Wild Times: Wildlife Education - TWT #71 - Treasure Hunter Josh Feldman, Ice Cold Gold, Lost Gold

Episode Date: August 17, 2021

Star of Discovery networks' Ice Cold Gold, and Lost Gold, Josh Feldman joins us to talk treasure hunting and a whole lot more! Enjoy! Patreon @ https://patreon.com/wildtimespod All the links @ https://thewildtimespodcast.com/info We love you!

Hey everybody, it's Forrest here. I am in the fantastic pontenal of Brazil. I'm sorry that I haven't been around much for the podcast lately. It has been a month that just hasn't ended. I've just kept going and going and going and never wanting to come home, but I'm running out of time, running out of finances. And so I'll be back next week, back to the Wild Times podcast. Looking forward to seeing you all, looking forward to catching up with everybody. And until then, enjoy some of this exclusive content, stuff that's coming out here before any other social media for the Wild Times. Wild Times podcast. See you guys soon. Wild Times. Yes. There is. Wild Times number 71. As you just heard from Forrest, the motherfucker stayed in the Pontinal, but he's

assured us that he's going to have that many more good stories when he gets back. We're here for number 71. I'm Papa P. The producer here with Retep. As always, what's up for Tep? Good day. Good day, gentlemen. More importantly,

today, though, we have a guest that replaces forest permanently. And he's just more interesting, quite frankly. He looks more interesting, for sure. Outdoorsman, Wilderness Guide, has been doing it his whole life, and obviously a cowboy, judging by his hat. Also, he's a treasure hunter by trade, in addition to being a wilderness guide. He's so good at it that he's had two TV series that I've produced. Josh Feldman, what's up, brother?

Hey, how you guys doing? Josh Feldman, sorry, I stepped over his name. Well, I love what you guys are saying. I'm here to replace Forrest any time you want. He's not really... Nice. I don't see him as the centerpiece of the show anyways. You know, I kind of see...

I know. Retepp really is. Yeah, exactly. That's right. You know what it is. Exactly. Oh, yeah. I'm the only one that engages with the fans.

Well, Pat does too. But Forrest is way off on the other side of the way. I'm going to piss off 40% of our brosters. By the way, Retep, the last one that me and you did where it was just the two of us, I saw someone commented on YouTube and the comment was so cryptic. It just said, Pat is pissing me off way too early in this one. I was like, what am I doing? How am I pissing this guy off way too early?

You just have a negative vibe about you until about three to five minutes into every podcast. Well, I'm going to make a lot of our broosters mad here because I, I love all animals, but my least favorite animal. That's infuriating, dude. That is infuriating. My least favorite animal is the horse. Did you, I can't, you know what? I can't even be a part of this right now.

Who in their right mind would even say, would even say the horse is really, it may not be your favorite. It may not be your favorite. Your least favorite? I mean, come on, there's like slugged favorite crickets. I mean, those are above a horse. Is there? Coons? No. There's so many worse animals.

You have, that's one. Well, it could. It definitely could. A donkey for Christ's sake, dude. What are you talking about? A fucking zebra. Just because Forrest calls it a zebra. I don't know you were a horseman. Horses are one of the greatest animals on this planet. You just have to be smart enough to work around them, Patrick. It's that simple. And if you're not, that's true. You know, you just, you might be afraid of them,

But, yeah, they're quick. They're reactive. But you just have to know, you know, how to stay with them. That's all. They're wonderful because, you know, they're hurt animals. They look for, they look for leadership. You give them leadership. Okay.

And they're in your pocket. And that's what makes me. So it's like a dog. It's like a dog. Is it like a dog? Yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, their dogs are pack animals, hurt animals.

They all have a social order, right? So, you know, and so to people. So that's why we get along with dogs, I think, and that's why we get along with horses and those type of animals. Horses are, they're fantastic. I mean, most people like dogs, but you could be like, oh, well, they could bite you. I mean, so it's the same argument. I don't quite say what you're saying, how horrid. You don't want to, you know what?

No. I'm on to you. You're just trying to rile me up. The horse is not your least favorite animal. Yes. I'm on to you. It's true. Yeah, okay.

To be honest, man, I am pretty uneducated with horses. Is that the thing? Like they really want to work. They want to please the leader? Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's their natural instinct. So whoever is the leader, that's who's in charge and looking over the herd.

So they know that instinctually. So they just want to feel safe. That's really what a horse wants. And if he feels safe. Like dogs. Yeah. They're good to go. So you just have to give them that security

and giving them a job and some sort of responsibility, a routine, that really helps them out. That's going to be, they'll be at their best mental state. A horse that just stands around and eats grass and doesn't do anything, not in their best state. They need something to do, to be a part of something. Yeah, because when you took, so I went and met up with Josh and his brother, Jesse, and they took us out riding in the superstition mountains where they live.

And it was one of the first things you told me, you were like, dude, you're a little nervous. Like, the horse is going to pick up on that real well. Was that just bullshit to make me feel better? Or is that a real thing? You know, through the years, Patrick, I've told you a lot of bullshit. I mean, a lot. I'm aware.

But that moment, no, that's totally true. They know before you even touch them. Just the way you walk up there and project yourself, it's all about your body language. So they'd absolutely know you're nervous. You're going to do one of two things. You're either going to make them nervous, and that's not good putting two nervous, you know, bodies together, or they're going to realize you don't know what you're doing, so they're going to become the leader. They're going to take over. And so either scenario is bad for you.

You just, you want to be calm. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah. I tell people all the time, man. I teach a lot of people how to ride horses, and I tell them, you know, all the time. Fake it till you make it. Pretend you're confident. Pretend you're confident.

you know what you're doing because that'll help keep you safe. So, you know, it's... Well, I'll tell you this. Like, even just... So how many horses do you have out at your ranch? About 40 head. Okay. Wow.

So when we went out riding, I requested, I said, give me the most docile horse you got. Give me the one that's like got two weeks left to live. But even just climbing on the horse, when you've never done it before is a little like, it's a little precarious and it's a little awkward. And you were like, dude, you're already blowing it. Like you're already showing this horse.

You don't know what the fuck you're doing. Oh, yeah. I mean, dude, I've seen you just like in normal circumstances until you've had three or four beers. Right. You're just a very high anxiety person in general. Nothing could be farther from the truth. That's bullshit.

Josh, I saw, I mean, I've seen these guys ride him and his brother, man, they were doing some stunt writing for the last series we did together, which was called Lost Gold. And, you know, we had the camera guy right up there, and they were, like, whipping by at full speed and doing some real crazy shit. Have you ever been bucked off a horse?

You ever had one that you couldn't control? If a horse can do it, I've had it done to me. Yeah, I've been kicked, I've been drunk, I've been bit, I've been thrown, I've had horses fall on top of me. Oh, God. Now that I'm starting to think about it, maybe I don't like horses either.

But it's, I've had all that happen. And most of the time you get out of it, though. Like if you know how to fall and where to fall, you're probably fair okay. But yeah, I mean, I broke some ribs and, you know, I've hurt myself a few times. But nine times out of ten, I guess. But nine times out of ten,

you actually do get out of there just by the skin of your teeth. Dude, I mean, what, so I love the show Yellowstone with Kevin Kossner. I don't know if you guys have watched it, but it's sort of this portrayal of modern ranching. It's a fucking great show. But they're always trying to, yeah, they're always trying to like break a horse. You know, they get a horse that's no one else can ride. And then the guy comes in and he, he calms it down. And everyone's like, wait, is that the same horse?

