how How'd you guys... Well, you guys were just getting hammered and throwing anything in there.

Same way. For folks who haven't been properly introduced, my friend Ben O'Brien is here, and he's the one... He was in the podcast from Paradise when we were in Lanai. One of my all-time favorites. I mean, the island or the podcast?

Or both. Both. It was all awesome. The whole damn thing. But people are drinking those cat ladies now. Which is not to be advised. That's a terrible idea, dude. When I saw Dudley making that, I was like, what the fuck are you doing, man?

He poured tequila and Red Bull into a glass of red wine. And we were looking at him like, what is that? And people... Hashtags are wrong, man. When people are hashtagging. Of course, I do it sometimes just to poke fun at everybody. But I've had probably a dozen people like, man, I tried the cat lady last night. Yeah, people are just drinking it just to say they drank it.

Which is just, don't do it, people. Don't do it. But rye brain is actually pretty good. I can get that. There were some meat, some Traeger, some bows involved, and stuff just got put together. I've had these before. They actually taste good. I can get that. There were some mead, some Traeger, some bows involved, and stuff just got put together. I've had these before. They actually taste good. Yeah. But there's

no benefit that you get from Alpha Brain when you mix it with whiskey. It's like all the science we put into Alpha Brain, all the non-science from whiskey. Out the window, folks. It's all out the window. Well, I mean, it's we've made zero leaps forward, but we're good where we are currently. I think maybe it might balance us out, though.

It might. Maybe it keeps you from getting too stupid. Which, that's an achievement. It's a big issue with whiskey. What is this whiskey we got here? I don't know. Jamie just kind of threw it out there. This is some shit a dude gave us at the comedy store.

It's called Angel's Envy. Oh, that sounds like a... I think angels are really envious of whiskey, though. I mean, you're hanging out with God, you can fly. You're like, God, I wish I had some of that whiskey. Meanwhile, you buy it in a store. What, angels don't have money? Maybe that's how it balances out.

It's got wings on the back. Maybe they're trying to co-market with Red Bull. I don't know. Those are always the wings on the back of a stripper that cries a lot. And Angel and Envy are both names of strippers. That's true, dude. I've never seen that. That's a really good point.

Yeah, the wings on the back is always a weird move, right? But if you're, listen, if you're drinking whiskey with AlphaBrain, you can do whatever you want. You can put whatever you want, whatever kind of whiskey you want in there. You're very open-minded. Yeah, the Alpha Brain cancels it out. It could be the worst whiskey in the world, and the Alpha Brain makes it better. Have you taken this anywhere, this Rye Brain? I have not.

I'm really counting on your listeners and Dudley's fans to do that. I want it to be organic. It's going to spread. Yeah. It's going to spread. The next time you go to some exotic location and they have a ride, like if you're in Nepal.

I'm going to Northwest Territories with your boys on your hat there, the Eastmans. In like a week. What are you doing up there? Caribou and Dull Sheep. Oh, wow. We're doing a film about there, a Yeti film. Yeti Presents film about their family history.

In the Northwest Territory. So like technically what part of Alaska is that? So that's, it's east of Alaska, right? East of British Columbia. It's up toward the Arctic Circle. So we'll fly into Norman Wells and go north from there up into the Mackenzie Mountains, which are about as far north as you can get before you hit the Arctic Circle. Whoa.

So we'll be sniffing the Arctic Circle most days. But it's still, it's still it's still alaska right no no no it's its own territory really yep oh wow same as yukon i mean you think yukon moves or whatever they're all their own territories outside so yukon is not alaska all right we'd have to look that up i don't want to be right i'd have to look at a globe and then looking i'm not questioning like i know i'm not i don't know either but northwest territories is its own territory it's not alaska so who owns that canada i guess really yeah oh so it's like past alaska becomes canada again oh god this is getting real deep i should have known to come into this package you're

like tell me the history of northwest territories so here it is right now we're looking at it on a map so yukon territory sees okay so yConn is slightly east, or east rather. East, and then the Northwest Territories course is further east above Alberta. Wow. So you're getting up there into the true Arctic. So it is connected to Canada. Yeah. But it's also connected to Alaska.

It's not. It's connected to UConn. It's part of Canada. It's one of the right provinces I had it right I'm getting confused I was doubting myself yeah I thought that the British Columbia section until I saw British Columbia I thought that was part of Alaska you could read the Wikipedia it's always really it's really dramatic the wild mountainous and sparsely populated it's crazy that it's north of northern Alberta like Like, people are like, you know what? It's just not fucking cold enough here in the winter.

We got to keep going. Well, they have lakes. They've got, I mean. They have lakes for like a month out of the year. Oh, my gosh. I think when we're up there, we were talking about last week. I think when we're up there, there'll be no, it'll be daylight 24 hours a day. Oh, wow.

I believe. Now, when you do that, do you bring like one of those eyeball cover things? Yeah. I have to. Yeah. The mask. Eye eyeball cover things? Yeah, I have to. Yep, the mask, eyeball cover things, or whatever. Yeah, you have to, right? You have to. You have to unless you're really, unless you can get in a tent and just kind of zonk out.

But it's 12, I think it's 12 or 13 days up there. So by the time you get to day five or six, you're, I mean, you're living out of your backpack. You're carrying probably 50, 60, 70 pounds in your pack, hunting, climbing every day. So, I mean, it's, by the time you get laid down, I don't think it matters what's going on. When you do something like that, how much gear are you living entirely out of your backpack?

The plane takes you to base camp, which I think in this case is not a float plane. It'll be a wheel plane. We can take 50 pounds. 50 pounds each? 50 pounds each. Plus your body weight. Plus your body weight.

And then six days in, they will either come in a helicopter and pick us up and move us if we're not having any luck, or they'll just drop us more gear. So the plan would be take 50 pounds of essential gear and then have other gear as backup back at base camp. Oh, wow. So you fly into base camp. It's like, for me me it'll be like austin to denver denver to edmonton edmonton to norman wells hop a charter to base camp and then from

there fly out into the hunting area jesus christ how many days to travel is that it's like two days and change two days solid of just flying just flying because you're overnighting because i mean they run like one out of norman wells they run like one flight a day or something. One or two flights a day. You have to be really dedicated to this kind of experience to travel. Just travel for two days. Why don't you do it, man? It's like the only way to go, though.

Really? It's not the only way to go. That's douchey to say. But it's like the best, most. When you get back, you're like, man, that sucked, but I wouldn't want to change it. Something happens to people when they do those like exotic location hunts like when they go sheep hunting and they risk their lives like i've seen some video of guys like why i saw some video of you guys when you were in new zealand yeah when you were that was gnarly rescuing your lives with

every step yeah it and it's the whole time too it's not just like oh we got up to this one area where the sheep live you're just it where we were in in um in new zealand with green tree we when you get up into so there's like beachwood forest so you're looking at like a 3,000 3,500 4,000 foot mountain right you're we stayed in a little hut in the river valley and so when you're down there you're looking up you're like oh that's where the tar live huh oh for 3,000 feet from where we are right now vertically for people who don't know is a crazy looking animal that looks like yeah it looks like a lord of the rings or something it really does yeah it looks like a woolly mammoth but just a miniature version yeah really crazy woolly furry shaggy yeah goat essentially yeah like a goat slash sheep but i mean the funny part

about all that is is when you there it is right there look at an image that doesn't even look real it's they look like where we were you would look across these little these alpine valleys and you'd see them it looked like a black bear looks like a giant black bear and you're just thinking where am i and what is that thing god so, so it really doesn't exist. Because I'm not like, you have some really cool adventurers on this podcast. That's not me. When I see that thing, I think, what the fuck? And where am I? It's wild looking.

Yeah, and they live up in the alpine. So there you've got the Beachwood Forest, which is probably, if I would just say hiking, straight up for about an hour and a half or two hours. And is that an invasive species for New Zealand? They're feral. They're not feral. No, they're non-native. So all the mammals on the island, they're non-native.

All of them? And they all were introduced by, and I wish I had really looked up some specifics, but they were all introduced by some other countries. Europe sent animals over there. Teddy Roosevelt sent some animals over there. Like, hey, here. How weird. You're going to want these.

And so the problem over there, to here how weird you're gonna want these and so the the problem over there to get on a whole different subject is that the the people on that island the residents of of new zealand don't value those animals as part of the landscape they're just they're i mean feral would be a good term just of the way they view them to the value they have on and we have like you have moose and mule deer deer. That's part of our ethos as a country, right? And our ecosystem. Yeah, and our ecosystem. They've been here before we were at some level.

And so over there, they'll jump in a helicopter and mow down like 40 red stag on a weekend because they want to control the population, one, because there's no win or kill, no predation, all that stuff. But they also just don't see a big red stag the way we see a big elk. They just don't have the big red stag the way we see a big elk they just don't they don't have the value for it down there well it's also the the weird thing about having no predators is how do you handle that do you bring in predators like if they don't they risk disease and there's all sorts of weird things that can happen like like they have on lanai yes yeah and so that's it right and and we've had we've done that in this country with bringing down uh northwest what's the timber wolf that we brought them down and put them in in the states and that's while that may seem like a good solution it we when we were in british

columbia hunting moose together we saw some calf skeletons yeah we showed that picture on the podcast it was kind of fucked up it's still that thing had just been decimated by those wolves and i saw in montana one time i saw them running circles they run in like concentric sir they just run like a bullseye pattern when they're hunting i feel like the packs and i just watched we were i had killed my elk on the first day of this hunt and i was watching i and you would show there would be a different wolf kill like every other day in this valley and it's like the wolves were just running in circles and i did see a couple wolves fighting that in that trip trying to call them in yeah you saw them fighting each other yeah two of them wow

and it was like 1200 yards away and i had a rifle and i was thinking i was thinking about it but i mean once you see when you see a dead fawn every day you go hunting it's pretty a new it may be not new to that day but new to that week you start to think like how if this pack work this valley for a full year what could they do right and there's numbers to that somewhere that some people have figured out what how many elk a year a pack of wolves can kill before the wolves were reintroduced there was an issue with overpopulation right so it. So that's where I think that's probably where hunters come in. Yeah. You know, I value that animal.

I'm willing to pay you for the opportunity to help you conserve that population. Right. But that becomes very problematic for people. Like when you start talking about wolves. Yes, it does. Because wolves look like dogs. It does. And you don't eat them.

Wolves are another one of those ones. Black bears, too. I mean, I think it's, you don't eat them. Wolves are another one of those ones. Black bears, too. I mean, I think it's, you don't eat them. I mean, you eat bear. I think wolves more than any animal. Yeah, wolves way more than any animal. Yeah. I was talking to, there was a gal at my work that I was talking to, and she lives in Austin, Texas, and is very, not a hunter, but works at Yeti.

And so she's around hunting. And we were talking about wolves. And I just said, look, I don't have a really hardened opinion on wolves. I've not spent enough time around them. I just know that they're meat processors on four legs. They give no shits about anything. They're not just eating. They don't just eat what fills their belly.

They eat, and then they eat more, and they kill more, and that's all they're wired to do. I've seen that in action, so that's all I really know. I don't know whether that's good for an ecosystem, bad, and she just said well i didn't really know that it's hunting has really bad wolves wolves seem to have a good pr agent and hunting and management have a terrible pr agent you know so i think that you know that's that's part of the problem that there's a sect of people that are really glorifying a wolf for good reason i mean it's awesome animal majestic animal but at the same time there is a juxtaposition to that that needs to be told, too.

Well, I think a big part of the issue is that people know that they virtually wiped them out in North America at one point in time, and I think people feel guilty about that. Yeah, well, and then they should feel guilty. They should feel ashamed about the mallard duck and the elk and the whitetail. Yeah, but we brought those back to the point where the numbers are higher than they've ever been before but right those same people don't know how that happened though right those same people aren't

aware of how they just see whitetails around they're like oh that's annoying yeah hit one with the car they don't know that turn of the century they were almost all gone yeah because we market hunting them to hell and so that I think that's there's just it's just education. I just think people need to seek the other side, which I always try to do and you do all the time. Just seek whatever the other side is and hunting is not always the way to go. Yeah, but it's inconvenient because like it's hard. Like if you say if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you're going to get your information from animal rights activists. And it's going to be biased in that direction.

Or if you're a hunter, you're going to get your information from hunting and conservation groups, and it might be biased in the other way. I think wolves are a good thing because they're awesome. I don't not like wolves. Well, and I think no hunter is like, wipe the wolves out. I've never heard that. I've just heard like, what's the carrying capacity for this state, this region for wolves, right? How many can there be?

And I know in a lot of cases, you know, the biologists would say one thing, like, okay, 100 wolves in this area. And then when it ballooned up to 1,000, they argued for hunters to come in and help put that population down. They were still a pushback. Like, well, wait a minute. We said, we agreed upon, scientifically and biologically, you know, we... Yeah, the problem is that it's negotiable at all. It should have been, like, once the wolves hit 2,000, then you start a hunting season. But then the real issue is it's incredibly hard to shoot a wolf.

Like, it's not as simple as, like, you go out and find a wolf and kill him. They're really smart. You think about Tar in New Zealand. You can't just, like, if they're overpopulated in an area, you can't just, like, oh, we'll just walk up a hill and crack a wolf and kill them well they're really smart you think about tar in new zealand you can't just like if they're overpopulated in an area you can't just like oh we'll just walk up the hill and crack a couple i mean that's that's a pretty big feat so they jump in a helicopter gun down the tar that way too really god damn so how do they determine whether or not they should be gunning them down it's you know and i don't know like the holistic method that they use i know our guide up there this year was just talking about he would go to the sheep stations or the ranch owners or some of the areas.

Some of those big mountain areas are owned privately. And some of the areas where they were down a little bit lower, they would just say, go out today and kill 100. And that's what they would do. It didn't seem to me to be too scientific in the way they went about it. But it's a private landowner telling you, hey, this is an infestation essentially. And my argument to them was like, why don't you just, these animals are here. They're not going anywhere. They're not going to swim over to Australia.

Why don't you just treat them like we treat our wildlife? Why don't you just accept them? And there were some people down there that were agreed with me wholeheartedly some people in the guide and outfitting community it's like why don't you just accept these animals as part of your landscape and treat them like that and i think that's that's a swelling opinion down there for sure well how do they accept i mean they just treat them like they're pests i wouldn't say pests because they do have some value because hunters from around the world would go down there like we did. But don't they have a lot of

that is on public land or excuse me, private land in those high fence places? That's basically stag. You can't really, it's hard to high fence for Shamian Tar. They just live in places where you'd be dumb to put a fence. If you tried, you'd be dumb. But stag, that's a big issue there.

Is it because they're so big? Like people want to go there and get a big rack of antlers? defense if you tried you'd be dumb but stag stag is a whole different deal down there yeah i mean it's because they're so big like they the people want to go there and get a big day rack of antlers to their discredit like they have harvested the bad parts of our hunting culture and marketed it really they have um and and i think there's a lot of people down there that would push back on that um on that idea but yeah explain that what that means by the bad parts and not just the american hunting culture because there's a lot of europeans that go there too i think the parts of the trophy hunting the hey come down here and and work on this 500 inch tag we've got it here and they have agents that go around and sell it for 500 inch tag what we're talking about folks is the size of the

antlers not the size of the actual animal itself right that people get super obsessed and they fetish numbers like the score. And what a score is, for people who don't know, they take a tape measure and they go over very specific sections of the antlers and they calculate all the measurements together. And when they do that, they come up with some number. And there's these milestone benchmark numbers like a 200-inch whitetail is a huge deer or a 400 inch elk is a huge elk it is they get stags that go to 500 and more what and more insane and is it as big as an elk

like the animal body size not quite close but not quite uh and and i and one of the sheep stations we hunted with originally they farm they essentially farm red deer i mean red deer and stag same thing are walking around in these they're the same animal no down there red stag red deer's basically the same thing but you find red deer in europe and they're different oh it's the same genius why do they call them a stack but isn't a stag a male stag and hind hind being the female h-i-n-d yep and so but you would call it uh you would call the animals a red deer i've heard it called though i've hunted in europe and they call it a red deer there so i'm not sure those deer came from there anyway so i'm sure it's the same so they came and they dropped them off in the

1800s just to turn the whole place into a giant hunting provision, right? Some level. Yeah, some level. I'd love to read the history of that. I haven't gone that far back. How crazy is it that before they came, there was no mammals there? Yeah. What a weird patch of land.

