The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 333: Enduring with Cameron Hanes

Episode Date: May 16, 2022

Steven Rinella talks with Karl Malcolm, Rick Smith, Dirt Myth, Seth Morris, and Chester Floyd. Topics discussed: Cam's new book, Endure, is out!; when an adult acts like an ass and accosts Steve's kid; the shit you find in turkeys; Jani's hens running into the house to nest their eggs on the kitchen counter; Chester catches the biggest walleye, ever; Sean's Duck Report on avian influenza sweeping the country and affecting the wild population; the symptoms of sick birds and the importance of public reporting; setting chokers; how Cam Hanes still keeps his day job; barely sleeping; when you lose your best friend way too soon; going for the most epic experience in the wilderness; coming within meters of that brown bear; living in the endurance world; how your body gives what you ask of it; just how badly the wind bothers Steve; prefering to be by yourself and loving the solo hunt; discipline and confidence; how tough it is to read aloud and record your own audiobook; memory words; and more.   Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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First Light, go farther, stay longer. Alright everybody, joined by what might perhaps be our most requested guest. If me looking at skimming social media comments now and then is any indicator. Cam Haynes. Bow hunter. Endurance

athlete. You've always been, you've been an author for a hell of a long time. For a while, yeah. An author again. Yeah. An author again

of a brand spickety new book, Endure, How to Work Hard, Outlast, and Keep Hammering, which is available. Now, it ships,

like, just, it doesn't matter. If you order right now but you won't know the difference if you're in fact listening to this on the day like today May 16th if you're listening now you won't know the difference because it ships all pre-orders ship May 17th right so you go buy like go to I'm gonna do this very diplomatically watch how I do this. Go to your local indie bookseller. Go to Barnes & Noble. And then there's that one outfit.

That small one. The real small one. Starts with an A. That's it. Yeah. Or go to Amazon. And it will ship and you will get Cam Haines' new book, Endure.

How's that going? Was that that fun working on all that project um it was a new one i've i had pretty much self-published my other two books and so this was the first time through a publisher like you know in new york big gloss yeah so it's a you know you meet with the publishers as you know and uh they make a pitch for the advance and all that. And so make a decision. And first time I've ever done that. Yeah. Was it an easy decision?

Let me ask you this. Did you not go with the highest bidder? Ask for more money from the highest bidder. That's a tough negotiation right there. No, got it. I know you've already won the bid, but I would like a tough negotiation right there. No, got it. I know you've already won the bid, but I would like a little more. Yeah, I don't know if they,

I don't know, I don't know how it works. So I had a book agent. But anyway, I just went with the person who, mostly that I felt best about. From the conversation, we did an interview and I just, I felt like they, my story resonated most with them. Got it, got it.

That's wise decision making uh we're gonna we're gonna get into we're gonna get all into that but we got to cover off on some other stuff up top per uh per use here so oh here's big piece of news you know my whole thing about how oh you know what's funny this i got ideas stacking up on each other. My kid was out ice fishing with his buddy and got accosted by some guy because my kid had a meat eater hat on. So he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Starts accosting my kid about how his dad wants to make it that you can hunt Yellowstone.

I was like, Jimmy's like, so what? I'm like, jimmy first off you're talking to a guy who doesn't know like a joke when he hears one and the fact that he's accosting an 11 year old on the ice about this wow i was like was he serious he goes oh he was mad so he realized that that was your boy well he got to asking my kid like what's up with that hat you know my kid's 11 years old he's like my dad tells him what up and he's like well i got something i'd like to say to your dad about hunting yellowstone wow idiots parents need to back off other people's children i would love i was trying to grill him about who where how i don't know how to find this guy he's in town but here's the funny part.

I basically now get to hunt Yellowstone. Because I drew Montana's most coveted tag, the buffer zone tag. Oh, you did? You don't know this? No, you didn't tell me. No, you should be applauding me. That little bison triangle right north of the park? The buffer zone wraps around the northwest park? The buffer zone

wraps around the northwest corner. The buffer zone, it's like this hunting restricted area. You can't do much of anything in there, but there's five tag holders. And I have a bazillion, had a bazillion points. No, I don't have great luck. All the people that think you're burning the spot,

there's only five tags, so good luck drawing anyone. If you go into that draw with no bonus points, I think you're burning the spot, there's only five tags, so good luck drawing anyway. If you go into that draw with no bonus points, I think you have a.08% chance of drawing. Oh, no, I'm spot burning. I'm spot burning. Exactly. Spot burning the most grizzly infested area in the state. You can't do much in there, but they give out five elk that what wraps around like the extreme northwest corner

has nothing to do with luck corinne or these points that he's talking about it's all his influence with the state's lawmakers and wildlife managers national park superintendent and said uh i listen yeah he said listen if you don't want me hunting in your park you better make sure i get one of them buffer zone tags this year or next year. I don't, like, I didn't draw any, I barely, I didn't, like, I apply for everything everywhere. I don't have extraordinary luck. Last year I drew nothing.

Okay. I just, when I do draw something, I like to tell everybody about it. The nice thing about it, that tag for you is that it's probably only like a five minute helicopter flight from your house into the hunting area. Yeah, when i chop her into there to hunt it no i'm real excited about that very excited about that uh oh here's a good thing that we need to talk about because someone do you believe someone sent in a photo where they're claiming that, I don't know, claiming is a strong word.

They're saying that they found, they shot a turkey and found their father's shotgun wad in the turkey's crop. When I first saw that picture, I thought it was going to be that they were so close to it when they shot it. That's what I thought. That it, poof, the wad went in there. But you know what else a guy just sent me? A guy just sent me, and it was kind of in one ear and out the other, in one eyeball and out the other. He opened up a crop and there was a perfect copper bullet in its crop. However the hell it found that, ate a monolithic bullet.

We had all kinds of turkey stuff going on the one i shot a few days ago had a whole a hole punched through the top of its breast i assume from flying into a branch it wasn't like green and nasty yet so i didn't do any you know i had to discard two breasts off a turkey one time that came in that that came into a call a goblin. And he had jabbed a stick, must have been trying to land. And I pulled a big chunk of stick out of there and it was so infected, nasty and stank so bad, I threw the breasts out. But that hole went through his breast and into his crop. There was like pine nuts, like in his breast.

You know what I mean? That were falling out of his crop. Yeah. Really? Hmm. And then Seth, you had a. Yeah, my buddy Casey Underwood shot a turkey that had a, like one of those Gammo air rifle

pellets in the breast. Yeah. Cam's thinking he knows what his next book's going to be. No, man. Yeah. Shit you find in turkeys. Shit you find in turkeys.

Listen to a good one. Watching my hannies, they are curious and they can eat big things in one gulp. The other day, we tore down an old shed and there was some mice nests underneath it. They didn't

quite gulp down the adults, but I can tell you what, those hairless little babies that were squirting around, those were going down like no problem. Like, there's no chewing, you know, it just gets gulped down and then it gets ground up or whatever. So, you know, to eat a

shotgun wad, why not? But did it eat that shotgun wad or is that just the guy's wad lodged into the bird? I think that there would have been some major trauma well look at it yeah but the pellets if he was i think what yannis is saying if the the wad made it oh it'd be full of pellets yeah because you'd have that the whole taking his whole neck off or whatever yeah you're not here let, I got to run one other crazy turkey thing about you.

Cam, hang with us, man. I know turkeys aren't your thing, but. Yeah, he's actually vowed. He was explained to us before we started recording. At this point, you vowed just to not shoot a turkey. Yeah. Making a stand. Yeah.

What if we found you like, Steve's actually next week going on a wilderness backcountry. Yeah, see? Backpack. We're going gonna walk eight miles before you start hunting yeah I mean that sounds better but still like what I've always said and this is like an inside joke back home but the best thing that can happen on a turkey hunt is you'll kill a turkey yeah so like because people like to say well it's kind of like elk hunting you know they're just you know, you know, call them in. And I'm like, no, because the best thing that happens on an elk hunt is you kill a big bull. The best thing on a turkey hunt is still just a turkey.

It's turkey. So. It's true. I, I, I also know that I know a number of elk hunters who are, who hate the, the false equivalency of how it's like.

I only know one other, Rami. Yeah. He's staunchly opposed to that. Yeah. Yeah, but listen. I've heard the grumblings. Yeah.

Like. There's grumblings. I'll do respect to Cam, but I think that the best thing that happens is you're going to kill a turkey. It's like, that's an argument for. Yeah. It's great to kill turkeys. Yeah.