Is that, I mean, is that a real, like, have you ever had to do? do that, like try to break a wild horse or something that people couldn't ride? Yeah, sure. I mean, I've done that throughout my entire life. It takes time. It's not like one of those things where you get on them and like it's a rodeo and you buck them out. And then if you stayed on top of them, the horse is now trained. It doesn't work like that. You'll have to have that moment because that horse is going to not trust you. And that's really what you're after. You're not trying to break the horse down. Sometimes there's a negative connotation on that. It's not what you're trying to trying to do it all. You're really trying to gain that animal's trust and realize, hey, let's work

together. But yeah, you could take a brutal beating while you're doing that. Some of them horses, they can be pretty rank. So if they don't want you on their back, I don't care how well you can ride or how big a cowboy you think you are, you're not going to stay. I mean, even in the rodeo, it isn't sit there for 20 minutes. It's eight seconds. The best guys in the world, eight seconds. That's it. You're out. So they're stronger than you. It's just the way it is. Yeah, so it's, but I enjoy it. I enjoy training horses, and there are better ways than usually like that one's real rank. Let's put a saddle on them and buck them out.

There's, there, that might quicken the process a little bit, but I normally don't want to do that. What I try and do is I'll put saddles on them and, and that sort of thing, but not myself at first. Because if they buck and tear up the pack saddle or the, you know, riding saddle, I don't care. It ain't me. And then, you know, it's just step by step. We don't do it all at the same time. We start small and then... Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, just like you wouldn't with like a human, because they probably get overwhelmed and then they freak out. You know, you said a lot of the things you were saying about the horses parallel, not only dogs, but humans. They like to have a purpose. They like to feel like they're accomplishing something, it sounds. So when they learn something,

they're probably like, oh, happy, endorphins flooding through the brain. And they're like, I'm going to chill out for a minute and this guy's helping me out like helping me with my purpose in life. It's all about knowing how they think. And I mean, it's, it's really like mental health, right? I mean, that's what it is. You have to understand what that animal needs in order to feel secure. And once you get that, you can then create a good relationship with them. And not every horse is the same. They all have different personalities. Some are more aggressive, some are more passive. And you're going to handle either of those type of personalities differently. You're not going to always do the exact same thing for each horse.

Yeah. Retep, I went, I was on a road trip through Arizona when I texted Josh and his brother and was like, hey, I'm like, not far from where you're at. You guys want to hang out? They're like, yeah, sure, come on over. I had one of the best days of my life.

Let me run you through this day. So first, first we go, we ride horses up in the superstition mountains, which was pretty, you know, once I got used to it and stopped being a little meager, scaredy cat, I had a lot of fun. Then we shot a bunch of guns.

Nice. And then we started drinking some beers, and they're like, hey, there's a mud bog tonight. I was like, I don't know what that is, but we obviously should go to this thing. We go to this mud bog. And Josh, why don't you describe what a mud bog is? What a mud bog is. Are you from L.A.? Mud bog?

Yes, we both are. You have mud bogs in L.A.? Mud bog. No. Fuck not. You take a big old patch of barren ground and you flood it with, I don't know, a ton of water. And then you take your truck and you just drive it through. But realize it's not like muddy like, oh, six inches deep of mud.

I mean, we're talking like eight feet deep of mud. And you've got to like step on the throttle and go as fast as you possibly can to have a chance of getting through it. And most don't get through it. You're done. They're stuck. Mud goes flying everywhere. I mean, engines are blowing up. It is fantastic.

Dude, so I know what you're picturing, which is like me and Josh and 40 other people standing around. We get there. There's like 2,000 people and like, you know, 100 people who brought their trucks. Most people are just there to spectate. They're selling tall boys of Budweiser for a dollar. Nice. So I'm like, oh, my God, this is amazing.

people are just like flipping their trucks over all this shit so then they're like now here it comes there's an announcer and they're like here's you know the Tyrannosaurus truck wrecks or whatever and then like a proper monster truck comes in everyone starts cheering the driver's like waving man and he decides he's going to take a bunch of little kids for a ride so like 10 little kids that I'm talking about like toddler age

run up and he helps them get up in the truck and the whole crowd's cheering for this big monster truck. Kids are like leaning out the window and shit. He gets going not more than five seconds before that car is upside down the truck with the little kids inside of it. People are screaming at the top of their lungs. Literally just say, oh my God. And every man in the place runs and it's like jumping over the fence to go rescue the kids.

And then all the kids got out and everyone was fine. It was a disaster, dude. Yeah. Wait, so is that a normal occurrence, or was that like a one-off or this happens regularly where the truck flips with 10 kids in it? Well, I got to admit, I was a little nervous with the kids in the truck and the flipping. That's not maybe, like, I was like, okay, these people are crazy, but I respect it. I mean, I'm looking at it going, well, you got guts.

So I wouldn't call it a regular occurrence. But it does happen. You know, a little Western justice, I don't know, country living, you might want to call it, that sort of thing. Here's what happens to us in the, well, the city or the suburbs. One time when I was about five, my brother tipped a grandfather clock and it almost smashed me to pieces. That's about the extent of what happens out here in the burbs and the city slickers. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, still dangerous. Still dangerous. Yeah, but not nearly is fun, though. Oh, dude, and the people, like, I was standing next to a guy who I personally watched drink, I think, 16 tallboys. And then the next thing I know, I'm like, he's driving his truck across the mud bog flipping it over. Like, this is fantastic. Yeah, that's living. You don't see stuff like that too much anymore, do you?

But it still does happen here and there. And you just got to know where to go and these people get together and do this. thing. And I don't know, nobody shuts them down, so they just keep on doing it. So, I mean, listen, I have this theory. If it's not dangerous, it's probably not fun, right? I mean, there has to be some danger, some, not a lot necessarily, but some danger. Otherwise, it's not fun. Riding a horse, it's a little bit dangerous. That's fun, you know? Yeah. Going underground, exploring a cave, a little bit dangerous. That's fun. That's fun. driving your monster truck through 10 foot of mud with your children,

maybe stupid, but fun. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, that is living. I mean, that is what it is. I mean, I'm not a believer that we have to be safe about everything that we do. You know, it's okay to be stupid every once in a while. I think we've all been there, right? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, Josh, we, Josh and I spent, he was, in Greenland with me. I've talked about the experience in Greenland quite a few times on the show. A lot of traversing really dangerous ground there. You spent your whole life outdoors. We talk about wildlife here on the Wild Times. What's the most scared, Josh, you've ever been, as it relates to wildlife or an animal, just out in nature? That's an easy one for me. I really only once in my life if I've been actually scared, like afraid for my life because of a wild animal. And I've come across and encountered many wild animals, bears and cougars and rattlesnakes

and whatever you want to think of in the southwest. But this one instance, I was in northern Arizona near the muggyone rim. And I was exploring some caves. And they were actually ancient Indian ruins from the muggyone people. So I was just taking a look, right? and I crawled up into this one cave and you had to climb up the rock wall to get to it. And it was a pinion tree there and I climbed up that pinion tree and I had to shimmy my way into the entrance of the cave like on my stomach. So I've got my feet.

I'm already terrified, by the way. I'm already out at this point. I mean, it's got to the good part yet. So I got my feet hanging out the entrance of the cave. I'm laying on my stomach. and I reach in my back pocket for my light, and as I'm reaching back out of the shadows steps this mountain lion or cougar.

And I am literally could have took my hand and reached out and pet this thing right on the nose. I of course did not. God. So I'm laying on my stomach in this animal's home. And the thing about mountain lions is if you encounter a mountain lion that won't leave you alone, You actually want to get kind of aggressive.

Throw rocks, yell, scream, don't run, right? They don't like confrontation. They're ambush predators, so they will only really get you if they feel they have the advantage. Except for one scenario when you corner them. And that's what I accidentally did. I had this thing cornered in its home, and I'm laying on the ground, and I'm telling you, I've never been more nervous in my life. I thought there was a good chance that I could get attacked.