It's a weird, like New Zealand is definitely coming from where we come from and all the things we have. And we just find it normal that we can hunt how many how many huntable species are there on this um you know on this continent going down there it's just such a weird but in and they celebrate the outdoor culture they celebrate hunting and fishing in the way that almost in the way that we do and they have public land much like we do and their public land is is more revered and more well managed and better taken care of i think than our public lands and it's more usable and so they have all these like similar properties that we have in america but at some level they're just i think they just got poor luck they don't have native mammals to you know to they don't have the bald eagle to put

on their mast they They just have these essentially chamois, tar, and... But tar, they're not native either. No, none of those. Chamois is not native. None of them. They also have Canadian geese that are not native. Did you know that they used to have the biggest

eagle in the world? Really? Yeah, they used to have an eagle called the Haast eagle. And apparently they killed them off in the 1400s and they were so big there's speculation they used to have an eagle called the Haast eagle. And apparently they killed them off in the 1400s. And they were so big, there's speculation they used to eat people. I'd kill them off too. They had a 14-foot wingspan, I think, is what we figured out. I might have exaggerated that. If you've ever been over there, it really is like it's a place where that kind of eagle would live.

That's what it looked like. Holy shit. That's what a Haast eagle looked like. We're looking at an eagle that's literally the size of a big person. My lord. Badass of the week. Yeah. Look at the size of that fucking thing.

And so this Haas eagle. That can't be it. Look, that's Gandalf. I mean, look, if it's as big as a person, like that picture. Go to that first picture again. Like, yeah. Look how big that thing is. I mean, if that thing spreads its its wings that is what it looks like

If you've been over there, the landscape over there in some of the alpine areas that it looks like a place where that would live That would kill you. Yeah, that thing if they caught you hiking You'd be fucked. It would just pull you off the cliff and just drop you off. Oh, that's not a real host eagle The actual host eagle. That's the problem with Google Images. We're getting all kind of we got Gandalf riding an eagle we got but that one with the that one with the Emus or whatever the fuck those animals are is that an ostrich? It's a fox with Google Images. We're getting all kinds. We got Gandalf riding an eagle. We got... Is that a golden eagle right there? That one with the emus or whatever the fuck

those animals are. Is that an ostrich? That one's scary. Oh, look at that. So when did it go extinct, Jamie? What does it say? Look at that. Look at the size

of the fucking thing. There's a dude standing next to the skeleton of a host eagle. And who is that dude? That dude is awesome. Look at him. Yeah, he looks like a wizard.

Oh, he really does. Look at his robes. That's an ancient intellectual. It really is. dude? That dude is awesome. Look at him. Yeah, he looks like a wizard. Oh, he really does. Look at his robes. That's an ancient intellectual. It really is. Back in the day, I was a scholar. 1600 AD. Oh, boy.

Is that what it says? The real thing actually lived on Earth as late as 1600 AD. And of course, it was known as the Tiger of the Skies. Tiger of the Skies.

Dude, that's not that long ago. 1600? Holy shit. I thought it was 1400s. Because there are no predatory mammals in the sky. Six feet tall. Oh, it weighed only 35 pounds? And it had a wingspan of 10 feet.

Wow, that's crazy because they're hollow bones, I guess. 35 pounds doesn't seem that much, man. How do you go back to that picture? How the fuck is that thing 35 pounds? There's nothing six feet tall. 10 foot wingspan. That thing's only 35 pounds? That nothing six feet tall 10 foot wind span that thing's only 35 pounds that seems wrong i don't know like a turkey's heavy like you pick up a turkey in like 25 pound range yeah look at the size of that thing oh you see how big it is every time i'm

hanging around you i hear about these like evil mystical animals. Well, I think the real concern was that the host eagle, they might have killed it off. Like the local New Zealand folks might have killed it off back then because they were eating people. I do not blame them in any way. See if that's the truth. That might be a lie. We need to know about this host eagle. I do need to know. We hunted at a place called Host when we were over there.

So maybe there's a connection. Maybe we're really finding. Maybe we find some ancient eagle skull big old hook bone just see if it ate people relationship with humans you can google that see where it says relationship with humans yeah hmm do do do do do could have been possible do do do do do even smaller golden eagles are capable of killing and yeah they said they kill humans which scientists believe could have been possible if the name relates to the eagle given the massive size and strength of the bird even smaller golden eagles are capable of killing prey as big as sick of deer or bear cub yeah that fucking thing killed a few people yeah for sure. Like a baby. You didn't think, yeah, like a baby.

You don't think that a predator like that did not learn what it could and could not go get. Okay, so the sculpture's goofy. Yeah, the sculpture weighs a lot. Okay, the sculpture, is that the sculpture we were looking at? Maybe, yeah, it was an approximation of it. It says it's 7.5 meters, 25 feet tall. No,

that wasn't 25 feet tall. Oh, with a wingspan of 11.5 says it's 7.5 meters, 25 feet tall. No, that wasn't 25 feet tall. Oh, with a wingspan of 11.5 meters. 38 feet. Oh, okay. That's the art park that we're looking at in New Zealand. That's just a giant sculpture. Of the animal. Okay. I get you. But there's a really

cool eagle that lives in the rainforest called the Harpy Eagle that eats monkeys. You ever seen that one? I don't want to know about this stuff, man. I think that's the biggest... Because I'll probably find myself in a rainforest in like a couple months, be looking up for harpy eagles all over time. Well, there was a dude that was trying to put a camera in a harpy eagle nest and he

got attacked by a harpy eagle. Well, that dude shouldn't have been doing that. Well, he's a scientist. Well, that's what he does. He should have worked in a movie theater or something. That's his fault, dude. That was his thing, man. See if you can do this.

Stop looking at these terrible winged beasts. The harpy eagle's cool looking because it's kind of white. Look, and we were talking about this when we were in Lanai. I have a problem swimming in the ocean because I feel like I look like a seal all the time when I'm in there. Right. And I feel like sharks will, they're like, look at that. That looks delicious. A guy just got both his legs bitten off yesterday in Florida.

See? Yeah. This is awareness, man. Chomp. Chomp. And you're done. So now I'm scared of the skies thanks to this. Did you know that the bull shark swims so far up river that they live in fresh water

and they have been found as high as Illinois? They go up river to fucking Illinois and they're the most aggressive sharks. I heard that. I've heard that before. He used to live right on the Illinois River. Well, they also are the reason why the movie Jaws wasn't inspired by a great white shark. It was inspired by a series of attacks by bull sharks in freshwater rivers in New Jersey. We've got to talk about something else.

No. It's freaking me out. No, no, no. And they made the music. We got to talk about something else. No. It's freaking me out, Joe. No, no, no. And they made the music. Like, oh, it's terrible. Do-doom. Yeah, Josh. It gets in your psyche, that stuff.

Changed people. What would the music be for one of those big eagles? Same. It would be death metal. Yeah. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- See, I can't. You'd be out in the field. You'd hear that death metal music. I've seen too much. Over in Nepal, they have these big things called langargaers. It's a Nepali griffin.

It looks like a big old vulture. Look that thing up. See what the wingspan are on those. But we'd be up on some mountain glassing for sheep, and there'd be a giant thing with an 8, 9-foot wingspan. And you could see, the creepiest part to me was, you could see their heads moving back and forth like they were looking for shit. And they take and kill baby sheep. I saw a video after I got back and I was freaking out about these things. And it's a vulture? Yeah, it's like a Nepali, they call it a langargar.

And when we were there, they told us, oh, you're going to see griffins. So it had a variety of names, like everything there seems to have. But it looks like a vulture. It's like a giant. I didn't know that they hunted. That's interesting. I thought they just ate carnivores. I watched something on, like, Planet Earth about them,

and that they showed them in packs. And they eat bone marrow so they would they would get a bone off the ground fly up into the air and strategically drop it onto the ground so it crack open fly down eat the eat the insides wow yeah how they figured that out the same thing you could just see their brains churning like a lot of times you see a an animal in the sky bird in the sky and you still get soaring around but you could see the predatory brain of this longer guy as it flew above us just churning as it looked around for what to get after well they say ravens are stupid smart like as smart as chimps yeah so you think about this bird i mean this bird's brain the size of what i don't know a lemon but yeah

it's it literally found out i want to get inside that bone. I'm going to fly up and drop this sumbitch and eat the insides. Well, somewhere along the line, they figured a long time ago how to drop things off of cliffs. Absolutely. They've been doing that with goats and stuff. There's a ton of videos of them grabbing goats and pulling them off like eagles in particular. Whoa, that's the longer guy? What is that thing?

That thing looks fucking evil, man. Holy shit. Look at the face on that thing. I think when I was over there, when we were in the mountains, I just wrote a whole page about this longer guy we saw. I don't remember it being that color. It wasn't that color. That's amazing.

That looks like one in the zoo. Oh, my God. They were jet black, the ones we saw. Imagine how scary that looks, but just being jet black. Wow. The coloration. What is that, a bone in its mouth? A bone, yeah.

It's swallowing whole? Yep. Ugh, primitive creature. Just no, like, complete emotionless eyes. Yeah. I vividly remember looking up at some point and seeing these things floating in the breeze and Looking around and thinking that thing is savage. How big do they get Jamie?

What a weird name lumber guy, or how do you spell it? L a m m e r g e i r Over there. They described it originally our guy described as a griffin But a griffin is like a mythological creature, right? Yeah, I know. That's why I was thinking I'm going to see this mythological thing, but that's what it was. I was waiting for something to land and, like, talk to it. That's, like, that's a place in New Zealand.

It's like, that's a perfect location if they ever decided to do like some sort of a Jurassic Park type situation. Well, even Lanai. Right. Four feet tall. Nine foot wingspan. There it is. Wow. Yeah, man.

Again, but look at this weight. 15 pounds. That's crazy. That's gotta be... Nine foot wingspan. Whoa. That's the wise old wizard vulture. I don't want that.

The Egyptian vulture. I'm gonna have dreams about this podcast. That's's closest relative what the fuck isn't it crazy that nature just designed a really creepy shitty looking animal to come down and eat all the dead shit where's that picture from right there

looks old as fuck looks like it could be in Nepal or Tibet over hunting has led to the endangerment of the species it's just Looks like it could be in Nepal or Tibet. Overhunting has led to the endangerment of the species. Hmm. It's just, it's weird how nature has evolved these animals, or they have evolved, to develop that weird look. Like, vultures, like, look disgusting.

They do. But, like, look at that thing's face. Like, there's something about the way nature has evolved, or they have evolved. And they're not, yeah. They've evolved to look scary. Yeah. Cute animals are delicious. Right. A rabbit.

Yeah. Yeah. Delicious. Deer. Deer. Delicious. Gorgeous animals. Right.

Like, if you eat a bear, like, some people think bear are cute, but you gotta cook the shit out of it. Yeah. Can we, let's address something right now okay bear meat is is good it's very good it's very good yeah it can be very depending upon what they eat depending on what they eat where you're at like if you're going in september to prince of wales alaska and you shoot one and it's just been eating salmon for a couple weeks clams on the beach you don't want to eat that thing right but if you go somewhere

where where good vegetation and it's it's well it's got a lot of fat on it, it can be good. I would argue it's not to be celebrated. It's not that good. It is not. Well, it depends. Apparently, if you eat a blueberry bear, it's one of the best meats ever. Yeah. Rinella raves about it.

See, if Rinella does, I've eaten a lot of bears, and I like eating them. I wouldn't throw them away or whatever. So I would continue to hunt them. But I've never had that same feeling of like an elk tenderloin or elk backstrap. Or an axis. Or an axis. It's not in that category. So I feel like maybe we overcompensate a little bit because there's so much pushback on bear hunting.

Right. We start talking about how great it is. How great it is. It's really good, but it's not like it's's not, it doesn't get to that next level. Have you had smoked bear ham though? I have. It's very delicious. That's pretty damn good.

But that's one of those things where it's like, it's smoked, it's brined, it's treated. And that's the biggest thing, right? You can, most meats that you're going to go hunting for, you treat, you look at the cut of meat and you treat it accordingly. Right. that you're going to go hunting for, you treat, you look at the cut of meat and you treat it accordingly. Right. And so there's no, you have to, obviously because of trichinosis, you have to cook a bear all the way through to a certain temperature. So that may be, because I love rare meat, that may be my problem.

I don't know. I think maybe, I think maybe a little bit we could address the fact that hunters a little bit of overcompensated for the fact that people are pushing back on them so much. And then they're like, I love bear. It's like, it's good. Right. But I wouldn't choose it. It it's good right but i wouldn't choose it my favorite i wouldn't choose it over a lot of other meats right if you have like it's bad but like if someone told me you have to pick one animal forever i'd probably say elk yeah and bear would be pretty far down the list yeah it wouldn't it wouldn't make it in the top three or four right it would be all well that's again the thing that you just said like i like eating things medium rare or rare that's where they taste the best yes yeah and so look i'm not i would never put somebody down for

i love bear meat i eat it all the time that's great i just that's the point i've always thought my head right yeah i always thought my head like it's like people like largemouth bass fishing but if you go to a restaurant and they have largemouth bass right next to Chilean sea bass and you pick the largemouth bass, you're kind of an asshole. You're lying to yourself. Yeah. Like, come on, man. Yeah, it doesn't taste that good. It's okay.

It's edible. It's edible. It's really good. I mean, if you cook it right, it's really good. It's a bad example because largemouth bass tastes, bear tastes way better than largemouth bass. We're going down the track. Like, largemouth bass just doesn't taste that good. A pear tastes better than largemouth

bass. Have you had largemouth? No. It's okay. There's some delicious freshwater fish. Delicious. You go to Alaska and they're everywhere. Yeah. But yeah, I'm not much of a fish eater anyway. John Barklow from

Sitka was in Vegas this past weekend. Love that dude. Yeah, he's a great guy. Him and Dave Brinker were there. And he was talking about how I love that guy too. I'm going to leave him out. Oh yeah, we love you. Love you guys. Miss you guys. But John

was talking about how he actually enjoyed brown bear meat. And I was like, really? And he's like, he goes, it tasted like a mule deer roast. He goes, I made it. I gave it to people at parties. And he said, he put it on, like, he cut it up into cubes and put little toothpicks in it and handed it out, like, as hors d'oeuvres at a party.

And people were eating it. And they're like, wow, this is delicious. What is it? And he goes, it's a brown bear. And people got mad at him. Of course they did. Of course they did. It's a person. It's my neighbor. He did it. I love that he did it's a brown bear and people got mad at him of course they did of course it's a person i love that he did it i love that he did it though i support fully support that idea right

but i would assume that if someone like john who works for sitka this is probably the number one hunting gear clothing company in the world and john is a wealth of knowledge yes all the way through and you know had a considerable amount experience in the military I would imagine the people that would come to his house for a party. Yeah would be Normalized what would happen in LA if you did like if you did that God they'd go crazy Yeah, there'd be a there'd be riots. Yeah, I should see the look on people's faces when my kids tell them that they've eaten bear Cuz you know when the kids are like five and six like i've eaten bear i ate a bear it was awesome do they have that like fierce look in their eyes like you just had like i ate a bear yeah i think it's fun to freak people out i do like that sausage and your daughter's so cute

like that's that's a wonderful thing coming out of there it's weird right it's you know the the bear thing is a very strange one and i um I definitely don't like hunting them like I like hunting anything else. And I struggle with that. Like, as a hunter, I feel like coming on and talking as a hunter, I don't want to, like... Disparage it. Disparage anything. But I also just want to be 100% honest about every part of it. And hunting is this really complex activity.

