The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 212: Chad Mendes on the Fight, the Hunt, and the Food

Episode Date: March 16, 2020

Steven Rinella talks with Chad Mendes, Ryan Callaghan, and Janis Putelis.Topics discussed: the Total Putelis-Total Rinella Dinner; eating Jani’s baby moose; a whiffle ball bat for a leg; getting paid a couple thousand for a couple minutes’ work; Chad getting picked on in high school and then beating the guy’s ass; getting disciplined through hunting; lost in the woods; redlining your body multiple times per day; Finz and Featherz; down to the peanut; fad diets; getting knocked out; the UFC payment arrangement; not having to get punched in the head anymore; guilt-based motivation; the three Chads; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEaterSteve on Instagram and TwitterMeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeShop MeatEater Merch Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Welcome to the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. Presented by OnX Hunt, creators of the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters.

Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google Play Store. Know where you stand with OnX. Yanni, tell... Man, you gotta tell everybody about a handful of things. Tell everybody about the egg rolls you made. The Putellas has had the Ranellas for dinner. Yeah. For the first

time, maybe. I don't know about that. I've eaten over at your house. You know what? Your wife's just never joined you. She's always been out, and I've just had you and the kids over. I think it was the first formal total Putellas, total Ronella formal dinner. Sure was loud in there. Our house is not very acoustically friendly.

Log cabin, you know, and we just don't have enough bears and lions and on the walls to to dampen it down so we have five kids in there it's yeah and he's got a cold rolled sheet steel table which doesn't help no it doesn't help either but uh yeah we're making pho which if you don't know what pho is it's's basically a bowl of very hot broth that's traditionally made from oxtail. I used wild game stock. P-H-O, I'll point out. Yeah, that's how you spell it. And then you add to the stock a bunch of very aromatic herbs.

You char some onions. You char ginger. There's cardamom in there, coriander. I'm sure I'm missing a few, but you get the idea. Very flavorful, strong on the nose stock. And the way it all comes together is you have some rice noodles, you have some raw meat, and then you have some garnishes like mint leaves, basil, green onions, sliced jalapenos, bean sprouts. And you put the noodles and the meat into the bowl. And then you take a big ladle of the super hot stock, pour it over the top. Over the raw meat.

Yeah, over the raw meat. And it basically cooks it um when you're in a vietnamese uh like a noodle bowl restaurant you can choose from all basically every cut of meat out there and i'm guessing that some of them they must cook ahead of time a little bit but we just use like the tenderest we just use backstrap well yeah he used um his baby moose got ran over on the road down below his house. Yeah. Awesome. That is a tender animal, man. I thought when I came in, dude, I walked in. I said, is that like pork? What is that? It's that baby moose that's so pale.

Oh, no. And we had to eat the whole thing. My kid looks up the hill behind Yanni's house, and there's a bedded cow moose on the hill. So we're like probably eating her baby. How's that, kids? Now, if I was on a hill and someone was eating my baby down at the bottom of the hill, I would be pissed. Going, what does that broth smell familiar?

Do you think that was the mother of that baby? Who knows? There's quite a few moose running around in that drainage. I like to think it was not. So, Yanni made that. So, anyways, we made some pho, and I thought, you know, pho is just not going to be quite, because the kids tend to be, some kids are really into it. And my kids, it's like a 50-50, depending on how they're feeling about how interested

they're going to be in eating pho that night. They kind of flag the raw meat. Yeah. They sort of are like, oh, but what? It's kind of the attitude everybody has. Yeah. The kids. Yeah, and again, some nights my kids tear it up,

and other nights it's just not what they're feeling. But so I thought, well, we should make a little something extra. And since we're going Vietnamese, one of the other things I love to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant are these fried spring rolls that come served with basically a big stack of lettuce leaves, like whole lettuce leaves. Think of like a head of just leaf lettuce. And they just separate them out, big stack.

And also, same thing again, basil, bean sprouts, jalapenos, all that stuff. And you take the fried spring roll, which basically is just like a skinny egg roll. Inside of it, I had- Yeah, you're leaving a lot out. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead.

The filling was probably 50% like a rice noodle. It's like a really skinny noodle that it cooks so fast that you don't even actually cook it, like boil it like a traditional noodle. What we do is you just basically put it into a bowl

and then pour just boiled water over the top of it and just let it sit in there for 10 minutes or so. And that's how you get the best consistency out of those rice noodles. And then from there, it goes into the hot bowl soup. finely chopped onions, carrots, cabbage, some rehydrated mushrooms, fish sauce, garlic, a couple other things. And yeah, all rolled up. Steve fried them for me.

We fried them. Was that beef fat that was in there? Yes, it was. Yeah. And my, how'd you like that double-sized Western fryer? I like that thing. That thing's nice, isn't it? No, you can get some work done with that thing. Yeah. Dude, you want'd you like that double-sized Weston fryer? I like that thing. That thing's nice, isn't it? No, you can get some work done with that thing.

Yeah. Dude, you want to see kids eat some shit, man. Give them those. Yeah. Just give them those. Yeah. Egg rolls, man. Yeah.

We took them skiing the next day for lunch. It was just cold. And yeah, like before they touched anything else, their hot chocolate wasn't even drank and they had polished off, I think five, five of these egg rolls.

I never seen anything like it. I'm going to have to take notes on that one. Yeah. That was the voice Chad Bendis. What's up guys? Ten month old baby. Ten month old, yep. I don't know where that came from. Are you married? Oh yeah, you're married. You got a ring on. Got it. First baby girl. Probably plan on having maybe

one more. The wife's trying to do maybe two or three more, but I think I'm good with one more. The wife's trying to do maybe two or three more, but I think I'm good with one more. Stop at two. Yeah. Everybody's got their own talents. Man, we got burned on three. We were maxed out for a couple years there.

Now we're in the clear, but it got rough. My good buddies had one boy, and they're like, let's just do one more. I had twin girls. Yeah. And they got three now, so. Now that you have a girl, are you hoping for one or the other, for the second one?

I mean, I'm going to be honest here. I was hoping for a girl. I've always just pictured myself, I'm a softie, man. People see me, I'm this UFC fighter. I'm supposed to be this extremely tough dude. i'm the biggest softie you've ever met like i love having my girls you know and just i don't know something about being able to cuddle my daughter and um and i'm hoping that she gets into the outdoor lifestyle and i'm hoping that she's into hunting and fishing and stuff like that i'm gonna do my very best to get it going that direction. And obviously that's up to her, but, um, you know, I, I wouldn't be opposed either way. It'd be nice

to have a boy and a girl, but. Did you have a rough relationship with your dad? A little bit. See, that's the thing is I had, I mean, I had a very complex relationship with my dad and it made me want a girl cause I could, I was like was like man I don't know if I can do all that yeah from the other side uh-huh so I was like if I have a girl hell it'd be easy yep and I mean I had a good relationship with my dad like he was always taking us to wrestling and doing a lot of stuff but my dad was always kind of a tough ass you know and um I don't know if maybe that's what it was but yeah I feel I feel good having a baby girl. I'm just excited about that. I had a girl first as well.

And when we were having our second one, we waited, we didn't know. And I ended up rooting to have another girl just because my thinking was, I wanted them to have sisters. I see my wife and her sister, they got a strong relationship and I can just look at me and my siblings and I don't want to say I'm really that much closer to my brother than her sister and they got a strong relationship and um i can just look at me and

my siblings and i don't want to say i'm really that much closer to my brother than my sister but a little bit you know and i just figured it'd be nice if they're you know your sisters that's what we ended up with yeah oh nice so yeah and they're tight nice see that that would be awesome and i i grew up in a household we had eight people living in my house one time. I had too many people. How was there eight people living in your house? So my mom and my dad had me, and then they split up when I was young. And then my dad remarried, my mom remarried. Obviously, my mom, that wasn't part of this.

But the woman he remarried had a boy and a girl already. And then he had two boys and a girl with her. So all of us were living in one house. I had lots of half-brothers and sisters. So your dad had custody of you? Yes. My dad got custody of me. And that's what I'm saying. Like, girl, I probably shouldn't make the statement

I had a horrible relationship with my dad or anything, but we were close. He got me into wrestling when I was five years old and wrestled shit every year all the way up through college and then jumped right into fighting so um my dad coached me all the way up through up through to high school and it was actually your your coach in high school into high school yeah once i got to high school he backed out and let the high school take over but um you know we were talking to another athlete um you know uh Bo Jackson and I was surprised to hear Bo Jackson say that um he wouldn't want his kid to play football really would you want your would

you want your daughter to go into UFC I could uh no no I thought you were gonna say wrestling UFC no not a chance uh you know because what like what is it about it it's I and one of the main reasons why I got out of it you guys know Jason Hairston yeah yeah good but I'm good buddies with them yeah the whole CTE thing scares the shit out of me okay I feel like obviously with boxing you know that's one thing you're getting knocked down and you know you're basically getting flash knocked out and then getting back up and counting off. Oh, I'm back. And then you get flash knocked out again.

You're saying in boxing. In boxing, you know. So, obviously, UFC fighting is not that way. You get flash knocked out and the guy jumps on you and finishes you. That's it, you know. But we box as part of our training so i'm still doing the same shit in the ring you know 10 weeks out before a fight where i'm taking repetitive blows to the head where if i get my bell rung during sparring we stop it for a second

and we're all too damn hard-headed to be like i'm done like let's keep going jump back in there you know there's a lot of in my opinion it's a lot of head damage that happens. The sport is so young that we just haven't really seen the long-term effects of it. And I see— You know, I want to interrupt you for a second because I want to bring people that might not know, because we talked about Jason Harrison, so I want to make sure people track what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. Jason Harrison, he was one of the founders of Sitka a long time ago.

Yes, yes. And then founded Kuyu, the hunting apparel company. But he had been a high school, college football player. Yep. Went into the NFL, never played in the NFL, but went into the NFL and practiced in the NFL, but had a number of concussions. Yeah. And then I guess it was a little over a year ago. Yeah.

Took his own life and had observed, correct me if i'm wrong any of this but had talked about in interviews and mentioned his concerns about traumatic brain injuries and and that he he would he he worried that he saw things in his personality and saw things in the way he responded to things am i getting this right yep you know that it made him like wow is that is that me and then again um like in a way that was inexplicable to a lot of people around him uh killed himself yep and he i mean he had everything i mean beautiful family beautiful kids yeah you know a very successful company when like when we would go on hunts he's i remember multiple times you know sun coming up we're getting you know on a duck hunt or something and he'd look over at me and just be like dude this is like this is living the dream like we're working right now yeah it's

like fuck it takes you back and you're like dude you're right like this is awesome you know multiple times and i i know he had those moments of him like he knew he had the life like you know what i mean he knew everything was good but he had talked to us multiple times about him knowing that he had cte like he knew it like i'm you know they had a family plan like 10-year plan stuff like that like this was something that they knew is that right was was a serious thing. And, um, you know, it's just kind of a bummer. And for me, like I have teammates that over the last, I mean, should I fought for 11 years and from the beginning to when I just, I just retired last December. Um, but I can see them changing, you know, we, there's certain people on our team where we, they take a beating in the gym training and they take a

beating in the fight when they get in there. And it's like, dude, you got to stop, but they just can't. What are the things that you see? Um, speech, like a lot of the times you're just like, dude, where are you? What are you saying? Like they're, they're talking to you and they just start jumping around. Oh, so it's not like, it's not enunciation. It's sort of like the logic of talking. Some of it is. I mean, you got a guy

like Chuck Liddell. I don't know if you've ever talked to that guy. Sometimes I'm like, I don't know what the fuck you're saying, man. You know, I don't know. I didn't know Chuck

before my college career, so who knows? Maybe he's always been that way, but there are certain guys where they're talking and you're like, I don't know what's going on. You know, and then also just mood swings.. But there are certain guys where they're talking and you're like, I don't know what's going on. You know, and then also just mood swings.