And what I did was, I knew, I mean, you know, you're in a dangerous situation, your brain speeds up so everything slows down, but actually you're thinking really fast. So that's what was going on. And I thought to myself, I don't want to scramble. I don't want to run. I don't want to look like I'm prey, but I don't want to go any further forward and scare this thing anymore. Because it's just as terrified as I am. and my left arm was in front of me and I slowly like kind of scoched myself back

and I remember looking up at this mountain lion and I can see the image is burnt in my brain I can still see the light coming across its nose the shine the mirroring effect in its eyes and then the light just like kind of glistening off of the hair in its ears I mean I could still remember that like

it's a photo in front of me and I slowly kind of came back, and I got down to the bottom of the little cliff area that I had to crawl up to, and that mountain lion, thank God, never made another step, and the only thing it actually did when I was in there, it didn't roar at me or growl or anything,

but it did make a noise, and the only thing I can, it's, I can attribute it or make it sound like is like a burp, like somebody burping. It's like it came out of the shadows, but it just, like, it burped at me. I don't know what the heck that was about, but I assume it was kind of like, what are you doing?

Like, are you here to kill me? And do I got to kill you? Get out. Yeah, there you get. Nice. Yeah. But anyway, I mean, from the Simpsons. Maybe he was right back around the corner just feasting, you know?

Like, maybe he had just eaten like 13 pounds of like antelope entrails and he just came out and let out a burp. I suppose. That's why he didn't kill you. He was full. Your theory is as good as anybody's. All I know is that it did not kill me. Obviously, I'm sitting here.

But I knew I was in a very dangerous situation. I mean, I'm laying on my stomach with a mountain lion standing over my head. I mean, it's like, you could. Maybe if my belly was exposed would be worse, right? And I knew it was in a bad spot. And, you know, and I've been back to that cave since, actually, because I'm smart. Not very smart. On your belly?

No, this time, I climbed up in there, and I was on it. I had my legs underneath me in case I had to move. But no, I actually did go back in that cave a year later because I'm like, I mean, I can't be defeated here. Like, I got to see what's at the back of the cave. Like, okay, I know there's a mountain lion. But he's probably protecting bars of gold or something. I just know it. Right.

Still, I had to go back. It's undeniably, Montezuma's gold is in there. I just have to get past this mountain lion. It's 100%. And so I went back. there and unfortunately no bars of gold. But the second time there was also no mountain lion. So it worked out okay in the end.

But that's the only time I've ever been afraid. I've been, you know, maybe a bit nervous around them or whatever, wild animals with bear encounters and those sort of things. But really, always felt like, hey, you leave them alone. They're fine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What about you, Retep? What's your scariest situation?

Was it a dog named Charlie? No. I mean, God, if I think about, I mean, I told you, I didn't have any fear when I was young, so I can't think of any moments. Nothing sticks out. But there is that one time that I latched my fingers onto my friend's car. And then he drove like 35 miles an hour down the road. And he couldn't hear me screaming at the top of my lungs for him to slow down.

And he just kept speeding up. And I fell off the car and woke up in the hospital. and the thing that was the most terrifying about that was that I thought they found my weed bowl and that I was going to go to jail forever. Yeah, you're like, I might have broken something that I'll never be the same, but I hope I don't get charged with weed possession.

Yeah, there's no, there's no animal. I was crazy, dude. I used to build like zip lines in my backyard, like out of telephone cord. One time I booby-trap, I had a little forest behind my house, I booby-trapped it with swinging bricks and wood with nails in it that would like pop up and hit you. All kinds of stuff. Had you just watched Home Alone, possibly?

No, I know. This was all right here. I was kind of a loner, so I was just doing all kinds of stupid, dumb shit like that. Dude, what, uh, I mean, Josh, what would you say was your favorite experience of the three summers that you spent in Greenland? Was your favorite moment? God, there is a lot of them, but I know. My favorite moment is this.

We had a ruby claim on top of this mountain in the Arctic, middle of nowhere, and I mean by every sense, the definition of middle of nowhere. And really the only way in and out was helicopter. And we had done our work up there, and just to describe the deposit a little bit. I mean, here is this

complete virgin deposit, never been touched, and there is literally rubies peppered all over the surface of the rocks up there. I mean, it's like something you've never seen. This is out of a movie. You just don't see that. You're walking around, stepping on rubies.

So we were up there, having a lot of fun with that, and taking assessments, taking samples, and then we went, and that's a great moment, but that's not my favorite. The favorite was when we left. We got in the helicopter, and we're in this Huey and that's the main helicopter

they fly over there and it takes off and I've got headphones on I'm the only one of the crew that has headphones so I can listen to what the pilot and co-pilot are saying and I hear the co-pilot tell the pilot we are too heavy

and I'm thinking I'm thinking who do we have to push off of this thing like what do you mean like we're too heavy why does that work and this helicopter is trying to take off and the wind is like keeping it down and the darn helicopter starts drifting sideways on us

and there's this huge mountain cliff like oh not cliff but mountain sides there that we're heading we're drifting towards and there's snow everywhere all over the I mean you know because the blades are just blowing snow everywhere and I mean all of us knew the helicopter

did not have enough thrust to get through this And we're sitting here going, what in the hell do we do? I have no idea. Right. And finally, he does get enough thrust. The wind probably changed. And we get out of this situation. And I get back to the airport with this guy.

And I go over to the pilot and I go, what in the hell was that? And he goes, yeah, we were too heavy. We didn't have, we couldn't get out of the situation. We were in a pickle. We couldn't land safely because of the way the winds were. it would have been an uncontrolled landing, and he said, and we couldn't get any rise out of the darn thing. So he said, we were just stuck. And he basically, what he said is the pilot took off the wrong way in the wind.

I don't know how it all works, but evidently there's a way to face the copter so that the wind helps you instead of, you know, as a disadvantage. Yeah, I think that's a very important part of flying in a helicopter, yes. Yeah, right, right. And still I'm like, oh, I mean, it was really his pilot air. Like if he would have done it right. But I guess once you're in the air, you can't turn broadside, which kind of makes sense to me. Like I know if you're riding quads and stuff, you know, you get on a steep hill, you turn broadside. What do you do?

You roll, right? So, you know, I assume the wind would have hit it and rolled us. But even though I was nervous in that moment, I love that stuff. I love that I had that experience. I mean, who almost dies on top of a mountain in the Arctic above. a ruby deposit. Yeah, with a backpack full of rubies.

Yeah, exactly. I love that. Wow, man. That's one of the things, too, is you know, I'm a nervous flyer. I don't like flying. But helicopters, I just sort of trust them. They move different. I like, I actually like

flying in helicopters. Yikes. But the thing in Greenland, man, is your average pilot looks like he should be in middle school. I mean, you walk up to your helicopter and this guy is going to take you fly over a bunch of glaciers and mountain, you know,

fucking through crevasses and shit like it's Star Wars. I mean, and these guys like they like swerving and doing this crazy shit. And the helicopter lands and the guy gets out and he still got peach fuzz on his face looking all cool with sunglasses and you're like

great, this fucking 17 year old's going to fly us up into the air. Yeah. They don't let 17 year olds be commercial pilots for a reason out here in the States. Because you're dumb as shit when you're 17. You like to take chances when you're 17.