Well. And you're not like carrying all that hundreds of pounds of shit. Plus what you might not be aware of. I like that part. I like that part. What you might not like that part i like that part but you might not be aware of too is i'm actually opposed to this but you can score turkeys you can the spurs it's like i've seen them hanging you gotta wait you gotta weigh it so you weigh it then you gotta like measure its spur and times that by something

its beard times that by something what is can score. What is a record book minimum for a turkey? Do you know? No. It's really bad. It's like 70, 80. It's really bad. You can score. Yeah, people will be like,

well, I've got a high-scoring turkey. Yeah. People measure them by length, total length now too, don't they? I don't know about that. Well, the hunting public dude

started that. Yeah, I think that's just kind of Just a joke. The long bird, they call them. All right, but tell me what you think about this. Go on.

I get home yesterday. I got a bunch of stuff in my truck, so I just got to take multiple trips in and out of the house. I leave the side door open after the first trip, go back to the truck. In the time that it takes me to go to the truck, grab another load of stuff, and come back in the house, four or five chickens and two turkeys

have entered my kitchen through that side door. Really? Yeah, they're curious, man. You leave a door open and they're right in. One of the turkeys in this very short amount of time has jumped up onto the countertop. And right where we keep our basket of eggs is already got her beak in the

eggs and is like coursing, moving, not the chicken egg, the two turkey eggs that are in this bucket that either she or the other hen laid. And she is working them. This happened in seconds. You're kidding me.

Wow. Somehow, like, I don't know, man, but it makes me think that there's like some sort of shit in the head going on there that we don't know about. Because how does she, she's never been in that house before. Because those little baby turkeys are like,

Mommy. Dude, it could be turkeys are like, mommy. Dude, it could be. Because I think they're fertilized. Because I was telling you, those wild jakes bred those hens. Oh, really? The wild jakes are having sex with your turkeys? Mm-hmm.

Are you going to let them sit? Things are getting pretty rich. Giannis is going to be stuck in his valley with turkeys. I think that after this podcast, I'm going over to Murdoch's and buying an incubator. Good for you.

Yeah, I think the kids are going to have a blast with it. I mean, I'm going to have fun with it. Yeah, what else are you going to do? I'm sure you're breaking a law, but I don't know what the law would be. Are you a criminal if a wild turkey breeds your turkey? And then you raise those turkeys? I don't know.

Are you stealing wildlife? Well, no. If someone comes and arrests Yanni. He's going to plead ignorance and we can bleep out what he just said. Dude, this is like a real crazy gray area. Because if you go find an elk calf, this is like a real crazy gray area. Because if you go find an elk calf, you damn sure can't bring that home. Nope.

You're 100% right. Yeah. A couple of corrections. You good? Yeah. That's crazy. If you had a dog that like a coyote, if like a coyote bred your dog and had puppies. You'd be fine. Yeah.

I think you'd be fine. Right? This is going to end a real stoner landscape. But you know, if you, to a willow tree, if you, do you know this, what I'm going to say? I'm just laughing about your comment. I do. I don't think you have to be a real big pot smoker to appreciate this. If you play the sound of running water to a willow tree, the willow tree will send root tendrils in that direction.

Oh, I've heard this before. That's what I'm saying. Like some point you're not going to be able to eat anything. When they find out how, what's going on out there. No one's going to want to eat anything. Yeah. If the vegetarians find out that their food has. Is talking to itself.

Yeah. What are they going to eat? A couple of corrections. This is bad. I got to talking about, we were talking about Top Gun. And I was saying how it made a lot of people, I was talking about Top Gun and the Air Force. Guys like, other than a beach volleyball scene, the actors are wearing Navy uniforms, flying Navy aircraft, or they are aboard Navy aircraft

carriers throughout the entire movie. I assume you may have some Navy vets a bit upset with you. So apologies. Listen, a bunch of us were in the room when you were saying that and I didn't catch it either.

If you would have asked me, I would have known that they weren't in the room when you were saying that and I didn't catch it either. If you would have asked me, I would have known that they weren't in the Army. If you would have said, are they in the Air Force or the Navy in that movie? I don't know if I would have been answering correctly. It would have been a 50-50 guess. One more correction. This is more substantive. We were talking about when we had the episode with

Mr. Nugent, we were talking about lighted knocks and mechanical broadheads being illegal in Ohio. And, we were talking about lighted knocks and mechanical broadheads being illegal in Ohio. And we were particularly talking about weird arbitrary... Ohio or Idaho? Sorry, Idaho. Idaho. Weird arbitrary tackle,

archery tackle restrictions. As of February, legislation HB 507 was passed, according to IDFg idaho department of fishing game beginning july 1st 2022 so uh coming right up it is legal to use mechanical broadheads and lighted nox in the taking of wildlife during any archery season. Rejoice! That was more of an update than a correction.

Right. Technically correct. Yeah. I mean, at the time that we recorded, we weren't aware. Technically correct. Yeah. It's breaking news.

That's more, yeah, I'd put it more as breaking news. Chester caught the, pretty much the world's biggest walleye ever caught. But before you touch on that, I need to tell you, I forgot to mention, we touched on it earlier, that I am now an ordained minister. Yep. Oh, wow. So I can conduct Seth's ceremony this summer.

You seem real excited about that. Very excited about it. They're actually sending me a wall plaque in the mail. You going to wear the priest uniform? excited about. They're sending me a, they're actually sending me a wall plaque in the mail. You gonna wear like the priest uniform? I'm gonna dress like an old Wild West preacher. Oh, that's gonna be great. I can't wait. So, world's biggest walleye.

Lifetime best. My lifetime best. I honestly, when I saw that picture, I didn't know they made walleyes like that. So, Cal and I were out fishing and there was no other boats out on this local lake we were at, not a single boat. The water was colder than you'd want.

So it was like 35 degrees. Really? Still, still pre-spawn, but we were trolling. I never get to do that with Seth. He doesn't like trolling. I don't like trolling. Anyways, we were. He's got like fishing ADD. Yeah doesn't like trolling. I don't like trolling. Anyways, we were, uh. He's got like fish and ADD.

Yeah. I gotta be active. All you gotta do is get him that, uh, get him a dose of that ADD medicine and see if he likes trolling more. I just give him a bush light if he's gonna troll. Anyways, uh, so we were trolling, we had

planer boards out, um, and we were trolling slow, like 1.2 to 1.5 miles an hour. And we had marked a big pot of fish, caught about a 13-incher, which is very, very common to be expected out there. And there's a lot of carp in this area. So we were trolling along, and all of a sudden that outside planer board, the tattle flag goes back. So it's kind of like watching a tip up, except the flag tips down rather than tipping up. And that, that planer board starts pulling towards the middle of the boat and Cal's like, oh, Chet, you're on, you know, and I grab it. And I immediately, I'm like, I snagged a carp.

Cause it was just a lot of weight. A behemoth. Yep. Just a lot of weight. A behemoth. Yep. Just a lot of weight. And I'm sitting there marking a waypoint and trying to slow the boat down because I did not think on the other end. I did not expect what was on the other end of that line. And anyways, so I'm cranking, reeling. I get to the planer board and you disconnect the planer board from the line and then you keep reeling and it's just heavy.

It's getting towards the boat. I'm expecting it to see a yellow carp come up. Yeah. And the first. There he goes. Ugh. Yeah. Carp.

Carp. Nasty. So it gets to the surface and I see white on the tail, which a walleye fisherman knows that they got a little white spot on the tail. And this isn't a little white spot. This is a big white spot. And I didn't say anything at first because it really didn't register. And the thing got to the surface. And with the refraction in the water, it looked like it was four feet long.

And I'm not kidding. I was just like, oh, my gosh. It looks like it's four feet long yeah and anyways my legs start shaking because like i couldn't believe it in any walleye fisherman would know that this fish was big it was 33 and a half inches it was 21 inches around of girth and cal said he didn't even measure it in the right spot. So it could have potentially been even bigger. The Montana state record is 32 and a half inches with a 22 inch girth. This had a 21 inch girth and it was 33 and a half inches.

How do you know it's not, how do you know it's not the state record? Cause we didn't have a scale and you know, I don't really. Hold on a minute. Chester! You let it go, not know that it was a new state record? Yeah, I don't really care to have the state record. The fame! The fortune!

Could be rich. Johnny Morris would have been knocking at your door. Yeah, Cabela's... What a replica. We got a guy coming on the podcast pretty soon because he shot the biggest archery whitetail ever. What crankbait you get it on? You got a few of those for free. Blue Chrome Flickershad. Yeah, Berkeley would have been kicking the door down.

Chester, you'd have at least at a minimum the number two state record walleye. Well, I mean, we don't know that for sure but it was it was a big fish and i was i was ecstatic god just to think that i could have said like man you know what a buddy of mine state record holder but now i can't say shit now i gotta be like oh i know a guy that you know it's a guy chester no one cares to hear that. Yeah, well. You know what? Let's do true. Let it go. That's mighty big of you, Chester.

Yeah, it's full of eggs. Just think of how many eggs that is. I know, but I'm saying nine out of ten Americans. Nine out of ten Americans would have been taking that fish home. Yeah. 9.999 out of ten Americans. Congrats on the fish. Thank you.