Like there's certain guys that during training camps, I mean, this is probably understandable, but they'll just flip out. Like something's not going their way and they throw shit and storm out, you know. And, you know, I know that's a symptom, just not being able to control emotions, you know, and shit just gets out of control. Um, did that factor into your decision to retire? Big time. You know, I had my first baby girl. Here's how I looked at the whole fight game. I came out of college. Um, and I, I told Uriah, like, look, I I'll fight. I'm going to first try this out. If I absolutely suck at it, I'm going to go get a real job. Ended up being good at it, and I said, okay. And this is what age?

Oh, shit, I think I was 22 or 23. Right out of college. Graduating college, and then I got you. But you had done it during college. No, I just wrestled. Oh, I see. So you had, like, there's, like, a transition from wrestling to, I see what you're saying. So when you say to know if you're good at it, you mean to know if you're good at it you mean to know if you're good enough like to make that jump exactly were you approached by somebody to say hey you should

try this out or is it just something that was happening and you're kind of like yeah i got some you're looking at people on tv and stuff being like i bet i could kick his ass no i mean my for me it was fateriah Faber. I don't know. Do you guys know who that is? The California kid. I know the name, but. He was kind of the pioneer for the lighter weight guys.

You're going to be disappointed with a lot of our knowledge base on this. It's real interesting to me, but excuse me for not knowing what the fuck. No, I'm the same way, man. I get it. No, so Uriah wrestled at UC Davis. So I knew Uriah through the wrestling community. My wrestling coach at Cal Poly would put on a six-week camp every summer up in Tahoe. And he would bring us in as like counselors and like people that would, you know, mentors and stuff like that.

And he brought Faber in as well. And so at that time, I was oh I think it was my freshman summer going into sophomore year in college uh Faber was there and he's getting ready for one of I think he had fought maybe two or three times where he was getting ready for his first championship fight and he kept hurting all the other wrestlers because he was doing jiu-jitsu like submissions and stuff and none of us knew what the fuck we were doing and so nobody wanted to train with him and he's like man I I have to work out like I got a fight coming up I got to train and me they're gonna have to go back to Davis and start working out or I gotta you know I don't know what to do I'm like I'll train with

you I don't know what the hell I'm doing so I jumped in there and we trained together for the rest of the time he was there but he like pulled me, pulled me aside and he's like, dude, I think you'd be really good at fighting if you want to give it a shot after college. He's like, I have a gym up in Sacramento. He's like, I have a spare bedroom in my house. You can just crash there until you get a few fights under your belt and, you know, you have some money in your account. And I'm like, well, shit, I'll give it a shot, you know. Like I said, worst case, I suck at it and I'll just go get a real job. So we kept in touch all my college career.

And the day I graduated, that next day I threw all my shit in a U-Haul and moved up to Sacramento. Oh, really? Yeah, moved my stuff into a spare bedroom. What did you study in college? Kinesiology. So study how the body moves, which a lot of that actually helped out my fight career a lot. You know, a lot of the nutrition classes and just understanding that type of stuff. But, um, yeah, so I, I threw all my shit in his spare bedroom and that same day I went and jumped into pro sparring basically.

So, and they put this stupid, funny looking headgear on you, 16 ounce boxing gloves, shin guards. Why 16 ounce gloves? Just to keep each other from knocking each other out, which there are still guys that got knocked out wearing those, but you just have these big pillow gloves, you know? Yeah, I got you. And I have no clue what I'm doing. You guys just start beating each other's heads.

I'm watching these guys. I'm sitting on the sideline, and these guys are like trying to kill each other, you know? And I'm like, what the hell did I just get myself into? Was it, was it cage fight? Like walk me through how cage, like people don't use the term cage fighting anymore. Um, they do from time to time, but. Was it like a rebranding?

Maybe. So a lot of people get infused on, on the sport. So MMA, mixed martial arts is the sport. That's like football. Yeah. And then UFC is like the NFL. Yeah. So people, like sometimes I'll get asked, oh, do you fight in MMA?

Like do you fight in the league MMA? And I'm like, I fight in the UFC, but I do fight the sport of MMA. But there used to be, or maybe there still are, other UFCs, right? No. So there's only one UFC. But no other things that had the same function. Yeah. Like the octagon and shit.

What was that? Yeah. That's what it is. The UFC is still an octagon. So there's different organizations. Yeah. So like Bellator is another organization. So you have the UFC, which is like the top of the top.

I'd say probably Bellator is right underneath it. And then one is a new one that they just opened up in Asia. I'd say those are probably like your three biggest right now. But the sport is mixed martial arts. Yeah. So everyone that's fighting in those organizations is fighting mixed martial arts. It's just what organization are you in. Does that make sense?

Yeah, for sure and in a from the old days like when do wrestlers came out of this more successfully than boxers oh yeah like it's better to be a wrestler I think so yeah mainly because of in my honest opinion it's body awareness like someone they can learn how to move and put their body in certain positions naturally without having to think about it versus someone that's just standing straight up trying to punch you like those wrestlers get those guys down and it's game over you know if they don't know what to do on the ground it's pretty easy you can't it's hard to punch someone from your back

does that make sense yeah Yeah. Yeah. What year did you do your first UFC fight? Oh, UFC. So I signed with the WEC, which was World Extreme Cage Fighting, which, um, was owned by the same company that owned the UFC. Okay. So that was- And it was like a farm league for the UFC or? Yeah, it was like for the lighter weight guys. They did like 30, 135s, 145s, and 155s. And that was it, I believe. I take that back. They had a few other weight classes, but the majority of it was like to put some light on the lighter weight classes because the UFC started at 155s and up. So I really don't understand why they did that in the beginning, but they eventually just realized this is dumb

and they just merged the two. And just had all the weight classes. Exactly. So now the UFC just goes from the smallest weight class up to the biggest all-in-one organization. What was your weight class? 145. And so my senior year in college— See, I beat your ass, man. What am I?

I got like 17 know 17 18 pounds alright that's actually what I normally Chad would you like a week to bulk up yeah before you fight Steve

I'm actually about 175 I was out here going to the gym so much I'm starting to look like J-Lo man I'm getting ripped

I love it oh go ahead Cal do you want to continue down I love it. Oh, go ahead, Cal. You want to continue down the career path here? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So you went from spare bedroom on a sparring team for somebody? Yeah, so our team was Team Alpha Male.

So that was Uriah put together. I like that. Uriah put together this team. This is a dream of his, that he wanted to build this MMA team like nobody had done before. And he started recruiting all these wrestlers. And we just talked about Faber had the same mentality, like wrestling is the best base. So he started getting all these NCAA wrestlers and pulling us all in. And we all came together and built Team Alpha Male. And we had coaches, like, so you have your striking coaches, your strength and conditioning coaches, your jujitsu, like submission stuff type coaches.

And so you have this one-stop shop where you can just do all your discipline training in one location. And that was kind of unheard of back then when it first started. Like most guys, when they were getting ready for a fight, they'd have to jump over to this gym and just do their submission stuff. Then they'd have to jump over to this gym and do their strength and conditioning, and then over here for striking. So this was kind of like a new thing, new era. Was it like a revenue share model in there? Like what makes the team, the team? So, yeah. So we all paid a percentage, um, of our fight purse. So say. To compensate all the trainers. Exactly. So that's how we divvied it up and everybody paid for all the coaches and everything. Um, and, and that's just how it went. Like everybody pitched

in. Um, but yeah, so we would train, um, we have all these now training partners all in one location. So I got guys that were in favor was a world champion at that, at that time. Um, but yeah, so we would train, um, we have all these now training partners all in one location. So I got guys that were in favor was a world champion at that, at that time. Um, so I'm training with straight out of college with some, with a world, multiple world champions, um, learning the ropes and how to fight and like all the techniques and, um, did that for three months. And was that a supportive atmosphere? Like, were they invested in you and in getting you improved? Yeah, for sure. Okay, cool. That's what was so cool about that team. It felt just like a bunch of brothers.

Like, everyone came from that NCAA mentality, like the wrestling mentality. Oh, so you guys had a little bit of shared history. Exactly. We all knew each other. We all wrestled against each other or on the same team, some of us, in college. And so coming together, you know, it was really cool. Everyone was pretty close. Everyone's helping each other out for fights.

And I did that for three months before I had my first pro fight. And I still remember this guy's name was Encarnacion was his last name. He had a wiffle ball bat for a leg. One leg was like, I don't know what the hell had happened. Maybe he got in an accident as a kid. But he was this really high class kickboxer. And so, you know, he's jacked everywhere. His other leg's all jacked.

And he has this one like really skinny leg all the way from the top to the bottom. Oh, when you said wiffle ball bat, I didn't know if you meant like big bertha or like the yellow kind. No, it was like just, yeah, yellow. Not the red kind. Nope. And I remember going out there and I, it was. Like, what do you mean? Like, cause it had been specially developed as like a.

It atrophied. Yeah, I was going to say there must have been some kind of atrophy. Yeah, I think he, I don't know if it was a birth defect or if he got in an accident, like I said, but there was, like, not a lot of muscle on it, but holy shit, did he throw that sucker. Oh, really? Like it was a blade? Yeah, he would, like, head kick people and knock them out with that thing. Just bone.

Oh, yeah. And so I remember going out to the first hit. So your coaches were like, so watch out for that. Exactly. We trained a lot for that, and he threw that thing at me in the first, like, 15 seconds, and I moved, and I remember it just whizzing by my head, and I'm like, dude, you cannot get hit with that thing. I remember being, when I was a little kid, man,

you remember the Chicago Bears had their big deal where they won the Super Bowl and Fridge Perry and all that shit? I remember, this is probably the last sports interview I listened to, was Fridge Perry was talking about why he liked black shoes. He said that people see those black shoes and they think you're going to be slow. Well, then you smoke them. So I'm thinking that leg, he's like, oh, yeah, dude. People are like not paying any attention to that leg and all of a sudden it cold cops.

That has to be it, man. Because I remember watching highlights of that guy and just studying up on him before I fought him, and he had multiple head kick knockouts with that thing, and I'm like, that thing is brutal. Did you win? I won. I took him down. I'm not getting kicked at that damn thing.

I took him down and choked him out in, I don't know, a couple minutes. I remember getting up just feeling so pumped. Like, this is pretty freaking cool. I just got paid to beat somebody up. And that was good money, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah, shit. Straight out of college. It was only a couple grand, but, you know,

going from no money as a college student to a couple grand in a couple minutes, I'm like, sign me up for the next one. The second you turn, I remember like selling my first magazine stories. The second you turn something that's generally cost you money into something that makes you money is a triumphant feeling oh it feels so good there's like a reverse you're like sucker yeah so what what made like

someone that self describes themselves as a softy like what made you be a like be pumped up about beating somebody up i think it was more of just a success thing you know i was so nervous going into it yeah because i didn't know how the hell i was gonna do you know coming off of wrestling i was i was the man in wrestling i was an ncaa runner-up two-time all-american in in college and so i'm like god i got a lot like there's so much pressure. Like, people are expecting me to come in here and do really well. What if I go out there and get head kicked and knocked out by that wiffle ball bat, you know? And so there was just, for me, I remember feeling super nervous.

