Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0231_Steven Rinella — Crazy Hunting Stories You Won’t Believe: Wildlife, Adventure & the MeatEater Journey

Transcript

#0231_Steven Rinella — Crazy Hunting Stories You Won’t Believe: Wildlife, Adventure & the MeatEater Journey · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Steve Rinella, welcome to the show, man.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Thank you. It's a privilege to come on. Like, I
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: always watch your, uh... I consume tons of your... the
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: shorts you pull from your episodes.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, thank you.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: And I like them, yeah.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: I like all the... all the warriors, man. Like, hearing
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: them tell stories is a kick, yeah.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Man, it's an honor to do it. You know, I
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: just think it's really important to document the last war.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, I was in part of both of them.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: So I think it's just important to document that stuff, actually,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: how it happened, instead of listening to some fucking news
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: head on the media tell us about what happened. It
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: had never been there. Or maybe they did a photo
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: shoot there at some point in time.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I've.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Been tracking you for quite a while. So it's pretty
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: surreal to have you sitting in here. Thank you for coming.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Appreciate it.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: But all right. Everybody starts off with an introduction. So
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: Here we go. Steve Rinella, an American outdoorsman, writer, and
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: TV host known for ethical hunting, wildlife conservation, and field-to-table cooking.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Founder of MeatEater, Inc., producing top-tier content on hunting, fishing,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: and outdoor lifestyles across TV, podcasts, and digital media. Host
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: of the MeatEater TV series on Netflix. You run The
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Meat Eater Podcast, America's number one outdoors podcast and a
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: top 10 sports podcast. Author of 10 books plus three
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: audio books on hunting, survival, and nature, including hits like
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: The American Buffalo, In Search of a Lost Icon, and
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: The Meat Eater Fish and Game Cookbook. And you're a
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: husband and a father.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Being out there a little bit, talking to your team,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: we were asking for funny stories, and they had mentioned
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: something about a hunt, I believe it was in South America,
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: for monkeys. Yeah. What is that? I got to hear this.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a number of real life-changing experiences hunting
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: down in South America with indigenous South Americans. Some people
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: use the term Amerindians. I spent time with some guys
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: that are from the Makushi tribe or Makushi and Wapashan
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: tribes in Bolivia, and then the Chimane. Sorry, Makushi and
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: Wapashan and Guyana and the Chimane in Bolivia. And we
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: were on a river trip, traveling up a river with
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: some Chimane guys. And they had a shotgun, which is
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: kind of a common armament down there. And it would
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: be that, like I was with these guys, Another trip
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: I was with, just to give you a sense of
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: the ammunition and stuff they use down there is I
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: was with these guys in Guyana one time that they
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: weren't supposed to have a gun, right? They weren't allowed
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: to have firearms, but they had a firearm and they
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: had a 16 gauge shotgun and they had 12 gauge ammo.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not kidding, dude. They would sit there. So at night,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: they like to hunt at night and they would take
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: that 16 gauge casing. It's got the same primer. So
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: they would take that 12-gauge shell. Someone would give them
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: these 12-gauge shells, and they would cut it open, and
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: they had a leaf. They cut it open, poured the
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: shot out in a leaf, got the wad out, poured
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: the powder out in a leaf, pushed that primer pin out,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: put the primer into the 12-gauge, put the powder in,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: And then they used like, they had this kind of
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: waxy paper they'd use for a wadding, put their shot in.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: Then they had a candle. Instead of crimping it, they'd
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: cut the crimp off and they'd melt a candle in
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: there and drip candle wax in there to seal the thing.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: No way. So they could go take their 16 gauge
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: shotgun out hunting. I remember one night these, these guys,
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: I would go out with them sometimes. One night I was,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: I just, for whatever reason, I wasn't like invited to go.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: I remember they made two of these shells. and they're
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: gone for quite a while in the dark and a while.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: I never found out what happened, but a while later,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: they come back and make one more shell and then
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: go back out again. So that was, but these, these, these,
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: to get back to the question about the monkey, these
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: guys in, in, uh, Bolivia, they really like, they like
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: monkeys and different. I, the handful of different groups I
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: hung out with, there's different opinions about eating monkey. Um,
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: It's either taboo or not, but these guys like red
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: howler monkeys. So I go out with them in the
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: jungle and they had, they had found a, they knew
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: about a tree that was fruiting. They had been scouting
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: around and found a fig tree or not a fig tree,
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: maybe some kind of date. I don't remember the fruit,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, but we got under a tree and we're
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: just waiting under tree. And pretty soon you can see
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: a holler monkey up in the tree and he shoots
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: up there with a shotgun and down comes. Not only
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: a howler monkey, but a howler monkey's baby. And man,
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: this guy comes back. There's some stuff we filmed this off.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: There's some stuff we didn't film or didn't use the
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: footage of. But they come back and they kind of
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: cook that monkey's head and eat it like an apple,
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: walking around with it, kind of chewing the.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Are you serious?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Took all the intestines out in the river. So they
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: took all those monkey guts down and inverted all the
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: intestines to clean them to eat. And yeah, they cook
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: everything to the nth degree. So they smoke it, cook it,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: boil it. Yeah, and sitting there eating that monkey meat.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: And it was like, I can eat anything, man. I'll
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: eat anything. But eating monkey meat was... Yeah, eating monkey
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: meat was a tougher meal.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So they run around with a monkey head and eat
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: it like an apple? Did you try that?
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: I didn't try the monkey. I ate a lot of
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: monkey meat, but I didn't try the monkey head. I
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: wasn't offered the monkey head.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: You weren't invited.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: No, but I remember just seeing it. He had the
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: little monkey, and he had his palm in it, you know?
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: What about the skull?
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: No, just kind of like a picture that you're, Picture
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: that you're getting the skin off and the jowl meat
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: and stuff. Just kind of cleaning it up. You know,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: cleaning it up.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: That's fucking crazy.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a wild experience. And the joke about
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: that that I always tell people is we run into a,
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: they have like our only marsupial here is an opossum.
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: They run into, we're out at night and we run
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: into opossum. And they just killed this monkey. So we
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: see opossum. which is not a steamed food item here.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: Once upon a time, it was. People would even harvest them.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: The commercial guys used to harvest them just for the fat,
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: just for oil. Oh, shit.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: But we run into a possum, and I'm like, dude,
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: if there's some Americans eat a possum, that possum's dead
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: meat with these boys finding it, you know? It was
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: so funny. There's this possum hanging on a tree, and
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: they can see it in the light. And I'm like, man,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: I feel bad for that possum. And they're like, nah,
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: just keep walking. So it's like, monkeys, cool. Possums, no
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: one's going to eat that. Damn.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: What's the craziest thing you've eaten?
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Uh, I think that like eating monkey meat and then,
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: and then, um, years ago I did a story. I
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: went to, I was mentioned to you, um, even though
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: I promised not to do this from like earlier, I
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: was telling you, but, um, early, I mentioned having an opportunity.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: We were talking about Vietnam vets. I mentioned having an
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: opportunity to go to Vietnam years ago. I did this.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: I did a magazine story when I was doing magazine articles.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: I did a magazine feature on, um, Thit Cho, which
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: is like meat dog in Vietnam. And it's in the
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: North of Vietnam around the Lunar New Year, so Tat.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Tat is like an auspicious time to eat dog meat
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: in the North. And so I did a story about that,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: like eating dog meat, the mythology of eating dog meat,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: the business of the business of dog meat in Vietnam,
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: how it's raised, how it's sourced, how it's served. And
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: went and ate for about a week and was never
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: able to enjoy a bite of it, man. It would give, like,
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: it would give a hot, they would call it a
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: hot food. Like, it's a charged food. They would call
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: it hot. Meaning it's like a potent food. But I
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: would get hot, like hot flushes of guilt, dude. Like
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: I'd get like a sweaty guiltiness. Damn. Eating that dog.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: There's a common thing they would serve where you'd go
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: into these places that would open. It was funny because
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: I was right on that lake where they fished McCain.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. You're sitting like that lake where McCain went
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: down in. And a guy in Vietnam mentioned, he was
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: a guest of us once, Tom McCain. But it was that,
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: where he was, there's a street there that during the
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Tet holiday is all these sort of like, you'd almost
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: put it like, it's almost like food trucks or like
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: pop-up stores. It's just all fit show places that are
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: open just for the Tet holiday. And you can go
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: in and get, they'd serve, like you'd go to that,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: get dog five ways or dog three ways. And it'd
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: be like a prefix menu.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Of just different preps. And when I wrote that, I
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: published that story in Outside Magazine long, long ago now.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: And I remember it was the most, they were saying
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: that in terms of generating like vitriolic hate mail, it
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: was their number two.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: I'll bet.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: And the number one. thing was, at the time, they
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: said the number one thing was something they had written
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: that was critical of the Boy Scouts. So I fell
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: behind in vitriolic hate mail. But that was a rugged
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: bunch of meals. And eating the monkey was.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: It was fine. I would eat the monkey. I would
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: do that again because it's such a pleasure to hang
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: out with guys. You got a picture that you're with
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: people that their great-grandfather, their grandfather, their father, them, they
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: hunt and fish 250 days a year, maybe. They spend
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: some time doing these little, uh, little farm fields they
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: cultivate up and down the river, but they hunt and fish.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: I would ask a lot of guys like how many
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: days and they'd have to think about, they'd say like,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: you know, two out of three days or whatever they
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: hunt and fish, um, within a 50 mile radius, 75
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: mile radius for many, many, many generations. I don't care
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: how good you think you are in the woods. You
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: can't compete.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: You can't, Um, you'll never catch them. Do you know
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: what I'm saying? You can't catch them. They're so good
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: at like a specific set of things in a specific environment. Yeah.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, they, they live in it and it's, it's
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: not pleasure or hobby, right? It's survival.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: It's just, you can't compete the stuff they see. You'll
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: never see it. The stuff they hear, you won't hear it. Yeah. Damn.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: I bet you've seen a lot of that all over
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: the world.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So that meaning like if I can go and
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: spend an evening or a day or whatever, go out
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: at night with flashlights with guys that know their business
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: like that, like I'll do it anytime. I don't care
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: what I got to eat.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I bet you've learned a ton over the years, huh?