And I feel conflicted about it almost every time I go. Like, not about killing the animal or hunting, but just about little parts of what's going on. Yeah. And so bear hunting... But also, sometimes you just want to... Like, Rinella said this once, and I never understood it until it happened to me.

He's like, I just want to watch them sometimes. Yeah. I don't really want to hunt them. And it's... Yeah. What is hunting anyway? Is hunting killing, or is hunting getting close enough to, like,

shake their hand? Or is it the whole thing? Yeah, it's the whole thing. I think my opinion on that specific point is one i would go back to i always ask myself two questions why are you going and and does this hunting benefit the place and the animal that you're hunting and if i can't answer those questions myself and i always strip away conservation and meat from the first question well you have a very good way of looking at this i think it's very honest i think this is super important is that conservation is essentially a side effect of hunting it's a byproduct right and

to pretend that it's the whole thing it's almost like a weird it's it's a disingenuous approach to the argument like people saying you shouldn't be hunting we'll say well hunting is conservation and hunters are the best conservationists okay that's part of that's true but it's not true but it's not really why you're doing it and there's in the here's the the biggest point to make there's semantic chinks in that armor right we've built up over the years as hunters like these organic meat and conservation is this like armor right right that insulates why we go and i think there's just chinks in that armor that if we don't recognize those points, especially the conservation one,

I think that's a bigger deal. Like conservation, hunting is a tool for conservation. It's the same way as translocation is a tool for conservation. You can move the animal to get him away from a certain situation, reintroduce an animal. That's one way.

Or bring in hunters and help manage the population that way but it's that first question right is why do i go and i always say it's like we've had experiences you and i together in the woods that i wouldn't we couldn't replicate anywhere else like you've done a lot of cool shit and there's some like when you ran down the road after i shot my moose like there's just something about that for me that is way more fulfilling and enriching to my life than any other thing i've experienced i haven't experienced everything but all the things that i've done well it's so primal right and so it's that it's learning about animals you're in the woods too you're also in a really almost like you're a visitor in an alien world. Exactly. And so you learn about these animals, you develop skills.

I feel like you wouldn't develop any other way. So, and on and on it goes. I mean, there's probably a hundred reasons that I, and I discover a new one every time I go. And so I always say like, that's the answer to the first question. Why do I go? It's not like, man, I'm real hungry and I want to control the population. I'm aware as I go hunting that those two things are byproducts of my efforts. And they're always going to be byproducts of my efforts unless I'm poaching. Right. You know, there is a biologist, a state wildlife biologist, federal biologists that determine what tags go where, what animals.

They're moving pieces of the puzzle around to keep this thing the way it is, right? Keep it healthy, keep it stable. But they're also looking at what's the economic impact of that. All that's going on while I'm out there thinking, I got to kill this big buck. But I'm not thinking, while I'm out there with my bow,

I'm not thinking, well, I'd like to kill that one because that'll really stabilize this area. I'm out there and I'm, ah, kill that one because I really like backstraps. I know those two things are happening, but they're almost like you pull that away from what's actually going on

and focus on why you're there. Like why did you go to Lanai? Somebody said, why'd you go? What would you say? Two reasons. One, to bow hunt for meat for sure because i wanted to eat axis deer and two because i think that it's great practice one of the hardest things about bow hunting is just you can practice all day on a target but it's almost like never sparring like you could practice all day

hitting a heavy bag but you've never hit a person right like once you're in front of a person things get weird well and there's a chink in the armor right so you say i practice on an animal that's terrible i would say to that like that that's just another chink in the armor that we all know is happening like if we were conservationists we would never pick up a bow yeah but i'm not practicing on an animal like i've never practiced before right like i this is a practicing maybe being the wrong term like there's something in there that like the experience of stalking an animal is pretty visceral and if you've never done it you can shoot your back or the hell you want well i say practice in in terms of like when

you compete as a young martial artist it's not really practice but it is it is like you're involved in competition so like are you hunting or are you practicing well you're definitely hunting but that hunting is practice for other hunts where you don't get nearly as many opportunities as you do in Lanai. Lanai is one of the best examples of a place that has no predators and a real problem with overpopulation. You weren't with me and Dudley that one time where me and him and his son were hanging out and we were there at last light and we were watching these axis deer come off the mountain and we saw, I don't know how many hundreds. I mean, it might have been seven, 800 deer coming off this mountain. And we were like, what the fuck? It was just

crazy. There's 10 more. There's five more. There's six more. There's 11 more. There's a herd of 20. Like what the fuck? It got to the point where we're is crazy so in a place like that i feel like you you have a a great ethical argument for like you they are going to shoot these animals period and the only other way to get around it is you bring in wolves yep and if you bring in wolves well guess what then you have wolves and these people also have dogs running around on the streets and you, you know, like pet dogs. Those dogs get fucked, like, immediately. They're going to get killed by wolves because wolves want to take out all the possible. You can't have wolves on the Nye.

It's a stupid idea. Hey, everybody. Just stop. We're never going to do that. But so it's one of, in terms of, like, since the animals are there and there's no talk of eradicating them because they have a real value, the people that live there live off of them. Like all those folks that we were hanging out with, like Roman and a lot of the people that work at that place, they eat axis all the time. And it is, without a doubt, not an – it is the opposite. It is the most delicious game meat in the world.

If it's not right up there. I'm going to say it's number one. If it's not number one, it's number two. Yeah. It's amazing. It's so good. Like, we ate it at the restaurant. They served it at the restaurant.

Oh, yeah. The burger. Remember the burger we had at that one lunch? Oh, my gosh. And then the steak place. The steak place at that place, terrible. Terrible meaning good. Terribly good.

Like, so terrible I can't get it out of my mind. Those sliders are insane. Oh, yeah, that's what it was. They were sliders. Yeah. But the restaurant serves tenderloin, and it is phenomenal. It's so good. So why would you like it?

That's one thing I always try to separate. And I try to do it only because I think I try to look at it from someone else who's a non-hunter and is hearing us talk or hearing me talk or whatever and maybe thinking, like, that's a weird part of that. Like, that's strange. And so I feel like if I can say, yes, the meat is delicious. Yes, they got to kill these things. Yes, the local people value the animal because hunters exist, you know. They wouldn't just gun them down because hunters will pay to go out there. All those things, I think, set set aside what am i there for like we were that group of hunters we had in

camp was probably i mean i've hunted with a lot of awesome talented folks was probably the most skilled group of hunters i've ever been around well think about who we have we have john dudley he's arguably if not the best bow hunter in the world world, he's in the top three. I think it's like John, well, there's like top four. Like John, Cam, Remy, and Adam. Adam Green Tree. Yeah. They might be like the four. Of all the people I've hunted with, that's the top four, I would say.

They might be the top four in the world. They might be. And if they're not top four, they're all they're in the top ten. Yeah. Right? Come see us. If you think you're better, come see us. It's a clan of killers. Yeah. I mean, and then you got Shane Dorian, who's a great bowhunter, too, and the top ten. Yeah. Come see us if you think you're better. Come see us. It's a clan of killers. Yeah. I mean, and then you got Shane Dorian, who's a great bow hunter, too, and the best big wave surfer in the world. I've got to say about Shane, he's fanatical.

Oh, yeah. I'd be like, hey, Shane, you want to go take a break and get a sandwich? And he'd look at me like, what? Yeah, he's like, no. We could be hunting. Why would we be eating sandwiches? Yeah. He was out there all day.

Every day, all day. He didn't even come in. He didn't come in during lunchtime when everybody else was in because it was 95 degrees outside yeah he's out there on his hands and knees crawling through the bushes hoping to find one slip and just crawl just forever to crawl it but so that for me like one reason to do that stripping away all the things that i know to be right right in my own mind was that, was those people getting them all together and then like meeting Roman and meeting Brandon and meeting Alec, all our guides and all the locals that were there. Like those are things I, and I learned more about

the quick twitch muscle on a goddamn deer than I've ever learned. So I feel like I've learned something. I spent time with these people that, that made me better at not better at not just hunting but everything well for people who've never been around an access deer before they evolved with tigers so tigers hunt them I mean you've never seen an animal more fast in your life how about that one deer that we shot I shot at this deer it was 60 yards away it was looking at me and I was like I think I'm gonna shoot it it's just standing there by the time my arrow got there it was four or five deer away. It was swimming to Maui. It built a boat and it was rowing over.

So 60 yards away, the arrow's going 275 feet a second. And it was nowhere near it by the time it got there. It's like, bitch, please. They're so fast. They're faster than any animal I've ever seen. Well, with that, let's just say like what a weird scenario to be hunting an animal that has been trained by tigers to avoid you yeah you know what a weird thing so like that that's my appreciation yeah that little that little exchange of hey me and tigers both hunted this thing like that's that's something cool to

me that's a that's outside of this thing so So you can talk about that all day. And then the meat. Look, if you're a person who values animal protein, if you like ethically sourced animal protein, there's no better way to get it than a place like Lanai. All the pieces are in check. Do they need to kill them? Yes. Is there an overpopulation problem?

Yes. Does it provide jobs for locals? Yes. All the good things. I mean, there's a lot of positive sides to it. and again if you're someone who enjoys bow hunting like look it's an uncomfortable thing for some people but i enjoy it i like it i like getting my meat that way i don't like i feel bad if i get bacon from a store i feel like what are we talking about like a as predators like we are predators like you look at you know it's been millions of years we've been

killing and eating things. No humans are herbivores, and that's all a lie. I don't know. I've done some reading. You don't have to be a predator. Look, you don't have to be a predator. You could live off of... But aren't we, though?

Some people. But, look, you could live... My point is, if you wanted to, I don't want to disparage the way anybody lives their life. You could live off of just pure vegetables. You could live off of just pure vegetables. You could live off it. And by the way, there's a real moral and ethical argument if you are a vegan to eat mollusks, folks, because mollusks are more primitive than most plants. They don't communicate as much as plants do. They don't have any sense of feeling. They have no nerve endings that would allow them to feel pain. They're incredibly simple organisms.

The only thing that we have against them in terms of when we think about them as being an animal versus a plant, people think eating a plant is cruelty-free. Eating a mollusk, you're killing a living creature. But that's just because they move. But a fucking Venus flytrap moves too, and it's probably 10 times smarter than like a scallop like they're not smart

It's hard to regulate that morality. It's it is but I mean, I just want people if you're if you're uncomfortable with eating chicken I get it, but you know what clams and Oysters and those things are good for you. They really are and it's sustainable and The the animals themselves are not feeling shit yeah the moral entanglements of all of it is just yeah and like you know we say we're we humans we wake up in the morning and you consume everything like you're just consuming you breathe air you pump out co2 and every other animal does too they just wander around chewing on the grass and consumption engines and like for us to to separate out one part of our consumption and then like

beat the crap out of it even though we've been doing it for two million years is in and of itself kind of weird well you know what i think happened is your mic on that was so weird it was very loud it was weird it was like it was in my ear jamie's jamie's on the ride brainer there he's getting crazy but i think part of the issue is that people over the last 100 years or so have been so removed from where the meat comes from that when they can find a direct connection, like, oh, you went and you shot a moose and then you ate that moose? Like, you killed the moose? Like, you didn't have to kill that moose. Like, that becomes problematic because people aren't

used to someone killing things yeah people that they know in particular no and i i enjoy the ideological conversation i just enjoy the conversation right like i enjoy it because i think it's part of a human condition it's part of who we are and what we do so yeah we should probably fight about it a little bit and disagree because it's pretty damn important like this is an important piece of our humanity. It is important. That we're talking about. So I feel very strongly that hunting is like the essence of who I am as a human and has made my life better.

But I can see how somebody else would say, yeah, that's, you're killing stuff. I can too. And I also think that those people are important. I think so. I think having vegans and having animal rights activists and having to be able to have dialogue with them, it also makes sure that you keep people honest, like people that are hunters. Yeah. Like, you know, like, because we all know unethical people.

There's people that are unethical. Absolutely. Well, and look at, like, I always think about it, you know, if you look at the trend of hunting in the 70s, hunting was doing great. And then in the 80s, it started to tick down. Fucking Bambi. That's what happened. Well, I would say three.

We talked about this before. Like three things. Bambi, maybe Walt Disney. He was maybe a dick. I don't know. And then urbanization. Right. Which correlated with the decline in hunting.

And then hunters being the third one. Messaging. We have bad, we're bad PR agents. Some of them are bad PR agents. Not all of them. People like Rinella that are amazing at it. We're bad PR agents. Some of them are bad PR agents. And then there's people like Rinella that are amazing at it. We're way better now than we were five years ago. We're better tomorrow than we were yesterday. But I think

in general, if you look at that line graph in the 70s it was going nicely. In the 80s it started to decline. And I think 2011 was the first time it actually went up. Oh really? The number of I think it's license sales or number of hunters participating. I wonder what caused that. I bet it's like the organic food movement. There was a study that said

local vores, they were talking about more women, they talked about returning military members. I remember reading the study. I think those were the top three, but I think local vore was probably pushed out there as like the way to reverse that second point, the way to reverse the suburban and urban rise, was

to take that suburban male or female and say, you can hunt and get your food. Right. And then that's a way to kind of reverse the decline. And I think that's probably what was happening. Well, everybody wants to go with locally sourced, locally raised, grass fed. People are trying to go to farmer's markets and connect with the people that are actually growing the animals. And this is like one step better than that. Instead of having an animal that's in captivity go out into the forest. But there's a rude awakening for a lot of these people that think they're going to just go ahead and try it.

Like it is not easy by any stretch of the imagination. That's the other problem. It's the Grand Canyon. Being I would love to procure my own elk meat and killing an elk is like being on two sides of the Grand Canyon. There's no bridge to be built there. You've got to take it one step at a time. And for most people, they don't have time for that. They don't have the want to do that.

So I would say, what is it, like 14 million hunters in the world or something like that? Or in our country. in our country, how many non-hunters who don't either have the wherewithal to get educated or want to, or just don't fall into the anti-hunter side, like the agnostic crowd, how many of those are there out there? Right. I don't know. But it's hundreds of millions of people, or there's a lot of them. Well, urbanization, one of the things it's done, just careers, just careers in cities.

It's eliminated almost all of your free time. Yeah. And if you wanted to go out and procure your own meat, first of all, if you want to do it with a rifle, that's going to take a tremendous amount of time. Absolutely. But if you want to do it with a bow, multiply that by a factor of like maybe five or ten. Maybe ten. Ten is probably pretty honest. Honestly.

And then you're talking about one of the hardest pieces is access, right? Right. So even if you get with John Dudley and you learn how to be a great archer and you understand that in your suburban area there are some places where there's deer that you may kill, you've got to get access to those places. And then when you're done with that, you've got to figure out a way to get that thing from dead deer to meat and all the other things. So it's just so complex.

How would you ever expect somebody just to have like a desire? You were like that at some point. We talked about this. Well, Rinella opened the door for me. So you're lucky as hell to have that, right? Yeah, super lucky. Forever grateful. Because when he took me into a wild backcountry Montana deer hunt.

Yeah, you got kicked in the nuts on the first deer hunt. In the Missouri breaks in October, 9 degrees out, freezing your dick off every night in a tent. It seems like lifeless Steve Rinella. That's kind of what it's like. Oh, he loves it. He loves suffering. He loves it.

But I love that he loves it. He's as legit as they come. He really is. I think that's it, right? There is just this big gap, and my father got me into it, but my brother doesn't hunt, but I think he has respect for it and understands what's going on, but he just

I think at the time that I was introduced to hunting, my brother was more interested in going out with his friends, and Saturday mornings were not for getting up early, and so we're essentially the same person, but I just went this way, and he didn't go that way. Right.