Like, I remember walking, because at that point it wasn't a cage. It wasn't an octagon. It was a boxing ring. So I remember walking, you know, and it was basically in my hometown so i had tons of people that i knew from high school and growing up they're watching me and i'm like man i can't please don't screw this up and uh and so i went out there and was successful in a couple minutes and i just remember just being like ah yes that was freaking awesome like and i want to do it again and i think that's one of the main reasons it's just

the success part of it like like feeling the relief all the hard work knowing that you just killed yourself for that whole training camp to go in there and within a couple minutes you know not getting beat up at all and uh just being successful so you probably get people ask you this, I bet people ask you this is probably as annoying, but did you get in a lot of fights when you were a little kid? I got in a few. Yeah. Not, not because I chose to, I was a tiny little guy. Like I was 80 pounds my freshman year in high school. Like I was so small. No shit. Really? Yeah. And so like my whole life I got picked, like I would get picked on and then I would just whoop their ass. Like guys would come up to me thinking that they were just going to bully me. And I mean, I, like I said, I started wrestling at five years old.

So did you grow up, did you grow up poor, like in a poor neighborhood? No, not too much. I grew up in like a little farm town. Why is everybody fighting and beating each other up? I don't know, man. It's just a fight in town. Yeah. There's a lot of ghetto-ness too like it's a farm

town but there's also because it's in california right yeah i know what you mean like it's hard to picture but there's a kind of a weird there's like agricultural areas in california that it's different than an ag area in indiana like like things are kind of more compressed like worlds collide a little bit exactly we had such a melting pot of races and just tons, you know, tons of different types of people there. You got one side of the town, it's all the farmers who, like you said, the ag people. And then you go over here and it's, you know, low class, just pretty ghetto people that are living a rough life, you know, and then you go on this side and you got people with tons of money, you know, living in these big mansions, you know? And so it's kind of just a mix of a little bit of everything. But man, I just, I remember as a kid being terrified riding the school bus because we'd have people that were fighting on, I didn't like fighting. Like it's

not something I like sought after as a kid. Um, but there would be people picking on other people all the time, getting in fights. And, dude, it was not something I enjoyed. But it's, you know, how old are you? 34. Yeah, see, I'm like 12 years older than you. Longer reach.

Yeah, more evidence. Like I'm older, so it's even another advantage I have, right? My kid's now in school, so my kids are five, seven, and nine. And the intolerance these days at school of people like beating people up, it's just like you don't beat people up and you don't bully people. I remember things happening when I was a kid like on the school bus that I just can't even imagine now.

Oh yeah. There was, I don't want to say the kid's name. She's still around. And I don't want to say the girl's name because she's still around, but there was a girl that would ride our school bus and she would get off the school bus. This is in junior high. She would get off the school bus. And as she walked up her driveway, the same kid every day would roll down his windows and yell out and call her repeatedly, hey, thunder thighs, thunder thighs, thunder thighs, every single day.

Oh, you couldn't do that this day and age. And just to have it be, oh, he's just harassing her about the shape of her body. No big deal. Yeah. Dude. And just the brutality that kids get away with man it's amazing like kids are i remember kids are like kids are awful man oh yeah you gotta it's like real lord of the flies you gotta kind of go you gotta like govern kids man i agree and that's i'm i'm kind of

terrified i i mean this day and age all the social media stuff and where we've come as a society like i'm terrified for my baby girl. Like what, what the hell is shit going to be like when she's in high school? You know, like, what am I going to have to do? How many kids am I going to have to beat up to keep her safe? You know? And that's, I don't know. That's just something I'm terrified, but I think that's why we need to have another sibling and hope that, you know, either it's a girl and they're really close or a boy that can just whoop some ass. Yeah.

My daughter screwed something up on the bus. I still don't understand the full story, but she didn't get on the bus in the right way. But we heard from a teacher that my little boy went into her classroom and just read her the riot act about. No way. Yeah, how worried he was i was like that's cool yeah that's really i guess you just tore down right in front of everybody you did not like it don't make me worry like that that's pretty cool that's amazing did uh so what was your introduction to hunting and fishing was it young young so i started hunting

and fishing i grew up here in central california um blacktail up in, um, D D seven was the zone. I grew up hunting near Shaver Lake and Dinky Creek and, um, me and my dad and my brothers. I don't know what it was. They, they were never as into it as I was, but. How'd your dad get into it? I think just through some buddies. Uh-huh. Growing, you know, not even growing up. I think it was kind of later in life. But I mean, I remember just having this weird, like I would, hunting to me was like one of my most favorite things to do. Like I remember, here's a story, like me and my brother, my dad used to like discipline us with hunting. Like you're not going hunting and I would ball. Oh, no kidding. Really?

Yeah. Like I remember. Not like you are going hunting. Yeah. No, you're not going hunting. And I remember. So this one story, I had this. No kidding.

He would use it as like a tool. Yeah. He'd weaponize it. Yeah. I think that would work very well with your son. Oh, God. Oh, yeah. My older boy, it would tear him up. Because he's sensitive too. He wouldn. Oh, yeah. My older boy, it would tear him up.

Because he's sensitive, too. He wouldn't like to get excluded. But yeah, it would tear him up. Yeah. So I remember one time, me and my brother, I was probably six or seven. And my dad, it was a Friday. He just, my dad owns a cabinet business. So he would, he's obviously self-employed.

But he would be like, look, after Friday or sorry, after we're done Friday, Saturday morning, we're going to get up. We're going to go. It's like a two hour drive before daylight. And we're going to hunt Saturday, um, all day Sunday and come home Sunday night. So you guys had overnight. Yeah. Yeah.

Camp and do all that stuff. Oh, really? Okay. And he was, he was pretty like, he was into it. He was into it. Yeah. As a kid. Like enough to take kids and tents and shit.

And yeah, which I don't, um, yeah, that's another story. Like he was into it. He was into it. Yeah. As a kid. Like enough to take kids in tents and shit. Yeah. Which I don't know. Yeah. That's another story. But I remember I had this like star shaped metal that I won at a wrestling tournament and I took the ribbon part off. So it was just a star and that was my ninja star. And me and my brother were up in our bedrooms playing ninjas that Friday night.

At the drywall? Oh no. Window. My brother, I was in my room and then it was just an empty doorway. And then he was in the other room and I don't know why I did this, but I tossed it. And I remember that one of the star edges sticking in the window, just like breaking a hole and sticking it and like just shat it around the edge. And I mean, these were pretty big windows in our, in our you know and i just remember being like oh shit like don't tell

dad don't tell dad i'm like i run in there and take it out yeah and i'm like trying to figure out a way to like keep it covered from him finding it and of course like shortly he comes up there to see what we're doing and there's a freaking hole in the window, and he lost his shit. And needless to say, we're not going hunting tomorrow. And I didn't sleep all night. I was so bummed, dude, to cry. Like, I cried. I think we just went to bed right then because I was so upset.

And I think overnight, my dad realized it was an accident, and he still got us up before. You mellowed out. I remember him coming in in the dark and loading us up in the truck and we headed up. Did you guys have some success as kids? Yeah, I mean, kind of. I killed my very first buck up there. It was with my old PSE Nova. I saved up in high school. I saved up enough like, I would mow lawns around our neighborhood.

And I bought a used PSE Nova from a buddy. And I killed my very first. It was just a little tiny fork spike. Frontal shot. Clean pass through. And me, my brothers. It was me and my two brothers and my dad went down. We found them, followed them down this real deep, deep canyon, got to the bottom.

And my dad was like, all right, so we'll gut this, showed us how to do all that. He's like, I'm going to hike back up and I'm going to get the truck and I'm going to try to find a way to come down here because we're not pulling this thing back up out of here. My dad gets lost. And so we're just like, what the hell do we do? We're sitting there in the dark with a dead deer. My dad is like wandering through the woods at night. And luckily we like drug that thing out and another hunter saw us. Oh, really?

And loaded it up and we just told him how to get back to our camp. And my dad was out there for most of the night. He ended up finding his way back to the truck eventually, and then I don't even remember what time he got back, maybe 2 or 3 in the morning. But, yeah, that was a pretty good trip. You were like, I'm hooked. Yeah, I love this.

Let's do it again. This is great. But, yeah, I mean, I was successful then. And like growing up, I was thinking about this not too long ago, but my dad never really killed anything. I don't know if it's just him always trying to let us go first. Yeah. But I killed that one. My brothers never killed anything.

And I think my dad killed one other little two point, you know, years down the road. And that was pretty much it. I think we only killed two, two or three deer in that area from when I started as a little kid till I stopped hunting up there, which was basically after college. Did you have other kinds of stuff you did? Like hunting, you know, BB gun hunting, squirrels and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. Grew up doing all that. So, um, And fishing too. I mean, you're a great fishing spot.

Yeah. There was a lot of good trout fishing up, up in that area. Um, we would go up there and sometimes pull overnighters where this was like one of my favorite things to do where we'd go up there, no tent, no nothing. Um, and there was one spot, if it was a full moon, when the moon would come up and over the, the, the

hill in front of us, those trout would go nuts on a glow bobber and a cricket. Oh yeah. So we would just go out there and just sit and wait. Sometimes that moon wouldn't come up till like midnight and you just sit there. Nothing would bite until then. And, you know, everyone's kind of started getting down like, well, maybe we're just not going to catch anything. And sure enough, as soon as that full moon would come up and over, we would all limit out on trout. Like it would illuminate.

Yeah. It would illuminate. They could see up or whatever. And so we would do that from time to time, and we sometimes would just crash in the bed of the truck for an hour or two and then drive back home. But we wouldn't camp early. We wouldn't bring anything for it.

Just go up there and catch our limit as soon as that moon came up and over, and then we'd drive our two hours back home. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law

makes it that they can't join. Whew! Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,

24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right, we're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light,

Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. OnXMaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. When you decided to start going into athletics, did you ever sense that there was a,

you were sort of making a decision in life? You know, like there's this Jim Harris, I can't remember how, there's this Jim Harrison quote where it's something to the effect of, I think we're talking about like 10-year-olds or something, and he's saying that where he grew up, there was already a split,

and like you had your boys that had a baseball bat and a baseball mitt on their bike, and you had your boys that had a baseball bat and a baseball mitt on their bike and you had your boys with a fishing rod on their bike and they might intermingle but they're kind of their paths in life are like a little bit set you defied that because now you're done doing the one and you're like very dedicated at you know hunter and angler but did you going off to be so aggressive about athletics? Did you like ever, did it occur to you that you're just going to have no time? Yeah.

And that actually happened. It's like a discipline, right? College for me was, I really had to put the outdoor life on hold. Because you just couldn't be successful and do both. Nope. And it was tough for me, man. It was really tough for me. In fact, I almost quit wrestling my

freshman year in college. I remember going through the full season and having to cut back on what I loved, absolutely loved to do probably more than anything. And I was just trying to find myself, is this something I really want to pursue? I could just go to college and be a normal person and do all the things that I love to do as far as the outdoors goes. And you got that one buddy who was always calling you being like, man, we knocked him dead over here. Man, we got him over here. Here's the bark I got. Here's the bark Dave got. Yep. And so it was brutal, man. I almost quit. And luckily I had a really good coach in college and we sat down and he just kind of weighed out the pros and cons.

And it kind of just put things into perspective for me on, look, I can suffer now. I can kill myself for these four years and, you know, be successful and have something to where I can transfer out of college into making money and be able to do all that stuff for the rest of my life. And so after like really like thinking about it and putting that type of stuff in the perspective, I said, all right, I stuck with it, had to keep all that stuff on hold. I would still get out from time to time. Like, so I went to Cal Poly, which is right there near Paso Robles, tons of wild pigs in that area. So we'd go out from time to time and do some pig hunting, you know, but for the most part, my deer hunting, pretty much everything got put on hold. For four years. For four years.

But then more years because you went professional. Exactly. But what's great about the fight game is fights can happen at any time of the year. It's not like a season. Okay. So I might get a fight scheduled, and this happened quite a few times, right before deer season would start. So I would kill myself, do the 10-week training camp, go out there, whoop this dude's butt. And now I usually take like a good two to three weeks off and let my body recover, depending on if I had any injuries or anything like that.