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I've learned. A lot of stuff you pick up,
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: it's not like you're learning tricks that you're going to
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: integrate into your own program, but you're learning. You know,
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: it's more like building kind of like a database of
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: information or an understanding rather than like picking up some
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: little thing. Though I did, like, I have gone and seen,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: it's funny, gone and seen people solve, seen how indigenous
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: hunter-gatherers or hunter-gatherers, like, see them find, like, solve a
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: problem that I have recognized in our own world.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Um, we used to, for, for a short period of time,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: I would sell snap and turtle meat and, uh, in Michigan.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: And we would always get snap and turtles, you know, and,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: and I remember my dad would, how I was taught
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: to do it and how I would do it later
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: when I sold a little bit of snap turtle meat
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: is like, you cut snap turtles head off. And then
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: they have such like an ancient, nervous system, you know,
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: that they'll, for hours, I mean, for hours, like if
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: you cut a turtle's head off and he's going to
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: retract into his shell and for hours, you know, the
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: expression like chicken with a head cut off, right? Like
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: I'm always trying to explain that to my kids. He's like,
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: he's dead. He don't know it. But for hours, a
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: turtle is tensed up.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. So like, I just remember my old man,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: he'd like cut his head off and go hang it
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: by the tail and then you'd pull and eventually it
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: would go limp. And down in South America, I saw
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: these guys, they got this big, they had set a
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: net and they got this big giant river turtle in it.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: And they whittled a big long stick. Have you ever
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: heard of the fish processing technique called Ikejime? No. So
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: you'll catch a fish and brain it and then they
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: cut it by its tail. and crack its tail so
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: you get an entry point into its spinal column, and
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: they'll run a wire into it to just deaden the
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: nervous system. Well, these guys cut this big, long skewer,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: and when they cut that turtle's head off, they ran
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: that skewer right into the backbone and shoved that skewer
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: down in that thing, and that turtle just.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: I mean, melted. And then it cooked it right in
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: its shell. And with something like that, I'm like, that's
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: something I could wish I would have known about a
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: long time ago. That's something I wish I would have
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: known about a long time ago. So there is stuff
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: like that, but a lot of it's not transferable. It's
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: just cool to see it. It's cool to witness it.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: It's cool to understand how they do it.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, as a writer, it's cool to know it. Because
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: I'll write about that stuff. How do you deal?
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, I can imagine that with the dog thing,
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: you've got a ton of hate mail. I mean, I
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: could see that happening.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: I remember seeing some, but surprisingly not.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that's good. I've had a little bit of
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: that from, I'm always shocked at how little of that
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: I've got. I've had to have the FBI look into
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: a guy one time. That's always fun. They like scared
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: the hell out of him, you know, never heard from
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: him again.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: Good deal.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: They went through his trash. He was eating pepperoni pizza.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: I'm like, he's not even a vegetarian, dude. They're like, no,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: he ordered a pepperoni pizza. Damn. Damn. I was like,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: what a hypocrite.
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: I'm surprised you don't get more pushback. I've had a
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: couple of guys. Actually, I had Bob Parsons on. He
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: was the CEO of GoDaddy, and he had a thing.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: But I mean, I don't think people realize how good
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: we have and how sheltered we are here in America.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, you go to the fucking grocery store and
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: get everything you need, but you're talking about out in
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: the jungles of Vietnam and Bolivia. And it's like, dude,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: this isn't like pleasure or a hobby for these people.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: This is their occupation and how they feed the villages.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Legitimate subsistence. Legitimate subsistence. On the issue of like here
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: and from, just to wrap that up, like on the
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: issue of getting, being a hunter out in the public
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: eye and getting harassed by animal rights extremists, it's like,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: there's nothing, there's nothing they can take from me. Yeah.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean? It's like what they
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: do is a better target is someone that you can
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: harm some aspect of their occupation. Let's say you're an actor.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: You're an actor and you're like a closeted hunter and actor,
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: and there are some. Because they're like, well, I'll be
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: rejected in Hollywood if people know that I do this.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: But there's no repercussion for me. It's like no shit,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: you know? Yeah. I'm not going to be like, damn it,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: I've been outed. Yeah.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: Well, hey, before we get into the interview here, I've
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: got a couple things to crank out.
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: Please.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: First one being we've got a Patreon account. We've turned
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: it into quite the community. They've been here for a
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: long time, a lot of them. And so one of
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: the things I do is I offer them the opportunity
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: to ask each and every guest a question. So this
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: is from Justin Larson.
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: Justin. Okay.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Steven, given your expertise as a hunter, conservationist, and advocate
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: for ethical outdoor practices, do you believe that with the
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: right advocate, we could implement mandatory hunter safety courses in
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: schools to promote responsible gun handling and teach sustainable food
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: harvesting from the land?
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: Mandatory. I don't know. Cause like driver's ed isn't even mandatory.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: That's a good point. Yeah.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: I like it. It's nice to have it be available.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: When I was a kid, we took it at school.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: You could go to the school and take it, but
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: it was a weekend-long thing. How long can people go
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: on about this? I'll try to be quick about the issue.
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: If there's been a trend in hunting regulation structures, A
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: surprising trend is that states have tended to, over the years,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: lower barrier to entry. When I was growing up in Michigan,
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: you couldn't hunt at all until you took hunter safety.
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: You couldn't hunt with a firearm until you were 14.
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: We did not pay attention to that rule. My dad
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: was not interested in that rule. You had to be
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: 12 to hunt with a bow. You couldn't hunt with
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: a bow until you took hunter's ed. Now they leave
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: it up to a family to decide when a kid
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: can hunt. And they make it that you can hunt
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: for a number of years with a mentor who's within
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: arm's reach before you need to go and take your
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: hunter's ed. I generally support, not generally, I support that deregulation. Yeah. Yeah.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: there to make it easier for people to participate out
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: in the woods with their little kids. I live in
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: the state of Montana. Um, I think Montana has got
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: it just about right. A 10 year old can hunt
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: with their parent or a person designated to, to mentor them.
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: They can start at 10. They can hunt two years
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: and then they're obligated to take hunter safety.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: So you can, so when my kids turned 10. I
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: hunt with them. I'm their mentor. They're right here with me.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Like they don't do, unless I say do it, they
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: don't do it. They're right there, but we can do
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: two years. They can get hooked or not, and then
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: go down the path of doing the hunter safety. And it's,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: it's like, it's, it's a great program. It was too strict.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: It was too strict and too big brother. I felt
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: when I was kids. So I like these, I like
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: these moves to leave it up to a family. to
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: figure out when it's appropriate for their kid to get rolling.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds good. I mean, is that when you
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: started your kids? Is that 10?