So it's a weird, so you could be in the same house with somebody and go a different way. But Rinaldo has a real good way of looking at it too. He's like, I don't expect people to go out and get rid of their own sewage. Why should I expect them to go out and hunt their own food? Like you don't have to. Well, and he's, I think he probably said this at some point um or somebody smart did it was like i choose i believe it i choose to for meat to be the one thing that i grabbed a hold of to bring into my to my skill set right i don't knit my own clothes i don't i don't make my own shoes

i don't build my own houses you know we were just looking at some construction stuff a little bit earlier i'm like dude i don't what, what? Yeah, what are they doing? What are they doing? Yeah. I couldn't do that. I just picked this one thing because it's also part of my passion. So you couldn't just ask someone who's a construction worker to go hunt, get some meat. I know you have a desire for that.

So that's just another hard part about hunting. And non-hunters, by proxy, are essential to hunting always in industry and opinion. And because we could legislate ourselves out of being able to hunt. That could happen. Hunting is a privilege, man. That's not a right in a lot of ways. And so that's another whole nother can of worms. But it could go away.

Yeah, I think the issue is that so many people are opposed to it because they're so removed from the realities of the wild and they just feel some sort of moral superiority by either not eating meat entirely or by not killing their own meat. They're not killing their own meat is really ridiculous. Like my wife was having a conversation with someone, uh, they were out to dinner with a bunch of people while I was on an elk hunt. And, um, the guy was eating a steak a guy from England, in England they don't hunt or they do hunt, they use like foxes

and horses and shit they wear like tweed pussies sorry England, we love you this guy is carving a steak and my wife goes he's actually out elk hunting and the guy goes, he hunts? that's deplorable the guy said that's deplorable while he's carving a steak

i was saying something the other day like and i got i got a lot of like people were looking at me like i was weird at work uh one of my buddies at work was eating a chicken sandwich from chick-fil-a and i look on the bag and there's a cartoon chicken on the bag and in my mind i'm like that's like building a swimming pool by the lake it's fucking weird and irony that that we're like saying hey i'm eating a chicken but here's a cartoon version of it so we can celebrate the building a swimming pool by the lake. It's fucking weird and irony that we're like saying, hey, I'm eating a chicken, but here's a cartoon version of it so we can celebrate the fact that we just murdered this chicken and we fried it up.

That doesn't make sense. Like a swimming pool by the lake is probably smart because it's parasites in the lake. The rye brain's wearing off. Time for a refill. But I know what you mean. It is weird that we As long as you know what I mean. We definitely like to cartoonize these weird... Is that a word?

Not really. Cartoonize? Personalize? No. Well, anthropomorphize is you take an animal and you give it human characteristics. Personify? No. Cartoonification.

Is that a word? Let's just go with it. Just turning it into a fucking cartoon. We'll create drinks. We'll do what we want. A sweet little cutie pie when really a chicken is a ruthless little fucking dinosaur that lays eggs for you every day. But is it weird to be eating a chicken and like there is on the bag where that chicken

came from. Yeah. It's like a picture of the chicken. Right. It's kind of a, seems like a weird way to handle it. Oh, it is weird. But we like cartoons. People love cartoons.

Well, that's like the personification of animals, I think, is part of the bear situation. Yes. Because my kid, my son's nine months old, and from before he was born until now, there's cartoon bears everywhere, and there's like this personification

of these cute little creatures that come along with being a little baby. Right. And then, and then you look at so many, uh, Pixar and DreamWorks films that like personify animals. Yeah. I think that's, I mean, it's, there's some indoctrination into that, right? There has to be.

There is because in those, those magazines or rather those movies and books, even those animals are never like eating each other. Yeah. The bear, poooh Bear never goes out. I mean, if like, if fucking, if Yogi killed a hiker, you know, if a hiker fucked up on one of the episodes of Yellowstone and just took a wrong turn. That's the funniest shit I've heard in a long time. And Yogi's like eating his rib cage.

A bunch of people show up. Like Pooh Bear and Yogi are just fucking going at it just ripping it apart eating cubs yeah eating some dude asshole first while he's screaming and swatting at it with his fucking hiking sticks and they're playing the circle of life in the background

yeah I feel like there's some indoctrination and maybe that's what happens. I just don't know. I have no idea why bears get this thing because bears are around. It's not like there aren't bears around. They're in almost all states, aren't they?

Yeah, but what it is is people that don't experience them firsthand, and when they do experience them firsthand, usually they're in their car like, look, a bear, and they drive by. My friend Tommy. That one bear that was walking on its hind legs and that was cute oh that one that had a broken front paw so that bear they called them like petals or something like that yeah there was um my friend tommy who lives in connecticut sent me a picture of these bears that were in the middle of the street duking it out uh in connecticut

like they're invading connecticut now and they don't have any pressure. So here's the thing about bear hunting as opposed to anything else. Like California is weird in that they don't hunt mountain lions. But what's good about that is California has very little deer. Now it's not good if you like to hunt deer, but it is good if you like to drive down the street and not slam into fucking deer Like Iowa doesn't have mountain lions But they do have a shit ton of deer

And when you drive late at night in Iowa You gotta have your foot on the gas But ready to hit that fucking brake at any second You just get the ranch hand grill guard And you just plow them Mad Max grill People like everywhere you look In like Iowa and Montana

These people have pickup trucks With these battering ram Front grill things Well how many deer did we kill in Lanai Were you in any of the deer We must have hit With a car? Oh yeah with Brandon's truck

I think we hit at least two or three deer Did you? While we were in Lanai We were there for five days We never hit any Roman's a better driver than Brandon He must be That's what's going on Brandon if you're listening We never hit any Hands on ten and. We were there for five days. We never hit any. Roman's a better driver than Brandon. He must be. That's what's going on.

Brandon, if you're listening. We never hit any. Hansel 10-2. We didn't even hit one. Yeah, we hit multiple. But they were telling me about them. They were like, people just slam into them all over the place out there. So there you are. I'm sure the insurance industry would really enjoy less deer.

Well, in Camstown last year, a guy died because a guy in front of him hit a deer. Oh, right. And the deer flew through the air and went through his windshield and brained him. Oh, that's poor luck. Yeah. That's a shit luck. Do you hear a story like that? You're like, I would've ducked. Do you hear that?

You're like, psh, I would've ducked. That guy's a pussy. I'd have been like, I don't, no, in the moment. People think stupid shit like that, right? In the moment, I would've been driving my car and I would've seen this deer flying through there, and I'd be like, well, it was a good run. There's nothing I can do about an airborne deer. That's just bad luck.

Yeah, 150-pound black tail. Yeah. Hurling through the air. What the hell? Antlers and hooves. Yeah, I'd have been like, well, it was, I lived all these years without this happening.

That was lucky. That's probably more lucky, right? Yeah. Yeah. But that's, I mean, you know,

you start to like break down those things, like more animals, less animals, the value of them and all these things. What a complex freaking thing to have to figure out. I always just get more. You read the more you jump in, the more you go. Going to New Zealand, going to Northwest Territories, going to Nepal. You go to these places and you just realize that everybody has the same essential problem.

How do we cohabitate? How do we live with these things that we were in some ways meant to consume? Like there's evidence of 2 million years ago in Tanzania, humans, early humans hunting. And so 100,000 generations of people have lived on the hunter-gatherer diet. Then you had the industrial revolution, a couple of generations of generations of people were introduced to a new diet. And then the last couple generations, you have processed foods. And so everywhere that I've ever been, you find people struggling with that thing. It's just not us in America.

Right, but you can exist on a plant-based diet. I mean, I know a lot of people that do it. Absolutely. It can be done. And I'm sure in those 100,000 generations, there was plenty of people that didn't exist on the hunter-gatherer diet alone, but the majority of humans... I wonder how many there were, honestly, because I feel like people were just

really super opportunistic back then. I mean, if you were just trying to survive and struggle, I don't think you could say, like, hey, I don't want to eat that rabbit, because I feel bad. No, that rabbit is the way I live. And then you have to wear its pelt, and that's a different deal. I was writing a piece one time,

and I got into reading about these basket weaver people that were in Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, which is really close to Vegas. And you should go if you've never been up there. Basket weavers? Yeah, basket maker or basket weaver people are they like native americans yeah they were essentially a roving band of nomadic hunters um i can't think of the year you probably look it up and find it but there was different

generations of this essentially roving band of tribes in in that area next time you're in vegas it's like an hour drive north there's a bunch of petroglyphs there that depict, like, deities and sheep and all these different things there. And you could just go visit them? Oh, yeah. You know what's fucked up about those petroglyphs, man? They're not protected. Like, there's a ranch in Texas that a buddy of mine went to, and he's like, you could just go over there and touch these things, and they might be 5,000 years old. I did that when my wife and I went up there.

You could have had a can of spray paint. They weren't shit. How fucked up is that? It's strange. It's strange that you wouldn't find a way, but also probably, yeah, it's probably okay because it's a natural occurring, you know, it's a natural place. You don't want to put fences up or have a guard standing there. No.

I mean, it's actually pretty badass that no one's fucked with it so far. Well, and so you go up there and you see these things and you're like, holy crap. So I started reading a little bit about those people and they were part of a nomadic band of hunters, gatherers that lived in caves and essentially followed desert bighorn sheep, much like Indians of the Plains followed buffalo. So they essentially followed these things

and into this valley. Eventually the Anasazi Indians move in, they start cultivating the land and planting crops. And you get this like, oh my gosh, agriculture and hunting, which one is better? What do we do? And so the whole story of that interaction is interesting to me because it's kind of the evolution of our culture, right? Hunting has created this social structure, ways for us to communicate it's created all these things ways for our body to grow and expand as we were you know early humans ways for our brain to expand and grow and function differently and then you have this like oh it's a lot easier to plant

crops in the ground than it is to go kill a sheep right guys right anybody is this easier so then you get into this weird thing about what do we do now? And so I think their story was very much like the Anasazi Indians. They go in and they cultivate this area, and as long as they can grow crops, that's what they did. So this nomadic band of hunters kind of settled in this area. Wow. I'm sure they still hunted to get meat because they have to because you can't grow a whole year's worth of food for a valley like that.

But I think agriculture kind of won out a little bit in that scenario. And as it would, it's an easier way to live. Yeah. It's an evolutionary easier way to live. I mean, the whole thing is filling your belly. That's the whole thing is filling your belly. That's the whole thing. And everything you can do to do it, whether it's with deer or whether it's with corn or whether it's with tomatoes or whatever you can grow. And you just have to eat. I mean, that's the whole picture of staying alive back then.

That's not our whole picture today. So that's where it gets really complicated. And that's where I think that hunters have done a really good job over the last X amount of years describing to people, like, if you're going to eat meat, this is the most ethical, the most cruelty-free, and the most natural way to do it. And you're talking about an animal that literally, like, okay, here's a perfect example. That deer, that mule deer that you're looking at right here, that deer had no idea I was alive until it died. And it died instantly. It was boom, one shot. It dropped right where I shot it, and that's it. And then it becomes steak.

And it becomes delicious food that we ate. And that's way better than any other animal that you're ever going to buy in a store. I don't care if you're talking about farm raised, grass fed, you know, locally sourced. I feel like your evolution as a hunter has been accelerated more than most probably because that's how you do everything.

But you went from when I first, we first hunted in British Columbia was three, three years ago. Yeah. So where you are now, I mean, you've evolved in this, like what you see is hunting and in our community and in our world and doing different things um and in some ways you evolve from when

i was a kid we just shot deer oh here's a spike here's a four point shoot this deer and that was a great day we drag it off and eat it and it's great now i understand way more about what i was doing then and what i'm doing now and i think think what hunters we need to be cognizant of and comfortable with is you change. Your sensibilities change over time. You don't become a trophy hunter. You're not a trophy hunter, but you do appreciate the difference between a small antlered animal and a large one in terms of its maturity and how awesome it is to see a 380-inch elk or a 200-inch deer. Your pursuit is different than it was when we shot that moose.

It is also, but also part of the pursuit that's different is that I understand that the benefit of going after mature animals is if you're getting a mature deer, you're talking about a deer that's five years old. That deer has had five breeding seasons, has spread its genes, and by killing it, you're going to give a chance to the younger bucks that are coming up to breed. So it's done its part. It's spread its genes.

It's created its progeny, and now you'll take it out of the mix. And this is the right way to do it because then you ensure a healthy herd. Especially for bear, that's the big argument. You want to take out the dominant males because the dominant males actually eat the cubs marauders of animals that's the craziest part about it is by shooting a boar

you're going to save the lives of many bear in many ways it's kind of a catch 22 because you're talking about controlling populations isn't it a catch 22 that a younger deer tastes better yeah and so like you're out there like i really love access to your meat but to and when we're over there they're like we have certain call bucks and there's certain things you want to shoot it's like i really love access to your and if i was out there just for

meat i would have shot the youngest probably not the youngest but i would have picked a certain age group yeah but i'll tell you here's the argument against that with access deer that deer i shot was not young that was a big ass deer and that fucking thing's delicious delicious like if they're better than that when they're younger i don't even need that it's a fact that a younger animal is more tender and is a better better cut of meat than an older animal for sure in most cases it's not all cases but yeah but that's that's the general that giant elk that i shot where you saw the antlers? They're all delicious.

That's amazing. I've been eating that thing for eight months now. It's fantastic. Yeah, I do the same thing. Elk is great no matter what. Yeah. Even a seven-year-old elk. Yeah, you're talking about two animals that it'd be hard to mess it up.

Yeah. But in general, that's the fact of the matter, right? See, I don't like that argument, though. You know why I don't like that argument? I don't mind chewy meat, and I like eating what I kill. So it feels good to me on top of it tasting good. If I eat a deer that's a six-year-old deer, there's two things going on there. One, there's a satisfaction that I know that a six-year-old deer is very difficult to hunt.

Yes. So most of the places where you hunt, other people are hunting as well. A six-year-old deer has seen people to hunt. Yes. You know, so most of the places where you hunt, other people are hunting as well. A six-year-old deer has seen people that are hunting deer, period. That's right. So that deer is going to be on point. That's a tough deer to kill. So by killing that deer, you get extra satisfaction. That's one.

And then on two, you're eating this animal that you have this connection with, so it tastes good because of that. And I like meat that tastes like meat. I don't want filet mignon. I like a deer steak. It's the best. A sirloin from a mule deer. I'd prefer that.

Well, I would say if you took conservation and organic meat, right? And you said, I understand both those principles. I'm going hunting. Everything's great. You're shooting that six-year-old m organic meat, right, and you said, I'm going for, I understand both those principles. I'm going hunting. Everything's great. You're shooting that six-year-old mule deer, right? If you remove conservation, you're probably not going to shoot that six-year-old mule deer. Right. Because you're going to get a younger deer that's easier to kill, more tender, more delicious.

You're going to shoot that. Right. You know Eduardo Garcia, the chef in Montana? Yeah. Awesome dude. He gets shit from other hunters because he'll shoot a spike on purpose. He's like, look, I'm here for the meat, guys. He goes, I'm grocery shopping.

That should be, in general, that should be okay. But there's principles that say like shooting a mature animal is more beneficial to the herd. So that's yet another complexity that we should all just say like, man, this is here. And we just got to continue to talk about it. That's yet another complexity that we should all just say, like, man, this is here, and we just got to continue to talk about it. That's important. I think the way you approach it is very important because you're entirely honest about the good and the bad and the bear thing. You know, it's like it's not the best meat.