That's a great one. Yeah, yeah. If you like fishing as much as I like fishing, it's like shooting a 400-inch bull, you know, like if you were to compare it to hunting. So it was pretty sweet. That's awesome. So how big did that state record walleye, what is its weight? It was over 18 pounds.

So I don't know if it's like 18.2 or 18.5, but it's around 18, a little over. And that fish, who knows? You know, I mean, it could have been 15. It could have been 19. It could have been 17. Do you think you might want to get yourself a little scale? Seth has one.

A little late now, I guess. It's not going to happen. Yeah, that's it. You can go fishing there for 30 years and maybe catch a fish like that. Yeah. Chad was supposed to come turkey hunting with me that weekend. He ditched. Yeah, Steve gave me some 410 shells.

Do you look at this as a good, positive omen to the beginning of the walleye tour? That's hard to say because being a fishing guide, you know, if you catch a fish on the first cast, it's bad luck. But this isn't even same day, same month. So I think we'll have some time to recuperate and catch another. Oh, when they make a documentary about Seth and Chester's first year as tournament walleye fishermen, or like a fictionalized version, that'll be in that. That fish will be in that. Yeah, because it can play either way.

It doesn't matter. You're going to put it in there and it'll be that it was either like a harbinger right it was like yeah it's a big part of this whole story yeah so cam these guys are these guys are becoming uh tournament walleye fish they're doing their first year of the tournament nice yeah does that count or is that i wish it did this i wish it did so when is the tournament now may it's the weekend of May 13th or 14th. To make it count, he would have to keep it alive and then pass a lie detector. Oh, that's tough. You seem pretty honest.

But if on that day, you're like, I caught another one that looks just like the one I had on social media. Crazy luck. One of the one I had on social media. Crazy luck. Crazy luck. One of the chances. Same bait. Yeah. That could have been your signature. That bait you used could have been your signature series.

Signature series. Yeah. The Chester Floyd Flickr Shad. Yeah. Next time you catch a big walleye, I need to have a talent manager with you to tell you how to handle the situation. But if you want to see a picture of the fish, I mean, it's an impressive-ass fish.

Yeah. Go to at musky chat, right? That's it. There's no underscores and all that weirdness? Nope. Just at musky chat. Yep. You can cheer.

These boys are rigging up the electronics in their new tournament boat. Right now, well, yeah, we'd take a break for this, but we've been rigging the last two days. A lot of wiring. It's a sweet boat. Yeah. A lot of head scratching.

Yeah. We've never done it before, and it's quite a process. A lot goes into it. What do you win in the tournament? We don't. If you win. Bragging rights for us, but you can win money, and we're going to donate it back to like access, whether it's a

fish cleaning station at the local lake we're fishing on or boat ramp improvement or whatever's needed. Yeah. Some sort of project. Yeah. You know, around a lake. Good luck.

They're going to be, they're going to turn into philanthropists. Yeah. All right, boys. Thanks, Steve. Thanks, Chester Yep I'm gonna go pack for

Turkey hunt Alright so now Moving on We gotta do This is a We're gonna jump into Sean's duck report real quick Cause Sean's gonna hit on

Something of international Or national News significance The other day I got a buddy that always Sends me articles Every morning I wake up I read whatever he sends me

32 Bald eagles Have succumbed to avian influenza which is nothing compared to what it has been doing um tens of thousands of ducks right now dying from avian influenza and sean's gonna break that down for us yeah so i got to talk to Dr. Andy Ramey. He works for the USGS. He's a research wildlife geneticist, and he works in Alaska on avian influenza. And what got me all interested in the whole avian influenza outbreak was I'd got a text in January about the first confirmed case of what we would call highly pathogenic avian influenza in a blue-winged teal, I think, if I remember right. And it was like,

you know, that stuff kind of happens. But when the snow geese got back to South Dakota this year, it was like, holy cow, something's changed. So figured I should probably do a duck report on it, which this wasn't the duck report we'd originally planned to do, but it's relevant for sure. So how Dr. Ramey described how the highly pathogenic avian influenza works is typically there's avian influenza in all wild birds, but it's what they would call low path. It's, you know, not causing symptoms or sickness, any kind of actual disease. They just kind of all kind of have a pool of viruses always working through the population. Every now and then what happens is avian influenza will pour over from the wild birds into a domestic bird population.

But it's not highly pathogenic when it does that. Now, once it gets into these domestic birds, that's where it can become highly pathogenic. That's where you get kind of the, you know, the news articles and headlines every so often of all these poultry and domestic birds getting killed off. Historically, once it becomes highly pathogenic in domestic populations, it just stays in domestic populations. Until 2014, 2015, it never really worked its way back into wild birds. And during that outbreak in North America, we had our first positive north american wild bird cases and they had 98 of them this outbreak puts that to shame it's not like anything we've ever had before it is uncharted waters for sure for example this, we have over 40 species that have been infected.

The positive tests are in the thousands, but frankly, like they, they've kind of quit testing all the reports. For example, South Dakota is right now sitting at, I think, 48 positive tests, but I've on one rocky bank on the side of a lake counted like 43 dead birds myself so it's hard to know you know wild birds are hard you can't really quantify it near as easily because they die all over the place and they're all spread out they're not concentrated but it's running through the wild population and it's pretty intense are they uh is there any way that folks can uh are they worried about it moving to folks the way that you know i mean the same way that that covid19 right jump

from a animal host to a human host is that a concern yeah it is there has been times since 2003 where bird flu does jump into humans. I think it's around 860 human infections and half of those were fatal. So if it does jump the kind of animal, human species barrier, it can be real bad news. So they're definitely worried about it. Now, you know, typically you have to have a lot of exposure to the virus to see it jump that barrier. You know, when it has jumped the barrier in the past, it's domestic, right? It's poultry. But the USDA does have a bunch of recommendations out on how to handle wild birds and kind of how to proceed with this going through. There's two reasons for that. One being they don't want you to transfer it to other bird populations and also they don't want you to get sick. So are they talking about

wild birds you just find laying around dead in your yard or they mean like wild birds that you get when you're out hunting? Both. Yep. in general you shouldn't be eating or drinking when you're in contact with them you shouldn't have the carcasses around other birds use dedicated tools for cleaning those birds and make sure they don't get near poultry or your pets are you supposed to put on like an n95 mask i didn't see anything like that just when you finally got to burn all your damn masks no or like what i want to do is make a big quilt hold on sean you can't be like breathing too much around them but you can still eat them yeah that's that's what i'm

gonna because they're talking about having a dedicated pair of shoes that you wear while cleaning birds. Right. And then you go in your kitchen and eat the bird. Then what about a dedicated, like, you know, jacket? Dedicated kitchen. For cooking the bird. So presumably you're cooking it out of the meat, Sean. Yes. And yeah, you know, they recommend you cook it to 160 degrees, which is hard to fathom.

Eating snow goose has been cooked that long. But the shoes thing is about the feces, right? That's where a lot of the spread comes from is fecal matter. And what's this that about, what this where the minnesota board of animal health banned exhibitions of poultry yeah you can't what is an exhibition of poultry well they mean like even stuff like fairs or sale barns or stuff like that but they place the ban on sales right now yes yeah and there's a lot of states doing it. Even up until April 15th, they were hoping that the Pacific Flyway was in the clear, but now it's like Idaho and Utah and Wyoming,

everything's getting it. It's pretty much everywhere. It's rampant at this point. So they're trying to keep domestic populations from moving around too much and being you know sold and moved keep yannis's turkeys from having sex with the the wild ones yeah yanni's rethinking now that he's having his turkeys and chickens walking around on his kitchen counter so sean when i you know when i said at when i was teeing this up i said tens of thousands of duck deaths and i was only saying that because of seeing pictures on social media and other places where there's like pictures of shorelines covered in dead ducks but my number was probably like my numbers probably exaggerated right like that's probably not what I was saying. Well, I don't know, because you just can't really get a tab on how many wild birds are dying from it.

You know, I personally have seen hundreds of dead birds scattered around our local lakes here. You know, they had a lake in Illinois that had 200-some dead birds on it. I mean, there's a lot of dead birds out there that no one's counted up. Right. Exactly. You know, they just, they don't have the personnel to go test and sample all these birds.

And then when you get, when there is an avian influenza outbreak, how long does it, how long does it play out? Do you believe that this will still be a conversation people are having next, you know, when duck seasons start back up next October? Or will it have run its course by then? Yeah, I don't know.