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I would bring them out with me and
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: they could hunt pine squirrels and whatever else. But they're first.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: So I got a boy turning 10 now. In a
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: couple weekends, in our state, we have our youth waterfowl season.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: So that'll be... Well, no, because he was able to
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: hunt turkeys in the spring. This will be his first
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: duck hunt coming up.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, right on.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: So we have a two-day youth waterfowl season. It'll be
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: his first duck hunt. We have a youth deer season.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: It'll be his first deer hunt. And that's what I
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: do with my other two kids, too. Cool. And they
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: all love it, yeah. And it's nice to be able
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: to get them going and not have to jump through
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: all these legal hurdles to take them out and set
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: them right next to you.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Man, I'll bet your kids are dying to get out
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: there with you.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been lucky in that way, man. I've been
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: lucky in that way. I remember having kids and someone saying, like,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: what if your kid's don't like to hunt as much
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: as you do. And I'm like, not many people do,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: but I've been lucky because they dig it. You know,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: it's fun. I don't know that they always will, but
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: they'll always carry it with them. You know, they'll always carry, like,
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: I like them to be a little bit, you know,
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: it's good that they're a little bit gritty. You know
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: what I mean? Yeah. I like them to have that.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: Even if my daughter, whatever, she grows up and doesn't
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: go near it, she'll carry some things from those experiences
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: with her, you know?
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's cool. I think kids today definitely need more grit.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I think it's, at least from my perspective, it's very apparent.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I like it. The thing
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: I always tell people, like if I, like a measure
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: of sort of a way, this kind of like very
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: arbitrary individual way of kind of measuring like where your
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: kids are at. Like if I hold, if I got
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: something in my hand, you know, and I hold it out,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: like my kid would be like, They're not, they don't,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: they don't go like, well, what is it? Do you know?
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Or if I'm like, no, try to eat that, eat that,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: take a bite of that and eat that. They'll be like, okay.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: And I just like, I like deliberately try to like
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: get that feeling. I'm like, if I hold, if I
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: got a snake, I'm like, no, he's cool. He won't
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: get you. They're going to take it. Wow. You know,
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: or whatever. If they see something, like they see a
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: mouse run along, like their instinct is to grab it. Nice.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Is hunting under the decline?
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: Man, depends on how you, Depends on how and when
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: you measure it. So it's remained remarkably in, in, in
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: not percentage, but this is this kind of a weird deal,
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: not in percentage, but in actual numbers, it's remained remarkably consistent.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Well, since the end of world war II, like world
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: war II kind of gave us the modern day outdoorsman. Um,
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: and my dad was a product of that. Like my
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: dad came home from the war. There was even a
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: editor at an outdoor magazine at the time and made
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: some comment that like, how can you train an entire
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: generation of men to shoot and camp and not expect
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: them to hunt? And my dad grew up, he was
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: raised by Italian immigrants. He was raised by his grandparents,
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: south side of Chicago. Came home from the war and
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: got into it, man. Like started bow hunting in the 50s,
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: started deer hunting. He just got into it. He wanted
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: to be outside. He said everybody was stir crazy. No
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: one to be held tight. He told me stories of
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: like being lined up hunting rabbits and someone would shoot
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: and everybody hit the ground. Wow. It was like that fresh,
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: you know, but he was just, that's just what he
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: wanted to do. And that kind of gave us, there
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: was other things that were happening culturally as you had
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: people had automobiles. So people that could, that would live
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: in urban suburban areas had a way to get somewhere.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Freezers were becoming a thing. So you got away, like
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: if you killed a deer, like picture it. And normally,
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: like if you killed a deer, you know, you had
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: to either be really good, knew how to dry it
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: into jerky and want to eat that. But with the
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: freezer came this idea that you could go and hunt geese, docks, deer, whatever,
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: and bring it home and freeze it and then have,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: and then be able to periodically throughout the year, eat
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: fresh food. And so it birthed the American outdoorsman. And
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: since those post-war years, the number of hunters has remained
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: remarkably static. But obviously it's declined hugely in terms of,
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, our population, you know, doubled, tripled, quadrupled or
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: whatever the hell since then. I'm not sure how this
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: has to have tripled. So the percentages have dropped. You
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: look in California. So California, New Jersey, it's less than 1%.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: Are you serious?
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Less than 1% of the population. New Jersey doesn't surprise me. California,
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: less than 1% of the population buys a hunting license.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Fishing participation is different, but just speaking about hunting. Other
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: states are pretty robust. There was a huge spike during COVID,
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: you know, um, behaviors change. So hunters are kind of
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: hard to count, right? Like, like if, if I go in,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: if I go and buy a license in, if I
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: buy a license in my home state of Montana and
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: we have a little fish shack in Alaska, if I
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: buy a license in Alaska, I just got counted twice.
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: I'm on the, I'm on the list. Yeah. In two places.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: The one thing that's really easy to count is if
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: you want to hunt migratory waterfowl, you have to buy
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: a federal duck stamp. People could go buy that duck
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: stamp for no reason or just collectors or whatever. But
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: by and large, you can look at how many federal
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: duck stamps were sold, how many guys hunted ducks because
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: they have to buy this federal stamp. And they'll sell
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: a million of those stamps. Meanwhile, 13, 14 million people
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: will hunt deer. Deer is the most hunted thing. Morning
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: doves are the most harvested animal.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not a big hunter, but when I took
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: my first deer last season, it was a little guy.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I was excited, but he was like, don't ever post that.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: It was too little?
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Was it a male or a female?
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: It was a male. Antlers? Yeah. Dude, come on.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: They were little. He was like, don't post it. I
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: was like, why not? It's my first one.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: I don't want to disparage your friend, but he's giving
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: you bad.
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: Advice, dude.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: If you were happy.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I was ecstatic. I was like, I thought it was awesome.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: But anyways, we were having a conversation and he was like, yeah,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: he's like hunting his hunting's on the decline ever since.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: And you know, this could be hearsay. I don't know.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: But he was like, ever since, you know, smartphones came out,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: he's like, it's getting harder and harder and harder to
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: get kids out into the wild and He's like, and
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: now we're seeing this overabundance of deer and all this
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: other game. And I was like, oh, shit, makes sense.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: I was just curious what your thoughts were.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's, you know, like suburban deer and stuff. I mean,
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: it's a very complex issue. It's not just the lack
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: of people willing to hunt them. Like anyone out there,
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: if you got a bunch of deer, you have 10 acres,
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: 20 acres, 100 acres, and you got a bunch of
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: deer bugging you. and you put a sign up, says hunters,
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: please inquire, the day's not going to be through and
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: you're going to have someone banging on your door. There
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: are like, you don't meet, you don't meet hunters who
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: will tell you like, I can't even scratch the surface
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: of all the properties I got to hunt. They're dying
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: to hunt. People are dying to hunt. The suburban deer
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: problem is self-made. It's not because there's no interest. It's
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: because people are intolerant. They don't want like hillbillies and
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: rednecks running around their place. Yeah. That's what, that's what
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: that's about.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: And for some people in some, and for some people
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: in some suburban areas, they would rather, they would rather
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: entertain ideas such as like providing a contraception to deer hiring, um,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: hiring taxpayer funded sharpshooters to shoot deer. They would rather
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: do all that than let some hillbilly on their place.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: No shit.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: That is the suburban.
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: Contraceptives?
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: That is the deer problem.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: What the, what is, what, what?
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: They can treat them with contraceptives. Really? Yeah, it's tried, yeah.
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: They somehow like, they do it with wild horses. You
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: familiar with the whole wild horse problem?
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: No, I didn't know there was a problem.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: There's like a, you know, the wild horse and burrow.
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: In the area of the West, there's these feral populations
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: of wild horses. And for a while they were, you
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: could commodify them. And so they passed this thing called
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: the Wild Horse and Burrow Protection Act. which is a
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: huge mistake. And now we have like, now we lose
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: all kinds of wildlife habitat. We lose desert bighorn habitat,
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: mule deer habitat to competition with feral horses, just like
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: horses running around. They're not a native animal. And so
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: there's even legislation up right now to like up the
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: amount of contraception, darting mares with contraceptives to try to
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: slow the population. This is something they're always toying with
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: the deer. It's more palatable. than some dude killing it
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: and eating it. Wow. It's just, it's lunacy. So like
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: the suburban deer problem, I'm like, it's a problem because
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: we've decided to let it be a problem. It would
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: very quickly not be a problem.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: Have you heard about this, shit, I can't remember his name,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: this guy in Hawaii. I guess there's all these deer
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: that are just like- Axis.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: Axis deer. They're just like taking over everything. Yeah. And
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I think he shoots them on nods and it's like-
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Take his message. as you can get. Have you done
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: anything like that?