And so then that would be my hunting time. Yeah. So you would start getting a little bit of time to collect yourself. Uh-huh. There was a point in my fight career where I started to lose control and started doing a little bit too much of the outdoor stuff. And I could tell my training started to suffer. I was in the training room.

I was feeling it, you know, getting tired when I shouldn't get tired, you know. And another person that actually sat me down was Uriah was like, look, man, he's like, I see you're starting to struggle a little bit. Um, I see you're on all these hunting and fishing trips. Like maybe we should cut that back a bit. Oh, no kidding. Oh yeah. And, uh, see, I would, yeah, it's funny. Cause like you're, you're performing at such a high level that stuff like that is regarded. Cause like for most people who are so sedentary, that was sort of like that was up their game. You know, I mean, it would be like, oh, you look great. You seem like you're getting out, you know, and you got a little more energy now. But to have it be that that is like the slacker route.

I know. Right. It's kind of weird. And I mean, the thing, I think the things that made me kind of feel crummy in the, in the workout room, say you do a hunt where you're not eating a ton of calories, where my body's, I'm used to being on like

a very strict routine when it comes to diet, like making sure I get enough food and the right kind of food where you're living off of freeze dried meals and just eating kind of minimal stuff for four or five six

sometimes a week um you know and i'm not yeah i'm hiking but my body's used to redlining you know multiple times a day so it's almost like taking a step back which is which was good from time to time like right after a fight after just killing myself for 10 weeks, that's perfect. You know, maybe not so much the calorie part of it, but not killing myself, not redlining my body where I'm just hiking around, glassing, sitting for a while, my body's recovering, but you know, two, three months of that, it kind of catches up. And I would feel it when I'd get in the, in the gym and start training when I'd start sparring with guys and I'm getting fatigued and stuff like that. I'm like, all right, it's time. So I did listen to Faber.

I cut back a little bit, started, you know, overcoming that type of stuff in the training room. Luckily, it didn't ever affect any of my fights because I was usually pretty smart about, like, look, if I have a fight, I have to be serious here. But sometimes, you know, I would fight I have a fight, I have to be serious here. But sometimes, you know, I would fight one time a year, you know, so I got tons of time that I'm just like training, but I don't really have a purpose. I don't have anything lined up. You know, they're the UFC is

like putting me kind of on the shelf for now because they're waiting for a certain match to happen. And then I fight the winner of that that fight so i'm just like kind of training for nothing not training for nothing but but way more motivated when you know exactly yeah right and so i kind of get in those types of years where it's like well shit i'd rather be out chasing black tail or something you know and so that's why i would be kind of doing that for two or three months at a time and and i would fill it in there but but. Did you know, well, let me ask you, I got two questions, a whole shitload of questions, but scrap the, did you know, I'll ask you that one later. Do you think like, based on the kind of person you are and what you realize about yourself

now, do you think you'd have been successful at anything or do you think you just happened to hit the thing you'd be successful at? I think I probably would find a way to become successful at anything I would like to hope. It was like a drive to do it. Whatever it is. I think that comes from the years of wrestling. I know in college, during the summer, if I just didn't train, if I went two weeks without training, I'd feel like the biggest piece of shit. Like I just feel like guilty almost. And that's just

because I'm like so used to doing everything or doing something every day. And I think even now that transfers into my daily life. Like I'm running fins and feathers. If, if I don't. Tell people what it is. We didn't do a good job of setting that up. So that's a company, me and a good buddy of mine started back in 2015. What we call it is like a celebrity outdoor service. So we put together like a year-long schedule of different species of hunting trips all over the world and fishing as well mixed in there. And what we do is I have like 20 different celebrity pro staff members, which are a bunch of different UFC fighters, pro ballplayers, actors, PBR guys, just a mix of different types of athletes and celebrities you'd see on TV or watch playing their sport. Um, and what we do is we book clients on those trips and then we add one, uh, two, sometimes even three of our celebrities to join people on these trips.

Like in a kind of hosting role. Exactly. And they'll hunt with you. They fish with you, hang out in camp, have some beers, tell stories, like just make it a new, like unique experience. Because there's a lot of guys that have booked a ton of different things all over the place. And they kind of get to that point where they're like, well, this is just, it's kind of boring for me now. And so now they can kind of mix it up. Or we do get a lot of like bachelor party guys like for our fishing trips oh i'm gonna come hang out with a bunch of different ufc guys and drink beer and catch fish

and you know what i mean and so we launched it back in 2015 16 was our first full year and i honestly i had no clue how it was gonna do like i i was was like, is this going to be kind of a conceited, like are people going to look at me and be like, dude, you're an idiot. I ain't booking shit with you. Or are people going to love it and want to come do these cool hunts with me or some of my buddies? And dude, we sold out. Like every trip that we had that year, we sold out completely.

And I'm like, dude, we got to grow. We got to add some trips for next year. That was cool. That was too easy. Yeah. If you want to, if you're trying to look this up, it's Finns like with a Z. So F-I-N-Z. I'm looking, dude, we got to grow. We got to add some trips for next year. That was cool. That was too easy. Yeah, if you're trying to look this up, it's fins with a Z. So F-I-N-Z. I'm looking at Chad's hat right now. And feathers is with a Z as well.

Yeah. So fins and feathers. Imagine by the time they type in Chad Mendez fins, it'll auto fill. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah. But yeah, so we just basically added from 2016 on, we've just added a few trips each year. Um, and we've sold out everything that we've done. So it's been, I mean, it's pretty, it's pretty rewarding for me to know that people, A, just want to hang out with these guys.

But, you know, taking something that I have so much passion about, you know, hunting, fishing, teaching people. We get a lot of guys that have never hunted, never fished, that watch your guys' show a ton. And, you know, they see Rogan, they see Cam, they see all these guys who are going out and, you know, killing their own meat and living off of that. You know, and for me, like being able to talk about that in interviews when I was fighting, like, look, I live off of my wild game, like my training camps, the meat that I eat during those camps is all the stuff that I've killed throughout the year. Oh, really? So even when you're on like a super regimented diet, you're still putting wild game in there?

Oh, yeah. That's like any diet that I've, so I work with the RP strength, who is a, it's a program that will create your diet as well. And so that's who I use, would use through my training camps. But all the meat. I don't understand what that, that's like a consulting? Yeah, basically. Like you give them all your info, your goals, you know, obviously weight, height, like all that type of stuff.

And like I tell them, okay, I have a fight in 10 weeks. I need to get down to this weight, but I don't want to lose much muscle. So we need to get as lean as like body fat lean as possible while keeping as much muscle as I can. So that when I cut that last 10 pounds of water, um, you know, I don't, I'm not dying. Um, and so then they put together a full diet plan for your training camp, knowing how much you're training, how much working out you're doing each day. To what level of detail? Pretty freaking detailed.

Like down to the peanut? Maybe not quite down to the peanut. We're talking like a meal would be like a four-ounce lean piece of meat, which any wild game is, is okay for that. Um, uh, 45 grams of complex carbs.

So like your whole oats, brown rice. I count this as being down to the peanut. Okay. Yeah. Down to the peanut then. And it, I mean,

it's a lot of freaking work, dude. It's, I mean, meal prepping is a must. Like you can't, you can't. And they'll have it dialed and you follow follow this thing, and you'll get, like.

Yeah. And are you doing your own meal prepping and cooking? Yeah. Yep. You do? I see you cooking all the time. I do, yeah. I love cooking.

Why don't you have someone come in and do it? No. I wish, but I'm too picky with my food, man. I love cooking. I love, here's how much I love it. When I'm cutting weight, like, I'm the week of the fight. I'm, here's, here's how much I love it. When I'm cutting weight, like I'm the week of the fight, I'm in my hotel room. I have weigh-ins in two days and I'm sitting there watching the food channel, watching these people, all these delicious ass meals. Just

like, Oh, I'm going to make that. I'm taking notes. So some people, my wife's like, you're freaking insane. Like, why are you watching this and i just i don't know it just feels good to me tell me what can you i don't even know this word kinesiology kinesiology yeah kinesiology you studied this in college yep and then you went to like the highest level in terms of nutrition and body performance like professionally um when you look back at it all now like your formal education everything you learned from watching and body performance, like professionally. When you look back at it all now, like your formal education, everything you learned from watching sort of like the world's top athletes get in the best shape they've ever been in,

what is your sort of interest and tolerance in fad diets and stuff? Like do you think there's like a magical formula and are you always like trying new things out or do you think there's just like what's your diet theory, your diet philosophy? Yeah, I've never, I don't think I've ever tried any of these fad diets. I see a lot of people doing a lot of different things and teach their own. I feel like every human body is different. I think some bodies will, you know, will be okay getting away with doing certain things where other people's bodies will not put up with it. I honestly think find what works best for you. Some people could live solely off meat and nothing else and feel great.

Some people only want vegetables and that's, that works great for their body. Me, I've always been about balancing everything. Like I, I love carbs. I love vegetables and I love meat. Like I, my, my solid meal is a protein, a carb and a vegetable. And whether I'm cutting weight or not, like even during the weight cut, like I would always make sure I had that type of. Those three things. Yes. So like my, those RP meals would be a, say, like I said, a four ounce lean piece of meat. So like a venison steak.

And I would have to weigh those out. 45 grams of carbs. So like 45 grams of brown rice. And like two cups of broccoli, or my favorite thing would be, uh, cucumbers with a little bit of rice wine, vinegar on them. Uh-huh. Just kind of mix it up a little bit. That's your weight cutting meal. That was it, man.

That was something that I lived off of for 10 weeks. Obviously I'd supposed to eat. And, you know, you can get away with making like tacos or, you know, cause I make a little, um, pico de gallo salsa or something. It's all veggies. And so I know I need this amount of vegetables, this amount of protein, this amount of carbs, throw that together. Now I'm, now I'm eating something that's not boring. I would eat that anyways, you know? Yeah, I got you.

And so I would start getting creative towards the end. Um, and mainly because I was kind of getting bored of eating the same things over and over and over again. When you're like hungry like that, do you feel like they're just like punching someone? Oh dude, I get hangry bad. I get really, yeah, I get really emotional when I get hungry. I have zero, zero patience and my wife could probably attest to that too. But, um, yeah, man, it's, I get really irritable. Do you guys, is that just me? Oh yeah man it's i get really irritable do you guys is that just oh yeah man i get so irritable you can watch steve really yeah you might give him a snickers yeah yeah what's your take on alcohol i drink it yeah i mean in moderation obviously um like nothing

through training camps i would never drink but that night after the fight, I'd, I'd let loose. Like we'd get, we'd get a little stupid loose for sure. Got you. So. What about. Go ahead. Oh, all your meal prep. Is that what led into cooking for you? Or have you always been kind of tinkering with cooking like through college and stuff?

No, I think I, the cooking's always been something that, um, that's always interested me. My dad was always the one that cooked in our family. Um, and it was something that I remember watching him have so much passion about. And I think, I don't know if that's just what transferred it over to me or what, but, um, I love cooking for people. I love cooking for large groups, like our fins and feathers trips. I'm usually the one cooking most of the meals. Like if I work with an outfitter, I'll even ask them like, can I at least cook one of the nights,

you know? And so we'll go and do that for the clients. But it is funny because on, on Instagram, you know, there's a lot of people who are like, look at me, I'm cooking.

And you can look at it and you're like, you do not cook. Yeah. But when you're doing it, I'm like, Chad knows how to do things. Yeah. And I'm like, Chad knows how to do things. Yeah. And I'm no pro by any means.