Yes, you take a lot of risks with other people's lives. You don't care. Even your own. I got a question for you. Yeah, totally. Do you think that all guys at some point in their life do dumb shit? Like, is it just, is it in our DNA that we must do

dumb things occasionally? It's testosterone, man. You're just full of it. I mean, when you're when you're young, before you hit puberty, you don't give a shit about girls or anything like that. It's all icky gross. Then you hit puberty and you turn into just like an idiot,

a drooling idiot, first of all, who all you want to do is fuck. Like, that's all you care about now. And then you're so frustrated because girls think you're a drooling idiot that you just start doing crazy shit. And your testosterone just keeps going and growing and growing. and the lucky ones of us can rain it in, and we can turn it into something that's constructive. The dumb ones, they're like 23, and, you know,

they're not like, they're not flying helicopters. They're shooting up heroin and snorting meth. Right. Well, so if you just look at basic accident statistics, it does support the fact that men tend to do, more dangerous and stupid things. So, like, looking at the data from 2018, just in the U.S.,

104,000 men died from unintentional deaths, right? So that includes traffic crashes, falling, poisoning themselves, things like that, compared to only 57,000 women. So twice as many men die unintentionally. each year than women, because we're fucking stupid, ultimately. Testosterone, man. It's corrosive. That sounds like absolute proof that women are smarter than men.

Yes. I agree with that. They have an ability to, they're not so impulsive. They take their time with things. They think things through. And don't get me wrong. There's a lot of guys who do this. I'm not saying they're less manly in any way, shape or form. But I find as I've gotten older, I've been able to do that. I had absolutely zero ability to do that. Like, even college, I would procrastinate until the last fucking minute, caused me a bunch of stress, and then I'd have to, like, do a paper,

study for a test or something. It was ridiculous. And I always hated it, but I did it every time. Of course. Of course. It's just, you just file it in the risky behavior thing because it's less risky to study for a couple days before the test. It's very risky to stay up drinking all night.

and then study for four hours before the test. Yeah. Just go in winging it. Yeah. Josh, you and I, let's talk treasure for a little bit because this isn't just a wildlife and outdoors podcast. My favorite treasure story is one that you brought to my attention. So Josh and I did a show called Lost Gold, where him and his brother went out every episode

and just explored a treasure story, a different one each episode. So, you know, you've got all these great stories. in the American Southwest and sort of all over the U.S. There's one story that we really wanted to do that I think was my favorite, and then we weren't able to do it in season one because of some permitting issues and stuff like that. Retep, do you know the story of Benedict Arnold's lost payroll?

No, I know that you call me Benedict Arnold regularly. Do you know who Benedict Arnold is? Yeah, yeah, the traitor in the Revolutionary War, right? Right? Yeah. So there's a fucking amazing story, a real story that's actually documented through like guys signed like affidavits and shit that testified that this is what happened to this gold that's never been found in Maine, in the Dead River in Maine. All right. Tell me how this trade. What did? Let's talk about it, Josh. Well, you've always loved that story. I love that story. I know. And I like that story. It's a really cool story. story because supposedly they even had to testify before Congress about this law payroll

that Washington had sent with Arnold North to go fight up in Canada at the time. This is before Benedict Arnold became a traitor and all that history happened and we've known. So anyways, they're crossing the river and the wagon that has the payroll on it goes down in the river. and of course it's gone. I mean, there's no recovering it. It's just a done deal. So it was this big mistake that happened and, you know, cost a lot of money. The treasure today would be worth multi-millions of dollars, also because of historical value on it as well.

But today, there should be a bunch of gold in that river somewhere. And I'm sure it's moved here and there and that sort of thing and been buried. It could be 10 feet under mud for all we know, but it's up there. And Patrick's always loved that story. He always is like, oh, we should do that. That's a great story. We need to do that. We've got to go to Maine.

Well, it's just so cool. Let me ask real quick. So you said you couldn't get this one produced because of permitting issues or whatever? It was like permit and budget and going all the way to Maine just to do it. It just like wasn't going to work out with our timetable for, you know, a cable TV show, which we don't have millions of dollars an episode to do. Okay, okay. So it wasn't like they're trying to actively keep people out from finding this or anything.

No, I don't think so. Okay. But it's just one of those things that you'd never think about is the fact that a lot of lost gold stories and a lot of treasure stories are payrolls from wars. Interesting, yeah. The battalions or whatever they're called would travel and they would bring the payroll with them, typically in the form of gold. So they would be going to fight

and there would just be somewhere in one of the wagons or on one of the horses a fucking giant literal treasure chest full of gold. And then in wars, people lose, people get killed. In this case, they're crossing a whitewater rapid essentially. And

dudes are flying down, horses are going down, and one of the ones that goes down is this literal chest full of gold on a wagon in this beautiful forest on the Dead River in Maine, somewhere at the bottom of that is like $10 million present day

worth of gold coin, I think. What are we doing here? It would be... It would most likely be coin. There's not... It's a lot of these stories, unfortunately, there's always like, there's little blips about it

here and there that you can find when you kind of read between the lines. It gets mentioned here or it gets mentioned there, but there's there's never a great detailed report of exactly what it was and exactly what happened that history either just gets lost through time or it just never got wrote down um you know it's a wildlife podcast i mean retep has a wolf in his house a tiny wolf very he's barking at the amazon man uh but but anyways i mean and i love any any lost treasure story i'm on it i love it and

Listen, they're not all real. A lot of them are nothing but pure legend. But I do believe that there is some truth in all of them. It doesn't mean that there is a ton of gold waiting for you at the end of every single story. But I love to research and find out what the truth was of each one of those stories. Where did it originate from? I mean, it exists for a reason. And I want to know why.

But some of these stories, the gold is still out there. It still exists. This one with Benedict Donald is probably one of them. There's enough documentation that shows that it most likely happened and where it happened, and nobody has proven to ever recover it. And there's a lot of other stories out there that are like that, too. How do you get a bunch of gold coins that have been scattered over the course of 200-plus years in from the bottom of a Whitewater Rapid?

That's not an easy thing. We should figure it out. No. It's not easy. They've got to have the technology these days. You don't know how that water is going to react with that gold. I mean, there are some simple rules with gravity and the gold super heavy and how water reacts. We all understand that where water, you know, a lot of times the heavy materials will follow the inside of a curve of a river. The problem is we don't know exactly where Benedict Arnold crossed.

Many times a certain river will get attributed that that's the one and actually it wasn't. It was the river further north where that happened. That happens all of the time. So that's why these treasures become lost. And so, yeah, and then, you know, God, with flooding and those sort of things, that gold's just going to keep going down, down, and it's going to get buried. It probably got scattered to a certain extent as well. I don't think that most likely you wouldn't, you know, find the box and everything would be intact inside.

You would probably permit it some gold here and maybe a mile down the river you might find some more gold. you know, that just caught the water in a different way during a, during some flood, some flooding. So, yeah, it's, it's, I love figuring out the mystery of it. I mean, that's the thing. I love a good mystery. And if I have an opportunity to possibly find a bunch of gold, if I solve that mystery, I'm in every single time.

Dude, Retep, listen to this shit. Listening. So, we're in Southern Arizona. Okay. Josh and Jesse have had a TV show out where people are aware that they're treasure hunters, especially in the area where they live. Jesse's Josh's brother, yeah?

Josh's, yeah, exactly, his older brother. Okay. A woman, her parents, or her dad dies. Okay. She was aware that her dad didn't, and Josh, you can correct me if I'm wrong, or just go with it, that's probably better. But I'm pretty sure I have all the details.

She was aware that her dad didn't really trust banks and had throughout his entire life, all of his savings was in the form of gold, right? He didn't like inflation. He basically collected all this gold. Okay. She didn't know where he kept it. When he died, instead of telling her where it was, he left a treasure map. Oh, my God. This is a true story.