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: I've hunted axis deer in Hawaii long ago, but I
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: haven't done any of the sort of like eradication stuff
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: that they got going on.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah, we're thinking about bringing him on, but I
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: just haven't gotten around to it yet. But anyways, yeah,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: so a couple more things. Everybody gets a gift. Okay.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: Vigilance League gummy bears, legal in all 50 states.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, legal in all 50 states. That's my first question.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: There's no funny business in there.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, really?
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: It's not a vice. Oh, okay.
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: I would have found a home for them. Made up
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: in Michigan.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: Got you something else. That's great.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: I appreciate that.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Are you familiar with the USCCA?
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: No, I'm not. Okay. Should I be?
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Are you a concealed weapons guy?
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Well, I live in an open carry state, but the
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: other day I was doing an FFL transfer on a pistol,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: and she suggested to me that I should get concealed,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: even though I don't need it, because then I don't
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: need to do FFL transfer.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: No.
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: My old man had a— in Michigan, my old man had
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: his concealed. But yeah, we're open carry.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: So basically what USCCA does is they are— it' s kind of
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: like a— So if you have to act in self-defense,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: it's going to be an entire disaster of a legal process.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: And so what they do is they provide you the
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: attorneys and all of that stuff. So it's an insurance
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: policy for concealed carriers in case something goes bad or
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: you have to defend yourself or your family. And so
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: they'll jump in. They'll provide you with the attorneys if
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: you want them. They'll provide you with all the advice
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: and they cover all the legal fees up to a
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: certain amount. I can't remember what it is.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'll eat some gummies and I'll read up.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Right on.
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Appreciate it. So that's a lifelong membership.
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, sweet, dude. Thank you. Appreciate it, man.
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• 35:33
  Speaker 1: All right, so I love doing life stories. Where'd you
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: grow up?
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Where'd I grow up? I grew up in Western Michigan,
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: Muskegon County, Michigan. Pretty close, about eight miles from Lake Michigan.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: How into hunting were you?
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: Sorry?
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Did you grow up hunting?
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. My dad was a big hunter. We were
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: brought up in it. We did a lot of normal stuff.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: Everybody does, you know. But I grew up on a
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: lake and had a lot of fishing and hunting opportunities around.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: My dad had been, like I said earlier, he was
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: a big hunter. He was into archery hunting very early.
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: You know, there was sort of like, obviously people used
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: to archery hunt before the advent of, you know, before
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: the introduction of the firearm. And then archery hunting took
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: a long vacation. And then started, you know, people started
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: toying with bows again in the 20s and 30s. And
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: my dad was bow hunting even before some states were
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: even having archery seasons. So I was brought up around
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: archery hunting. We hunted ducks, we hunted squirrels. We'd hunt
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: mostly within probably, definitely most of our, the vast majority
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: of our hunting was in 10 mile, 10 mile radius.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: We had a lake. And so I grew up fishing
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: in the lake, grew up trapping muskrats, got real into
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: fur trap when I was a kid. But yeah, it
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: was just totally immersed. It was never like a thing
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: that you, I, it was never a thing you decided
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: to do. It was just around. It was, I just
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: kind of give you a sense of like what that,
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: what the community was like or how it was perceived.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: As I remember, I would wake up, I remember waking
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: up in the morning and hoping to look out my
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: window in the dark, hoping to see those rain and
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: blowing so that we didn't have to go hunting. And
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: I remember feeling real guilty for feeling that way. I
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: feel like, oh, I hope it's real windy so I
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: don't got to get up. And I'm like, man, I
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: shouldn't feel that way. That's terrible. Yeah, it was just
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: baked in, man. It was baked in. Everybody around there hunted.
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: I got a friend who's an outdoor writer, Pat Dirk,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: and he was talking about Wisconsin right across the lake
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: from us, very similar. And he said, in this community,
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: he said, if you're not a deer hunter, you sleep
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: with one. And it was just a thing. People just
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: did it. People did it. Everybody did it. Not the women.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: Would you like doing more fishing or hunting?
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Hunting.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: Would you like more firearms or archery? Firearms. Really?
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: Why do you like firearms?
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: I just like them.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: I hunt bow when it's bow season. The real serious archers,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: like the way you measure a real serious archer is
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: a real serious archer is bow hunting during gun season. Right?
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: I bow hunt as a way to extend my hunting opportunities.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: A real archer Like a real bow hunter, even when
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: they could use a firearm, they're like, nope. Like when
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: I see that, I'm like, that's a bow hunter, dude.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Right on, man. And I'm like, I use it to
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: extend my seasons.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Right on.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I bow hunt when I can, but the minute
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: I can grab my gun, I grab my gun.
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: Is it that much more challenging?
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: It's just different, man. It's too hard to say. Okay,
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: I would say this. If you're bow hunting during firearm season,
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: hell yeah. Yeah. way more challenging, but there's some great
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: archery opportunities where, and no one is able to be
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: out with a gun. So then I can't say it's
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: more challenging because it's like giving you an opportunity in
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: a behavior set in wildlife that you're not going to
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: see during firearm season. Like deer know, let's just take
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: something like whitetail deer, like which are, they're all over here.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: They're all over everywhere. People hunt whitetail deer in 40
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: some states. They know. Like when general firearm season opens,
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: they know the day before firearm season opens like unusual activity, whatever.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: And they go into lockdown mode, um, oftentimes right in
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: high pressure areas. So their habits just change. So if
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: you're hunting them a week before that with a bow,
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: I can't tell you that it's more challenging because you're
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: hunting deer that are acting more like deer, right? They're
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: out and about. But if you were a purist, you're
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: a purist, and you're like, even when gun opens, I'm
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: out with my bow, and I got plenty of friends
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: that do it. Yeah, way more challenging. I mean... The
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: difference between I see a deer at, you know, I
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: catch a deer crossing something at 200 yards, and it's
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: just like, he's mine. For him, it's got to be 35, 40.
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: It's got to be that close.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it depends. I got one very serious
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: bow hunter buddy. I was having this conversation the other day,
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: like lifelong bow hunter, the kind of guy that's going
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: to hunt with a bow even during gun season. And
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: instead of his range going out, out, out, like the
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: better the gear gets, everything. He was telling me just
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: the other night, a guy named, a whitetail hunter named
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Mark Canyon was telling me, he's like, from now on,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: I don't know how true he'll stay. He says, from
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: now on, I don't shoot more than 30 yards. Why?
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: Too much margin for error. They got too much time
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: to react. You know, they got too much time to react.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: They're already doing something.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Makes sense.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: And the time, from the minute that, like that bow
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: makes a noise, he's already responding.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: And you'll see people, there's a term people use called
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: jumping the string or ducking the arrow, where if you
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: look in slow motion, there's an arrow coming toward a
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: deer and it looks like he ducked it because he
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: scrunches and the arrow over his back. What he's actually
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: doing is he's loading up to spring. So he hears it.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: They're so fast. You can't even comprehend how fast they are.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: They're so fast. He's already down, loading up. to take off.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: And so that's why it gets really tricky at certain discs,
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: especially with fast animals. Like elk aren't nearly as fast,
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: but a white tail deer, you know, who's most famous.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: I've never killed one with a bow, but the most
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: famous string jumping thing is the axis deer.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: That's, that's, that's what very like credentialed friends of mine
• 41:39
  Speaker 2: have said that axis deer. You know, they'll point out
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: maybe this is a thing that had in its native
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: range coexisted with tigers, right? They're like, you think about
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: releasing that string and that deer is already loading up,
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: you know? That's their reputation is they're way ahead. You
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: can't comprehend time. But think about like, you picture that
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: there's a fly sitting here, you know, and you're like,
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: and he's already gone. You think you're going fast and
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: the fly's head, you're going like this. how he perceives time. Yeah.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, I should probably get out of the
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: way of that thing. At some point, I should probably move.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: If you, I got it. I'm sorry. I just got
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: a bunch of random questions.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, please.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: But have you ever done, we're going into fishing. Have
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: you ever done anything in Brazil or maybe Peru on
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: the Amazon? Have you ever done an Amazon fishing?
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: I fished in the extreme headwaters of the Amazon in
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Bolivia and stuff that will eventually flows into the Amazon. Yeah.
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: But it would be like Tribute headwater tributary stuff. Yeah.
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: But never the Amazon proper. Okay. And I fished over
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: a drainage divide into rivers that would like on ridge
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: lines that would, one side would go to the Amazon,
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: but the other side flows into the Caribbean. I've fished
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: that stuff, but never, I've never been like on an
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: Amazon river trip though. I would like to.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: Man, I've been dying to do that.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: For peacock bass and stuff. Yeah.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: For whatever. Arapaima.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: Have you got one of those?