I, I even sometimes make stuff where I'm like, Oh, what the hell did I do? But I mean, in my honest opinion, that's how you got to learn. I mean,

I'll follow a lot of recipes and sometimes I'll tweak things, um, where I feel like it would add to it. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does not. But, um, no,

I love doing it. It's something I, especially with so, so much wild game meat that I have, like you guys probably know this, you get bored

of cooking it the same freaking way over and over again. So I'm always like, Oh, that's why I like eating at Yanni's here at night.

Yeah, something new. Yeah, because I remember my brother Danny, you know, he lives off wild game at his home

and when he goes to someone's house, he's like, I just love it because it just tastes like something I didn't make. Because my shit after wild game just seems home. And when he goes to someone's house, he's like, I just love it because it just tastes like something I didn't make. Because my shit after a while, everything I make just seems to kind of be the same. Yeah.

And for whatever reason, when someone usually, when someone cooks something, whether it's something you've made or they've made, it tastes better when somebody else makes it for you. Like it's the sandwich effect. Like I can make a sandwich and eat it and it just doesn't taste the same. But my wife makes me a sandwich. It tastes 10 times better for some reason. I don't know why the hell that is, but. Especially if it conforms to your idea of what food ought to be. Yeah, exactly.

But, you know, we've talked about this in the past too. You get like these very fitness centric people. Some of them hunt, some of them don't. But it's like the one thing that binds them together is the boneless skinless chicken breast. And I'm like, I don't care how healthy you are. That is just, that is a bridge too far. Yeah, no, I agree, man. And I'm someone that will definitely stray from the health stuff. I've always tried to make things not over the top unhealthy, but I'm a sucker for good eats, man. I'll, I'll throw some heavy cream

in there, douse some cheese in there. And like, I'm not afraid to, my wife doesn't always like it. She's like the wild game. Oh yeah. She loves it. In fact, she actually, I kind of got her into hunting the last few years. She's, um, killed a wild pig on that ranch that I told you guys about. Um, she's, she's killed a couple of turkeys She killed a four-bearded turkey her very first time. I said, you might as well just quit now. You're not going to beat that. But she killed one with her bow, which was like the pinnacle of my career because I scouted these suckers.

I got it all set up, and I was like, I just want you to try to kill one with your bow. And for the first three setups, she was trying to use the guillotine broadheads. Yeah. And she missed three different jakes at like eight yards. And she was getting so frustrated. Because that's binary, right, with oils. It's either like a kill or a miss. Yeah, and that's why I did it because I'm like,

I would hate for her to hit one, wound it, and let's not find her or fly off. And I know that would probably scar her. And so I'm like, you you're either gonna end this thing right now or you're gonna miss yeah i guess there's a little room to like nick it but generally it's like a uh-huh and she missed three times and you know shit we're getting up at like three in the morning and we're having to drive an hour each time and you know getting set up waiting for the sun to come up these things work in and then she misses and she's like i think the third time it almost broke her. Yeah. That's when you start telling her, like, I wish we'd never met.

You ruined my life. I didn't retire for this. So I just switched her to a normal broadhead and was like, look, this is where you're going to aim. The night before we looked at videos, we like like i showed her some pictures of where to aim and luckily this giant tom comes walking in right at right at first light you're calling oh yeah call him in he's coming into the decoys and i think i had the decoys at like eight yards because i was like i gotta get these things it's close to like shaking hands he comes in and she just hammers this thing and he goes like 15 yards and tips over and i would i was just like oh that's great i felt more excited than if i would have shot the dang thing you know and she's like is it dead i'm like it's dead you

got him and so she was pretty pumped about that and we had that for um a big meal we had a bunch of friends that came over and we i smoked it on the traeger and we did this whole big like meal made like a big ordeal about it she loved it so much oh that's cool yeah it was pretty cool and so um that was my that was my hunting story with the wife so hopefully she definitely said she would do more and that was her last last time doing anything but yeah we have to get her on the show next i know right tell tell some stories would be cool yeah hey when you're um like when you get knocked out all the time how many times been knocked out can even count them up yeah so what do you count as a knockout at this point you're talking

about like the flash yeah I count those so like getting your bell rung so this is what I don't know if you guys have ever had that happen where it sounds like boom in your head. One time I was swinging on, you know those macrame, like those things you hang potted plants from? Yes. Yeah, I remember hitting a tree when I was a kid one time and having that.

Yeah. So it's almost like a drum going off in your head. Yeah, and I was flat out in the lawn. Did you not remember and then wake up? Yeah. Okay, so you were knocked out. Yeah. I think that was Yeah. And I was flat out in the lawn. Did you, did you not remember and then wake up? Yeah. Okay. So you were knocked out. Yeah.

So like, I think that's the only time I was knocked out. Gotcha. So that's a knockout. And I, I would count those as a knockout. I wouldn't count the ringing your bell where it's just kind of like, like everything kind of.

Explain a bell ringing. We use ringing your bell to have someone shoot a shotgun next year here. Kind of the same thing. Cause there's like, there's literally like for the next three hours. oh that's the worst um so we're getting your bell rung someone hits you you hear that noise but you don't forget anything like you're right there the whole time like holy crap you know like a knockout the technical term for that is a bell ring you got your bell rung yeah and then a knockout is you don't remember shit you just you just wake up so i don't know if you guys have ever been like blacked out from drinking ever oh yeah and you just if you ever just come

out of it and you're like what the oh yeah you gotta walk out look for street signs figure out where you're at oh yeah that's kind of like being knocked out. So I think the times I've been knocked out, Jose Aldo, my first fight, he caught me with a big knee and I just remember waking up. Now, it doesn't hurt because you don't know what the hell happened. You're just like, shit. You're looking around. Everybody laughed. Yeah. What the hell?

This dude's sleeping up. That was my first time. But how long, though, typically, in a fight? It's seconds, right? Seconds, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, like you don't really – I remember watching the video. So I get hit with a knee.

I went back to my back, and then he jumps on me, and he hits me like three or four times before the ref finally got to him and tackled him. Don't remember any of that. Oh, okay. I don't remember getting back to my feet. I came back to like talking to the ref already standing. And I was just like, what the fuck happened?

Oh, and then all of a sudden your brain like caught up. Yeah. It's weird. So that's like a legit knockout. That's a legit knockout. And those suck so bad because it's weird. So that's like a legit knockout. That's a legit knockout. And those suck so bad because it's like. So you're up and some dude's asking you questions and all of a sudden you like come into being. Yeah, like a ref's talking to you.

And then I think you're answering them because usually when I come back to, I'm talking. Like I'm talking back to the ref. In a sensible way. I have no idea. I don't know. I wish somebody would film this because I don't know if I'm just, I don't know what I'm saying. I just, when I come back to you, I'm talking and then I like,

I think they probably realize when you come to. So how many of those? Let's rule out the bell ringings. I think two. Oh, okay. I thought you were going to throw at me 20. Two. No, two. Luckily I think because I was a wrestler, I was mainly taking guys down and

staying on top of them aldo was one and frankie edgar was the other guys that knocked you out yep um i got my bell rung with connor he didn't put me out though connor mcgregor that's like the one name that a lot of people know yeah and then the second fight with um aldo he rung my bell um maybe two or three times in that fight where boom and you fall down and you get back up like i never lost memory on any of it but it takes your feet out from underneath you and your body basically shuts down for a split second and you're when that happens you you jump up and you're i imagine you're focused on what you're doing but are you you also like, man, I need to be alive a long time. Yeah.

And be functional as an old man. Or do you think about that the next day? Next day. Yeah, you're not thinking that in the – You can't go down that path. No. So for me, when I got my bell rung, I fell down. It messes with your vision for a split second, too.

You can't focus on anything. It's just like everything's blurry, and I just see him running at me. And then it kind of clears back up, and I'm like, ah, shit. And then I get back into grappling and him being on top of me, and we get back to the feet. But once that happens once in a fight, your head's never the same. So it feels like you have tons of pressure in your head for how long depends like for that one that was a brutal fight man i pissed blood that night when i got back to the hotel my head was probably foggy like that and

pressure for a day or two man so if right now right now, let's say I said, you got to just sit there and Yanni's going to sit up and Yanni's going to give you the hardest haymaker he can give you, would you just be like, okay, whatever? Or would you be scared about it? I mean, I wouldn't like it. No. Not at all. So when you go into a fight, are you like thinking like, man, I hope I don't get hit?

Yeah. I mean, that's, oh yeah. That's the goal every time. Like in the basic way, like in the basic way you'd imagine not wanting to get hit. Exactly. I mean, and like I said, I think the difference between someone that's never trained for fighting and someone that has like, I think you fear the pain. I fear losing my fight.

So. Yeah. I get that. That's kind of like, I think I'm thinking about it as being like, you walk into a situation where you're going somewhere, you know your feet will get totally cold. Right?

You're like, my feet will be numb. And you just go into it being like, it sucks, but I know my feet will be numb. And you just,

right? Yep. I think some people will be like, well, if you know they're going to be numb, why would you not go?

But just some things you become comfortable with over time. Like, you've been through it. Exactly. They get numb, they warm up again later. You're just aware that it'll happen and you, go but just some things you become comfortable with over time like you've been through it exactly numb they warm up again later it just you're just

aware that it'll happen and you whatever yep but you don't get there about getting hit in the face no no and that's the thing it's like you know i know i'm gonna get hit going into this fight i'm not afraid like i said i'm not afraid of it hurting i'm afraid of waking up and having a loss you know what i mean because here's the shit know what I mean? Because here's the shitty thing. Meaning like having lost the fight. Yeah. And here's the shitty thing about that is not always the best guy wins that fight. I mean, with those little ass gloves on, one tiny mistake, if someone just puts their head

down and wing something, even if they're meaning to hit you or just winging it and you don't have your hand covering your chin for a split second and it happens to catch you, you wake up and you're like, fuck, you know, all that work for nothing. I didn't even get to fight. And that's kind of what happened with my Frankie Edgar fight. Like I went out there and just got clipped in the beginning of the fight. And I just woke up with the ref pushing me up against the cage, like fights over and I'm

just like mother you know like I didn't shouldn't have been that way no like I wanted to fight and does the community do the when that happens when someone gets like a lucky shot is it recognized in the community is it like oh yeah he won but he shouldn't have won there's some people that know it but most people the public perception is you lost. You lost, you got knocked out, you lost. Yeah. No one's like, wow, not really. In my honest opinion, this is how I would look at it. So, and this is how I based a lot of my preparation for certain fighters. If I'm looking at someone's highlight reels or, you know, certain past fights that were online, if it's them going out there and knocking a dude out, I don't base a lot of my, um, preparation off of that. If they go out there and completely

dominate a fighter from start to finish, even though it goes to a decision, that's what I pay more attention to. Because like I said, anybody could go out there and get lucky and knock somebody out. You know, we have four ounce gloves on, which is basically bare knuckle. It doesn't take much to knock somebody out if you catch them right. But if you go out there and take them down or just outstrike them or just dominate them from beginning to end, that says something. So that's the type of stuff that I would pay more attention to. Yeah, like those fights where everybody's shocked because someone just throws up a calf and

whap! Yeah, I can see that you might be like, I don't know how much I actually trained for that. That person did that one time. Exactly. Yeah, keep an eye on it. But, you know, unless they've done it to like eight or nine different guys. Yeah, that's interesting, man. Because I can see that you'd be like,

I hope I'm not the guy that gets hit real fast and goes down. I could see that you'd fixate on that. For me in my fight career, that was probably my biggest hurdle to get over was the fear of that. Not, like I said, I just didn't ever want to lose mainly because I didn't want to disappoint. Disappoint who? My team, my family, you know, just fans for me. You were with your wife while you were professionally fighting, right? Yep.

What did she think about all that? When you told her you wanted to wrap it up, was she pissed? No. She was happy about that. I mean, she did it and, you know, put up with it because she knew that I loved it. But supportive. She was like a teammate. Yes.