Yeah. She gets a hold of Josh and is like. Like, if you can help me fucking decode this math to get my dad's, my entire inheritance, I'll give you some of the gold. Yeah. Josh, you take it from there. I mean, it was really, it's actually a tragic story. Her parents both died in a car accident.

So she lost her mom and her dad at the same time. And she knew that her dad had gold and that's what he put his savings into. And he, he, he, he. He told her, if anything ever happens to us, I have a map that I've created and you can figure it out and you'll find it. And that's it. He wouldn't tell her where it was. It's not a map that says with an X on it that says the treasure's here. Right.

So unfortunately, the worst thing happens and they both pass away in a tragic car accident. She spent a couple of weeks, didn't tell me anything about it, looking just by herself, her and her husband. Right. And so they could. Was this map? Was this, was the map? It's not like a typical like you would see with the X on it, but was it like some kind of a scavenger hunt or something?

Sort of. So yeah. So after a couple weeks that they were unsuccessful in finding this gold, they knew that, you know, I have a knack for that sort of thing and I at least enjoy it. So they came out to talk to me and they said, can you please help? And they trusted me, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. So I'm like, well, show me the map, right?

So here's what the map is. Yeah. It's a slip of paper that's not more than three quarters of an inch wide in about six inches long. And there's an Eckerd's receipt. Yeah. Like a film strip? Right. Yeah.

Yeah, right. And there's icons, cartoon icons on there. Oh, my God. That's it. Yeah. It's it. There's not a trail. There's not a word written.

There's nothing. cartoon icons. Wow. And I'm looking at this going, okay, well, you know, and I'm talking to her about her dad, what her dad was into, you know, that sort of thing trying to get an idea about him. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know him. And so for, and I don't remember the exact reason, but for whatever the reason was,

I was going to go meet her there at this property where this thing was supposedly buried. And I, I'm on my way and she can't make it. And she says, she says, I trust you. you just go ahead and, you know, see what you can do. I'll be there in a while. So I'm like, okay, I don't think nothing of it. So I'm putting this thing together, and I'm looking at the property,

and I'm looking at the icons, and I'm seeing what matches up with what, and I figure it out. And at first it fooled me because I'm like, it looks like it's taking me to this sewer pipe. There was this three-inch ABS sewer pipe, and I'm going, but I don't want to open up a sewer pipe. I mean, who wants to, like,

you know, bust the cap on that thing. You know what I mean? I'm like, but I'm looking at you on, but it seems to take me here. So I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to open the drain. So it's, you know, it's a screw cap, right? So I unscrew it.

Right. I unscrew it. And of course, I look down in there with my light and I see this wire bail, you know, like a handle sitting in there. And I'm like, uh-oh, that ain't, that ain't supposed to be in a sewer, you know? So why?

So I reached down in there and I pick it up and it's weighty. I mean, it's heavy. We're not talking an ounce or two, you know. And I pick it up and I pull this other tube out and I pull this tube out and I'm like, uh-oh. And you know, your heart starts racing because you're like, this is really cool. Of course. And I take that inner tube and I pour it out and here come these tubes of gold. You know, gold coins, one ounce gold coins.

Wow. And they just fall right out. And I'm like, uh-oh. the first thing I do is I look around. I'm like, oh, God, did anybody see that? Like, what am I going to do? So I'm sitting here with this woman's inheritance, basically. It's her goal.

It's not mine. And I'm thinking, oh, she's not going to trust me, you know, that sort of thing. So I'm calling her. She's not answering the phone. And I'm like, well, crap, do I put it back? And I'm like, no, what if somebody saw, you know, that I just did that? I just stole it, right? So I'm like, I can't put it back.

How much gold are we talking? How much you're thinking it's worth? At today's prices, there would be, let me do some quick math there. I also can't believe she didn't answer the phone. We're probably today's prices pushing 180, 200K, something like that. So it's a significant amount. I mean, it's not a million dollars, but that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money.

Yeah, for sure. And so anyways, I'm calling her. I can't get a hold of her. And I had a rental car because I just got back off of a trip from Utah. And so I had to go return this rental. So I'm trying to get a hold of my brother. He's not picking up the phone. No surprise there.

I'm trying to get a hold of her. Nobody's answering the phone. So I wind up having to return this rental car. And I wind up standing in the middle of Mesa with all these gold coins in my pocket on the street corner with no ride waiting for somebody to get back in touch. with me. Dude, imagine standing on a street corner with $180,000 of cash stuffed in your pockets. Oh, my God. That is fucking crazy.

And all the time, I'm thinking like, okay, she's going to be like, well, where's the other tube, right? You know, like, she's going to be like, well, and I'm thinking, like, I am in a bad situation here because she just has to literally trust that I would never steal. And so, finally, she does call me back. So does my brother. And I tell them. And, of course, then they come racing down.

And, you know, they find me. So luckily, she trusted me and she believed me, and there was never any problems and all of that. And she was very appreciative that I was able to find it because she wasn't. And, you know, probably a lot because she was just in a terrible state losing her parents. And she just couldn't think it through. She just wasn't the ability to do that. What a cool thing for the dad to do, though.

Like, you know, that's for sure what I'm going to do. Like, instead of just leaving a will where it's like, take all my investment accounts, it's going to be mandated that the money is converted from my investments into just the biggest diamond that I can find that can be purchased. And then there's going to be a cryptic riddle that will lead my offspring to the diamond. I think that's fucking sweet. And what you should also do is declare in said will. that whoever finds it first gets the entire thing. Of course, that's the point of doing a riddle for a treasure.

Whoever it will get treated out. All I have to do is outlive Patrick, right? That's correct. Do I get a copy? I get a copy of this map? Everybody. It's open to the public. Yeah, well, people who know me will just be like,

I know where it is. It's underneath his barstool at Barney's Beinerie. I'll just walk over there. I don't even need to look at the riddle. Dude, that story is fucking crazy. It was a lot of fun. I mean, it really was when I look back on it, because I'm kind of like, that's,

it's just a rare thing. Like, who gets to, to do that? You know, pull stuff up. My entire band has been absolutely trying to do stuff that most people don't get a chance to do. I don't know what it is about me, but that's what I really want to do. I have so much respect for the ability to do that, to just to do what most people just don't be in the hands because a lot of people don't.

And I find that unfortunate. I think it's because I grew up like in the tourist business, running a horse stables, dealing with tourists and stuff. And so I was kind of, the business was all about doing stuff that people do on vacation, people do for fun. And I just wanted to continue that, right? Like do other things that are also,

that are also fun to do, you know. Treasure hunting. Yeah, for sure. I mean, that my dad is like a maniac treasure hunter. So I don't think I really had a choice either now that I'm thinking about it. He drugged me all and my brother all over. Look at lost treasure. And when I was a kid, I'm like, we're going to be rich, we're going to be rich.

You know, we didn't exactly get rich. But we had a lot of fun adventures. Yeah, so you just said that your dad got you and your brother into the treasure hunting. Like, what age did you guys start doing this at? Oh, dad, my earliest memories of going treasure hunting with dad, probably I was six. And I'm sure I was on trips with him before that, but I was a kid. I didn't even know what was going on, right? But at six is when I think I started to have like a consciousness of like, we're looking for gold.

You know, like that's awesome. Yeah. And so we went all over. I mean, we, Colorado and you, mainly the southwest, California, but I guess Arizona is really where it's at. My dad is an avid treasure hunter. His favorite story of all time is the lost Dutchman gold mine, which is a story of lost gold mine in the superstition mountain mountains here in Arizona. And also probably the most known lost treasure in America. There have been like four TV series of people looking for the lost Dutchman.