It's good meat. It's good. But it's not as good as elk. Yeah, I'm not going to stand up and be like, hey, pussies, eating a bear is the best thing ever. It's not. Some people love it, though. I don't know if they're telling the truth they're telling the truth but it's just i'm just i i would assure

them if they would dabble in some other meats they'll find one that's better i i'm pretty sure well i guess it depends entirely about the way they preserve it prepare it right but the thing about there's an argument for hunting bears is different than the argument for hunting any other animal because you do eat them and you need to kill them because they don't have a natural predator the problem with bears is like especially like we went in alberta jesus christ they are everywhere people who think there's a shortage of bears need to go to alberta there people that want to have one of those experiences where you walk away from that and be like did i just do that yeah are there 20 fucking bears hanging out over here?

I'm sitting there with Cam. Like, I wish we could get Cam. Call Cam. Cam, please text in. He's at work right now. Quit your job, Cam. Quit your job, Cam. I've been telling you for years.

Quit your job. You're too cool to have a nine to five. He's got a seven to five. Oh, my Lord. Takes two hours lunch to go work out and run the mountains. Well, that's... Savagery. It is savagery. He does pretty good for seven to five. It's goddamn savage I gotta do my I gotta get my ass together. He's a legit savage I know well every time I'm complaining about anything I think about cam haines getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning to run

Think about that like 198th mile 205th He's gonna do 234 this summer it only gets worse my dad was an ultramarathon runner growing up and it just gets worse it's like smoking crack oh they just get deeper and deeper into how much they can endure that's probably a terrible analogy but

dude I'm scared of it because I keep running further and further distances I'm like what am I doing and I'm doing it more and more often what am I doing you're feeling the runner's high well it's a little bit of that but it's also like I feel improvement and I'm doing it more and more often. What am I doing? You're feeling the runner's high. Well, it's a little bit of that, but it's also like I feel improvement, and I'm an improvement junkie. Yeah, I feel you on that.

I know that I can keep – I'm pushing further. I'm going further distances. I feel better when I hit the top of the hill. Yeah. Well, my dad, like when I was a kid, I remember my dad just being, you know, a regular – he must have been mid-40s maybe, late 40s, and he mowed. We had like a fairly late 40s and he mowed we had like a fairly small backyard and he mowed a little circle and he would go out after working his jeans and his loafers and like jog around this circle and it was very good like i remember looking out there being like

what are you doing man how big was the yard it was like maybe an acre i don't know it wasn't very big and he was running like just little circles in this yard. Let me get to the end of the story. You'll get it eventually. But that was his way to run. Right. And so after a while, he started running, you know, got running shoes and started to get into the actual sport of running. And then it seems to me, like, three or four years later, he was like,

I think I'm going to run this 50 mile race in the mountains of Maryland. JFK 50 mile. And had he run marathons? No. No. So 50 mile race is like what? It was not like. Six hours, seven hours if you're in really good shape.

Eight or nine hours, I think. Eight or nine, I think, when he started. Or maybe 10. I think 12 was like the cutoff. Isn't it interesting like eight hours for 50 for 100 it's 24 of course it is it's like listen bitch yeah 75 miles in fuck this but my dad used to run he used to run in places it was like the jfk 50 miles up over this mountain it's not like i remember he used to tell me stories of, like, people falling and, like, busting themselves all up on these rocky cliff trails.

And he would come in, and this is going to make my dad sound weird. He's not. He's awesome. But he would, like, save his toenails. All his toenails would fall off during the race. And he would, like, save them, put them in a little jar. Oh, God. It's like memories.

Did he save his boogers, too? No, no, just toenails. And he was almost like this, like, I can take that. Right. I can take this thing. And then he ran 50, and then I think one time he ran 100, and then he ran the entire C&O Canal one time, 183 miles. And I was like,

I think I was in, maybe a senior in high school, and I had, like, had to drive to the checkpoints and, like, give him food and stuff. So he never started until he was in his 40s? God, maybe 50s. It was 40s, probably he never started until he was in his 40s this guy maybe 50s it was 40s probably i would say yeah late so what did he does he still do it how old is he now he would still do it if his knees would allow him to he's mid 60s now 65 his knees are fucked up but he's still he's he'll still bike and he'll still he hikes all the time now so he still has that like need to push push and he all and like when he gets around one of

his buddies in particular that they ran together they're like old army buddies and talking about this like experience that they shared together like remember that one time a mile mile 94 when you trip and fail and and it's just like they're telling old war stories it's like that's this visceral thing that they share it's really cool you know like he did it past i mean maybe it's like that's this visceral thing that they share it's really cool you know like he did it past i mean maybe it's a midlife crisis man i don't know but yeah he wasn't predisposed to run 100 miles until he decided that he wanted to yeah it's weird right that that compulsion is a very odd one that the need for suffering. Like Cam's got it bad. It becomes a thing.

Yeah. He's got it bad in a weird way. I remember my dad, like he got a knee surgery. And then like- What kind? It was ACL, I think it was. Or it was the scope of his knee. He had a knee surgery. Oh, scope.

Scope's an easy one. They cut his knee open. I can't remember what. I don't want to say the wrong one. But he had knee surgery and they were like, give it four or five days before you're up and moving around. And he was like jogging around the backyard on day two limping around just you could just tell he was in pain oh that must have been meniscus yeah something like

that some tendon of some sort but it was just like you just see this this dude is this is if he can't do this man it's not good for his psyche you know if he can do it he's a happy guy well there's something that happens to you when you push yourself like that where it makes regular life easier. And that's part of the addiction. It's real. When I went to Nepal, man, that's exactly. I came back, I was like, I brought back a sheep, I killed and all that stuff. But the perspective was what?

It was real. When you were telling me how you were hallucinating when you saw a baby. I did. Tell me about that. All right. So how high were you? when you saw a baby. I did. Tell me about that. All right. So how high were you? We got, we'll have to start. We were, there we were like 13,000 maybe, 13 or 13.5 at that point.

13,000 feet above sea level. Yep. And so. It's sketchy as fuck. It's sketchy. It's not something to mess around with, I found. Yeah. Especially on this trip.

So we were hunting blue sheep in Nepal. Blue sheep? Blue sheep. What does that look like? Look it up. Is it cool looking? It looks kind of like an all dad. It's got these like. Oh wow. yeah especially on this trip so we were hunting blue sheep in nepal blue sheep blue sheep what does that look like look it up look it up it's kind of like an all dad it's got these oh wow it's got really um really you can really see their annuli like the the age rings and their horns they go straight out um they're short and stocky it'd be cool to look at them they're a cool animal and it's one of those things where we went to hunt them and i didn't really have much of an idea what blue sheep was until

we started getting into the thing. There's one. Oh, wow. A baral is what they call them over there. Wow, what a cool looking animal. Yeah. Yeah, mine wasn't quite that big. And that one looks like it might be at a farm. Because it's mowed grass? Yeah, maybe. But don't the goats mow the grass?

That looks like more... I saw a very disturbing video of a goat eating a whole bucket of chicks. What? Of little baby chickens. Yeah. What were you watching? It was on an Instagram page. I think it was either Jimmy Jew or Clown and the Homie.

Yeah, that's it right there. Look, this fucking goat is just sitting there eating. This is on YouTube. And what's the name of the video, Jamie? They're amazing goat eating live, alive baby chicken. So there's these two, there's several bins of baby chicks. And this goat is just standing there and it just reaches in chews one down and the goats aren't carnivores

so they don't have the teeth for this and this baby chick is trying to fucking claw its way out look at this watch watch watch he reaches in oh I can't catch it lost that one that one lived but look he gets one here we go I got you bitch and he just starts chewing

just starts chewing like what what is happening with this one Wild Impala fights back as its guts fall out. We're really making the case to be Christ predator hunter Yeah, look at this. No no Impala is getting chewed apart by this wild dog. Oh my god. Do it. Don't stop it Oh my god, but it's just oh, it's in it's in the cavity. Yeah. Oh Jesus Christ, that's like where the bacon is. Oh, my God. But it's just lying there. Oh, it's in. It's in the cavity. Yeah. Oh, Jesus Christ. That's like where the bacon is. Oh, now it's up on its feet.

It's terrible. Oh, my God. Oh. Oh. Oh, Africa. You're a dirty mother. Look at this. This is what Paul's like.

Come on, bitch. You ain't eating me. I'm stabbing you, motherfucker. I know I got weapons on my head. He's like, look at your tail. Oh. Look at this showdown. His guts are literally hanging out to the ground. And it's standing up. How tough are these things, man?

And I mean, I would not want to get gored by that Impala. Oh, yeah. And a horn. The dog doesn't either. Are they on a road? Yeah, they sure are. There's a road right there. Paved road.

Look how it just circles them, too. Look, and they catch them on the flank. Isn't it just messed up that, like, wolves and coyotes, they hit the back legs first? Yeah. They cause that shock and blood loss? I'm a big fan of cats, because at least cats will grab you by your neck and kill you. This motherfucker is not doing that. This is weird.

There's a whole minute 30 left of this yeah oh there's more a bunch more come in he's like that's it that's a wrap oh and they just grab the guts look how much more is falling out now oh how can it be alive oh i have no idea i don't understand and they're just going after the legs here comes another one yeah oh no it doesn't know what to do man oh god it's so crazy we're having some vegan oh dinner tonight there's like what six of them three four five six seven seven it's dead now hopefully it's dead yeah now look at the chunks oh they just pulled the guts out and then there's one watching look how fast they tear that fucking thing apart look at the chunks. Oh, they just pulled the guts out in one hunk. There's one watching. Look how fast they tear that fucking thing apart. Look at that.

It's just body cavity now. Holy shit. Where's the head? Did they drag the head off? Oh, man. They're no jokes. This is terrible. And those guys are nothing compared to hyenas.

Yeah. It's hard out there is the point. Like, if you get hit by an arrow, it's way better than that, folks. That was like three minutes of terror. Yeah. We're going for the vitals. We're going for double lungs. We're going for a arrow. It's way better than that folks has like three minutes of terror Yeah, we're going for the vitals. We're going for double lungs going for a heart It's gonna end nice and you know this is the biggest problem the internet you get from like what's a blue sheep to that shit? Yeah, well you can go way deeper than that you know yeah, I saw a guy chop his dick off the other day What oh yeah?

Just for a goof, I was looking at different hashtags online, and I looked for hashtag triggered. I think I might have wrote hashtag triggered in something, so I looked for hashtag triggered, thinking I could find a post that I wrote. Oh, good luck. There's millions. And one of them was this one dude chopping his own dick off, and somehow or another another got on instagram

and i was like how did that get on instagram yeah nobody nobody caught it before they pulled it down look there's no way they can take down everything fucked up there's hashtagging it though that's savage i think the guys were like they're like well we're getting ready to get this done what do we do for the hashtag because that's we got to market it like we gotta have people triggered Hashtag triggered yeah, they have to market it isn't that funny marketing marketing is a big thing right you know what I was reading some mutilation some fucking YouTube not even YouTube rather some Instagram person was talking about

What they do to market their brand. And they were like a fitness person. I was like, get the fuck out of here, man. You have a brand? You have 10,000 followers. Are you a brand or are you just some dude who does squats? Yeah, you can't be like Tuesdays, arms and back. That's my brand.

That's my brand. That's my brand marketing scheme. Working hard on my brand. It's like those kind of phrases. People use those a lot. They won't do something because it's off-brand. That's even an extra level of douchiness, I feel like. Really?

It's not like my brand? I won't put that up because it's off-brand for me. Oh, it's not like my brand. Right, exactly. That'll fuck with their... They're putting out there. Yeah, that seems not like my brand. Right, exactly. That'll fuck with their... They're putting out there. Yeah, that seems quite preposterous. Social media.

So, tell me about seeing the baby in Nepal. Oh, yeah, let me finish. So, you go up there, you're looking for this blue sheep. Yeah, so we're looking for the blue sheep. So, I'll start off by saying that we were hunting in a very rural... When I say rural, it's like six days walk from the nearest road where we were at. Six days were the walking. And I said, like six days walk from the nearest road where we were at it's called the six days six days and i said how many days walk to the paved road and they're like we don't i don't know what you're talking about like we don't know we couldn't gauge that and so we're

in this remote region of nepal the in this district called the rokum district and to say that the rokum district is full of this like primal this primal people and animals, it is really just out their place. I think to be out away from civilization, that was the furthest I think you could feel. I mean, we were out there. And the people there were part of a civil war, nepali civil war from 1996 to 2006 this district was maybe the epicenter of the rebellion there was a communist party rebellion against the government against the monarchy and so the people there are are amazing because they've lived in this abject poverty for their entire lives and not only that they've lived in this abject poverty for their entire lives. And not only that, they've lived through this civil war in recent times. I think we think about civil wars as this thing we go to see at a national park.

We get helicoptered into 10,000 feet, which is this just knob in the middle of nowhere. We hike about a full day to our base camp, which is this little village called Dule Yarsa in the middle of, of course, nowhere. It's like this terraced village. And we meet our Sherpas and meet a bunch of locals. And from there, we go up. We're going to do, I think we had two or three more days of hiking just to get to the area where the blue sheep live so you're hiking from about 10 000 feet and at our highest we are probably 16 or 16 and some change and so the first day we go up and we acclimate we sighted our rifles we're hanging out and we go into this um lady's little mud dirt hut, essentially.

It's just like probably half the size of this room with a goat standing in the corner and a little fire pit, sitting around this fire pit. And she starts telling this story about how right where we were sitting during the rebellion, the government police came in and shot six men right where we were sitting and buried them out back christ and this is like this lady must be in her mid-50s and she she looked like she was 80 i mean she's just like this it was this transformative thing for me sitting there listening to this being translated like holy crap where are we and in the midst of that story they were passing around they had made this moonshine which they called roxy it's just like made in a ceramic thing outside of where we were at and so we were all just drinking and i wasn't thinking much about drinking it and then

we had one more day before we left the next day everybody was sick but me i'm talking shit your pants puke out the tent we had two or three people shit their pants the next day. It was the Kathmandu flu. Everybody that wasn't native to that area got sick. I didn't on the first day. So everybody recovers. The next day we're going up the mountain. We're going up.

We had probably climbed about 2,000 feet. We go over this pass, and I'm feeling good I feel like everybody else was probably feeling pretty crappy and we're going down this ravine in this river valley to go we're on these like two or three foot wide goat trails probably it's like you if you go to the right you're dead if you step two feet to the right you're gonna die you're dead you fall off and you're dead we've got 24 Sherpas and porters. We've got three or four mules with all our camp gear going up this mountain in a string of people, probably 30 people long.

I'm generally in the middle, and we stop at some point after we had crested this high point, and we're going down. And I remember feeling pretty good. I got my trekking poles. I'm going. It's warm outside, and I'm going. It's warm outside. And I'm going. I'm, like, enjoying the view and looking around, just thinking, oh, my God.

And then I remember pretty quickly being laying in the snow. Like, oh, I'm laying in the snow. That's cool. Like, I had no recollection how I got there, what was happening. So you're hiking, and then you wake up. I was laying. I don't know that i lost consciousness but i just didn't i don't think in my mind i understood what was going on like i kind of maybe stumbled back against this rock wall and then just slumped down in the snow i don't think

anybody saw it and so i kind of stood up and i'm like you're okay you're good you fell down whatever maybe getting a little weird. And I keep going. And we had a little problem with the mules. These mules, we were going over the snow pass and the mules couldn't get through it. So they had to turn these mules around and send them back. They couldn't get through it because the snow was too deep.

I got videos of, of snow's too deep. And you're talking a trail half as wide as this table, maybe. And they're trying to get these and you're, you know, a thousand feet down to the river. Yeah. And so we we stop we all stop a second time to let these mules go back by and like i had to hang onto a bush on the side of the trail as they went by and i got back up on the trail you're hanging onto a bush for dear life well i mean you could you had footing but we had we had filmmakers with

us that were doing all kinds of crazy shit, like hanging off cliffs and doing stuff I wouldn't do. To make video? Yeah, to make film. Dedicated. They were. And so we stopped. We start going again. Most everybody gets out in front of me.