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: I've seen, I've laid eyes on Arapaima and. When I
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: was talking about those guys in Guyana, they used to
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: bow hunt arapaima for the commercial markets. And I've caught arowana,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: which is like a small, much, much smaller version of arapaima.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: And I've observed arapaima, but I've never even taken a
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: cast at arapaima.
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: Man, that's cool. I would love to do that. Yeah.
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: No, I've never done it, but it'd be sweet. You know,
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: you see those pictures of them. I think what is
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: the largest freshwater scaled fish?
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: That's the rumor.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: That seems like you're adding a lot of like things,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: because it can't be the largest fish, which is the
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: whale shark. So you got to be like the largest
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: freshwater scaled fish. Because in the Mekong Delta, there's a
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: catfish that's bigger than an arapaima.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: No shit. Have you gotten any of those?
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: No. I've caught some big ass weird catfish, but not
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: that kind of catfish, no.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Right on, man. Yeah, that's something I would love to do.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: I would love to get into hunting too. The, it's just,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: you know, business gets in the way of just about everything.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You got little kids though now. Well, yeah.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: I'm warming my son up to fishing.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: We've been at it for almost a year now. It's
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: come a long ways.
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: Now he's casting. He can do pretty much everything but
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: put the worm on the hook and take the fish up.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you let him fish worms.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: Poking their eyes and shit. It's hilarious.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: I had such a good time the other day. I
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: was with my little daughter and we went out and
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: She didn't call her little anymore. She's 12. But I
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: took her out. We caught grasshoppers. I have this little
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: grasshopper container that once belonged to my dad. And we
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: caught grasshoppers and put them in there. And then went
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: down to the creek. And this is an area where
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: you're not allowed to kill cutthroats. But we pinched the
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: barb and would hook grasshoppers and just send them downriver.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: Watch those fish come up and grab them. It was fun, man.
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: Like I said, she'll carry that stuff with her, you know.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: That's cool, man.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Well- Actually, one more. Where is your favorite place to hunt?
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, I like hunting all over the place. I
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: really have a lot of fun opportunities to hunt up
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: in Alaska. I have a brother that has been there
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: for a long time. And so when he moved up,
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: I started hanging out up there as well. I really
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: enjoy being out in Alaska. Between different kind of things
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: I'll do, I spend maybe a month every year up
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: doing different stuff there. We have a little uh, we
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: have a little fish shack in Alaska that I bought
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: 20 years ago with some, with my two, two of
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: my siblings and a buddy of ours. Um, we just
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: bought it on a whim at 20 grand a piece. Nice.
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: Smartest thing I ever did. Nice. Um, and we fish
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: up there and, and, uh, do some hunting up there.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I, I like that. Not to, I mean,
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: I love where I live. I live in Montana. We
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: have a great time there, but I really appreciate, um, I,
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: all my, some of my best experiences are up Or
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: up in the far north, yeah, up in Alaska.
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's beautiful up there. Do you like the adventure
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: of getting into new ecosystems, new environments to hunt?
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Big time. Yeah, I'll bet. I spent a month in,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: after toying with the idea and toying with it and
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: toying with it for decades, I spent a month in
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: Africa this year.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: How was it?
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: Just life-changing, life-changing. Went to Tanzania. I met these dudes,
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: this guy, a professional hunter named Morgan Potter. He worked
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: for this place, Robin Hurt Safaris. And I met Roger Hurt,
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: a kid of the founder. You know, he got tore
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: up by a Cape Buffalo. So he had come to
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: the U.S. for some medical care. And this other professional
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: hunter married a woman. Morgan Potter married a woman. They live,
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: so even though he spends half his year in Tanzania,
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: He spends half his year by me. And so we
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: just got to hanging out and I had him come
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: on my podcast, just talk about their life and the
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: kind of hunting they do. And once I knew, once
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: I had some people I really trusted to go, I
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: went and it changed, I mean, like life-changing experience. I
• 47:26
  Speaker 2: kept telling people I was there so long I had
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: to cut my fingernails twice. And it was, dude, it
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: was just, I mean, utterly life changing. Yeah. Just the
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: stuff I saw, other ways to live, you know, I
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: was blown away, man. I'll be talking about that the
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: rest of my life.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: Do you, I mean, when you go on these remote
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: trips like this, are you embedded with indigenous people? You
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: get to see how they live, what they eat.
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Got to hang out with the trackers, you know,
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: and the way these guys, the way these guys work
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: is we were out just to give you some, I mean, obviously,
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, you've been all over the world.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a, huge continent, right? Like it's the
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: different ways that, not only the different ways people live,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: the different climates and all that, there's very different ways
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: in which wildlife is managed in Africa. Tanzania has a
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: very progressive view on wildlife management. We were on an
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: area that's, we were on a hunting area that's the
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: size of Yellowstone National Park. It's a 2 million acre, Damn,
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: game concession. There are human activities occurring. It's not a
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: people-less environment. Like there's guys that have permits to commercially
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: fish there. There's guys that do commercial honey harvest in there.
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: But it's like the government has said that this 2
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: million acres doesn't get developed and they make money off it.
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: They're able to make money off it by allowing hunting
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: to occur on the place. And so we're out in
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: this like 2 million acre thing. We're the only people around.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: We would some days do 100 miles. You know, 100
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: miles of pickups on just trails these guys hack out
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: through the woods, you know, and you see just crazy stuff.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: But yeah, there's guys out on the landscape, you know,
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: you'd run into the honey season was just finishing up.
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: So there's guys out doing honey. But we were with trackers.
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: in this part of Tanzania. In eastern Tanzania, I spent
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: some time in Maasai land, which is the Maasai tribe,
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: where we were was like Bantu peoples. But we were
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: with trackers, and the trackers they use are by and
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: large poachers that they caught. So they'll catch poachers. And
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: if they're young and ambitious and good, they'll be like, listen,
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: you should come see us. So the two trackers that
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: I was hanging out with were both people that were
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: brought up as poachers. They were in the bushmeat trade,
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: snaring and hunting with homemade guns and poison arrows in
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: order to sell bushmeat. And these dudes are now trackers. Yeah,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: it's unbelievable. I said to our guy one time, the
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: professional hunter, who in some ways acts as a liaison
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: between you and the trackers. The trackers carry a lot
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: of weight. Their opinion matters immensely, right? And you're there,
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: you don't know shit. And the professional hunter is kind
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: of like, he's meant to be like, he understands you,
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: like the white dude, and what you're hoping to accomplish.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: And he understands the trackers and what they know. And
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: he's aligning, he's aligning everyone's interests. And he's also in charge,
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Like he's there to keep
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: you from getting killed. But at one point we're going
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: along and I would now and then make the, I
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: would now and then be like, you have to, like
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: when they're looking at the ground, I'm like, come on, like,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: what are they, what are they seeing? And when I
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: would do it, they would be like, okay, if you
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: really need to know. One went, one walked, one Cape
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Buffalo walked right there. One walked right there. One walked
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: right there. One walked right there. If you look at
• 51:11
  Speaker 2: that piece of grass, you see how it stepped on it.
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: Look how it looks now. That shit has about an
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: eighth of an inch of dryness on it. It wasn't,
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: it wasn't laying there yesterday. It wasn't laying there that night.
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: It was laying there this morning and they're probably bedded
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: down over that way.
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: Wow. And you're like, okay.
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: But at one point I said to this guy, I've
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: told people this a bunch of times, I said to
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: the tracker or to the, to Morgan, the professional hunter.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: I said, man, I don't see what they're seeing. You know,
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: we're going through a burned area and we're trailing something.
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't, I don't see it. Like I
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: was incredulous. And he turned to me and he said,
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: he said, that's the point. You can't see what they see.
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: And he's gotten to the point where he's totally fine
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: with that.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: He just, he's like, he's fine with it. If they
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: say it's there, he's like, okay.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Right on, man.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: If they say it's there, it's there. When they say
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: it's not there anymore, it's not there anymore.
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: I think that stuff's fascinating. I'm just a, just a,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I've been all over the world hunting
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: different stuff, but, but through my career, but just seeing like,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: it sounds weird, but man, like I love being in
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: third world countries and seeing, you know, how people live
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: and survive and what they like to do and all
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: that stuff. And, and, And it's just fascinating to me
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: to see how they live in Haiti or Yemen or Afghanistan, Iraq,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: all over South America. I mean, it's just fascinating to me.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: It also gives you an appreciation for how fucking easy
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: it is here in the U.S.