The 2014-2015 outbreak was seven months. You know, we're three months into this one, but really it didn't get going until March. So, yeah, it's hard to know. Definitely the spring migration was kind of how this spread so quickly because it timed out perfect where right as it entered the North American population was right as the spring migration was starting. So it was a perfect storm of timing

versus the 2014-2015 outbreak was over the winter. So it was a little. So spring migration just meaning that there's a lot of birds on the move carrying and passing along to other populations of birds. Yes. Yep. Hey, Sean, is there anything that you can observe behaviorally or in physical appearance to, uh, tell whether, uh, a bird's got influenza. Yeah, definitely. One of the symptoms I've seen a lot, um, around here is like a bobbing head.

They'll kind of be sitting there and just almost like someone nodding off on a warm day. They're just, their head is sitting there flopping side to side or they'll be flapping their wings real goofy and slow. Definitely seen a lot of them just not scared of people. They just sit there right in front of you and don't move. As far as, you know, anytime you see that or dead birds in general, the one thing that Dr. Ramey had said is please report it. If you're on private land, to the person that owns or manages the land.

If you're on public, to whatever agency it would be. Because most places have a protocol for how they're supposed to handle that whether it's you know through the usda or fish and wildlife service whatever it may be um and the other thing is they're now recommending take down bird feeders which oh is that right it makes a lot of sense yeah talking to everybody on my block dude it's a war on bird feeders all the time man uh do you think sean is anybody guessing that this could have population level impacts on waterfowl species or is it too early to say yeah they're hoping not it's too early to say but they definitely are paying more attention to it now than they've ever had to before you know before it was a purely domestic poultry problem and now you're really seeing easy to observe wild bird impacts so they're they're worried but not to the point of

maybe like you would be with cwd got you all right man we'll keep us posted yeah what's your next duck report on i think i'll now finally get to the the gps tracking one the odometer one oh like how many miles a duck puts on yep all right man this is kind of uh now you got me all worried about ducks well i don't think uh i don't think wild turkeys jumping in and hanging out with Giannis' pet turkeys and then walking around in the kitchen is probably not ideal. No. So, Sean, are you recommending that I just take out the whole flock, domestic and wild, at this point? Better get some of those special shoes, too.

Well, you definitely need to not, whatever you do, don't exhibit them. Don't take them to the fair. No exhibitions. Thanks, man. Take it easy. 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 high and titty there on x is now in canada the great features that you love in on x 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. onxmaps.com slash meet.

onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. All right, so you ready, Cam? Yep. You don't want to talk about turkeys. No. Whatever. Tell everybody about Endure, man. What led to it led to it was people saying like you ought to write a book

someday not real I don't know I mean I think Jim Shockey has a person he's worked with Greg Gus Chow and he knew this book agent I I'm pretty sure the book agent that Jim and Eva had used before, and they've been trying to get a hold of me. And I usually never call back anybody. And so anyway, this went on. That's just like a little rule here. I don't know why. I just like I'm not good with any business.

And so finally, I talked to this book agent, Esther, and she was super fired up. And it's just like, I think you should do this. This would be huge this and that and i was like whatever i mean i don't i'm good if i don't good if i do not that big a deal and so then we said we'll see what the publishers think and so then everybody's fired up so we just did it and but you had to do like a, you had to start collecting your thoughts. Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's mostly just, uh, the book I think in general shares, um, it doesn't matter how you come up, what your upbringing is. If you follow your passion, whatever that is, you can have whatever success you dream of essentially. And so it's, it's, that's the story.

And I thought that might be useful to share to, to have other people, maybe impact other people. So I thought, okay, let's do it. If you had to, if you're going to take that line of thinking and look at your own, um, your own upbringing and decisions you made when you were young, do you look and are you like surprised you landed where you are? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I had no, you know, what I say is I never let anybody down because nobody expected anything of me.

Yeah. So it's not like I'm like, oh, you let me down or you had all this, you know, you tell, like I tell my you, you, you let me down or you had all this, uh, you know, you tell, like I tell my kids, you got so much potential. Nobody ever said I had potential to do anything, you know? So, um, I wasn't not living up to it. So yeah, I mean, I, I figured what I did coming out of high school, tried to play football. Um, wasn't really that into, I went to school on and off for a few years after high school but then i thought well i'll get a job setting chokers and it's like back home that's what people did you worked in the woods and i liked being in the woods tell people what setting chokers is yeah it's just

you know working on a logging site so guys go down there off the landing they set chokers on the on the logs the the followers come in. They follow the trees. And then you set a choker on it. It gets drug up to the landing and cleaned up and then loaded up. Big-ass, like, half-inch, three-quarter-inch cable. Yeah, yeah. You're just dragging it around. It's usually pretty steep country because that's timber country.

And back home, that paid pretty good. I mean, it started at, like, $13 an hour. So I'm like, God, I could, you know, $13 an hour. I'm good to go. That'd be awesome. And so I thought I was going to get a job logging. And the same day I was offered the job logging for SE Logging was I got this job at just the city of Eugene working summer help and just working picking up dead animals basically that got hit they'd people would call in a dead dog or a possum or a something deer got hit and i'd go pick it up

and if i wasn't doing that i'd weed eat along the bike path and so i'm like well you know working for the city that's always a good good career so that's what i was going to do it's safe right secure you know it's like people like me that was like this is as good as it's going to get so that was my goal so if you'd have gone path the least resistance that was where you would have wound up yeah pretty much yeah i guess so i mean but you like well i want to get into some more stuff but this is jumping ahead a little bit but you for like you've at this point established like well you have a very established career um as a bow hunter as an endurance athlete like you're like a well-known figure you do a lot of media projects

right you have a lot of sponsorships with people, but you kept a regular job for a long time. I still have it. You still have the regular job. Yeah, I'm a superintendent at the Water and Power Company. So you still have your day job? I knew you did, but I didn't know you still did. No, I used a PTO today to

come here. That's funny because I think if you type in, like I'm trying to think what the Google search would have to start with, but it will auto-fill does Cam Haines still have a real job? Because I was wondering. Because people are always wondering if you still

have that job. Every time I hear that I get surprised all over again. Yeah, I do. I go to work every day. Except today I use vacation. Seriously? Yeah, I do. I go to work every day. Except today I use vacation. Seriously? so I take advantage of the value I have but hunting to me means more than any business so if I don't have to rely on it I can just tell whoever I want I'm not doing that and I you're not telling me how I'm gonna hunt what I'm where I'm gonna hunt what I'm gonna do I'll do what I want because if it all goes away I have this job yeah but here's what one of the things that

surprises me is like you do a lot of races and stuff and these are time consuming things and the training is time consuming yeah the training is hard yeah yeah so i mean i i don't get much sleep i get up um to train for a 200 mile race i want to run a marathon a day i want to be able to do that for, you know, weeks at a time and get in those miles to do that. I have to get up before work. I'll try to get in at least 10 or 13 in the morning, run at lunch, and then whatever the balance is to get that 26 after work. And so I'll just, I work it around, um, basically my life and, you know, I still want to hang out with the family in the evening. So I do

that. They go to bed, then I'll get those miles in, or I get up early before work and get those miles in. So the, the family, you know, I'm, I'm still away from work all day, but I still eat dinner and watch a little TV and then go back to training. What time do you get up in the morning uh depends on what my goal is i mean if some sometimes i want to do a marathon before work and if i do that that'll be like two or two or two thirty and then i have to be at work at seven damn jeez yeah it's not i mean i don't instead of calling that book endure they ought to call that book Tired. Yeah. That would be a good name.

Are you worried about – I want to get back into your biography, but hold on. Are you worried, like, with all the emerging research about, like, long-term effects of, like, chronic – Yeah, sleep. Chronic lack of sleep, are you getting worried? No. No, I mean, people say of sleep. Are you getting worried? No. No, I mean, people say that about knees and about, you know, what I would say is tomorrow's not guaranteed.

So why would I be worried about if I'm 60, 70, or 80 years old when I might be dead tomorrow? How old are you? 54. And how long have you been doing this kind of regimen? I ran my first marathon when I was 32.

So plenty, yeah, decades. Yeah. Do you see, or do you not even think this way? Like, do you see, like, that lifestyle coming to an end at some point? Or are you just going to keep going until you drop dead? I mean, I'll keep going. I feel, I just keep going. I, I, I feel, I just did a mountain marathon. I got fourth. Um, so, I mean, I'm not, I'm banged up just

cause I'm old and I've got a lot of miles, but I still feel pretty good. Right. Yeah. And it's something you enjoy and you just want to keep doing it.'s not i like pushing myself i mean i like i don't feel running for me has been a way for me to say uh just to just i'm putting in work and so i feel like i can't be in the mountains every day i can't hunt every day i can't scout every day but i can put in work every day and i feel like running is like i can go to bed knowing okay i did i did i moved the needle in the right direction today. So that's what running does. I want to back up for a minute, though. At what age did you start hunting and at what age did you start bow hunting?