For sure. Did you guys do that on lost gold? No, because Josh knows where it is. What? Well, so I say, yes. Yeah, exactly. He didn't want to do it. I can't tell you, I'd have to kill you.

Where is it, Josh? That's none of your business. It's in the superstition mountains is where it's at. The thing about, like, the Dutchman and a lot of lost gold. mine stories is that the minds themselves, the legend made them become lost, but the reality of it was, there was always people that knew where it was. And that's maybe the anticlimactic for the Lost Dutchman mine. I don't find it that way because for us, we solve the mystery, or at least we believe we solve the mystery. And yeah, I know exactly where the Lost Dutchman mine is. I can take you

to it. I can show it to you, all that good stuff. Now, that doesn't mean that you're going to go up there with a rock hammer and just pick away and get all kinds of gold in your bag. Gold mining is a hard process. We own gold mines right here in my backyard. And I'm not out there every single day gold mining because it's expensive and it's a lot of work. But we do gold mine. We do get gold. A lot of people, they get into the romance of what a rich gold mine would be and they get an image in their head that you walk into the mine and the gold is just hanging like stalactites in the mine. You know, And all you got to do is just grab it.

It's not how gold deposits work. Right. Right. Essentially. So, but very, very rich gold came out of the Lost Dutchman gold mine. They hit some very, very rich pockets within the vein. But it doesn't mean the whole vein is that rich. And, you know, so it's a great, it's a cool place. It's sparked an amazing legend.

It's still today sends people out on fantastic. adventures. And they may never find anything, but yeah. That's the point, right? The point is the adventure itself. That's what I was going to say. Like, so Josh and I, he was going to go on a treasure hunt. And I always tell him, I mean, we've known each other for almost 10 years,

I think, at this point. Maybe more, actually, more than that. But I'm like, hey, when you're going to do a treasure hunt, always just let me know. And if I have a week off, I'd love to join you. And so he was going out on a treasure hunt. He thought he had decoded something. And I was like, sure.

We'll go. And Mitch, Mitch came with us, who's been on the podcast before. And because Mitch wasn't working, he's like, yeah, let's go on a treasure hunt. The thing about it that's so fun is you end up in beautiful nature. So we, I'm not going to talk about the treasure itself because we didn't find it. But we're in this place called the Valle, which I'd never heard of. It's in New Mexico, way up in the mountains. It is one of the most beautiful, untouched pieces of land I've ever seen anywhere. in the world. I didn't even know it existed. We hiked around this place for seven days. Elk,

I mean, so many elk, you can't even believe it. There's just elk bugling in the morning and it's sunset. Elk everywhere. There was randomly one bison that we kept coming across, black bear. And we're just having this adventure out in nature surrounded by wildlife. We didn't find the treasure, but that's sort of, I feel like, the tie in between, you know, having a treasure hunter on the wild times. is like you just end up spending so much time outside, camping, surviving. It's fucking fantastic. And the solving of the riddle part is really fun. Yeah, it's like a little added piece to that.

You know, I go camping. I do that stuff. And of course, I love it. Like, I love being out there. You know, my, my, what I'm doing out there, I'm like, okay, I need to open up this can of beans. Let me put this potato in foil. There's, with the, with the treasure, you know, the treasure hug. you have this whole other element,

which is, you know, kind of guiding you and distracting you from all the other minutia, which is the normal stuff that people who aren't like super outdoorsy are doing. And that sounds real fun, if I'm to be honest. I want to come on the next one is what I'm saying.

Yeah, let's do it. We'll film that. If I have... Exclusive content for the Patreon. If I have a good chance of finding the treasure, neither of you are invited. That's fine. That's understood.

I'm totally cool. with that, by the way. Can I, Josh, can I talk about the obelisk that we found? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Okay. So we're, we're hiking all around. I mean, this is, Vivalas, I don't know

exactly, but it's, I would assume, thousands of square miles of wilderness. I mean, it's massive. And so we're covering tons of ground, you know, 10 miles a day easily, if not more. And rough terrain, too. And we come into,

to, we see like an old structure. This is definitely from the 1800s. What did you think that structure was, Josh? You're the, you're talking, whether I'm not sure. The cabin looking thing. Okay, yeah. There was, it was an old, it was an old town, old cabin, and it was probably from the old early timbering days

because they timbered that country up there. And so we come in, we come to this area. And, I mean, these cabins, I mean, there's nothing left of them. I mean, they're just log stacked on top. of each other. You could barely tell they are even cabins, for that matter. So we're, and I knew that near this area, there was some things that might lead us to this treasure hunt that we were on. And that's when we came across this stone obelisk in the middle of the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico. And the thing's about three and a half foot tall, something like

that maybe six inches in diameter. And it has carvings, like any good obelists, I guess should have. But the carvings, it's like, it looks like it's the Holy Grail. It's got crucifixes all over it. It's got these stars and all these symbols that make no sense. I mean, here we are near a town and, you know, a ghost town that these symbols don't fit. These aren't symbols you would see in the American Southwest.

West, they're symbols that you would see like from the Mediterranean, like Knights Templar stuff. Right. You know, if you guys know what that is. And so you're looking at this, this is very religious-looking artifact, but it's got these, like the Holy Grail. I mean, these treasures of Christianity, like carved into them. And you're going, why is this here? We're in the middle of New Mexico.

Makes no sense that it exists. It's obviously very old. You know, it's not from the 1950s. It's, we don't know when it's from. A couple hundred years. It had to be a couple hundred years old, at least, if not more. I think maybe more like four or five hundred years old. And here's the thing.

The workmanship that it would have took. This isn't something that somebody did a weekend project and carved a stone because they thought it was cool and they read a book about the Knights Templar. Right. I mean, this took a lot of work. The person or people who did this care. and they put a lot of effort into this thing. And you wonder why.

What is it that they're trying? It's obvious the obelisk is trying to say something. And I still to this day can't figure it out, but I'm trying. It's trying to tell us something. Now, does that mean it's going to lead to a billion dollars in treasure? No, not necessarily. But it's going to lead to something. Some bit of unknown history that we never, nobody even considered.

there's something to this thing that absolutely means something. And so, you know, that's the thing about treasure hunting. I mean, sometimes it takes you in different tangents. You think you're going to find one thing, and it wound up being something completely different. But you did find, you did find something. Right. And then you go on that tangent.

Yeah, exactly. You know, and you just keep on that right turn. Yeah, I was going to say, it's like, finding that obelisk, I was like, oh, well, like, this feels like we just found a box of treasure, because it was just so cool. In the middle of fucking nowhere, I just looked it up, Via Vidal's 102,000 acres of pristine Rocky Mountain. You know, nothing's allowed there except I think they give some elk hunting tags.

People can go elk hunting there. But, God, finding that Alask was cool. And obviously, like, immediately, Josh is just, like, obsessing over this thing, taking pictures of it. We go back. We weren't camping that night. We were staying in a little cabin. He's just sitting there looking at it.

He's on Google. He's trying to figure everything out. I'm like, God, this is fun. I want to be a treasure hunter. Fuck being a TV producer. I don't even know how many hours I spent Patrick on that. I have spent so many hours researching. I went through history into the Mediterranean.

I mean, all kinds of stuff, like, you know, from like 1,100 AD. I mean, just what happened over there with the Moors. I mean, so here I am in New Mexico, and I'm winding up and I'm studying Mediterranean in ancient history because of this thing that I found in the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico. And it's, you know, it's, I love that, I love the research part of it. I love, I love getting into that sort of thing. I mean, that's just kind of how my brain works. I mean, you know, if I have to buy, you know, some printer paper, I'm on the research

and what's the best type of paper and why. I mean, that's just kind of the way I am. So whenever I get into this, like, the history, I'm like, I just dig and dig and dig. Again, a lot of them are dead ends because you start going one way and then you realize there's no way there's any real tie here. And then you've got to put that down. And then I'll put it down for sometimes days or months. And then I'll be just an idea. I'll pop in my head and I'll go, wait a minute.