I'm slowing up, and I'm feeling dizzy. And I'm like, man, okay, maybe I just stood up too fast. Probably didn't eat enough today. I'm going. We're going. And at some point, it snapped in the room. It was just spinning like crazy. And I was thinking, and I knew about altitude sickness,

and I knew that I live in a place that's basically sea level, and I was at a place that was 13,000 feet, and I've never done that before. Did you prepare for it at all? You can. I mean, there's not really any. I trained. I did for about, we didn't really know we were going to go until later. So I trained for about a month and a half, but not, you can't train.

Like there's no, they told me before we go, like altitude sickness, there's no predictor. You could be a rookie or you could be a veteran. You can get it like that. Like it's just, it's part of the way your brain loses oxygen at those altitudes and it's just no real predictor for it and so i don't think physically i was having any problems but so and i don't know that i had altitude sickness but anyway the effects were i kind of sat down i just couldn't go anymore because i couldn't get i wasn't about to walk on this trail and I couldn't freaking stand up right and so our medic slash interpreter slash uh producer cameraman um Ben Ayers comes back to me and starts talking me through he's you know this dude's climbed everywhere been everywhere

um and is a medic and so he's talking me through a little bit of the situation he's like this is not good like if you're too dizzy to walk no good so let's get some water in you let's rest let's get some food in you see what happens meanwhile up the valley go the rest of the crew to the next camp so him and I spent like 20 minutes just going really slow and I just couldn't do it I was like I can't stand up dude I can't catch my I can't get my head to get back on my shoulders. And so we sit down and we're sitting there and I look across this little bowl in this valley and I see this wolf. I'm like, oh, cool, man.

That's a wolf. Get my binos out. I'm looking. I can't find it. Put them back. Look over. I was like, Ben, there's a wolf over there. And I think I see it.

This thing is laying down. He goes, shit. I was like's like crap there's no wolves here man i was like oh there's no wolves in all of nepal oh he's like you're not gonna see a wolf here basically they don't exist there they don't exist where we were in that district in the in the hunting area where we were he's like that's not nope so you're hallucinating i was hallucinating but it was not one of those, like, you see it, and then you shake your head, and it's gone. It was like looking at it, and it was, you know, just this, like,

what could have been a stump, but in my mind, it was a freaking wolf. I was losing my shit a little bit at that point. I'm like, this is not good. And so then I'm sure in his mind, he's thinking Diamox is a pill you can take to help with altitude sickness. And he's thinking about, okay, are we helicoptering this guy out of here on day two? What are we going to do? Because it's, you know, pulmonary edema, cerebral edema, that's nothing to mess around with. And it was only day two.

Yeah. Well, day two of the actual trip. We were four or five days into being in Nepal but day two of the the trek in and so we sat there for a while and I like I just look in and I remember just looking after like 10 minutes and still it being there like fuck this is not good and so we get up to go and I'm like I can do it man I'm gonna do it because I don't want to leave I want to hunt and we get going a little further down this trail and at this point I'm trying to like find some levity in the situation joking with him he's joking with me we're just like

trying to be normal and when I know that my head's not normal we're going real slow and I look on this like side hill of this trail and there's a fucking baby I thought that's I thought come on baby like I thought, come on, baby. Like, I didn't say anything to Ben. Was it naked? I feel like it was a really big naked baby. It might have had a diaper on. Like how big?

Like as big as me? I mean, like, it's like three feet tall. I don't know, Joe. This is some dark shit we're getting into. So it was an unusually sized... It was like a baby that... If you saw it on the street, you'd be like, whoa. What a whopper. That's a serious baby.

Science should be studying this baby. I didn't get that baby. This baby's just on the side of the road. And so I'm thinking, I'm not saying nothing to Ben, because this baby is like my ticket at home. Like this baby. If I'd be like, hey Ben, there's a baby right there.'d be like cue the chopper right see you buddy right you can't make it and this baby it wasn't like the wolf it wasn't like i saw it and i stared at like i saw it and then i looked back

and it was there and i looked back and wasn't there so i kept going i'm like you know what baby if you're really there fuck you you shouldn't be up here anyways it's not my fault like wow you got harsh yeah i got harsh with the with it a little fake baby with a fake baby like i'm just going man i'm not whatever baby stay there wow so i didn't say anything to ben about the baby like right off and we're getting going and eventually i just kind of collapsed and like look man i you know i was talking positively and i wasn't hallucinating any more than the baby and the wolf, which is enough. And we get down, we get going down this ravine and the camp, you can start to see camp guys putting camp together. And, um, essentially he was like, just give me your pack,

give me your trucking poles, give me everything. And he held my shoulders and just kind of one step, one step, one step for a solid hour and a half or so until we got to camp. Wow. A lot of breaks, a lot of just him and I talking about, well, here's the scenarios. Are you, is this really, you know, is it acute mountain sickness or are you, you know, what's going on? Did you get sick like the other people got sick? Yes. So that happened the next fucking day. That night and the next day.

Do you think it was because of drinking that moonshine? I think we got sick because of the moonshine. It could have been water in Kathmandu. It could have been anything. How are they making that moonshine i think we got sick because of the moonshine it could have been water and catman do it could have been anything how are they making that moonshine i have no i have a picture of it i show you like it was look like in this big ceramic thing probably spitting in it yeah the goat was walking over there licking out of it you know but we all did everybody in there got some level of sickness that wasn't used to that area it wasn't used to being in nepal and eating the food and drinking the moonshine and all that. So who knows if it was the moonshine?

That was my guess. Could have been anything. So we finally make it to camp and we're doing a film. So they're filming me while I'm all messed up. And I was kind of out of it. I remember coming down this switchback trail to go into camp and i remember like not i much like when i felt like i'm aware that my feet are hitting the ground and these trekking poles are hitting the ground and like i'm aware that i'm doing this but i feel like i'm i

can't control it i feel like i could be floating through the air just as well as walking it was a weird like head detached from body feeling wow it was gnarly and um at the end of the day i think what they thought was like it was this sickness that everybody else got coming on at the same time as altitude and it was just my body was fighting this battle against itself so we got back to camp i think i just kind of sat in a chair for a while and said a lot of weird stuff. And they filmed me. What did you say? I think I said, like, at one point I think I said, what's the name of this mountain? Because you've got to know the name of what's going to kill you or something weird, like dark.

Whoa. Like this mountain's out to get us, Joe. Were you thinking about your family? Yeah. Hell yeah. Right? That's the first thing you think about is you're in a bad situation in the woods. Like, why did I come here? Why do i have to be this adventuring asshole and yes that 100 i think i was more focused on levity and more focused on like making jokes and like making it seem okay

right because that's the only way that my mind could wrap itself around like oh hey you dumbass you trained for a month you went to nepal what are you doing? You're an idiot. Right. Like, you got a kid. You live in Texas. This is not it. What the fuck? What the fuck are you doing? This is your brain and body telling you, like, mm, dummy. Don't do this.

Right. But at the same time, I'm like, I'm here. It's amazing. These people, this place, the feeling, the spirit. Like, you know, you got to get through it. Like, if there was anything to get through, then it would be this. Right. And so I got hardened to that fact.

And I think, you know, eventually I had some water and I went to sleep. And I woke up in the middle of the night and Ben, the medic, was in the tent clutching his little medical bag and sleeping in there with me. So I feel like that's serious. And I think they had a discussion while I was sleeping about, does he wake up in a helicopter? Does he wake up going back to Kathmandu? Which was probably the right conversation to have. It's a Bob Seger song.

Waking up in Kathmandu. Then I'm going to Kathmandu. That's really, really where I'm going to. A baby and a wolf. Did you tell anybody about the baby? Yeah, they knew about the baby eventually. Eventually. But right at the moment when the baby was there, I'm like, listen, baby.

Wow. Let's make a pact. I'm going to keep you under wraps for a while. So you were basically like tripping balls. Yeah, I don't know the science of it. Somebody smarter than me could tell you what actually was going on, whether I was just a pussy or there was some actual scientific

stuff going down. I'm going to go to Farker Joint since it's illegal here in California. This is hitting me hard. Keep going. I'll keep going while you're doing that. So, the next day... There's more to the story to tell

there's probably so much to tell but the next day we get up and I'm feeling okay feeling pretty weak I'm still not poisoning weak? like that weird thing where you feel like you can't really make a fist

like achy so we did a little bit of filming in the morning and it was like hey O'Brien Yeah. Like that weird thing where you feel like you can't really make a fist. Yeah, like achy. Yeah. Kind of. So we did a little bit of filming in the morning, and it was like, hey, O'Brien, can you make it up for this acclimation hike, right? Can you go up this hill right here? What was it? Okay. Can you make it up this hill right here? If you can, we'll let you keep going kind of deal.

So they give you a test. Yeah, I could test you keep going kind of deal. So they give you a test. Yeah, I could test you, O'Brien. And so I get up there. I go with one of the guides, Raju. And then we get up. We start hiking. We get up over this rise.

I'm feeling pretty good. I'm like, shit, okay, that was a bad moment in time. I'm going. But we're back. Sheep, come on, sheep, let's do it. And we're going. I think we probably had a five or six hour hike into the next camp we started getting into sheep country at that time and um we're hiking and i'm feeling pretty good and we get to a spot where our main guide mon had spotted some sheep

and so we get to where he had spotted some sheep and i'm feeling tired i'm like that we're going up as we go so we may be there 14 000 feet or 13 5 at that point and um we sit down he's glassing his sheep and i remember glassing them and like okay they're like so far up you can't imagine going that far to get him and then i my stomach just like, oh no, oh God. My stomach is completely screwed. Does your butt start going... You get that muscle, that butt muscle.

You know that butt muscle like when you're holding a weight that you're going to drop? Yeah. That's what I was... Jesus! Let me say this about shitting your pants. Everybody on this trip was okay with it because it was happening. Right. Shitting the pants was like a...

It's not like you're on a plane. Yeah, and it was like our camera guy, one of our main camera guys, Renan, who's an amazing person. There's a whole other podcast about that guy. He shit his pants, i think during like day one and i don't know how many pairs of pants he had but i remember watching him like scrubbing the shit out of his pants thinking oh shit that's gonna get interesting but by the time we got into sheep country we were all okay with like the occasional shart or whatever's going right i think it's fine because your body's just like you're realizing that your mind has a directive that's right but your body is dealing with some pretty extreme conditions and

i wonder i always wonder now looking back on it like how well i would have done if there wasn't sickness and like i had some stuff like go to katmandu and it's just dust and dirt and all this craziness and i had going into it like respiratory issues and then sickness and then visions of things and so like by the time you get in there he's shit you know what really makes you respect the fuck out of jim shocky oh yeah for people who don't know who jim shocky is jim shocky is extremely respected in the hunting world but let's just step aside with that he's an amazingly accomplished hunter but maybe even more important than that he's got a show called uncharted and his uncharted show is so good it's so good that

it really shouldn't be considered a hunting show because what it really is is him exploring cultures in the most remote parts of the world. Jim goes to these strange villages in the middle of Russia that no one goes to. I got all kinds of stories. Last time I was at Jim's place up in Canada, I'm like, what you doing this weekend? I'm like, I fly home, hang out with the family. What are you doing? He's like, ah,

bison in Poland. They have bison in Poland? That's what he said. I could be mislabeled. Not that it freaking matters. But it's the same kind of thing. Right. And when I was – I saw Jim about a month before we left for Nepal. And Jim had been – if you can find the full episode of Jim's Nepal hunt with his crew, it is –

they film – they're like doing self-filming. It's kind of – it's how I felt. Just like you're just a, you're just a mess, just a mess. And, uh, I,

I said to him, I was like, I'm going to Nepal gym in like a month. And he goes, what? Like, I was like, what can I expect?

He's like, it sucks. It sucks. And when somebody like Jim Shockey, who's traveled the world, literally the world, it says, it's going to be terrible for you, little fella. I was like, oh, no.

This is real now. I'm going to be in trouble. Yeah. Jim Shockey has a video or an episode of his show where he went to, I think it was Mozambique, where they were hunting crocodiles. The crocodile one. Because the crocodiles eat all the people that live and work in this village. Yeah. It is so crazy.

These poor people. These people live under the threat of monsters on a daily basis. Like half the people in the village are either missing arms or they have a chunk taken out of their leg. And while they were there, they lost a woman. She was going down there either to fetch water or to wash her clothes. And she got taken out. And these people were screaming and weeping.

It was so hard to watch, man, to watch a bunch of people wailing, just wailing. Because they knew this woman that they loved got taken under by a monster. Do you remember the end of that? Yeah. The end of it where they cut the croc open and pulled, what was it, like a shoe or something out of the croc's belly? Something like that. A shirt or a shoe?

Yeah, something like that. I remember we were talking about that later on, and they were like, that should be on a different channel. Yeah, it's so good. It should be on Discovery or whatever. What's his son's name that films it? Branlon. Branlon is a bad name that films it? Branlon. Branlon is a bad motherfucker.

He is a bad motherfucker. The whole family. Eva, their daughter. But you know how, like, here's my criticism of outdoor, in air quotes, TV. There's episodes like Ranella's that are just brilliant. I mean, Ranella's show, or shows rather, like Ranella's. Ranella's show is just a brilliant show. I mean, it easily could be on any other network

It's it's shot by 0.0 the same people that shoot Anthony Bourdain show the same people that shoot a ton of Award-winning Emmy award-winning shows it's a brilliant show and then you got these Things that look like they shoot them with trail cams a bunch of dipshits They're all you know there you, the Lord blessed me when this bull came over the ridge. You're like, okay. They just think there's a rampant

anti-intellectualism, like an embraced sort of like fake simplicity to it. Yeah, there's like heartland pandering that goes on all the time. It's pandering. Pandering's a good way to look. But then you've got Jim Shockey, who has this like legitimate appreciation for these cultures that he visits all over the world.

I mean, he goes to these incredibly remote places and communicates with these tribes people that live in the jungle or in the mountains or wherever it is. And you could tell that this is a guy. Jim is like, what is he, probably 60 or so? He's getting up there, yeah. And he realizes that he's lived a long life, he's experienced a lot of wild and amazing things, and now at this point in life what he really desires are extreme experiences of a human kind and also of a wild kind, like in nature. Well, there's like a different

level to him. The outdoor TV thing is funny just because like I do appreciate and have friends that are like fall into that you know Bubba zone.

Bubba zone. Yeah. And I appreciate what they do. And like it's not for me. I don't watch it and I'm a fan of it but I appreciated other Bubbas like it

and it's a thing. It's it's hunting. Right don't watch it, and I'm a fan of it, but I appreciated other Bubbas like it, and it's a thing. It's hunting. Right. But I will agree with you. He's on another level. There's just a different level. You could watch Ranella's Coos Deer episode where he just kind of like, the whole theme is like sitting in silence.