I started hunting at 15. I killed my first deer, a spike mule deer, when I was 15 with a rifle. And my stepdad got me into it i didn't i didn't we didn't get along because he wasn't my dad never really liked him um he's still around yeah he's still around yeah and he wants to cut that part out but no no no no he's that's hey i talk about in the book i i mean i hated him it's just. Like nothing he could have done about it because it wasn't your dad. That's pretty much. He wasn't my dad.

That was all it took. And then it was like, then, you know, he had a hard job too. So he would come home. He was a roller operator on the construction, you know, and hot, miserable work. Comes home. Here's this kid who doesn't like him so I'd always have it wasn't a great situation so but and I give him a lot of credit because uh he did take me hunting even though I'm sure he didn't want to took me and my brother hunting and that kind of started it

and I killed the spike buck and then I you know hunting i'm like hey i got some positive feedback that i killed a buck and it's like as a kid that feels good to get some you know and i was like man this is i like this i like i don't know i like kind of like the challenge of it it seemed it was hard but i got it done i got positive affirmation so then that just kind of progressed. And then my buddy Roy got me, you know, I was 18, I think. And he, he was a year ahead of me in school. He was 19. He was, he had a trap line and all this. He was like always known in our little school as like, as like the authority on hunting because he just was always out there trapping and doing things. And so he said, Hey, we played football together. We're best friends.

And he said, you need to start bow hunting. He goes, there's way less people, way more animals. It's awesome. I'm like, oh, that sounds sweet. So I started bow hunting and then have never rifle hunted since. Is that right? Mm-hmm. Really?

That was it. What age is that? That was 20 by the time i bought my first bow tag so you felt like it was a thing you had to be that you're just gonna that's it you're gonna hunt with a bow that was yeah i just didn't have i don't know why i didn't have any interest in rifle i still went with people i still took my little brother i have a little brother who's 10 years younger than me. Like his first three deer, I took him and he killed with the rifle. Um, you know, my kids, they've all rifle hunted. I just, it's, I've always just been a bow hunter. And it's like, I go on a lot of hunts where it's any weapon. And, uh, you know, the, the most high pressure

one that most people kind of falter on, if they'd say they're bow hunters, but then it's a sheep hunt. It's like, you know, that's bow or nothing. I'll eat the tag. So it's just, that's what I do. That's a good bit of discipline. What do you think it is about bow hunting? Because I think that there's, you're obviously not the only one that sort of identifies that way.

And I think there's plenty of people that do a lot of both, me included, you know, like I like to mix it up. And when it's rifle season, I hunt with a bow or hunt with a rifle. But I mean, do you have any like thoughts on like, what is it about like the bow hunting that really just hooks people where they're like, yeah, I don't even have an interest to go hunt with a rifle anymore. Um, man, I don't know. I mean, I'm, I've i've always once i started it was just

like and then roy was the same way who got me started you know he's i talked about him in the book he died in 2015 he fell with sheep hunting and uh we were just bow hunters that was it i mean people now they'll they'll meet me that might not know me. And it's like, so you're the bow hunter. And it's like, that's all I ever wanted to be. That's it. I mean, how many animals have you killed with a rifle? Like before you started bow hunting? It'd be like three or four deer. That's it. 15 to when I started bow hunting. Cause I couldn't afford elk tags for 25 bucks. Yep. So a deer tag was, I think 9.50 or 10.50. So I could get a black tail deer tag. Yep.

But the elk tags were too much. So I just deer hunt and I killed, I killed a buck every year. Nice. Did you, what was the, what was the first bow you were shooting? A Golden Eagle Superhawk TurboCam. Okay.

So you didn't come in on recurves and stuff no bow hunters discount warehouse yeah yeah have you ever thought about tipping back into traditional archery um no i mean i messed around with them but roy actually he went back he had target panic so bad with his compound he said the best hunter i've ever been around best woodman's woodsman i've ever been around but he had target panic so bad he went to recurve and he he said he didn't think it was that much of a disadvantage he said it seemed it's easier in some ways because it's like more instinct and you don't have to think you don't have to level up and full drop you know anchor the same every time and you know know, kiss her button and all this,

you just shoot. And he killed never, nothing, never changed. His success stayed exactly the same. He killed no matter what. And I'd always say he could, if you said, Hey, you got to use this to go kill a, you know, a carrot, he'd moved to Alaska about, uh, in 93, I think I said he could go and get it done with whatever you told him the weapon was. So you're holding a pen. Yeah. Holding a pen. Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't matter. He's just would figure out a way to get it done. Uh, he's the guy that he, he fell sheep hunting. What was the, what were the circumstances there? Um, so there's this mountain rain. Well, right out of Wasilla, which is where he lived, his wife still lives, but, uh, you

can see pioneer peak and it's, uh, so that's the, that's the tag it's in it's, it's a Kootenai Lake tag. And I put in for it in 2008, cause as a non-resident, if you go for the late hunt, which is October 1st to the 10th, it's a terrible hunt. But sheep hunting, I've never, I've never sheep hunted. So he said, hey, put in for this tag. You have 25% chance of getting it as a non-resident. So I put in one time, got it.

And he goes, it's, it's hard. It's dangerous. It's, you don't know what the weather's going to be. But you still have the guiding requirement though. Yeah, he was, he got signed off. he was an assistant guide and he could guide me oh so you guys could hang out together yeah i got you so we went on that hunt in 2008 and i killed a ram it the the the hunt says any sheep and uh so i killed this like probably a four and a half year old ram wasn't anything it's my first sheep so that is the same hunt he drew in 2015 and he he'd killed nine doll sheep with his bow so he

but he killed rams up there too he knew he was like I said we we'd done that hunt we've been in country like that a lot but he was up there sheep hunting and uh just had done the stock he actually missed this ram and he was gonna head back up the hill to find a camping spot a little flat spot up maybe towards the top of the ridge and something happened a rock rolled or he stepped back and um fell off and 700 feet and died oh man so then all of a sudden you just get a call one day his we changed subject yeah um no I was in Colorado deer hunting and my wife called and said uh you know Roy had an accident, called Jill. So I said, okay. So I called Jill and I said, hey, what's up?

And she just said, Roy's not coming home. He fell. Oh, man. So, yeah. Yeah. Um, but so it's hard just because, uh, it's, it's hard every time I talk about it, but we came up together, high school, same, you know, 24 kids in our class. He was like making this name for himself in alaska just just just a stud and it's finally all happening and i got you and that was i imagine too man the fact that it was like that what it was like hunting that held you guys together and then to have that be the thing

that ends up taking his life is just a whole different experience right yeah i mean we knew what we love to do we always wanted the biggest adventure we knew there's risk just we knew that was always it was always there but we loved going for the biggest most epic trips the big the brown bear grizzly bear doll sheep uh we loved kodiak prince of wales we killed you know we did big black bear there all the time we just loved i mean i hunted alaska probably 30 times with them because we just loved that adventure and uh you know we're not dumb we know that shit happens people die all the time especially up there and and i know just from i read a lot and uh mostly adventure and hunting but anybody who's spends a lot of times in the mountains a lot of them die i mean in that that country a lot of them die

you can't have big adventure and no risk yeah so uh yeah it was just hard. Cause Roy was, he was, uh, he was the only one, you know, people talk about haters and, you know, you kill, I kill a spike bull and people are saying, oh, I heard he shot with a rifle. I kill a five point. Oh, I heard he shot with the crossbow. Roy was the only one who always believed in me. So when he died, I was like, fuck. Sucked. Was he on your mind a lot, working on this book? Yeah. Because it has a lot of personal history in it.

Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be talking to you if it wasn't for Roy. He started me a bow hunting. When you're going for like the biggest adventure or the biggest, what do you hope to like experience in that experience? Like what is that, what are you reaching for in that challenge just that

being on the edge and you don't know you don't know what's gonna happen and you know his last year we hunted together 2015 we went out and uh in this one area i went up in july actually you can start killing brown bear and uh in this area there's so many brown bear they're hammering the moose and you can kill two brown bear and uh three black bear and so i'm like roy was working for jonah stewart at that time i called called Jonah and I said can I said did I do I read this right you can kill two brown bear he's like yeah I said three black bear he said yeah I said well I said can I can I get two brown bear what do I have to pay to get two brown bear opportunities and so we went up there and it's like the first ones stocked in and this boar was kind of along the water there.