She was very supportive always. It wasn't her favorite. Like, she's sitting there always like this, just, you know, peeking out. Hands in front of her eyes. Yeah. Like, what happened? What happened? And she'd hear the crowd go crazy, and her brother would be there next to her or something.

And he'd be like, Oh, he knocked him out. And okay. No shit. Really? Oh yeah. So she,

she put up with it. It wasn't her favorite thing, but she was, like I said, very supportive. So, um, yeah.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness, we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.

Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land,

hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it. Be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.

Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. When you were going through all this and actually in the, you know, like really fighting hard as a professional, were you like, man, when I quit this shit, I'm going to hunt and fish my ass off?

Was that like in the back of your head? Oh, yeah. The whole time. And that's why we created Fins and Feathers. I was sitting there like, look, I can't fight forever. We don't get money after we're done fighting. If we don't even fight, we don't get paid. We get paid per fight.

So say we sign a UFC contract. Yeah, I mean, it makes total sense, but I hadn't thought about it really. It's like job work. Yeah, I'm an independent contractor. When I'm done with the UFC, they shoo me away and that's it. I'm on my own. So there's no sort of base salary? Nothing. Nope. It's just you fight for money.

You fight for money. So we are prize fighters. What about sponsorships? Um, and so this is what I tried to do. I started building a base in the outdoor world, um, about halfway through my career because I knew I wanted to do something in the outdoor world when I'm done fighting that I could make money doing something I'm freaking obsessed with. And so I'm like, what the hell could we do? So me and my buddy were talking about the idea for fins and feathers, and it was something we talked about for a couple years um you know and what really kick-started it for me was my loss against frankie edgar and that was that that moment where it was like look i just killed myself and went in there and got caught and i didn't even get the fight you know so when you lose you only get half

of your money that you were gonna get you don't don't get the full amount. So I just took a huge pay cut because I got caught by something. So each guy agrees to a purse. Mm-hmm. You're agreeing to the winning purse. Yes. Knowing that it's 50% if you lose. Yeah, exactly. But the two guys might have a different.

Different amount. Everybody signs their own. They have the potential to win different amounts of money. Exactly. It's not like one pile to this guy, one pile to that guy. No, no. So you sign your contract. Say it's a five-fight contract. Each fight usually goes up per fight.

Is there ever a huge imbalance between the two fighters? Oh, yeah. Like if I win, I make millions. If you win, you make shit. Yeah, that's usually the case with Conor. Conor's making millions, and most guys are not making anything close to that. So he could lose and make more than the guy that won. Oh yeah.

And some guys in their contract have a flat rate. And so typically it's guys that have been with the company for a long time. The company meaning UFC. And their managers have figured out a way to tell these guys, look, we'll sign a four fight contract

but these fights are all guaranteed this amount of money. Does that make sense? So there's no win or lose. Yeah, it's just the flat rate, no matter what. So he's not even incentivized. I mean, you're incentivized for all manner of reasons, but the actual money is not incentivized.

Yeah, exactly. But all the other career and sponsorship and everything else is just doing good. So that's why we decided to do Fins and Feathers. I'm like, look, let's, what can I do to start building a, a base in the outdoor world so I can start working with different companies in the outdoor space, um, and working on sponsorships and like trying to figure out ways so I can, you know, become relevant there. Um, and get the travel around, do these hunts,

make money doing these hunts, and have fun with really cool people. And so we came up with the idea of Fins and Feathers, and I'm like, like I said, I don't know how this is going to go. We can give it a shot. We'll try it for a year, and if, you know, if it doesn't work, we'll try to figure something else out. Yeah, you'd be like, or I'll just get real bitter, watch a lot of TV, get grossly overweight. Oh, yeah.

And take that route. I don't know. A lot of options out there. And so, I mean, we did it. I lost the Frankie and I'm like, that year, I'm like, you know what? Let's get this sucker started. So we started the business. We got our attorney on things and got everything planned out.

We started building the website. Oh really? You're like laying the groundwork, man. Yeah, I started doing it when I was still fighting. Like what's an old fighter though? Dan Henderson fought into his 40s. I want to say he was like 46 or 47. That's a rarity though. Yeah, that's very rare. Most guys like Uriah Faber

he retired when he was, I think 39. Well, so you kind of like got your money's worth anyways, man. I mean, you got out,

you didn't like get out way early. Not super early. I mean, I still probably could have fought for another four or five years. Okay. But like Faber got out 39, was out for like a year or two and then came out of retirement, fought a fight when he was 40,

knocked the dude out and then just lost his last fight. So I don't know. But that's like, you know, anything in the 40s is like that's kind of up there. You think that's in your cards? Like eventually somebody's going to drag you back in? I don't think so, man. People ask that all the time. Like some rocky shit, man, you come back.

I think things would have to be absolutely horrible. So you'd go into it from a position of weakness. Exactly. Not a position of strength. Things would have to be. You were bagged into a corner. Be real hungry. Exactly.

So I'm just having so much damn fun doing what we're doing, man. And, you know, it's something I love to do. I don't have to get punched in the head anymore. You know, and so I don't see myself coming out of retirement anytime soon. You're just keeping your busy now. Yeah. I like how you can say, don't have to get punched in the head anymore. And it's not a metaphor.

Yeah. When I'm like listening to all the good shit, you know, if I need to cheer myself up, I'm going to start adding that in. Yeah. Like no one's punched me in the head. That's true, man. Probably. You know how many mornings I'd get out of bed just like so sore from head to toe and it's early morning. You know, we don't get cold out here like it is out here, but it's, you know, high 30s, low 40s. And I got to freaking go to the gym, which our heater freaking sucked.

So everything was freezing. Mats were freezing. We had these big, like, diesel. Do you ever see those diesel heaters where it looks like a jet engine? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We always like torpedo heaters. Yeah.

So we'd have one of those on the side of the mat, so the whole gym smells like diesel exhaust, and everybody's freezing. Those things kick ass, though, man. Oh, yeah. They heat it up. You ever get a fire going and aim one of those into the fire diesel exhaust and everybody's freezing. Those things kick ass though, man. Oh yeah. They heat it up. You ever get a fire going and aim one of those into the fire? No.

That's amazing. Oh, I bet. It really gooses it, man. But yeah, man. And then I'm like, got these guys that want to punch me in the face. I'm like, dude, don't touch me right now. I don't even want to be here, but you got to get through it, you know, but yeah, those are the, that's the shit I don't, I don't look forward to ever again. Like I'm good. I'm good not doing that anymore. What's your, what's your career advice for people? finding something you love to do. Like I love fighting. I love competing. I did it my whole life.

You know, I say all this negative stuff about it, but it was very good to me. I was good at it. I don't think you sound negative. Okay. I mean, I think you sound like a guy who's done. Yeah. Right?

It's not negative. Okay, good. Just like it's, there's like a circumspect, right? Yeah. Or circumspection, whatever the hell I'm trying to say. I got you. Yeah, you're just looking at it from a new angle. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, just find what'm trying to say. I got you. Yeah, you're just looking at it from a new angle. Yeah, exactly.

But I mean, just find what you love to do. And if it's something you love, it's never going to be work. Like, there's going to be times, like I said, those mornings where I'm sore from head to toe, it's cold, I don't want to get touched. But you do the workout and you feel good about it after. You know, I just push through that. Like, that was pretty cool.

Do you think that being as disciplined as you had to have been, did that come naturally? Did you have to like force discipline? I think there was a mix of times where I had to force it. I actually, as a kid, tried to play baseball. And my dad, this is a quote from my dad, you're not playing baseball, only pussies play baseball. And my dad, these are, this is a quote from my dad. Uh, you're not playing baseball. Only pussies play baseball. So I was like, well, I wanted to play a team sport where I'm out there with a team, you know, and baseball and I played on the playground. I loved

it, you know? And you know, I was just always so small. Your dad was like the old school kind of dad. Just like the old Portuguese. He's like, I don't care if you're 80 pounds. Yeah. Get your ass in there and wrestle. You know, I, there was multiple times growing up. I wanted to do something else. I wanted to quit wrestling.

Um, and the discipline that was basically my dad making me stick with it, which looking back on it now, I'm glad he did. Cause it, you know, made me who I am now. Same thing with my freshman year in college, wanting to quit, you know, the wrestling part of it. Then, you know, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have made it to the UFC. I wouldn't be sitting here with you guys right now, you know? And so there's so many things that I'm grateful for when it comes to that type of stuff. But, you know, the discipline part of it was sometimes was kind of forced on me it's interesting that you mentioned the guilt thing because um, I

Think people that oftentimes when I see people who just really lack discipline. They don't have that. Mm-hmm where I'll see someone and I'll hear about what someone did and I think how like Like I'm not any time about like how could that be of interest to you like how you wasted that amount of time but where was the part of you that would have been where's the part of you that tells you that you can't do that some people don't have that yeah the guilt i have friends like that i'll go i get like fishing guilt yeah like to not fish it feels guilty to like you know a long time goes by and you have opportunities that you don't do. It's like it's like waves on my conscience. Netflix, I believe, is making millions of dollars off these people that don't have that in their brain.

That don't feel shame. No, because I watch films and TV with a sense of discipline. Like I'm strategic about it. Right. And I don't feel bad doing it. I get shame at the grocery store. Like when I have in between, you know, busy weeks, lots of travel. I'm like, ah, I'm just going to get this pre-made pasta stuff.

And then I'll throw some meat on top of it when I get home. Oh, and you get a guilty feeling. By the time I'm done cooking, I'm like, why did I? to get this pre-made pasta stuff and then i'll throw some meat on top of it when i get home oh and you get guilty feeling by the time i'm done cooking i'm like why it's not that much more time what are you doing i get a guilt yeah i mean i have a life defined by guilt man like when we do it like now and then as a sort of like a nod to our kids we'll have like pizza night right and it's kind of easy for everybody you know you don't have to clean up oh it's great you know it's like it's just everything about it's easy they show up kids are like oh yeah great know, you don't have to clean up. Oh, it's great. You know, it's like, it's just everything about it's easy. They show up, kids are like, oh yeah, great!

You don't have to be like, eat your food. They just eat their food. You like walk out and put the box in the recycling bin. And it's just easy. But that makes me feel guilty. Because we didn't like cook something and like yell at the kids to eat it. Like, yeah, I have a guilt-guided

life, man. I think that's a good thing though. I mean, it sucks from time to time, but shit, man, we don't, yeah, I don't know. I, I take that as, you know, that's what makes us all successful. Like if you didn't have that feeling, like I said, I have a few buddies that are just like the biggest pieces of shit ever. And I'm like, gee, how'm like, how are you eating that? And how are you like not doing anything after eating that? Yeah, I don't know.

Because I don't have guilt, bro. Yeah. Sometimes I'm a little jealous of it. I look at my friends who are like, you know, be like, oh man, I feel like a piece of crap because I ran out and got pizza last night. Well, you know, you work all the time and occasionally it's okay to get a pizza.

And you kind of look at them and you're like, are you really my friend? Yeah. Like, who are you? Do you, uh, you film some of your hunts? Yeah. Do you do it, like, do you film and put them up? You put them on YouTube. Yeah, I put them on my YouTube channel, yeah.

Yeah. Do you, is that, do you view that as being tied into Fins and Feathers? I do. Yeah. I think because a lot of those videos actually are Fins and Feathers trips. Gotcha. Not all of them. I do a lot of my personal.

So people can watch it and see what to expect. Exactly. And it's, you know, they're not like the highest quality videos. It's me vlogging, which I feel like resonates more with people. Like it's me, like you're seeing this from my point of view. I'm sitting here talking to the camera. Sure, yeah. Then I'm pointing it to me like you're seeing this from my point of view i'm sitting here talking to the camera then i'm pointing it to you you know and you know so for me the the marketing part of

going on these trips filming this stuff and being able to put that on the youtube for people to see a it brings such a bigger connection like when i go to those shows like so many people come to the booth and they're like dude i loved I loved this video. I loved this hunt. Oh, is that that animal? So there's like a connection. Are you setting up a booth, like a Fins and Feathers booth at these outdoor expo type shows? And then you go man that booth. Yeah.