And if you're looking for the right. And talking about his dad. Yeah. And talking about growing up. And there's no music. It's one of the most brilliant episodes. Oh, it's wonderful. And so you can watch something like that and then every once in a while you'll see one where you're like what the fuck's going on here and it's like there's such a juxtaposition between that what what steve and jim and some of these other like heartland bowhunter

these guys are able to like even cinematically produce yeah heartland bowhunter they do a really good job with their editing and their footage and they they do a really good job with their editing and their footage. They do a really good job. And Remy, Solo Hunter is a really great one, too. Timbernet, yeah. Yeah, Timbernet. And so there is this really good, and I don't know if they're pulling up

the ones that aren't so good or they're being brought down. I'm not sure. I don't think it's either or. You know what another one of my favorites is is western hunter yeah that's a amazing show you know and nate nate simmons is fucking so good on that and i would say as a hunter it's hard like if you really all you care about is hunting you just want to read read read there's a lot of bad information there's a lot of on television you mean television and but then you got like western

hunter which is a lot of really good information it's public land and what he does is go deep into the back country hiking sets up camp and does it the hard way that's the real hard way there's a lot of the man it's hard to tell people to tune into a show if they've never had any appreciation whatsoever for hunting it'd be hard yeah what show do you tune into you know i they've never had any appreciation whatsoever for hunting? It'd be hard. Yeah. What show do you tune into? You know, I don't, I mean,

it would be either in my, there's three. I feel like Western Hunter. There's a few like into the back country is really good too. But Meat Eater is probably the one I would send them to. I'd be like the narration that you're going to get and the intellectual understanding of like how to present these subjects and how to i yeah you know i mean that's what's important to me like as i get along in my life and career and like i have a son now and i'm trying to figure out what i want him to know like it's important to

me that there's good there's people like steve ronella out there representing kind of my thoughts and feelings in a way that i probably couldn't you know um so i don't want to struggle i don't want to struggle with that i don't want to like if he says hey dad let's watch an outdoor channel i don't want to be like oh i don't know man yeah like so i i do appreciate steve for what he does and there's a there's a bunch of them that are really good and uh i guess i would say at the end of the day, I've always struggled with being in a room full of hunters and watching the Outdoor Channel because we're hypercritical of every little thing. Yeah. Like, why did he draw?

Why didn't he draw? Well, there's that, but that's different to me. You don't think that flows into the actual quality of the content and how you enjoy it? No, because I feel like if I'm watching Nate Simmons or Steve Rinello or Remy Warren or any of those guys, I don't think anybody should be second guessing what those guys do in the field. Because you have a level of proficiency. To me, that's like the layman watching a UFC fight and go, why didn't Conor punch him there?

And I'm like, listen, bitch, are you fucking crazy? You don't think he knows when to punch and when not to punch? Like, this is a stupid way of looking at things. So if you would compare UFC to hunting television, there is no meter for how you get on hunting television. You have money and you buy airtime. You're there. There is no qualifier.

Well, explain that because most people have no idea. So on the Outdoor Channel and Sports Channel. So, like, if you want to put a show on Comedy Central, you have to make a deal with Comedy Central. They've got to be like, oh, this is good. For real producers, for real writers, you have to package it. They're going to invest in it. It's a big deal.

Yep. They're going to launch it right after Tosh.0 on whatever. And they're going to be invested in it, too. They're like, if this goes good, we do good. Everybody can buy it. Yes. And the cable channels that are outdoor and sports channel, the business model is not that. You pay the network for the airtime, essentially.

And you deliver them content. They have very little oversight over what you deliver them. There's rules, you know, how many times you can show a kill shot. There's like, there's... What? They have rules? Yeah. Oh, there's rules. What? Yeah.

Hold on. They have rules on how many times you can show a kill shot? I'm fairly sure. So you can't, like, shoot a deer two minutes into the episode and just da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- Red camera jib. All death metal and deers dying. Feet up in the air, kicking. Chicken on the egg. There could be a show like that.

I mean, there's a lot of nutty fucking shows. There's a few that are like kind of metal inspired, like Fear No Evil. But so there are... Oh, God. Right? There are like... I'm trying to be diplomatic here, Rogan. There are some really good shows, but you pay, and there are some shows that are owned

by the network, but that is the minority. The majority of shows are people who are paying for airtime, and then companies come in and sponsor their show and pay that for their four hours of time. Isn't that weird, though, that a network on actual regular DirecTV, like you can get to a channel 605, 606, 604. You know what's interesting? The hunting channels, which are, like, I would say overwhelmingly Christian, like in terms of viewership and in terms of, like, the people that are on the show,

are literally two or three channels away from black dicks and white chicks on direct TV. The porn channels are like 596, 597, and then you go 604. It's like, hey, y'all, we're out here representing God's great earth and the beauty and the bounty of Jesus Christ out here in the far. Well, you're always two clicks away from something terrible. Black poles and white holes. Next on

DirecTV. Click, click, click. Jesus has blessed me with this turkey. We were two clicks away from Langergeier and a freaking hyena massacre. That's true. You're always two clicks away. Butangergeier and a freaking hyena massacre. That's true. You're always two clicks away.

But that's the internet. This is television. That's true. You know, those lines are going to get super blurred. They're going to get super blurred. They're more blurred now than ever before. Stephen Colbert said that the president of the fucking United States uses Putin's dick, like uses his mouth as Putin's cock holster.

What? Yes. But Stephen Colbert is very religious, right? He is. He said that? When did he say that? He said it on television recently. Yeah.

On his show? Yeah. His idea was he was going to, this is the inside story. He was baiting Trump to respond to him. And finally, after he said that, Trump did respond, called him second rate, not funny, and all these things. Ratings dying, ratings bad, all this stuff. And then Colbert gets on TV and he goes, Mr. Trump, out of all the things that I know you don't understand, the one thing I thought you did understand was show business.

Oh, he's trolling him. He's like, you responded to me. That means I win. And then he trolled the president of the United States. He did. He trolled the president. The fact that. He did. He trolled the president. The fact that the president is trollable is an issue. He's trolling as well as being trollable. Yeah, that's true.

Like Joe Scarborough and his fiancée. Do you know that whole story where the president tweeted that the woman came to Mar-a-Lago, but she had facelift surgery and she was bleeding very badly and he did not hang out with them. He tweeted that.

Last week. I got to get back on Twitter. It's so bad that Scarborough left the Republican Party. What is happening in the world? Scarborough's like, look, if you guys are going to support this, he goes, I'm not a Republican anymore. He goes, I'm going independent. He goes, I still have Republican values.

I still belong to the GOP, but I'm not going to do this. We live in strange times. The strangest! The strangest of times, Joe Rogan. That's why my tour is called Strange Times. Go to JoeRogan.net for its house tour. See you in Utah this weekend. You're going to be there. I'll be there.

It's total coincidence, my wife doesn't believe it, but the total archery challenge is actually there at the same time. All hunting is total coincidence. Total coincidence. Joe's wife. I can't believe this, baby. It's amazing.

I can't believe I'm doing a show in the wilds of New Mexico in September. I always wanted to visit this Native American reservation, and it turns out that they invited me to hunt bison there. I mean, I don't want to go, but I don't want to. There's 75 people coming to the show i don't want to be disrespectful well strange times it is i don't i must not like i i do every once in a while flick on uh

cnn or something but i don't i'm not one of those people i've seen people in my life that get so wrapped up in that stuff that it becomes it becomes their reality i've never been affected by anything donald trump has done in my daily life the health care thing is a different deal but but i think in my daily life there's few things that directly affect me other than something that seems existential other than the environment and freaking health care right but that doesn't even affect you where you feel it you don don't feel it if you ignore it. That's part of the problem is that we don't, like on a day-to-day basis, it doesn't touch your skin. It doesn't make your nerve endings respond. So you can choose.

There's a choice, right, man? You can choose to create some sort of bubble for that news and politics and let only what's important in. That's kind of what I try to do. I don't know if I'm always doing it, but I don't just turn it on and sit there and watch CNN and think, ah, Russia. Right. Oh, man.

If I see a Russian on the street, I'll punch him right in his face. Well, you saw that news report where the reporter, he admitted that this whole Russia thing is kind of bullshit. It's just for ratings. Yeah. And I was like, well, I'm a journalism major. I'm like, of course it is. Yeah.

Of course it is. Of course it is. If it bleeds, it leads, Ben. Yeah. I don't know what's real anymore. I really don't. I don't want to ever say, I mean, I want to look into things for sure. It's not that I'm not thinking about it, but man,

I watch House of Cards too much. What's your drink in there, Joe Rogan? This is not a sponsor. This is what's important. It's Zevia. Do you know what Zevia is? I do not. I would like to know. It's a Stevia flavored soft drink. Yeah. It's 100% no sugar. This one is their energy drink. Yeah, it's 100% no sugar. This one is their energy drink. I think it has 120 milligrams of caffeine, which is like a good cup of coffee. Not a Starbucks.

Venti, I think, has 200. So it's not quite a Starbucks Venti. Not even a grande. But it has zero sugar, and it actually tastes really good. Would you like one? I would, yeah. Oh, young Jamie. Let me chug down this Rhyber in. Can we get this motherfucker a Zevia?

Yeah. Sorry, I wasn't, I mean, you think they would pay you for that? They make really good soft drinks, too. Do we have any soft drinks in the fridge, or just the energy drink? Throw some of those soft drinks in the fridge for the next... I feel like as a first time visiting California, I gotta do shit like drink this Zevia. Yeah, people in California just don't respect you if you haven't been here. They're like, oh, you don't even know what to do here.

I've been to your many great airports, but never. Like this morning, I went out and got like a parfait. Ah. Yes. With granola? Yeah, there was some granola in there. And then I got, I went to the pool a little bit and did some emails. Nice.

And drank sparkling water. Did you see any hoes there were no they were in different areas you gotta travel if you're gonna travel next time you gotta land in beverly hills or at least uh go to a hotel in beverly well we have the rest of today like we can yeah i really need to see like the comedy store i poke my head in there damn it i can't go there tonight though unfortunately i'm back yeah we would have been are those cold or no oh they are looks like the old grape soda so it is grape soda but it's zero sugar try one of those it's good they're delicious and by the way not a sponsor i was gonna say man i get in trouble all the time for shit but not in

trouble but people accuse me send me one of those bitches. They always think that for whatever reason I'm getting paid for stuff. People got mad at me about that Yeti thing that I did, which, by the way, my friend Ben works for Yeti. I'm going to be honest here. This is a Yeti rambler. He'll send me some Yeti things. But I bought Yeti shit before he even worked for Yeti, and I was telling people how amazing Yeti is. You made that very clear to me, too. I was like, man, I work for Yeti now.

Do you need a cooler or something? Yeti's, bro? I already had two Yetis, big-ass ones. Back off, O'Brien. I already got Yetis. They're the best. If you've never had one and people go, they're so fucking expensive, you're right. You're right.

You don't have to have one. But I'm telling you, if you have the money and you want a crazy fucking cooler, they are the shit. This is very good. How do you feel about the ones that, there's one that totally copied Yeti, like in every way. But, I mean, they copied the way. It's very flattering.

The way the logo is. And someone was saying, hey, man, this one is like half the price and it does just as good. I'm like, okay. And then there was like this battle after I posted that in the comment section of Instagram where people were like, they're copycats. You know, that's. There is debate. I mean, it's a good, robust debate on what's the better cooler. It's funny that Yeti has kind of, well, yeah, created the premium cooler category.

Yeti has kind of, well, created the premium cooler category. And when you create a category like that and become a business like Yeti is, you're going to have people that follow along. For sure. And they kind of need us and we kind of need them and it's whatever. But as long as they're not infringing on the things that are intellectual property and things of that nature. As far as that goes, I know as a company, man, we look forward. Like we have stuff we're coming out with now, things we're doing.

We're not worried about people that are copying us because they'll just continue to follow along. Yeah. I mean, look, coolers are coolers. It's all good. But when I find something that I like that's good, I like to tell people about it. And for whatever reason, people always assume. Why is that such a I like to tell people about it and for whatever reason people always assume why is that such a hard thing to get

their heads around well because it's they're cynical and they should be because people are full of shit there's a lot of people that are full of shit but I swear to fucking God if there's ever a time where I have an ad for like the ads for my podcast everybody knows their ads people pay for those ads that's what when we were talking about it that was my argument

I'm like people pay for ads and Joe reads the ad he never he never just like throws in during a pocket it's like ah let me just pull out this no no no it doesn't happen and that's why i talk like zevia i've zero i bought this i ran out i ordered these all on amazon.com i paid for them it's very delicious yeah they're great. I drink this shit all the time. You know why? It's good for you. Because it tastes good, and it doesn't have any bullshit in it. Like, this is all just zero calories, zero sugar.

You know? I mean, it's grape soda, but it's clear because you don't have any... Look, look. It's grape, but look. Clear. It looks like fucking water. It's like the Zima, right? Yeah, it's great.

I used to love Zima. It's not a Zevia ad. I don't have any fucking... Nothing to do with that company that company they're not a sponsor but isn't that the whole world like facts are you know people assign their motives to facts and like everything right i could say i work for yeah i could say yeti's a great cooler it's the best i've ever used i use them all the time more than any normal person it's my job and i found it to be i'm proud to work for the company because it's something i could stand behind i still have people be like whatever man right you're just shilling for your company bro like i just but it's isn't it smart though

that people are that cynical i mean like look but here's a perfect example i rant and rave about the glory of a 1965 corvette i don't work for 1965 corvettes. It's just like there's a reality about certain things that are awesome that people have created that I celebrate. And I don't say I'm not going to talk about Zevia because they're not a sponsor or I'm not going to talk about Yeti because they're not a sponsor.

It's interesting to me. It's all interesting. I like when people get it right. You have this podcast where you're closing on a thousand episodes and if you remove all consumer products from the conversation, it would suck. The problem is people boil down

innovation to a consumer product. They boil it down to a material possession that somebody has to purchase. I'm not looking at it that way. I'm being honest. When I'm looking at something that someone creates, some new innovation, I'm looking at it like, oh, look what they did.

Oh, yeah. I wish I could have figured that out. I don't even think that because I'm not an inventor, but I do get excited about cool shit. On the archery side of things, Bluetooth lock. I heard about that. Is that real? See that link I sent you? That is real.

It's real. What's it called? What's the name of the company? Breadcrumb Tech. Bluetooth knocks. The problem is, I'm shooting 86 pounds. You're too strong for that shit. I'm blowing right through animals. Look, man, listen.

There's not going to be any knocks poking out. We can track those things. I've had a lot of people tell, you know, through me to tell you just to dial it down a little bit, Joe. Do they? Yeah, a little bit. For real? Yeah, for real. I've had a couple people say, like, Joe, you can't be promoting shooting that much poundage. I just want you motherfuckers to check out the gun show.

My ears go this way and this way. I don't understand why people don't, it doesn't factor into their mind that some people are stronger than them. It's true. Like, if you pull 60 pounds, I don't feel bad about, I'm not upset at you. Look at these things, look. So, they shoot this arrow, and then with your phone, you can track the knock through a Bluetooth device that has some sort of a GPS locator on it. Oh, you shoot it in the grass, which I do often. He missed it.

That's Brandon Bates. Brandon Bates from RMEF, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation. Good man. I think he's got an America hat on. America. America. I got an America case for my phone. America.

America. America. Nothing better than America. Wait till we have the new studio and have America flag in the background. That flag we got sitting back there, Jamie? God damn glory. Have you previewed the new studio? Nobody knows anything.

Oh, okay. There's not a new studio. When it comes, it will be epic. You guys don't worry about it. But these knocks, it's going to be a good way to find arrows for sure. But what's interesting is it'll be a good way to track animals. If you shoot an animal, like a lot of times people shoot an animal and the animal runs and it's in thick cover and you can't find it. It's dead.

It died quick. An animal can run 200 yards inside of a few seconds and die immediately and you might never find it so if you shoot exactly where you aim and you put a hole in each of its lungs yeah with a two inch dynamic diameter rage broadhead or one and a quarter whatever whatever it is it can run 100 yards perfect example is that place we were out of texas oh yeah yeah this place had these scrub oaks that were six feet tall and you could not get into. And the animals, you would shoot one. The guys were talking to us about pigs.

Like, yeah, we had a pig contest. We shot three, lost two. Like, what? What? What's wrong with you? And it didn't make sense until you go there. You go, oh, yeah. How are you going to find that?

You can't even get in there. Why would we go there? Like, why would we do that? Well, they just needed to trim that stuff. Yeah's just should have talked to him about that i don't i think they kind of knew but they were putting it off but it was just like jesus christ like you have so much bush well there's any place you hunt like especially uh when you think about recovery game even in lanai you think it's fairly flat place like if i shoot a deer i'll see it go down or whatever it goes behind a bush or it goes over a rise and you go and you're like, oh, crap.