So he was laying down. And I got in, this old creek bed, the wind was good, and I got 40 yards from him. And he got up and he's looking at me. And that's what we live for, 40 yards. And what are you going to do? Can you make that shot so i'd pull back you know frontal just pinwheeled them couldn't have been it was maybe an inch to the right but smoked him that's what we live for do you do you think that's something like you always had in you

or did you find that through like the craving for that through hunting? I don't know if you really know you have it if you have it until you actually start getting those challenges so like I said I didn't have I was hunting black-tailed deer you know I walked from my house and up into the logging country and then then we started we went to the three sisters wilderness and couldn't find elk and so I said hey I think my my uncle had been to the Eagle cap wilderness before which is Oregon's largest wilderness me and Roy were in there and I said I think my uncle had been there before they maybe hunted back in there and we couldn't find elk in the

three sisters which is Ccades and so i called him and i said i said uh hey do you know any place to elk hunt in the eagle cap and he said uh he said yeah he goes you go to this up this road the fire watch tower you go up there's this tree and i was just like i didn't know so we get up there and we're just like what this is a 30 30 mile by 60 mile wilderness and we're look up here and by this tree and we're just like, what? This is a 30 mile by 60 mile wilderness. And we're up here and by this tree. And we're just like, so no, not a map one. But anyway, that, so then we were like, well, that got us started in the wilderness.

So then it was like, so we looked at the map of the wilderness. We're like, how can we get as far away from anybody as possible? So you go to the middle of the wilderness, boom, right there. And so that's where we wanted to go. The biggest adventure in our little, I mean, that was an eight hour drive for us. We didn't have gas money. We had to sell a, a 30, 30, his grandpa gave him to get gas money to go over there. But we were living. And now, so at that time, that was it. And then it was like, well, he moved to Alaska. And it's like, well, now what could we do? Oh, Kodiak Island.

That's pretty crazy. Get dropped off on Kodiak in November and hunt deer. And how much is it? Oh, deer tax $168. And we could do this and that. So then it just progresses. And then all of a sudden, you're hunting brown bear. So I don't know if it was in me.

It took time to find out. 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 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 x club y'all how did you uh what was your initial introduction to like the endurance world i mean not not hunting based stuff but like just competitive right uh i didn't really have any i mean i you know i did the i do the 10 K back home

in Butte to Butte and Eugene every 4th of July. And so then I did a half marathon out in Coburg, which is the town outside of Eugene. And, uh, that seemed like a long, you know, 13.1 miles. And it was like, God, I wonder if I could do a marathon. So in 2002 or three, I ran in the, along the Columbia river there, Hood, the Dallas to Hood river was the gorge marathon. And I got third and I'm like, well, you know, the Eagle cap is 30 miles by 60 miles. Roy had moved to Alaska. So I was hunting by myself. If I could talk somebody into going, they'd go one time and they're like, this sucks. I'm not going back. So I would be by myself, but I'm like, man, if I could run, if I can run 26 miles, I can get out

of the wilderness and a couple hours if I have to. So then that huge wilderness didn't seem that big. And then that progressed up my first 50K in 2005. And I was running this 50K and I'm like, God, this is crazy. You know, it's 30 miles in the mountains and nobody ever does this. And I see these runners coming up, coming there. I'm getting about a mile from the finish. They're running back towards me and I get to the finish. I'm there. I'm getting about a mile from the finish. They're running back towards me. And I get to the finish.

I'm exhausted. I, you know, hurt. And I said, I said, I saw these guys, these four guys running back, back up the trail. And they said, oh, yeah, they're getting ready for Western States. And I said, what's Western States? And they go, the Western States 100. And I said, 100 miles. They said, they go they go yeah they're

running the course twice today to prepare and i'm like what so i had thought that i had done the the most craziest thing ever and they're training doing it twice so i'm like western states so i did the bighorn 100 my first hundred and and um in wyoming it's a hard hundred it took me 29 hours it's terrible the next year i did the western states the race they were preparing for and there the goal was let's get let's break 24 hours you get the silver buckle so i did it in 2241 so i got my buckle so that was it's kind of just like hunting is like an evolution and then i was like i want to narrow in on that race yeah the one so you spent how many hours which one the west no say the one if you break 24 but you did it 22 41 and out of those this might seem like a dumb question but out of those hours how many of those hours were you actually on the move like did you

stop at all so you never you never stopped and took like a 20-minute power nap? No. No. I mean, so now I've done a 238-mile race. And even in those, the best of the best, two nights is hard. That third night, people, the best of the best can go two nights and finish took me for that race took me 78 hours and i slept two hours so you want you want to go through with no sleep you want to always move your body will reset in a you know a girl who i train with who's one of the best in

the world she's done this before and i did this in that race but you'll like doze off for a minute your body resets it's almost like a control i'll delete for your computer yeah and you wait like i was with my brother and i was like he was pacing me and i nodded off and I came back and I was like, I said, you know, how long was I asleep? He's like a minute. I'm like, let's go. And so it's weird. Hold on. This was while you're running?

No, stopped. Okay. Stopped. And I was like, I need to take a break. You're saying he was pacing you and I dozed off. So it almost sounded like you were able to sleep while you're running. No, that would be nice. That's just super powerful.

Yeah, but that's got to, some version of that has to happen where you sort of like lose your lucidity now and then for a minute. Yeah, probably. I mean, if we're there, let's talk about hallucinations when you're going. I haven't.

Nothing ever. Courtney does. Really? Courtney, who I train with, she does. She has a t-shirt that she made with a leopard in a hammock because she was running and saw this leopard in a hammock because she was running and saw this leopard in a

hammock generally cheshire cat yeah so uh yeah anyway so you'll go so you can go that long without but but when you if you take that one minute thing and your body resets why not why not capitalize on that and do a bunch of resets? Or is that not how it works? Some, it doesn't always work. It doesn't always work. I mean, um, if you can get, like, if you can get an hour, say after that second night, that's a, that's a lot. An hour would be a lot. Sometimes though you, you pop right back and you're like, man, it seemed like I was asleep for hours, but you weren't. You can't do that for, you know, you're like tricking your body, but pretty soon your body's like, okay, we're done. What's your version of recovering from those races?

Like, do you go home and have a milkshake and lay on the couch? It takes a while for your body. I mean, it takes, you're not a hundred percent. I mean, for a month for sure. I can tell my legs are hard. But do you, are you continuing to run afterwards or do you give yourself a period of time off?

Yeah. Um, I'd say a few days after 200. Yeah. Does that tear your feet up? Yeah. Like you're all bloody and. Yeah, definitely. How many pairs of running shoes you go through in a year?

I don't know. I don't know. What, what shoe do you wear for one of those? Um, I, well, I'd been sponsored by Under Armour up until this year. So I'd been wearing Under Armour, uh, in this last race I wore a New Balance. So, but the, so what I found out is my feet don't get torn up like they used to, because now the secret is you like put Vaseline all over your toes and then put your socks on and then put your shoe on and what, what your toes

rubbing together and getting dirt and grime and stuff in there. That's what's causing blisters for the most part. So that, I like, I just did that marathon, which is no big deal, but I mean, I didn't, I didn't have one spot on my feet,

you know? So in the last hundred I did, I didn't really have anything cause I did that. Yeah. So. And they got to just be like shoe leather by now, right? Yeah.

I mean, I train with no socks, just running shoes and my, just to toughen on my feet. Yeah. so but your seat your feet still are pretty sensitive and they're taking you know in a marathon it's 50 000 steps so you know it's they're getting pounded do you have anything that's like starting to wear out as far as like knees and ankles or like. I don't put any energy into that. Yeah. I mean, I feel it takes me a little bit to get warmed up.

Yeah. But yeah. I mean, relatively speaking, you know, I got, I got some, I'm banged up a little bit, but I mean, I can still run. Do you have any chronic pain? Um, not right now, but, but running. I said pains in the mind. Yeah, I know. I don't, you've avoided like major injury and surgery and stuff like that. Yeah. Never. So, I mean, part of it, I'm sure is genetic. I have good, good joints. Yeah. Um,

I eat, you know, I don't drink, um, haven't drank for a while. Uh, I eat pretty clean wild game. Um, so I, you know, other than the sleep, I do a lot of, I do the hot tub, cold tub, I do massage. So, I mean, my body's pretty good, pretty fit. You know, one thing I wonder when I look at the, the racing you do and the, the, the endurance stuff is when you, um, I guess it might be hard to answer because you've been doing it so long, but when you look at just like the nuts and bolts hunting stuff, right? Like you're just hunting. Do you feel that, that, that, that the endurance world translates in any kind of direct way? Oh, a hundred percent. Really? So do you start thinking of distances

just very differently and like getting up at a certain time to get into a certain place you just start thinking of like it's not an issue not distances but but uh challenges i don't i used to have the same challenge as everybody else i like got to get all the way up over this ridge. When you've done 200 miles, you're not worth a ridge is no big deal. You know what I mean? So it's like, it's just like, you look at things differently. So when you look at things differently, you, you internalize them differently. So if you get up over the ridge and a lot of times, you know, your nervous system can only stand so much stimulus. So you think about this ridge and climbing up. That's kind of you're making your nervous system fire like, oh, my God, I got to do this, you know, body language type stuff. And so by the time you get over there, maybe you work in, maybe it's the end of the day.