So people that wanted to meet, you could go to their local, or not local, but whatever sports show. Yeah, exactly. How many sports shows do you go to? We only do the booth at two shows. We do the SAC Expo and then that big hunt Expo in Utah. And both are extremely, you know, I've loved both of them. They can be a ton of work, you know, we're setting the booth up ourselves, traveling out to Utah and back. And, but I mean, just seeing all the people, like I've been going, I think this was our fifth year and it's crazy. There's so many like little kid, like wrestlers or just kids

that are into the hunting and out outdoor lifestyle that i've seen for the last five years just getting bigger and bigger bigger yeah that's funny i'm like dude and some of them like we've taken a picture every single year and they'll do like a slideshow and it's just cool to see the progression and when you when you if let's say people wanted to go and they wanted to make sure that they were going on a trip that you were accompanying um so do they do is there like a guarantee like can they be like i'm going on this trip and chad mendez is going or is it like i'm going on this trip and i don't know who but some they're going to send someone so what we do is if you go to our website um fins and feathers.com our schedule page will be this year's schedule so it'll show all the different hunts. So it'll give the species, the location,

the actual dates. Um, and then what we do, it'll say price and how many spots are available, but we'll put possible celebrities. Now, and the reason why I say possible, if my name's on there, there's like a 99% chance, especially now that I'm retired, that I'm going on that one. Um, the other guys we say possible, and I usually list like two or three guys if a fight pops up or something and they can't go on that trip. Oh, yeah, because there's always a little bit of uncertainty because you're scheduling way out. So then we'll rotate one of these other guys. But you'll have an idea of who's going to go on that trip. So that's what I was telling Cal in the car.

The last couple of years, I've gone on almost every single trip. Oh, okay. Um, and I'll bring some of my buddies in mainly because I just don't want, like if it's there, if one of my buddies that maybe fights in the UFC and they've never gone on this trip before, they don't know the outfitter yet. You know, I just want to be there and make sure everything goes smooth. I want to be there with the clients and make sure everything's going the way that I want it to go. Um, but last year, and I'm going to start doing that more this year, you know, those, those celebrity guys have gone on these

trips now and they understand the process. They are buddies with the outfitter now. And so there's going to be more trips where I don't have to go on them anymore. And so I'm going to start just sending more of these guys. And that's, that was the original business model for this. Like I, obviously I would go on every single, if I was single, I would go on every single one of these ones every year. My wife's like, I'm going to cut your nuts off if you leave one more time. So it's like. And that could actually impact your desire to go in the first place.

Exactly. And so I'm starting to just trying to clear up my schedule with these as much as i can and start putting some of these other guys on so that you know i don't have to travel as much mixing in with all my personal hunts and stuff as well what kind of trip um what kind of trip like really lets it all come home in the right way you know i mean in terms of being able to like have exposure to someone that you want to hang out with and it's kind of the right way. You know what I mean? In terms of being able to like have exposure to someone that you want to hang out with and it's kind of the right blend of effort and, you know, I mean like is it, I'm guessing it's not like hunting doll sheep.

No. And that's the thing. Most of our trips are pretty low impact. They're not like we're not really doing, we've done the back country stuff a couple of times, but it's tough, man. It's tough. So you do like a lot we're not really doing, we've done the backcountry stuff a couple times, but it's tough, man. It's tough.

So you do like a lot of waterfowl, turkeys. We do that type of stuff. Most of the stuff we do is big game, but. Oh,

you do? Okay. Yeah, I looked at the schedule, man. There's a little bit of everything. Yeah,

there's cow, cow elk, archery elk hunt, mule deer, whitetail back in the Midwest, a San Diego tuna trip, which I've heard from a lot of people who have done trips similar. That's a great time.

Yeah, that one's one of my favorite of the year. So we charter out a 90-foot boat. There's bedrooms and stuff all downstairs. You go out for three days. There's cooks on board cooking on your meal. It's pretty pampered. They prepare the tuna? They'll do it.

If you catch tuna, they'll make sashimi sometimes. They'll do it. Like if you catch tuna and they'll make sashimi sometimes, they'll do like big poke bowls. Oh. Um, it's nice, but yeah, that one's fun. Everyone's drinking beer. We got 30 clients on that one. Um, and so usually it's me, Dan Henderson and Clay Guida.

That's who's going on it this year. But, um, we're just there fishing with everyone, drinking beer, hanging out that one. And, you know, and there's not, once I get everybody on the boat and all the paperwork's done, all the planning and scheduling is done. I just get to go have fun. We get to go have fun. So it's like, you know, I'm handing out some gifts and stuff during the trip. So, but which is easy, but you know, we're catching tuna, having, you know, fun in the sun. And that one's a lot of fun. We actually just sold out, um, on my flight here. I sold the last

three spots on my layover so we're we're officially booked out on that one for 2020 but um yeah man we try to mix up all kinds of different things there's some people that really enjoy the mule deer stuff they don't really care too much about the whitetail stuff so we we make sure we do both um the cow elk hunt i think is going to be really cool this year it's a rifle hunt 100 success rate like there's tons of cows tons of elk um and so we're going to go out there and you know these guys that have never a lot of these guys have never killed anything before so um it's going to be a cool hunt where we're showing these guys how to do all the field dressing how to cut these things up and get

them prepped for the drive home. And just kind of teaching these guys like what, what Fins and Feathers is about, but also what it's like getting to harvest your own meal and take it home with you. One thing we are really starting to plan, we've talked about the last couple of years is doing a, like a Fins and Feathers Academy where we get a lot. I personally get a lot of fans that follow me for the fighting side of it that have never hunted or done anything like that. And so they see me hunting and, you know, cooking all these wild game meals and having all this meat just readily available in my freezer. They're like, dude, I, and I, you know, messages, I really want to do that. I think this is awesome, dude. And again, a lot of people that watch your show, um, and they're like, I want to be like that. I want to

be able to just go out in my freezer and grab, you know, X, Y, and Z and go inside and cook it. And so what we're going to do is we're going to show people how to get their hunter safety, get their hunting license, take them on a hunt, how to hunt, show them all the field dressing and all that stuff, show them how to properly break down an animal and then cook these really cool meals with the wild game. So it'll be like from start to finish, like if you've never done it before, this is what you do. And just go out, take a handful of guys and girls out and teach them all the stuff that I've learned over the years. And, um, you know, have buddies that are unbelievable wild game cooks, maybe bring some of those guys in, pair it with different wines or something,

um, and just call it the Fins and Feathers Academy. So I, I, that's like a dream that I've seen for a little bit. I just, I think the hardest thing is just finding the locations, um, that have all the, the kitchenware and like the, the spots big enough to, you know, A, kill the animals, but then also be able to cook it and teach them all that stuff with, with all the, um, right amount of utensils and all that stuff. So. Yeah. I'm impressed, man.

Just again, looking through your schedule, uh, there's a lot of hunts you can go on without, uh, getting to hang out with Chad Mendes for the same price. Yeah. You know, like you guys are very reasonable priced. Yeah. And I try to keep it that way. And that's what I was telling you. So what we do is we team up with outfitters and we figure out the monetary side of it per spot.

I'm not trying to like jack these up so high that nobody could ever go on them. I mean, is some of the stuff relatively pricey? I mean, if you buy that hunt anywhere, you're probably going to spend around the same amount of money, but, um, like I'm, I'm not trying to just like jack these up through the roof, you know? And so I try to keep them pretty similar to what you would normally pay. So it's not a huge celebrity fee. Exactly. Yeah. And that's, that's just one of those things. I feel like it's kind of a conceited, that was one of the issues I had when creating Fins and Feathers. Like, what do we charge? Like, what is my worth? Like, what do people, you know what I mean?

Not worth it. What am I going to charge people to come hang out with me? Like, is that kind of fucked up? It's hard putting prices on stuff, man. It is. It is. And I think we've kind of nailed it down. We do, like I said, we've sold out, you know,

all the years that we've been in business, which is unbelievable to me and to my business partner. And just, we've had a lot of people that have rebooked on a lot of the things that have just had so much fun. And what's great is those guys word of mouth start bringing buddies like, oh, you guys got to come do this. It was so much fun.

And it's just been so, so cool for me to be able to live my dream, you know. Got two more questions for you. Yanni threw this one in. Yanni, go ahead. Okay, so. You just throw this in? So Yanni went a whole,

Yanni took a whole year off alcohol. Now he's back on alcohol. And now he's taking, how long is your little sugar break three months three months with no desserts no way yeah he says um how does sugar play in your diet yeah i couldn't squeeze it in earlier when we were talking about diet but no we're just picking up loose ends right now well what's your attitude to sugar if i made you a big old flan, would you eat it? I'm going to tell you guys what I had for dinner last night. So I ate my meal, and for dessert, I had a chocolate brownie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on it with some caramel drizzle on top.

Yeah, and he'd beat your ass, Yanni. Now, would you have that same dessert during your 10-week training period? Usually, no. that same dessert during your 10 week training period? Usually no, but, but there are times depending on, and I think this is something that is very important when anyone is sticking to some kind of strict diet, you have to have cheat days. You will go freaking insane sticking to the same thing every single day for however long you're going to do it. So like during my training camp, I'd say maybe once or twice through the 10 weeks, we would go and I would get an ice, like an ice cream or, um, you know, whatever it may be, but we would go get something like a, like a splurge, or I'd even go out and get like a big old fat hamburger or something, you know? So. To satisfy that corner of the brain that's

nagging at you. Yeah. You have to do it, man. And people that say that they never do it, they're lying. No, Yanni's not lying. The other night, my wife made an ice cream pie for the kids, and he was leaning over it. There's like one little piece there, and he was like, you know, I might even eat that

piece of ice cream pie, but then he didn't touch it. That's strong. Dude, he had discipline, man. That's strong. Yeah, we'll see. So you don't consider sugar the devil? I mean, it's not great, no. I don't think it's great,

but I think in moderation from time to time is not going to kill anyone. We had a hard time defining when we were kicking this around. I mean, I'm not doing it, but defining what is sugar, right? Because, I mean, right because I mean sugars everywhere so he had to sort of be like well shit where sugar is the point like cutting out like shit where the point is that it's sugary and sweet yeah cuz you can't be like okay a strawberry has sugars in it you know I mean there's all that but I think yeah I know so he had

to look at like you know refined refined sugar is what you're probably trying to kick, right? Yeah. Yeah. Or like added sugar. Yeah, and when it's easy, like ketchup, I've been not eating ketchup. Because that's sugary enough. Because of the sugar. Well, yeah, again, when you look at the label, and if in the first two to three ingredients

it says sugar, that's what I'm aiming not to be eating right now. I thought that shit was just tomatoes hey you know something that uh when i was working on my book my first book called the scavenger's guide to oak cuisine it was about this french chef scoffier and all the wild game he would cook but um for a long time like ketchup didn't mean like you'd specify there's mushroom ketchup. Really? Tomato ketchup. Yeah.

There's many, many, many. And then over time it just became like ketchup became like ketchup, but ketchup used to be like, there's this sort of category of like vinegary toppings.

And that was the tomato one was no more than the mushroom one. You know what I mean? It was just like this whole thing. I'd be like, if all of a sudden sudden dressing just became ranch. Yeah. That makes sense.

Ranch won the fight. So it's like a general condiment. Yeah, it's like a pureed sort of vinegary topping. Boy, it'd be annoying to try to bring that one back. Oh, what type of ketchup? Mushroom? Yeah, you could become like that guy. Excuse me, Mr. Burger King?