Well, how about the place that we were at the last day where the grass was six feet high and the animals were in the grass? We were trying to dropkick deer and stuff. They were waiting. What's crazy was Ben and I were there. I shot at this one deer and other deer that were like 30 feet away from us jumped out of the bushes like they were hiding they they heard us talking they knew we were there and they just laid low yeah well they like they laid low and then you shot an arrow and they were like i know what that sounds like yeah and they ran off and i knew we knew they didn't cross into the next

little paddock like the next across this road so I circled around and got up on this mound so I could see into the grass. And I could see them in there. They're just talking to you like, shit, what do we do? It's Joe Rogan. And I was trying to get you to go in there, but you were what, like six feet away from these things?

By the time we got to them, I was no further away than 15 feet. Yeah. And you're talking an axis deer that has swords growing out of its head. Yeah. Multiple points. It was pretty crazy. But they're just animals evolved to experience whatever the dangers of their environment are.

And their dangers are 100% people. Yeah. And that animal's probably four or five years old. Been around people for four or five years. It's like, oh, I get it. When people are around, they're trying to eat you, man. People have never gotten me in this grass. Yeah. Nobody has ever been able to do it. So how did you, how did the Nepal thing end? Did you get it together? I did get it together. Uh, I think we left off at, I started to get

sick. Well, the whole next day I was puking shit and, just i had the flu everybody else got but i just got it like two days later and so it was that day the they it was the first day we'd seen sheep so we were three i think four days into the into the trek and we were camping somewhere at 14 000 feet and um the next day the guy was with other guy that had an attack, Cole, goes up, shoots a sheep. And they climb up 2,000 feet, 60-mile-an-hour wind bursts, microbursts, frostbite conditions. These guys, when they came back, looked beaten.

And these are Cole Kramer, who we went with, is a Kodiak,aska bear guide and a mountain hunter and his hardcore is gets and i looked at his face when he got back and i had just been in my tent all day puking and trying to stay alive and i looked at his face he's like oh my god and i thought i can't make it over there to the latrine let alone up this mountain to kill a sheep and so i kind of had resigned myself to like this is it man i can't i wish i was healthy enough to do it but that's i don't want to get up there and then have issues and not be able to get helicopter rescue and so we we talked about it but the worst part

and i'll just have to tell us just because it's like the low point of my trip there. The third night in, when we got to camp, I was puking in the vestibule in my tent. And all the Nepali guys were, are you okay? You okay? You okay? No, I'm not okay. I'm puking. And then fell asleep, woke back up, had to go to the bathroom.

Ben, the medic, is there. He's kind of helping me to the bathroom. Like, I can't. I'm not going to make it. I can't stand up. So I literally just kind of like huddled over in the snow and pulled my pants down and just right in the middle of camp. Just let it go. And I just remember, like, just thinking, oh, my God.

And I look up and there's all these porters and Sherpas with their headlamps on, like, you okay, Mr. Ben? You okay? I'm like, look at me. I'm dying. And so that was the lowest point of the trip. And that, I think the next day, Cole killed a sheep. The day after that, I went up the mountain with a with in midday just for

another like acclimation could I make it we got into a group of sheep didn't make it happen but I went up the mountain basically probably 1200 feet just a good climb went back down they're like okay tomorrow is kind of the last chance because we're almost out of areas to hunt these sheep and we went up the valley i want to say like eight miles i got i got it written down somewhere eight eight miles and after being on death's door two days before and i wasn't to be the hundred percent i wasn't carrying a pack or anything i just had trekking poles and a bioharness and i was just like one foot one foot we got into these mountain passes in these valleys where there was like you know two three feet of snow and it was frozen on the top and you were just like every step you would

crunch two feet down like boom boom and it was just hours of that and there was a time during that where we we summited this the probably the highest peak we were at which is mid 15s close to 16 and i was just like i can't is, I hope the sheep are right there because this is it. Like this is as far as I can go. And we rested and we glassy sheep. And there they are like a mile and a half away down this other giant ravine and up on this other flat. And I remember even the guys we were with looking like, he's not gonna be able to go over there. And I just, I just remember thinking like, this is what i'm doing it like i'm just gonna go and we slid on our butts like down the side of this mountain me and two guides slid on our butts down the side of this snowy icy bank got up walked

a half a mile popped up over this ridge there the sheep are within 300 yards in about 20 minutes i got got on a big ram and shot him wow and uh yeah and there was no celebration there was no i wasn't even happy i don't think because you're so out of it yeah i think i just kind of like slumped over on my pack i was laying prone it's like slumped over my pack and like okay did you eat it that night yeah they ate the whole thing wow not all that night but did you eat any oh yeah i was too they ate the whole thing. Wow. Not all that night. Did you eat any of it? Oh, yeah. I was too sick.

Like the spices, the curry spices, even the smell of that curry spice, I couldn't even take. Really? So I ate a good bit of it. Oh, they curried up your sheep? They put that on everything. But even the tent smelled like that. So like the cook tent, I couldn't even really be in there. I ended up just eating rice for a couple days because I just couldn't. Wow.

I couldn't stomach it because it was just such a gnarly experience. So everybody ate your sheep? You didn't even bring it back? No, you can't bring the meat back here anyways. So the point was, they had mostly already eaten Cole's sheep within a day and a half or two days. What, the wolves? How many people were there? There was 24, 25 of them.

Oh, wow. Oh, yeah, they're burning through that thing. And not only did they eat eyeballs, so Cole had shot a sheep, and he was caping out the head, taking the hide off the head, popped the eyeballs out, and I think jokingly handed to one of the porters, like, ha-ha, eat this. And I watched that dude put it on the end of a stick and put it over fire and eat it.

Yeah, why wouldn't they? I mean, that's meat. So I didn't see this personally but they were picky yeah they took the punch that the gut sack and and cut it open flapped out the insides and took it back and cooked that too you know it's kind of like a haggis tripe kind of thing and so i mean they just like they just devoured the thing would you go back yeah really yeah yeah i'm going to northwest territories that's gonna suck uh there won't be altitude as bad though yeah that's what i'm saying i think about like i often think about like

what if i'm glad it happened the way it did because i get i got so much perspective like on the way back because we still had two days to hike out to get picked up to go back to Kathmandu. It was two and a half, three days hike out. And hiking out, the first day we were hiking out, after I shot my sheep and had a night's rest, and I remember getting back at like midnight. I don't know.

We got back at like 10 p.m. I had left at 6 in the morning from killing my sheep. And I was just so like emotionally, spiritually, I'm fucked. And I remember thinking, well, tomorrow they're going to give us a rest day. And the guide was like, nope. It's too hot. We're all getting sunburned. I had like blisters on the roof of my mouth from the sun.

The roof of your mouth? Yeah, from like going up and the sun bouncing off the snow hit the roof of your mouth. What? Yeah, blisters on the roof of your mouth? Yeah, from like going up and the sun bouncing off the snow hitting the roof of your mouth. What? Yeah, blisters on the roof of your mouth. So you got sunburned on the roof of your mouth? I did. That's insane. I've never even heard of that before.

Yeah, I feel like that's a pretty common thing for guys that go to that elevations, hikers and stuff. Wow. It might not be. So do you have like sunscreen on your lips and your face and all that jazz? Halfway through I did, I like I didn't really think about that because I was hot but I wasn't in the field burning up but like there's photos I look at now and I'm like my lips are cracking open and bleeding I got like it was yeah, and if you watch Shockey's episode when he was in Nepal

it's similar like they're self filming and it's like this pretty visceral deal. Did you get something out of that though other than the survival oh yeah i got so much out of that i got like i've written this now i probably wrote like 20 000 words on the trip but i got this like amazing feeling first being around people that are that not primitive is the wrong word but that that removed from society. Right. They don't have, they don't really even have the option to be modern. Like they don't have, they couldn't get a, they couldn't get a chainsaw if they wanted to. Like they have an ax and they need to chop wood.

And like just being around that level of just primitive people and that they're, primitive is the wrong word i'll think of something better than that but their spirit was so infectious like they're happy people and you have these sherpas and porters who you know those big sitka bags the big uh roller top bags we took one to base camp because they told us oh we can leave it we won't take it in the hunt these guys would take like a 90 pound, put it on top of their head, and just go walking up these trails I was describing like it was nothing. Put it on their head?

Yeah, they'd balance everything in a basket on their head, all these porters. A 90-pound bag. And they would do more than that, 200 pounds. What? Yeah. On their head? Head strap, basket back here. 200 pounds?

Yeah, if not more than that. What kind of disc issues do those guys have? They don't care. I mean, and they're wearing, like, these guys are wearing, like, sandals, and some of them are wearing, like, old sneakers, and they're just wearing, like, whatever clothes that they were able to gather. And they're doing these amazing things, and when they take a break from something that you or i could never conceive of

doing they're like happy as could be their their perspective on life is only hardship and poverty that's all they know like that's the only thing they'll ever know but yet they're happier than than i think maybe i could ever be that is a a big part of Sebastian Younger's book, Tribe. A big part of it is like how living easy and not sustaining massive amounts of difficulty, like most people do in these impoverished communities, is one of the reasons why people aren't happy. Is that people actually need struggle, which is very counterintuitive for a lot of people. It is. And I remember coming back, there was a bunch of moments.

And I could describe all these moments where I just like i'd be at my my wits end just thinking i'm just a regular devil like some adventure what am i doing right and i'd get to a point where i'd be completely exhausted and i would look over and here would come this porter this you know 25 year old kid with a basket strapped on his head with, you know, a hundred pounds of stuff wearing sneakers. And I got $400 Italian boots on and sick gear. And I'm like, and it would always come at these opportune moments where I'd look over and I'd see that and be like, oh crap. Like this person is here. I am, you know, I am in physical pain and things are happening, but like to have the mental fortitude that those people have and they don't even know they have it. That's just how they're wired. And so I came back after

the whole thing. And I remember hiking out, being like in the front of the group, all of a sudden, like really feeling good. My pack's back on my back. I'm like energized again, thinking like this best feeling in the world, that feeling of overcoming that thing and being on the downhill slope. I'd go back just for that feeling if I could catch it again. I think a big part of the thing of that is just, you don't really appreciate what it feels like to be healthy until you're not healthy. I don't advise anybody to get food sickness or food poisoning, but one of the things about it is, man, once it's over, you realize, you go, God, like being healthy is so critical it's like everything

like it doesn't matter your status your money the your friends none of that means shit if you're unhealthy yeah i mean and the people in nepal live in this and they just went through a civil war in the recent decades and these people were like at the epicenter of it. And they're, you know, our trip gave them jobs. It gave them purpose. It gave like there's a lot of things. Our main guide, Mon Bahadur, didn't have shoes until he was like 13. And they used to go hunting and they would build their own guns. And he described to us a couple times where like he would remember hiking and hunting sheep.

And like the gun would blow up on his back and blow his shirt off stuff like that they were like making oh my god primitive muzzleloaders and using matchsticks as uh powder i feel like wow so there was all these stories like that that um perspective perspective and like you can't and look people say oh you trophy hunted that sheep maybe but there was so much more to it that if anybody would ever what does that mean though yeah see that's just ate it we ate it yeah i mean what does that mean what it means is people make a distinction that you did not have to bring that animal back in order for you to survive that's right so that's the only way they're assigning motive to me then, right? If they call me a trophy. And I would say this. I would say, look, you go into a war-torn area of the world where after the war,

they don't have a lot of chance to make money. Like the tourism has kind of died once you've been through a war. It's really not a happy place to be. And plus, the place we were hunting in, I think the Doropatan Hunting Reserve is like the only hunting reserve in Nepal. And it's heavily regulated. There's 19 blue sheep tags a year. So you're thinking like everybody that goes, how many people a year go to Mount Everest Base Camp?

Thousands. I don't know what the number is, but it's thousands. I think we were probably within a couple of dozen Westerners that had been to that area post-war and had brought 24, 25 jobs, plus the people that prepped that, plus all that stuff. So, like, seeing that is pretty powerful to me. And shooting that sheep and not even giving a shit whether the horns made it back or not. I mean, somebody could question my motive all they want. But within the system and the structure that's set up there now,

hunting is one of the more valuable things that they, one of the more valuable tools they have to get better at everything, their lives that they're having. It's their resource. Yeah, it's their resource. Yeah, and we can look down upon that, but it is a natural resource along the same veins as yeah and you know we can look down upon that but it is a natural resource in along the same veins as like if you live in an area that has fracking that's a natural

resource if you live in an area that you know uh they they dig minerals out of the ground that's a natural resource it's not a good or a bad thing it's just the reality of their environment and so there's so many i think that there is arguments against what we did if somebody like broke it down like i always try to break it down from the other side i think people say like why don't you just take pictures of it you know what are you doing you just go up there pay 20 grand or whatever you pay for a hunt like that take some pictures well part of the challenge people don't understand how difficult it is to do what you did like to do what you did and then have this final accomplishment, which is to get close enough to an animal where either it doesn't know you're there

or you get in a good place where it can't wind you, it doesn't smell you, and you can take it out and kill it. Like it's hard to do. It's insanely hard to do. I've got all my own personal reasons for wanting to kill that sheep. And I would also say like,

present a better plan then. Are you going to pay what hunters are willing to pay? And are you going to be a part of conservation regulation the way that hunters are as a trekker and a photographer? Like, give me a better idea. Okay, but here's the problem with that. Their response to that could easily be, you know, what about if you decided to hunt people? If you paid a million dollars to go hunt a person and that money fed all these tribes people in Mozambique,

is it okay to go out and hunt people? No, you surely still have the ethical and moral obligation to do it. But to them, to animal rights activists, do you have an ethical and moral obligation to let that sheep live? Yeah. I'm on your side, but I'm just saying... No, I like to see both sides. I really do, because we only ate it there and because we didn't have a freezer full of backstraps and because that thing didn't occur the way it normally occurs for me.

There was like some complexity of that in my mind. Right. Crap, man, you know. Am I really over here just to collect this sheep and bring it home and show people? But you're also filming. Yeah. We made what will be hopefully an awesome film and so at the end of the day i checked myself and i said did you do it for the right reasons and and after i look back at the

trip i'm like man there are a hundred reasons why i did it and they're all good and and it was what we did was a good impact on the place we went on on the animals that we hunted. Like, to me, it's all good. And I would love to have argument with somebody that feels differently about that. Plus, you get to trip balls and see a fake baby and a fake wolf. People pay a lot of money for that. Yeah, man. Mushrooms are expensive. And you might not see a wolf.

You might not. You might not see a baby on the road. I'm sure there's still like a wolf-shaped log in Nepal or something. Somewhere. Some rock that looks like a baby. It had to be something. It was a wolf. I'm not crazy.

Yeah. We've got to wrap this up, man. Let's do it. Ben O'Brien, what is your Twitter that you don't use again? My Twitter's at Benjamin OB, but I never use that. So Instagram's always the better way to do it. And it's Benny OB. Yeah.

B-E-N-N-Y-O-B-3-O-1. How did you get to 3-O-1? That's the area code where I grew up. Oh, holla. Holla. Shout out to 3-O-1. Yeah, man. I created that handle when I didn't know it would be a thing.

I thought nobody would ever see that. Oh, well, now it's a thing. Now it's a thing. Let's do it. We blew you up when you had that competition with the people you work with. All right, folks. We're out. We're out's a thing. Now it's a thing. Let's do it. Well, we blew you up when you had that competition with the people you work with. All right, folks. We're out. We're out for a while.

We'll be back next week with a one podcast with my friend Ari Shafir on July 18th, which is the release date of his new Netflix special, which is going to be fucking amazing. It's a two-part special, Childhood and Adulthood. Right? Is that what it is? That's what he calls it? What does he call it? Ari Shafir. Look up Ari Shafir on Netflix. All right. See you soon. Bye.