But what about? And I have so many stories that I've chased and so many ideas. And I don't know they randomly pop into my head what's going to be at the forefront and why I'm thinking about that one at that particular time. but it's it's very similar to to i mean treasure hunting is is super similar if you think about uh forest show extinct or alive in a lot of ways i was a treasure hunt it's just a different treasure looking for an extinct animal and the process is like for people who are interested in the tv part of it the process is remarkably similar to you know doing one of josh's shows where he's looking for a treasure and then doing what forest does which is looking for rare or extinct animals

the whole pre-production and the research and the planning, it's the same exact process. Just you're looking for an animal and one, you're looking for lost gold and the other one. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's funny because you were talking about how when you're out there, you were looking for this treasure, this specific thing, and you found the obelisk.

Is that how you say it? Yeah. Why not? Why not? And, but, you know, there's that thing. When you're out there looking for something, I mean, you're going to find something. Like, if you're just doing that repeatedly, you know, like people aren't looking for things normally in today's society.

Like, everybody's kind of just like out there with their head in the sky looking wherever, you know. And there's only a certain, I feel like a select few people who are out there, like actually looking and they're out there looking for something, whether it's the extinct animals or the treasure. and those, you know, there's, that's how it used to be. That's what people were doing for hundreds, thousands of years, like, you know, when Columbus set sail or whatever, this is how our society got to where it's at. And it's nice to hear that there's still that vein running through and in some people out there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, dude, talking about like Columbus and the great explore, I mean, well, Columbus was obviously a terrible guy. We've learned that by now.

The more that I study the stuff that Columbus did, I mean, yeah, they were horrible. But the idea of getting on a fucking ship, this was not a cruise ship, didn't have a water slide, didn't have an engine, and just going, we're just going to sail and look for stuff. And most likely not going to come back, probably die. But I just have to know what's out there is completely, but I can't even. I can't wrap my head around it. Yeah? Well, you would never do that, Peter.

Well, I wouldn't do it. I mean, I wouldn't do it, but it's, it's, you know, this, there was, there was more at stake back then, you know, like people were trying to, whatever they were trying to do, you know, I don't know what Columbus's intentions were or whatever, but, you know, but these are like explorers, man. These are like seekers who are out there who want more than what's just like around them, you know. People like Josh, people like Forrest, not to kiss everybody's ass.

But like from a purely zoological standpoint, our only job as humans is to stay alive and preserve our bodies for as long as we can. Pass our DNA on and then make sure that we put our offspring in the best position to continue passing the DNA on. It doesn't really, evolution doesn't really call for I'm going to risk my life to go look for something that, probably isn't going to really affect any of that. But that's what makes humans different. The pursuit of the unknown is crazy. Yeah. It's not, though.

But that's why we're different than animals. We have motivations, things that drive us that come up, pop up in our subconscious or whatever. They just pop into our head because we can think these thoughts and connect things. And we're like, all of a sudden, after this happens, you're motivated by something completely other than just food or whatever, man. Like, you know, people. Sure.

people are different Josh from you know from where we've traveled together you're you know you're definitely a risk taker it's something you have in common with Forrest is that you both do a lot of things that make me very nervous as the TV producer Do you think now that you have a kid Josh has a little baby right little six seven month old? Do you think that you will take? Yeah do you think you will take less less risks as you go out in pursuit of dinosaur bones and long? treasures and all sorts of stuff. This might sound a little bit selfish, and maybe it is. That could be debated, but there's absolutely no chance that I'm going to be safer. Not a chance. I want my son to see that his father took risk. I think that's important in life.

And if you wind up dying doing something that you enjoyed, that you had a passion for, to me, that's life. that's what life is about. It's not just about trying to stay alive the longest and have offspring. I think it's also about enjoying what life actually is in this gift that we all have. And if that means that it puts me in some, I'm going to say semi-dangerous situations, I don't want to come off here like I'm a daredevil. I'm not a daredevil. But obviously you wind up in situations when you're out in the wilderness and you're doing stuff in remote areas. I mean, things happen. So no, I will never slow down as long as my body will hold out.

I am in, I'm going, that's the way it is. Now, not mindlessly. Obviously, if I'm going to go repelling or I'm going to go scuba diving or whatever it is that might have a bit of danger to it, I mean, I'm not just going to be an idiot about it. I know how to do those activities and how to do them as safe as possible. Yeah, right. Like, you know, such as crossing parts of Greenland's ice sheet and refusing to wear your helmet because you needed to wear your cowboy hat. Yep.

That's, that's, that's not needlessly dangerous. But sure, maybe that'll be cut out of the equation with the kid in the picture now. Well, if I'm going to die, I have to do it with my cowboy hat on. I mean, it's just the way it is. I'm sorry. And I think it's got a little protection here. It's there's, you know, I've hit my head with my hat on. There's some.

There's some strength. There's some, there's some structure to it. Dude. Oh, my God. So good. Speaking of needless risk. So Forrest, as you guys saw at the beginning, so he's been down on the Pontinal. And he was filming for his new series.

But then he took more time than he told us he was going to. to basically explore the Pontinal. And he has sent us some fucking amazing videos. He had a crazy encounter with a jaguar that they saw on a rock face that had just killed a very large Cayman. And this Jaguar, I mean, beautiful big cat, it has like six foot long Cayman. And it is climbing up these crumbling-ass rocks with this Cayman in its teeth.

And I have a whole new respect for my cat. at Lemley after watching this. Oh, Retepp's got the video here. Check this out, dude. And we are going to have a bunch more stuff from Forrest's trip to the Pontinal on both the YouTube and the Patreon. Check this thing out.

So he's got a leopard, right? This is a leopard that has a... No, that's a jaguar. Or a jaguar, sorry. Look at that beautiful cat. Holy shit. Oh, my God. And this is a crocodile or crocodile?

A Cayman, which is a crocodilian, but... You know, still very big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Dude, this is wild.

He's climbing up this rock side here. So it seems like he just had killed this and then he was taking a break. Yep. Yeah. It was like you, Retep, when you go to the drive-thru from Taco Bell and then you sit on your couch, you take a little break before you eat it. Yes, that's right. Before I even get out of the parking lot.

But yeah, I mean, that Cayman is probably, that Cayman probably weighs more than the Jaguar. And he's just ragdolling. I mean, it's dead by now. He's already killed it. It's missing its tail, too, I noticed, right? It usually has a longer tail than that? Yeah, it would typically have a long tail. So, yeah, I'm assuming it lost the tail in the fight.

Look at that cat, man. Beautiful. Yeah, we have a whole bunch of other really cool videos that Forrest took that we'll be putting up on the Patreon and the YouTube. And then he's going to have a million, a million stories when he gets back. He will, in fact, be back next week. That is a fact. I made him send me his flight confirmation. Good job, dude.

Jaguars are stealthy. I mean, you don't see a ton of jaguar. No. It's not like you see those every day. I think there's supposed to be 5,000 left in South America. That is a good sighting. That's some wild. That's a once in a lifetime.

Josh, once in a lifetime. That's amazing. Not for forests, though. He'll probably. Yeah, he's out there all the time. He's probably got like 30 videos of bullshit like that. No, because I texted it. He got reception for a minute and I texted him and said, dude, how is it?