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: You have the added thing in your life, though. You've
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: seen a lot of places where it's like there's poverty,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: but it's overlaid with conflict. I've seen poverty, but I
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: haven't seen it overlaid with conflict. And so that's a,
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: what you're seeing is a very different version of poverty
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: than peaceful poverty is one thing, but wartime poverty is different.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I've seen peaceful poverty too. South America was all on
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: my own accord. And you know what's interesting is how,
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: at least from my perspective, not necessarily in where conflict is,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: but to see how happy especially in South America, living
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: in a grass hut. You know what I mean? Or
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: a mud-walled hut. And it's like, dude, they're just happy people.
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: You know, you go around America, everybody's bitching about who
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: knows what. Usually politics, but you know what I mean?
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: We have so much here, and yet we are so pissed.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: at each other and so tribalized and it's, it's, it's,
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: and then you go down there and it's, they're just,
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: they're not even making ends meet and they have such
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: a positive attitude. I think that's cool.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: I was telling someone about this the other day on
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: my show and I'll, I'll give it to you to,
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: to think about for a minute too is, uh, I
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: took this class in college called political rhetoric. Um, and
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: we read, you know, Dr. King, um, this, the, uh,
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: Camille Paglia. One of the things we read was the
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: Unabomber's Manifesto. You ever read the Unabomber's Manifesto? Oh, man.
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: Without in any way seeming like I'm endorsing, I'm not.
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: I'm saying there's a point he raises in his manifesto.
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: If you can get through it, it's very difficult to
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: get through. But there's this point he raised, which has
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: always stuck in my head since I was in college,
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: is he talks about there's these different There's this way
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: he sets out difficulty of task, okay? And when he's
• 55:03
  Speaker 2: laying out difficulty of task, he stages them like one
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: through five. I can't remember if it's escalating or de-escalating,
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: but the easiest difficulty of task or the most difficult
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: task is something where if you try your absolutely hardest,
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: you have only a slim chance of success. Okay, let's
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: say that's like level one. On up to, you don't
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: even need to try all and you'll succeed. Okay. He
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: said that humans do best at two and three. Like
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: at two and three, it's that if you try really hard,
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: you have a reasonable chance of surviving. If you try hard.
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: But he says that's what was his gripe with technology.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: He said technology has landed us at five. You don't
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: need to try at all. And you're fine. And he says,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: that's where all of our neuroses come from.
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: Because the thing that he argues, Kaczynski argued, and again,
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: without getting into sending bombs off in the mail and shit,
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: it's just an interesting point, is he argues that the
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: thing that we're supposed to be trying to do really
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: hard is to take care of ourselves and take care
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: of our family. But now that it's all a given,
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: we have all this mental room.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Hmm.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: We have all this mental room to be spoiled and
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: whiny and bitchy. Cause we, we wake up and there's,
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: we wake up and it's just, it's all pointless. It's
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: all taken care of.
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: I'm fine.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, even if you don't know where your
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: next meal is gonna come from, you probably know what's coming. Right.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting point.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: No, that was, that was his gripe, you know, it
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: was like, and again, I always hesitate to bring up
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: where it came from, but I, I need to be
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: intellectually honest to say where the point came from and, and,
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: and going to other places and seeing other things demonstrates
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: that my two boys share a room, which brings up
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: all amount of bitching, you know? And the other day
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: I'm saying to my, I'm saying to my 15 year old,
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: we're having the same damn conversation around dinner table, like
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: them sharing the room. I'm like, dude, you just came
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: from a place. They had been out there with me
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: for a week. And then my wife took my kids
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: bumming around, but I'm like, you just came from a place, dude,
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: people were sleeping and you saw it. You were there.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: People sleep in grass huts they made for themselves. He's like,
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: good point. Now that I'm done hearing about the room thing.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: But at least he's old enough to recognize, like, yeah,
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: you're right. That's cool. You're right.
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: That's cool. You know, back to the Africa thing, I mean,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: they take that, I mean, I've had a lot of
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: people in that talk that do big game hunting and
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: they don't want to talk about it because they don't
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: want the blowback. Oh, yeah, yeah. But friends of mine,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: guests that have been on here, lots of people, But
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: from my understanding, I've never been on a hunt in Africa,
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: but they take that shit, they take conservation very seriously
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: from what I understand. I mean, they have contractors' careers
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: that hunt poachers, correct?
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: Yep, yep. And I can only, I'm anything but a
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: subject matter expert. I can speak to like... I can
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: speak to where I was in Tanzania, but in Tanzania,
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: it's a remarkably different regulatory structure than what we have.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: One of the things that makes the United States of
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: America so progressive and so great on wildlife, like a
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: way that we've just achieved success with wildlife is wildlife
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: is publicly owned.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: The U S citizens, the citizens of a state, they
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: own the wildlife and then agencies represent your interest in
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: owning the wildlife. It's democratically owned. Um, in Tanzania, that's
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: not the case. Like the government owns the wildlife. So
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: the there's poverty there. What they, how they can, how
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: they can protect habitat is by declaring these areas, hunt areas,
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: and they put a fee to the animals. and they
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: hold a bid process. There's a bid process where a
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: hunting organization needs to go to the government and these
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: contracts renew. I can't remember. I think it's maybe a
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: contract's good for 10 years. You come in and you're like,
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: we will pay you Tanzania blank dollars to have access
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: to this parcel land to hunt it. So there's revenue
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: for them. Then they come and they have their biologists
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: come out and do a survey of what's there. And
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: there's like, you guys are allowed to kill whatever. I'm
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: just gonna throw out random numbers that aren't true, but
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: let's say, you know, you're allowed five Cape buffalo, you're
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: allowed 30 topi, whatever the hell it is. They'll come
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: out with a list and they'll say that you are
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: obligated to buy 40% of that wildlife from us, the operator.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: So then when, when you get an animal, your, what
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: they call a trophy fee, your fee just goes to Tanzania.
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: That trophy fee does. And so they're able to draw
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: revenue from undeveloped lands. The biggest risk they have is
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: slash and burn agriculture, which people, people, small farmers come in,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: they cook the forest. They burn it, they grow a crop.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: They don't have money for inputs. They don't have money
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: for fertilizer and other things. And so when you cook
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: the soil after a couple of rotations, what do you do?
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: You burn the next chunk. It devours the wildlands. Slash
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: and burn ag does. But you're able to come in
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: and stay with these areas. And all of a sudden
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: now the government is able to make money off of
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: preserving habitat. There's a, next to the place we hunted,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: there's this big national park. Guess how many, like, I'm
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: not going to make you guess because you never guessed
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: the right number. There's a huge national park of equal size,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: almost equal size, next to this concession. Last year, that
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: national park had 14 visitors. One for.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: It had 14 visitors to a national park almost the
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: size of Yellowstone National Park. 14 people went and paid
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: a visit to that national park. Meanwhile, the hunting concessions
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: meant money.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: Damn.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: For the government.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: That's interesting.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: So it's like you can, and that's where like a dude,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: as a dude growing up in America with holding certain
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: American ideals about wildlife management, wildlife being democratically owned, right?
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: Trying to, trying to foresee and prevent ways in which
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: people might commodify wildlife. So it wasn't available to like
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: blue collar people. So opportunity, like you grew up with
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: this whole ethos about how to protect the democratization of
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: of American landscapes and American wildlife. And you're like, that's
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: the way to do it. Part of travel is you
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: go and you say like, you realize there's other ways
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: to skin, there's other ways to skin the cat, right?
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: And they have got this other system and you could
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: look at it and criticize it, aspects of it. It's
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: very hard, you know, like it's very difficult for a
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 2: citizen of Tanzania to go out and do lawful hunting.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: There's not like an avenue for it. Like, that's too bad.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: I regret it. But it's a different place, different challenges,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: enforcement issues, poverty issues, whatever. They have found a way
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: to preserve habitat and to preserve wildlife by assigning value
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: to it. And right now, that is what holds the line. Like,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: that is what holds the line to burning it. You know,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: burning it and depleting it. Um, and so it's just, it's,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: it's hard to condemn it. You know what I mean?