Yeah, now I'm curious and want to try them, though. Yeah, like at the Burger King drive-thru. What did you say, ketchup? You mean a mushroom ketchup? Last question for you. Les Cal's got one. Believe it, like, you work in the hunting industry. I work in the hunting industry.

We work in the hunting industry. And so hunting is different for people in the hunting industry. Like the opportunities are different. And you know people and like, you know, you get connections and all that. Whatever. You just know what's up. Right. When you want to go somewhere, you make a couple phone calls.

You find out what's going on. Yeah. It's helpful. Yep. It's way more than shit you learn on Google. It's by calling people you know because you have a lot of connections but like i get a sense just from communications from emails we get that like that i find a high level of pessimism among blue collar california hunters like classic weekend warrior like that the kind of hunting you

grew up as right and you described it perfectly. Yep. Is that pessimism warranted in California? It just seems to be like a down and outness. Yeah. I sense that a lot in Cali. I don't know what, I mean, for me, and you're referring to like people buying hunts? No, I just mean a dude, you know, a dude, he pulls like a normal salary.

He's got a family. He can hunt on the weekends. He doesn't have access to a lot of private land. It just seems to be kind of like, like I said, like a general down and outness. Yeah. You know, you talk to whatever, like, you know, you could talk to people in Wyoming. There's a general enthusiasm, right? Like, oh yeah, you could talk to people in Wyoming. There's a general enthusiasm. Right? Like, oh, yeah.

Hell, yeah. It's great. But is the pessimism mostly aimed at lack of opportunity or lack of brethren? Too crowded. No, I don't think it's like lack of community. I think it's too much. If anything, too much community. Too much, yeah.

Like, everything's, it's just, it's so thick. It's so crowded. There is some extremely tough conditions in california but there are also some really great opportunities for the outdoorsmen in california in my honest opinion we have some amazing amazing fishing locations oh i think the yeah the the fishing is probably if you say that in california you're probably high. Yeah. And if you're in California, you probably are high. Yeah, I would probably. But I mean, there's still great hunting. And here's, here's what I've tried to do over the years. Cause I I've felt that before. It's tough. Like there's public ground, but it's thick, it's overcrowded. You know, the, the amount of animals you're seeing are, you know, close to none. Um,

you know, it's the opportunities aren't ideally easy, you know, you gotta work your ass off. Yeah. Compared to maybe I go to Utah and I'm seeing a hundred different deer in a day. You know what I mean? Like you don't do that in California. We saw 12 bucks. Yeah. No, I don't see it. And there's years I would go an entire season without seeing a legal buck, which, you know, just has to have two on one side, you know? And so, yeah, I, I can see why some people, um, have that, you know, it's not,

it's not easy, but I mean, you got to make opportunity to like, i i'm busting my ass daily knocking on people's doors like seeing different properties that i know have amazing animals on them and i ask for permission like do i get told no probably 99.9 in the time yes so you're still out there mixing it up like hell yeah strategizing and trying to get on to good hunting. Exactly. And there's a ton, a ton of great hunting that's private though. And so it's like, worst case, they're going to say no. In fact, recently I got chewed out for asking. You're just going to feel guilty if you don't go beat on some doors. That's what it is.

Maybe. The guilt driven permission ask. The turkeys are right there. I got to go ask. So you asked someone and they got pissed? They got pissed. I actually wrote a letter. You went past a no trespassing sign to go knock on the door or what was their... So that was their reasoning for it.

But it's an easement road and I got permission on the road because there is another piece of property that I can get on that the only road in and out goes through. So this is a road that they, they have a gate that goes, you know, a thousand yards to their house that's down there. So I hand wrote a whole letter, put pictures of my, me and my family. So they know that it's not some crazy lunatic trying to get in there. Um, explained to myself of, you know, why I would love to archery hunt turkeys on their property. Um, it's a, I think it's a hundred acre piece. Um, and I left it in the envelope and set it on their gate. Didn't go in their gate. Didn't go up there or anything, left it there. And I think two days later, three, two or three days later, I get a call from a number that's from the Bay area. And I'm like,

I don't know who this is. I answer it. And the guy's like, is this Chad? I'm like, yeah, who's this? He's like, this is so-and-so. I won't say their name, even though I probably should. And he's like, it was John Caswell. And the biggest dick I've ever talked to on the phone. How the, did you get that letter on my fence? How dare you even ask to hunt on my property? Like just going off and my heart's just like beating, like,

I'm getting an earful and I'm, you know, I'm trying not to be an asshole. And, you know, there's so many things going through my head that I want to say to this guy. And, you know, we're freaking neighbors. Like it's not that far from my head that I want to say to this guy. And, you know, we're freaking neighbors. Like it's not that far from my house. I could throw a football on the property that's over there. And he couldn't just be like, no, no, no. He had to, he had to chew my ear off first. And so he's going off, going off, going off.

And he goes, and to answer your question, no, you can't hunt on my property. And I'm like, well, I couldn't tell by the tone of your voice. I had a phone call the other day with a guy where I wanted to inquire about a property. And when I'm looking him up, I realized that he's got a business where you can send a, you can send them like a, you know, you fill out a, it auto-populates your name and stuff. And you can do an inquiry, like a business where you can send a, like a, you can send them, like a, like a, you know, you fill out a,

it auto-populates your name and stuff and you can do an inquiry, like a business inquiry. Gotcha. So I do a business inquiry and I apologize in my inquiry. Sorry to use this. I just thought it might be less

of an annoyance than if I called. Yeah. You know, and he says, and I lay it out for him and he says, well,

give me a call next week. So I'm like, yeah, hell yeah, I got it. Right. So we play phone tag a little bit. Eventually on the phone and um has a whole bunch of questions for me we're talking it's going great and i'm about right i'm to the point where i'm

like well where should i park yeah right and he goes well i don't mean to string you along uh no i'm like great very nice talking to you, sir. Thanks for calling. No, just friendly as shit, you know. Could you by chance tell me what you did mean? Just for future reference. I think he, my feeling he went in knowing that it was a no, but was just being like, I took the time to reach out to him. He felt obligated to, he felt obligated to close the loop.

Yes. And very politely, I'm like, okay, great. Thanks for calling. I respect your perspective on it. Yeah. Okay. I wish I would get that in California. It was really unusual.

I either don't get anything back, just silence, or that guy. This guy was from the South. Gotcha. No, he wanted to, like we were talking about earlier before we started recording, he was closing the loop. That's amazing. I mean, you just got to wonder what happens with that dude's day. Who yells down to him to where he's like, oh, I'm going to take the opportunity to wring the neck of this person with the nicely written note and the nice little family unit here. I'll show you to take the really responsible path here and write me a letter illustrating what you'd like to do and how to contact me and giving me a sense of who you are as an individual.

I'll teach you a lesson, buddy. Dude, that's how I felt, too. I'm like, you know how many people probably would just walk in there and poach and trespass? I felt like I went out of my way, sat down at my computer and wrote this- Dick in the wind, man. Oh, dude, I was so upset. That ate me up, too, for a good week. I'm just like, what?

Can you imagine if you were a kid doing it? You'd probably never knock on another door again. Oh, I know. You'd probably just go the trespassing route. It's like, next time, bro, I'm just going to go. It ain't worth asking. You get tore up when you ask. I get charged with trespassing.

It's just $100. Yeah. This thing stings. Yeah. Now you got to remember, old John's got to live with himself every day. It's true. Oh, yeah, like live with his own company. Mm-hmm.

I got a question we get a lot, but favorite game and how do you cook it? Oh man, I really enjoy axis deer. So the last, I think it's been three years now, I've been going to like Southern Texas, um, with the mountain ops crew and we do a free range access deer hunt down there. And my, the first year I killed a buck, um, and I was, it was, you know, during the rut and I'm just like, man, I wonder how these are going to be during the rut. Is it going to be a little, you know, gamey? What's it

going to be like? Unfreaking believable. We even had some on the grill next to a piece of elk. And so I was like, I want to taste test these suckers. And I enjoyed the axis deer more than I enjoyed the elk. And, and up until that point, I'd say elk was probably my favorite, um, wild game that maybe even wild boar. I absolutely really love wild boar um but axis deer and what like my favorite probably most um appealing way to make it is i keep the um the loin like bone in yep and i'll do the tomahawk steaks oh yeah yeah yeah and so like i'll usually smoke yeah smoke them for a little bit for you you know, 30, 45 minutes. And then I'll take them out and get a cast iron hot and I'll do the butter and rosemary.

Oh, so you do the old pre-smoke. Yeah, pre-smoke. Yeah, like a reverse sear style. Like cold. Yep. Cold or hot? Hot, but really, really low because they're thin. I mean, after you slice them, even at that low temp for like 30, 40 minutes, they are partially cooking.

But the goal is just the smoke just to get a little bit of the smoke from there and then just finish them off in a real hot cast iron nice just eat those suckers like lamb lollipops oh my god it's so good that's a fan favorite for sure that sounds good we are uh trying to do a cookbook i'm trying to copy you guys i want to follow in your footsteps. Go ahead. But yeah, me and two other buddies named Chad as well. So there's going to be three of us, three Chads, three Chads, one cookbook. But that's a great name for a book, man. That is, that is. And you're totally safe because we're not going to copy you and start

getting punched in the head. Yeah. But I want to, I mean, we've been talking about doing it now for a year and a half. So I have no idea when it's going to, when we're going to launch, we have all the recipes done and we're looking for a publisher and stuff now, but, um, I, I just love the wild game type stuff. You know, I'm doing that part of it. We have another guy, Chad Ward, who's, uh, in the Traeger in the barbecue world. He's a pit master barbecue world champ. Um, and he's going to do a lot of the barbecue side of it. And then we're going to do, do you guys know who Chad Belding is? He has the foul life. Um, he's going to do a lot of, I'm familiar with that, but yeah, he's going to do a lot of

the, like the birds and stuff like that. And I'll do more of the big game stuff, but it's just going to kind of be a mix of a little bit of everything. Send me a copy. Yeah, hell yeah. When we get it done, I'll for sure send you guys some. I'll blurb the back. Nice. I'll just blurb the dude's wild game.

Did you? Yeah, the guy up in Toronto, Michael Hunter. Nice. He's got a book coming out. All right. Good, fellas? Very good. Good.

Thanks, Chad. Good luck with that baby, man. Thank you, guys. Don't let her go in the UFC. Oh, that was my question for you, buddy of mine, same very young child at home. Where do you put the brand new baby life versus the training life? What would you rather be doing? Baby life. Yeah? Yeah. I love it.

And I, I mean, my wife does most of it. She's, she's super mom for sure. Um, when I'm out doing all this type of stuff and doing the fence and feather stuff, she's home alone. Her family's from Missouri. So, and, and my dad is like four hours South of us and he just doesn't really do the baby thing anyway. So, you know, she's pretty much home alone taking care of the baby. So, yeah, my hat's off to her for sure. I want to give you some parenting advice, but. Go for it.

Well, I can't. I got to wait 20 years. That's the problem with that stuff, man. I got like ideas, but they haven't been borne out yet. Yeah. I could be way off. You know, you come like find my kids and they're all in jail and whatnot. Be like, dude, don't do that guy, dude.

No, I think you guys are good. I'll have to hold off. When I'm, how old will I be? Yeah, when I'm in my mid-60s, I'll be throwing around some advice. I might be like, whatever you do, don't do this. Here's where I went wrong. In hindsight. All right, Chad Mendes, Fins and Fathers. Thank you guys I went wrong. In hindsight. All right. Chad Mendez,

Fins and Fathers. Thank you guys very much. Formerly UFC. Yeah. We are retired. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. Appreciate it, guys. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.