Because this was his bucketless trip, was the Pontinol, which is this wetlands. I don't know if it's technically a jungle. I'm not sure what it is in Brazil. And I was like, dude, is it everything you thought it would be? And he just sent me like 10 of the mind-blown emojis and then sent that video. So I could tell he was pretty stoked about the Jaguar. He also sent a couple other videos. Dude, the amount of Cayman is insane.

Like, he was out on the bank, on the bank, just taking a little bath at night. Because, you know, if you're going to bathe, you should do it where there's a ton of anaconda in Cayman. In a river, yeah, with deadly animals everywhere around you. But he shines his flashlight out and you just see the eye shine of, you know, all the Cayman. No joke, there's like a million.

There's a million Cayman just sitting there watching him. Josh, we have a thing on the podcast where we talk about Forrest, and we say that he has no amygdala, as in he has no fear response. So some of the craziest bullshit I've ever heard of. You've got a partial amygdala, but I think you're missing a portion of yours as well. You call it that. I call it just passion. That's it. I mean, you know, with passion, you don't think with passion.

You just do, right? So, you know, I get it. I get what Forrest is doing. I would love to be there. I'd love to see, I mean, wouldn't you love to see that in person? I mean, unbelievable. That is unbelievable what he's viewing down there. You know, and I know we were talking about treasure hunting earlier,

but I have had the opportunity to see stuff somewhat like that, right? And that is, that's amazing when you're out there and you get to be able to see those sort of things. I just have Let me ask you this, Josh. So you've been doing, you've been treasure hunting for for basically 30, 40 years, right? I mean, since you were six. So yeah.

He's not 46. Let's not make him 40. Come on, I said 30, 40. Yeah. I said 30 or 40. Get out of it. I don't do Pat Smith. But my question is this, what, and I'm kind of putting you on the spot,

But what is like, has there ever been a moment that it's just something, aside from the mountain line, like a picture in your head where you discovered or you found or you accomplished something with the treasure hunting? And it was just like the most memorable best thing that you went through in all those 30 years. The first thing that pops into my head is I'm not going to tell you where. But I was in the mountains, we'll say. Okay. I was at this site that was from the 1870s probably a mining area. And I was doing a little bit of, you know, just digging around, checking things out, that sort of a thing. And up pops out of the ground this silver and gold cross crucifix.

And it's about, oh, shoot, maybe three inches tall. so it's it's got size to it and here's this beautiful silver and gold cross and it just pops up out of the ground kind of like an Indiana Jones thing where you're like what is like you know I mean it's the perfect treasure right and so I dig this I mean I dig this thing up and it's got dirt all over it I still have it to this day and to this day I have not wiped the dirt off what stuck I just left it I left it alone because that's how I found it And is it worth a ton of money and silver and gold? No, it's not. But to me, how I found it, the way in which I wasn't expecting to find something like that.

And I love the connection to the, you know, history is a big deal to me. And I love history, especially Old West history, the history of the American Southwest. And also pre-Anglo, too, ancient Indian stuff. I love. Oh, interesting. And so, you know, here I have this. piece, this connection. I mean, this meant something to somebody. You don't lose your jewelry, right? It was obviously, it was accidentally lost. Or maybe something traumatic happened.

What also I found at that site was a ton of casings, so bullet casings. And that's weird. For that era, the 1870s, to just have a bunch of spent cartridges laying all over the ground, and a lot of it was buried too. That's a really weird thing because you didn't waste ammo. Where I was was in the middle of nowhere now. So think about how middle of nowhere it was

in 1870. You do not target shoot. You don't go for fun and do that. Your ammo means everything to you. There was a gunfight there. There probably was a gunfight there and somebody lost their life, lost that cross, whatever happened.

I don't know. I feel like maybe I was meant to find that. Maybe I was meant to at least have some sort of a consciousness that something important happened here. And I'll never know exactly what I would assume. But I love that I have that connection. And then I'll keep that provenance. And that's something, that's a small treasure that I'm going to be able to hand down to my son and tell him the story. And I'll tell him where I found it, of course.

But, you know, so that we can maybe keep that going. You'll also tell me where you found it. I will not. I will not tell you. Josh, I'm going to see Josh in about eight to ten days in Scottsdale, Arizona. And we're going to be doing a little drinking. And he is a loose-lipped fellow when he gets three, four drinks in him. So I will find out where it is.

And you'll let all of the brochures know they'll all be there the following week for scavenger hunt. You know something? That's totally true. I get drinking. I know. You always got to watch out. I will. You think I talk.

You're going to show up and be like, you're going to be like, oh, maybe a Corona. I'm going to be like, no, no, no. I already ordered you a margarita mate. I know it's only 10 a.m., but let's get it going. I want some secrets. Well, dude, Josh, this has been really fun. Do you have any social media or anything for the Brosners who are interested in following you or now? Nope.

Actually, I do not. You know, I don't know any shows. Any shows coming up or anything you want to promote? Well, you have to talk to the producer about anything like that. Yeah. So Josh, Josh was on, for people that are interested, the show we did in Greenland was called Ice Cold Gold. It was three seasons available on Discovery. I believe it's on Discovery Plus.

It should be. Lost Gold is also a Discovery Plus show that we did. Only one season. Not our fault. It was on Travel Channel, and they changed to a paranormal network. And they wanted Josh to go explore. haunted gold mines and he said, nope, I'm not doing that. Don't need to be on TV

that bad. Do you remember why I told you? We do have a new I don't. I just remember you said no. Oh, I said the problem with a show like that is that I'm going to look like Scooby-Doo and my brother's going to look like Shaggy and I'm just not interested. Yeah, that's right. I'm just not interested in doing that. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, but we do have a fucking, we are just about to start pitching a new series around that is fucking bonkers. Nice. So I'm hoping at some point on the podcast to announce that we sold the show. But it has potential to be, I think, the coolest thing we've done. So anyway, let us know if you like Josh.

You like hearing about treasure hunting. We'd love to have them back on. I'm going to find out where he found the cross. And Josh, congrats on recovering from COVID. I heard that was real shitty. It was not fun. I can attest that getting COVID is not easy. A lot of my friends and family got it like a year ago and they sailed through it.

It seems like the second round is brutal. At least it was for me, some other family members that got it at the same time I did. So, yeah, we were down for, I was down like sick for 10 days. And then it was like another 10 days of you don't have any stamina. Like you go out and like you, you know, you want to like weed your yard and you do that for five minutes. and you're just like, I think I'm going to lay down. So it takes a while to recover. I mean, you're just kind of wimpy after COVID.

So, yeah, I feel for anybody that gets it is it's not great and it's nothing to mess with for sure. Yeah. I'm alive. Glad you could come on, man. Yeah, I know. Make sure you're negative because I'm excited to have some cocktails with you. Of course. Anyway, thank you so much for doing it

For the Brosners. We love you guys. We are going to post some of the stuff that Forrest sent us when he got service from his adventures in the Pontinal. We'll definitely post some more on the Patreon. He will, in fact, be back next week. Sorry about the

false hope I gave you last week. But Forrest is an asshole and he decided he needed to catch more snakes for an extra week. So that's how it goes. Retep, take us out. Thank you, Josh, for joining us. I had a lot of fun. That was fucking super interesting. Check out

ice cold gold, lost gold on Discovery Plus. Check out the Wild Times Podcast.com forward slash info for all the links to this podcast, the audio, the visual on YouTube, the Patreon, the merch. It's all there.

And the link to the Patreon specifically is patreon. com forward slash Wild Times Pod. Brostner's We love you, Josh, I love you. And, Pat, I really do love you today as well. Thank you. You're in a good mood.

Thank you, too. Thank you, Jim. Thank you. Wild time. Yeah, you got to play the answer. That's the outro. This is nice. Yeah.

70s porn music, baby. Can't help a bob your head to this. It's great.