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: And I used to sit back, I used to sit
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: like in my pompous, you know, somewhat pompous American seat
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: and used to be like, oh, you know, pay to play. Right.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: You got to pay to play in Africa. That's not America.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 2: You know, that's not the American style. It's like, it's
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: not the American style, but it's a way to achieve
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: conservation in that place.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: You know, and, um, and, and you also can look
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: and be like, we've also, you know, in the late
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: 1800s and early 1900s, because of deregulation, I mean, we
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: almost ruined, we almost ruined American wildlife.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, let's move into the history of hunting.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: In America.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: In the U.S.? Yeah. First off, it's, you know, people
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: hunted in the U.S., I mean, there's, people debate the number,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: but somewhere between, there were people definitely here hunting 13, 14,000
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: years ago. People were maybe here hunting as much as 20,000
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: years ago. People that came from Siberia, passed into Alaska
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: very quickly, you know, at some point by 13,000 years ago,
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 2: it like exploded across the landscape and those were hunting cultures.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: Only later, right, like many thousands of years later, Europeans
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: started to come and that's kind of where I'm very
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: interested in native hunting practices, but kind of when we
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: look at the decimation of American wildlife, that story begins
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: with the colonials coming in. Just to get a little
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: extra detail there, there is a very powerful argument. It's
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: not settled science, but there's a very powerful argument that
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: when humans arrived here, they wiped out they wiped out
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: many species of wildlife. I'm talking the first Americans, Siberian immigrants.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: They wiped out many species of wildlife. People debate it,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: but to me it's verging on settled science that humans
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: were a huge contributing factor into extinction of mammoths, mastodons,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: short-faced bears, giant ground sloths, a host of things, like
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: nine genera of animals. kind of blinked out around the
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: time humans arrived. But then they had this huge period of,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: the historian Dan Flores calls it like Native America. They
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: had this 10,000 year period, 10,000 years of hunting in
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: America had, the ensuing 10,000 years of hunting in America
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: had one extinction, a flightless bird on the Pacific coast.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: People hit harmony. Like people hit where we weren't driving
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: shit to extinction for 10,000 years on this continent. And
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: then boom, Europeans show up and that story shifts, right?
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: To get into kind of like, just give you a
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: little bit about like the first hunter, if people that
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: are like loosely familiar with American history will recognize the
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: name Daniel Boone, like no doubt. I mean, we're kind
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: of in Boone country right now, you know. Let's take
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: a look at Boone for a minute. So Boone's people
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: came from England. At the time in England, you weren't
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: going to hunt. The king owned the deer. There was
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: no sort of public hunting. Wildlife was jealously guarded by
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: the elites. Hunting wasn't a thing. Boone's family comes here,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, there's this rich wildlife resource
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: out there, and they pick up hunting. These are not
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: hunters coming to America. These are very much like non-hunter.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: The European colonists that come over, they're not showing up
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: as hunters. They're getting here, and they're learning from natives,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: how to utilize these resources. And Boone is this interesting
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: figure because he sits right at the beginning of colonial history,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: or he sits right at the beginning of the American experiment.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: Like he, in the years prior to the American Revolution,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: Boone becomes a deerskin hunter. During the colonial period, Boone
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: is also an interloper. He's a poacher in two ways.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: Boone is he's living in these settlements. First, he lives
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania, then he's down in the Yadkin Valley in
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: North Carolina. He's forbidden for two reasons from hunting where
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: he hunts. The British, the colonial British, don't want American colonists,
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: who they view as like, the frontier people they view
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: as like the worst of the worst. Hillbilly rednecks are
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: these American colonists out on the frontier. They question their
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: allegiance and they don't want them crossing the Appalachian mountains
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: and hunting in native land because it causes so much
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: trouble with the native Americans. Like the British were somewhat friendly,
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: were somewhat better than the Americans became at like dealing
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: with native relations. So the British would say, you're not
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: allowed to go over there. And then it also violated
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: native law where the natives claim these areas. The Cherokee,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: the Shawnee, they claim these areas as their hunting grounds,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: but these colonists like Boone realize they can make a
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: lot of money going into the Indian territories and hunting deerskins,
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: which they're forbidden, the British forbid them from doing it,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: the Indians forbid them from doing it, but that's their biz.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: So like Boone going through the Cumberland Gap, the first
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: time he went through the Cumberland Gap, he's looking for deerskins.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: And these guys have no, they have no cash economy.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: You raise crops, a family raises crops, the family uses
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: 90% of those crops. The only access you have to
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: cash is you might sell a small amount of corn
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: or whatever, but all of a sudden they have access
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: to a cash economy because they can kill whitetails. And
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: we see then this thing that's this deer hunting era,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: late seven, like late 1760s into the 1770s, we see
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: this phenomenon that we're going to see again and again
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: and again, where these guys come up like with a
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: commodity whitetail deer, we see that they're able to like
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: wipe places clean. They're able to go into an area
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: and literally kill everything. And what do you when that happens?
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: Go further down the trail and literally kill everything. And
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: from that point, we start seeing this, like, this de-wilding
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 2: of America from commodity hunting, from commercial hunting. And, man,
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: I got nothing but respect for Boone. Like, I've done
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: projects on Boone, studied Boone, phenomenal, phenomenal woodsman. But that
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: becomes the American tale. is deregulation, commodification, and all of
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: a sudden you just realize that this inexhaustible resource we have,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: we just eat it. We just consume it from one
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: end of the country to the other. Damn. You've heard
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: of Jim Bridger, like the mountain men era. I mean,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: they pretty much wiped beaver out in the Rocky Mountains.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: The buffalo, I just finished a project on the buffalo
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: hide hunters. The buffalo hide hunters from the end of
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: the Civil War to 1883, they killed the last 15
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: million buffalo. Sold them all. $ 2. 50 a piece. $ 2. 50 a piece.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: And it's like, so when people, it's funny because, you know,
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 2: I tend to be, in many aspects, I tend to
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: be like right-leaning. And then you hear like deregulation. And
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, you know. In some areas, sure.
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: But in some areas we've caused a lot of trouble,
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: like deregulation has caused a lot of trouble with American wildlife. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: When did we start to see a turn?
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: Late 1800s, early 1900s, you know, the name that comes
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: up often, Theodore Roosevelt was, was instrumental in this. By
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: that point you start seeing, by that point, the first
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: thing you start seeing is bans on selling wild meat
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: in cities. Like New York, have you ever heard of
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: the Boone and Crockett Club? No. Okay. Like Theodore Roosevelt
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: was the first president of the Boone and Crockett Club.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: When people talk about, you ever hear someone's kill a
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: buck and they say it was a 180 inch whitetail?
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: What they're usually talking about is a scoring system developed
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 2: by the Boone and Crockett scoring system. It's a way
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: to measure a deer's skull or measure a deer's antler growth.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: Boone and Crockett Club, all these other organizations start out
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: and they start trying to regulate harvests. And they'll come
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: in and say, like in New York City, there'll be
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: a ban on selling certain wild meats. And then they
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: come up with a thing called the Lacey Act, which
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: gave it some teeth, where if you broke, anytime you
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: break a state's law and cross a state line, it
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: becomes a federal problem. Because you could have states, when
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: they're trying to save wildlife, a state might come in
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: and say, no more market hunting. You can't kill ducks.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: You know, you can't kill ducks with punt guns anymore
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: and sell it, but they don't enforce it. So then
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: with the Lacey Act, it became like if you're down
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 2: and you're in Chesapeake Bay and you're commercially killing ducks
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: with a punt gun, but then you take them to
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: New York and sell them, you now have a federal violation. Gotcha.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 2: And so that is when they were really able to
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: start curbing the market hunters. There's a great irony with
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: calling the Boone and Crockett Club, the Boone and Crockett Club,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: because it takes its name from Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: The Boone and Crockett Club and people that came out
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 2: of that organization, that influenced that organization was instrumental in
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: wiping out the wildlife markets. But Daniel Boone and later
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: Davy Crockett, they were market hunters. So there's a kind
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: of irony in the name. Like we associate Boone and Crockett,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: like Crockett was a commercial bear hunter, you know, and
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: became a congressman, but he was a commercial black bear hunter.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: And he also had military contracts. When there was a
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 2: military campaign during the Indian Wars, Crockett would hire on
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: to shoot meat to feed the soldiers. Interesting. That was
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: one of Crockett's early occupations, is like feeding a marching army.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: Nope.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: I did not know that.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: Kill enough shit for everybody to eat.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: That was his job. Right on, man.
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: Right on. Yeah, he was a badass, too. Now, he
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: wasn't a badass like Boone, but Crockett was a badass.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: Not like Boone, but, you know.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: What made Boone more badass?
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: There's one time Boone, Boone went over, there's one point
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: where Boone goes into Kentucky and goes there with some guys,
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: a handful of guys. They run into a bunch of
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: trouble with Indians. They get all their shit stolen. One
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: of them gets killed. Okay. Eventually, one of Boone's hunting partners,
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: his brother and stuff, they leave and go home. Boone
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: stays by himself. Some accounts suggest that he's there so
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: long he needs to make his own gunpowder with using
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: wood ash, bat guano, and sulfur deposits, right? Stays there
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: two years. Two years? Yeah, stays in the woods two years,
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: much of it by himself. builds up a big loot
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: like builds up a big pile of hides twice gets
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: them stolen from him or seized i should be better
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: word for it seized by the natives um and just
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: hangs out two years he was like he he loved
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: being in the woods man you know boone was a
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: badass and and and um it came at a great
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: cost like there was always these conflicts on the colonial
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: frontier boone's um Boone was next to one of his
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: kids when he was killed in Indian fighting. Another one
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: of Boone's sons was killed in Indian fighting. A brother
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: of his was killed. A brother-in-law was killed. Many, many
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: people in his family all gave their lives, if that's
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: the right word, made enormous sacrifices to live that lifestyle,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: very dangerous lifestyle at that time, because there was active warfare.