Maybe you haven't had enough calories in your nervous systems and thinking about all this challenge and you got to get back to the truck. So you're thinking about that. And then you get that opportunity. You can't be at your best. To me, I don't put any energy into getting over the ridge, worrying about getting back, nothing. So when I, my nervous system isn't getting taxed, it's all dedicated to making the perfect shot when that happens. When you say nervous system, you just mean your mental state. Yeah. It's like, so it's your body. Um, I don't, I think, uh, like athletes, that's why they try to stay so calm, like before the Olympics or a fighter, you know, before a fight, because just being wound up, you're not at your best because your nervous system can only operate

optimally for a certain amount of time. And then you get tired. So say for example, like in an endurance race, if you don't have sunglasses on and you're squinting at the end of a long run, that can make a difference where on you, you want to have all, you want to have sunscreen, you want to have sunglasses, you want to be as comfortable and relaxed as possible because then you put more energy into whatever endeavor you're doing. Hunting is no different. So if I'm not thinking about all these distractions and challenges, all my energy and focus is on what I'm there to do, which is kill. Yeah. So it's – maybe I'm not explaining it right, but I mean.

No, you're explaining it perfectly well. It's like your mind can think your body into stress and then you have physical signs of that stress that take energy. Yeah. Yeah. Physical, it's like impediments, you know, and it's, yeah, so you're not, what I always say too is like if the hunt, on that hunt at that time is the hardest thing you've done, there's no way you could expect to be at your best. Yeah. That can't be the hardest thing you've done. Like if that's the hardest thing you've done.

There's no way you're going to be able, you might make the shot, you probably won't. You know, oh, go ahead. I was going to say that's what got me into starting to actually run more and more consecutive days. Because I realized that even though I was getting in great running shape, I'm like, when I go on a lot of times, it's like a one week backcountry elk hunt. And that's going to be my week of elk hunt, most likely. Like the one hunt I really want to do. Just live it out of the backpack and go bow hunting. But that's seven days in a row.

Yeah. Of going ridge after ridge, after ridge, after ridge. And on, and so I started thinking like, well, I got to train that way too. And so I started like, okay, you might not do 10 miles every day, but I should like at least go every day so that my body's just like, when it gets there, it's like, oh yeah, this isn't a big deal to just, my goal is always like, I just want to stroll the mountains comfortably for many days in a row. Yeah.

You know, and if I feel like if I can get to the end of the week and be like, ah, I still feel like I could go another day, then I did, I probably did well and I didn't like, like you're saying, like be halfway through just like, oh my God, another ridge.

Most people are, give a good effort the first day or two. And then it's like, to get the wind right, you should go all the way around the top. They get here and they're like, that's probably good enough. The wind's kind of quartering, but it's going to go over. So you kind of take these little shortcuts because you're, just because you're tired. Just because you're like, I don't, even if you're not admitting to yourself, you're tired, you're tired just because you're like i don't even if you're not admitting to yourself you're tired you're looking for shortcuts so to me i'm like i need to get all

the way to the backside of the ridge and come all the way over top that's just how you have to do it i don't it's not doesn't even do any good to think about some other shortcut so and really on a long hunt, the way I look at it is by day 10, I've killed bulls on nine and you know, way, way deep into the hunt. Um, you should be better than you were on day one because you're more in tune with mounds. You're a little, you should be a little tougher because you're like, it's hard to be tough all the time in the regular world we get have you can get take a drink whenever you want in the mountains you're like shit i'm out of water i got a whatever so um but by day 10 you should be tougher you should know the animals you know the terrain you should know you kind of have this thing patterned and then so you have more experience in that setting

of when you're hunting. And you should be so you should be better than you were on day one instead of worse. You know, if you go in and you're physically, you're still 100 percent with all those other factors, you should be better. Do you think that everybody has the capability to like, you know, to improve their mental state somewhat, or do you find people that just are never gonna learn to deal with these, these like stressors or like the nervous system override? Uh, no, I think, I think people are capable of a lot more than what they think. I think they, they, they give up mentally. Their body doesn't need to give up. So if they could, you know, what I've learned in training with these people, you know, like Courtney or these Olympians is that the body and even what I've done in my training, even though

I'm not at that level, but the day after day after day, what I say is your body gives what you ask of it. If you don't ask much, it's not going to give you much. If you ask a lot, it'll give you a lot. So with that comes confidence. And I think, yeah, everybody is capable of, I'm not going to say greatness, but man, when you're talking hunting there's capable of doing some you're capable of getting it done on a hunt for sure like more than you might think you can yeah when you're talking about that nervous like you you're you're talking about the nervous system um that's a thing that i struggle with uh is i find that super high wind, cold temperatures, you know, when it gets like, you know, below 10 or below zero becomes harder to concentrate.

Yeah. Problems seem bigger problems. Things that you wouldn't normally think of seem like a big deal. Yeah. Setting your 10 up all of a sudden seems like. Right. Yeah. Huge challenge.

Because like everything requires a bunch of thought you know yeah and i've often pictured like god you just get through that it's the thing i'm always trying to tell my kids is like just in certain situations and i don't put them in like stressful situations but in situations that to them as young people yeah find stressful yeah i try to be like just calm down like don't get get like even like a bee lands on their drink or something. I'm like,

just don't do that. Don't get jumpy like that. Like people don't want to be around jumpy people. Like just calm down. Nobody likes that.

Nobody likes just settle down. But then at the same time I realized like I'll even find like cold weather, high winds. I'm breathing differently.

Yeah, humans it's not a flaw. You're thinking differently too. You I'm breathing differently. Yeah. Humans, it's not a flaw. You're thinking differently too. You're definitely thinking differently. Yeah. It's not a. You realize you're clenched up. Like on edge.

Yeah. You realize like, why am I, it's windy and it's cold. Why am I contracting all my muscles right now? Yeah. Like this has nothing to do with wind and cold, but I catch myself and realize you're like your jaw, my teeth are clenched, and I'm actually like flexed. No, that- For why?

That wears you out. You're muttering curse words to yourself. Yeah. That's because you just need more fat on your body. You need to intake more calories, I think.

The wind, the wind is still the wind. It came- Like a high, deafening wind makes me like- That's the one thing Steve complains about

consistently is wind. He doesn't complain a lot, but wind makes me like. That's the one thing Steve complains about consistently is wind. He doesn't complain a lot, but wind makes him complain. Wind does a thing. My body reacts to it. Yeah. Like I said, it makes me like clench my teeth. High wind. Cam, have you gotten to the point, like for me on like a backcountry hunt, like tough terrain, it's always easier to like maintain that like

positive outlook when there's someone else around, maybe a couple other people around. Like, have you gotten to the point where you can just stay tough when you're by yourself or do you still find it easier with other people? No, I, I mean, I like to be by myself. Really? Definitely. Because with somebody else, you have to, a lot of times you have to motivate them. You have to check in with them.

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like this whole thing. Yeah. And sometimes, I don't know. I mean, I prefer to be by myself. Roy had the same mindset. One thing about Roy is that he was always in a good mood. It didn't matter what the situation was always confident and it's

like i remember when i killed that doll sheep with him i screwed up on the shot i actually hit the doll sheep in the ankle like front like cut its wrist basically and i get back up to him and i was just like oh my god and he goes uh he was nice shot i said yeah i he i said well he goes well it's bleeding he goes we'll get it i said i know because it might be a week from now but we'll get it so it was always whatever it we're just going to get it done is whatever it didn't matter it was never we weren't going to get it done and so that that's hard to find in another person you know they say a hunting partner is harder to find than a wife and it's like having somebody with the same mindset if you have this mindset well

you'll do whatever it's take finding somebody that that's hard to do right i went through a lot of people and um so if you can have that on your own then that's that simplifies yeah definitely better that was my one uh takeaway that really stuck me stuck with me from backcountry bow hunting i probably read that i think i came to montana the first time i hunt with a buddy in like 06 or 07 and i think that's right when that book came out, right? 06, yeah. So I must've had it a year or two after that. And when I came back in 09, and we were doing a fair amount of hunting like that,

working out of our backpacks already. So like a lot of the stuff in the book, I was like familiar with. But the one thing that stuck with me was about hunting partners. I can't, and I was going to bring the book, but I realized I gave it to that dude and never got it back. So now I'm stuck here. I can't, and I was going to bring the book, but I realized I gave it to that dude and never got it back.

So now I'm stuck here. I can't get my book signed. But like in there somewhere, you talk about having to like make decisions about who you're going to hunt with because some people want to have more of a good time and they're going to weigh that against like hunting hard and being successful.

And I remember thinking about the guy that I was hunting with at that time and be like, you know, he likes that first thing a lot and like, likes it and nothing wrong with that. If that's your style of hunting, great. But I had that drive at that time where I was like, you know, next time we hunt together, I might just take off for a few days if that's okay. Yeah. You know?

And, uh, but yeah, that really, that was influential and it impacted me. Cause I was like, you know, you just going to have to maybe go hunt by yourself. Yeah. And that's, uh, it is, like I said, getting somebody on the exact same page of you as you is difficult. If you're at that, that, because it's like, for us, it didn't matter how miserable we were. It had nothing to, the very first time we were in the Eagle Cap wilderness, I did kill a spike bull on that hunt, but it got down in La Grande, which is down off the mountain. It was eight degrees. And we were up there and I had, I talk about this in that book, but I had like the sleeping bag with the pheasants on the flannel on the inside line.

And I was like, had these wool pants that were too big for me. They got an action surplus, you know, military supply. And I had, I was sleeping with my boots on, everything. It was so cold. And I'm like, I go, I asked Roy, I said, are you having fun? And he goes, he goes, no, but once we kill something and we get home and we get to tell everybody about this trip, we're going to have fun. And he goes, we're not always going to have fun on a hunt. And I was just like, that was like the first time. Cause that was my first wilderness is like, it's not always going to be fun, but what's your goal is your goal to be

comfortable and have fun? Or is your goal to kill? And so then it was like, ever since then, which was, you know, early nineties, it's like comfort means nothing. They're to kill. That's it. Have you, uh, when was the time when you didn't live up to your own ideal, right? Like, yeah yeah you kind of haunted by sometimes and you're like shit man i didn't do the thing i said people ought to do um probably let's see it'd have to be something about you know discipline uh about you know i i made i made a lot of mistakes coming up about i'm a lot better now about being disciplined with the shot with my sometimes as an as a new not a new bow hunter

because i've been doing it for 37 years now so it's been a while since i've been a new bow hunter but you take the the first decent shot instead of a high percentage shot you know what i mean it's like when what when i first it was going to be like i might i don't know if i'm going to get how many shots i'm going to get this might be the best i get and so just being disciplined and waiting you know it for elk it's pretty i'm i'm hardly ever it's quartering away or broadside. I'm hardly ever forcing stuff. After I say this, I just forced one on my Arizona hunt last year and killed a bull. But it's like being disciplined when you've been thinking about this thing for maybe your whole life.

If it's like your tag where it's five tags and you get to hunt the buffer zone. So you've been probably thinking about this for a long time. And then that, that crunch time is there being disciplined right then is very difficult. And I've let myself down. So you're talking about by taking shots, not by not taking shots. No, taking shots. I'm always, always too aggressive. Or I err on the too aggressive side as opposed to, passive so it's just forcing shots yeah so i've i'm a lot i mean last bull i missed

2009 so it's like i'm pretty pretty disciplined on the shot wow that's impressive i haven't missed one since then yeah that's really count that's counting your shots and trying to yeah you know it's uh yeah i mean i've had to have some follow-up shots and sure more than one arrows but yeah do you uh in describing your book to people, is it more, do you picture it more like, do you picture it more like people would read it to inform how they live their life? Or do you picture people reading it just to hear like a good story about an American life, you know? Oh, no, no, it's not. It's hopefully to help people to be, because, so if you look at it, it's like, you know? Oh, no, no, it's not. It's hopefully to help people to be, because, so if you look at it, it's like, you know, divorced parents.

My dad was an alcoholic. My stepdad was an alcoholic. Moved out or lived on my own when I was 17. No expectations. So it's just like, you can, it doesn't matter. None of that shit matters. It doesn't matter. None of them, everybody has these challenges and it's just how you overcome them and how you set yourself up, um, or how you look at your perspective. It's like, and so I hope that my story will help people like dream big, uh, you know, achieve more type, you know, I,

I had that in that old back country book and it's true. It's just like, I don't know. I don't, I don't want people to play it safe. I want people to know, you know, this is, this is a circumstance I'm in now that doesn't mean that's going to affect where I'm going. So that's, hopefully it does that. I mean, I appreciate you guys having me here and getting this opportunity. I mean, we were trying to work on this years ago and it never happened. Rihanna helped me make this happen this time. And so I, you know, I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of Meat Eater, what you've built here, your guys' role in all this. You coming up from Michigan, coming out west and making your mark, it's inspiring to me.

So I'm honored to be here. Oh, I appreciate it. And I think that doing a book is something to celebrate, so I'm glad you're here for that rather than something else. And you did the audio version yeah it's terrible i heard a i heard a snippet that you didn't like that process oh it's so hard god i did not realize how hard that was gonna be i didn't know read you know it's another thing so you go into a room and read the damn book yeah and god have an energy and you know i i didn't realize how many words i skip when i read you know oh you know like when you're actually reading something oh no shit you're not reading

like no and i'm like they said yeah back to neck that line whatever you've missed whatever word and i'm like what i didn't i didn't know i missed skip over words you know they call that because i have we have a young boy who's learning to read those are memory words oh really and it was so funny is uh he always has assigned memory words and it's funny because you'll see these words that like everybody knows like oh and yeah but to have him encounter it and have to every time my kid does the same i'm so glad that he's not alone he's like drives me up the wall i'm like it's and you don't even you don't even need to say it just it's and yeah why are you rediscovering and all the time a and d and just never mind that word but is that is that like translating you speed reading? Like when people read to themselves, like being able to speed read and then having to verbalize what the brain is. To enunciate.

Yeah. Yeah. Because I read fast. To myself, I read fast. I can get through a book very quickly. But reading it, I was just like, oh, my God. Was there ever the option for someone else to do the reading? No, I can't do that.

It's never as good. That's a crime. It's never as good. I've had it's never as good i've had it done to me and i just it's just horrible man so you insisted on doing it yeah did they ask you to do it um i just said i was gonna do it yeah i just said because i just know like with goggins um he had somebody else he did like this in between the chapters type thing but he had somebody else read it. And hearing somebody else, I would love to have heard him say what he was,

you know, what he's going through. But so, I mean, at that time, and I've listened to other books too, I think, trying to think who else's, but it's always better when the author does it, I think. But the finished product, I mean, you're selling it real strong to listeners, but the finished product is cool, right? I mean, you happy with it? The audio.

Oh, yeah, I guess. I mean, it's cool because Joe does a forward and Goggins does what's called the afterward. So that's cool. Did Joe read his forward? Yeah, he did. On the audio. Yeah, he killed it. Oh, that's great. Yeah, he did. On the audio. Yeah, he killed it. Oh, that's great.

Yeah, he's so good at that stuff. But he's so, you know, he's very supportive of his friends. And just for him, you know, I mean, I said, are you doing the forward? Probably just on the advance probably made me $200,000. I mean, there's like, oh, well, Joe Rogan's going to read the forward. They're like, oh, yeah, okay, well. Can you do two books for us? I saw you had a six-book deal or something, right?

Don't you have to pump out some more books? Yeah, we had a big, you know, it seems like more. We have a lot of books lined up. All those books coming along there, bro. I was going to say gonna say we asked that question look over we did that we got a book we got a um we got like an activity book for kids we're doing that's like a book about raising outdoor kids we got an activity book for kids are doing we got kind of like we're gonna we haven't

really got rolling on it but we're gonna do a do a sort of Atlas of the American Outdoorsman. Like shit you ought to go look at. That's going to be fun. Crazy ass. That's going to be my favorite. I can't wait for it. Yeah, and it's like everywhere. What I want to do one part of, I want to have everywhere every mountain man died and got mauled by a bear.

I like that. Or got shot. You won't have to travel far for some of those. No. So you can go and be like, to the best of our knowledge, if you want to stand hugh glass got mauled by a grizzly i'd go stand right about here yeah so um and then we got an outdoor cooking cookbook okay yeah and he's been working on that with us too mostly brody again um yeah that's good but uh no i like man i like books man i like them a lot uh so this obviously everywhere everywhere books are sold.

And the audiobook is everywhere you go to listen to books. So if you go on your phone, assuming you got a lot of, who in here has got an Android? If you got an iPhone, right, you just go to the native books app. It's orange. It looks like a book. Click that. Type in Endure. Pop.

Should. I guess so, yeah. Trust me. Okay. that type in endure pop should i guess so yeah i'm todd trust me okay i know the audiobook selling a lot more than is like the audiobook is they're pretty happy with how how good it's selling already that's great that's great man so again everywhere books are sold audio version print version it's kind of a it's a very attractive large format print version it's got a ton of photographs in it um you know i'd recommend this one over the audio i don't know it's like i said it's a beautifully done

large somewhat large format book uh endure how to work hard outlast and keep hammering by cameron haynes forward by Joe Rogan available now if you wish you could run farther or shoot straighter yeah this book is for you and then who of us does that not apply to so

appreciate you coming on oh everybody stay tuned Cam is going to join us for a round of trivia. We've got to go find trivia, our trivia man, Spencer Newhart, and just check on the next thing that pops up on the download list, and you'll hear Meteor Trivia, Game On, suckers. Thanks, Cameron. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.

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