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: in the colonial areas. And, yeah, and Boone, I mean,
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 2: he just was hooked. He couldn't picture living another way.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: You know, talking about Theodore Roosevelt, I mean, he's the
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: one that put all the national parks in place, correct?
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, a number of things. They weren't called national
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 2: forests then, but he was designated in these, like, forest
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: preserves and was instrumental in the national park program, too. So, like,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 2: the public estate in many ways comes from There's a
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: famous story with Roosevelt where he had authority to declare
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: these wilderness preserves, whatever nomenclature they used at the time.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: He had authority to do it. He was losing that
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: authority while he was in office. There was legislation. He
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: was going too crazy, they felt, declaring what would become
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: our national forest system. And there's legislation arising that's going
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: to strip him of the authority to unilaterally create national forests.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: support for this legislation is so strong that he knows
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: he can't veto it because his veto will get overridden
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: so he creates this another huge pile of national forest
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: they call it the midnight forest because his ability to
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: make forest preserves was going to expire at midnight so
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: in a flurry he like sits up with his team
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: and they just start making national forests and then turns
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: around the next day and has to sign legislation saying
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: he won't do it anymore and those are known as
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: the Midnight Forest that he created. Who was right? I mean,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: he was hugely controversial at the time. That's the thing
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 2: people forget about. Like, all politicians would want to be
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 2: favorably compared to Roosevelt now. Like, any politician is going
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 2: to take, if someone says, he's like a Theodore Roosevelt
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: when it comes to conservation, they're going to be like,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: thank you. That dude was controversial at the time. And
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: who was right? They carved him into Rushmore, right? That's
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: the preservation guy. Yeah. So, um, he was right, you know,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: and it was not popular at the time. That's the
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: thing people lose sight of is like what he did
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: at the time was, um, some people support it, but
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: a lot of people hated him for it. And then
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: now we recognize that it was a stroke. It was genius.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: It was genius. Yeah.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, what do you, you know, we just had
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: that public, uh, public land sale, you know, almost go
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: through and the big, beautiful bill and I was way
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: late to the game on that. I saw a tweet
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: from Jocko saying, pay attention to this guy, this guy
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: Braxton McCoy. Do you guys know each other?
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: No, I know of him now for sure, but I
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 2: have never personally met him, yeah.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: Great guy. Amazing story, too. But anyways, I saw a
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: tweet that he had thrown out through Jocko, and I
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, I'll be in touch. Brought him on.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: He kind of told me what was going on, and
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: we released a preview. It got pulled that night. But
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: I was curious, I mean, I know you were a
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: big player in that, and you and Cameron Haynes and
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: a couple other people I follow were screaming at the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: top of your lungs like, this isn't a good idea.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: And so I just wound up jumping in last minute
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: because it was like, this doesn't seem right. Who are
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: they selling this land to?
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 2: Glad you did. yeah. I'm glad you did and everybody
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: else that did, yeah.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and well, all of the collaborations together got it pulled.
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: But I was just curious, you know, we were talking
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: a little bit about this at breakfast, but I mean,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: what was your take on all of that?
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 2: Man, it's a thing that comes up in different forms
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: throughout the year. the history of the country is this
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 2: question of the legitimacy, the intelligence, or whatever, of having
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: large tracts of federally managed public land that's open to everybody.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's not a 10-year cycle, but my friend and colleague,
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: Ryan Callahan, is a lifelong crusader for public lands, and
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: he and I were talking recently, and he was talking
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 2: about it's just like it's a 10-year cycle. where in
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: some Western states, the majority of the land is owned
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: by the federal government. Some people look at that and
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: they're like, what an enormous gift that half of the
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: state or more than half of the state, whatever, is
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 2: open to any American who wants to go out on
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: that land to ride ATVs in certain areas, ride bikes,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: camp with their kids, hunt, fish, live an outdoor lifestyle.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: You don't need to have money to own your own ranch.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: It's just there, right? It's there for us. And not
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: only that, it's not developed and it's not industrialized. It's like,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 2: it's literally, it's money in the bank and it's habitat
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: in the bank, right? It's just there. It's an American treasure.
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: Other people look at it and they look at it
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: and they see a huge loss in revenue. Because you're
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: not able to industrialize or develop that landscape. So someone,
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: you know, you're a political figure in a state. What
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: you want to do is you want to generate economic activity.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: And then you see that there's these landscapes that aren't
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: easily used. Now, to be fair, on these federally managed
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: public lands, U.S. Forest Service land, Bureau of Land Management land,
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: they do mine it. They do alternative energy on it.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: They do oil extraction on it. What's the big festival
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: in California? The Burning Man? The Burning Man. The Burning
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: Man is on BLM land. So BLM land is like...
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: Is it really? Yes. It's on public land.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: The Burning Man festival is on BLM land. The BLM
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: makes money. The BLM makes money by permitting the Burning
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: Man to occur on their BLM property. All kinds of
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: shit is happening on... this land, cattle grazing, right? It's
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: a multi-use landscape. But what doesn't happen is it doesn't
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: get permanently developed. So in states, Utah is a hotbed
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: of anti-public land sentiment in the political delegation there. A
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: lot of it comes from Nevada, where they want more
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 2: land to develop. And this public land system, this federal
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 2: land system, stands in their way of having more areas
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: to develop and more areas to produce revenue from, produce
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: opportunities for friends and, you know, developers. And therein lies the, like,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: therein lies the rub. There's some states where, like, I
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: happen to live in Montana. In Montana, there is a, like,
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: it's political suicide. It's political suicide, remains political suicide in
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: Montana to advocate for large-scale sales.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: Of public land.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: You can't do it. You can't do it there. In Utah,
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: you can't. In Utah, I can't. And so oftentimes, federal
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: land sales, where they want to peel off large acreages,
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: there's kind of like, in I think it was 2017,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 2: there was talk of 3 million acres. There was talk
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: of 3 million acres this time of like, we're going
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 2: to sell 3 million acres of public land. That's usually
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 2: coming from the Utah delegations.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: Well, that's where it came from this time.
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They spearhead it. And that is, that is a hotbed.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: Like this, I'm not telling you like a controversial thing. Yeah.
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 2: I'm not, I'm not putting like a spin on it. Um,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: the intellectual architects of large scale public land sales, the
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: intellectual architects of, of that concept come from Utah. Okay.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: This is not spinny. It's just, that's just the reality.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: It was, it was the last time around when we
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 2: went through this and something very similar, 3 million acres.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: I think it was 2017, Jason Chaffetz, House of Representatives
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: in Utah had legislation out there which they were calling it,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: they were calling like excess public lands they were gonna sell,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: three million acres. And when you get into three million acres,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: you're talking big tracts of public land. There's a way
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: to move public land. Like we have systems in place
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: by which we can move public land. Like if you
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: have a, whatever, there could be a military base that
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: gets decommissioned. There's a way in which that can be sold.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: and what these efforts usually are, are ways to ditch.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: It's usually like a way, how can we ditch the
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: process and do this right now, large scale? And that's
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: usually what happens. And the last time and this time
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: were identical in the response is your normal groups that
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: the effort to push came from a faction of the
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: American right, like came from a faction of the Republican party.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: Like we should, moved to sell public land, large tracts
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: of public land. Of course they know that the tree
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: hugger community, the bleeding hearts, of course they know that
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: they'll revolt, but it doesn't matter to them. They don't
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: have their support anyways. But both times what has happened
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: is that people that they view as being their people,
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: people that probably normally support President Trump's agenda, people that
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: normally are right of center, They're like, no, not that idea.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: I don't like it. And then both times with Chaffetz
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 2: and then this most recent thing was coming from, was
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: being pushed from Senator Mike Lee, both times it seems
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: they were quite surprised that their constituent base hated the idea.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: I hated it. All right. It was, it was, it
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: shocked people, but I'm like, I was always feeling like
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: it should be that shocking. Cause this is what happened
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: last time. And the response was the same. It was like, oh, wow.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: All these, all these, um, we're just shocked at all these, these, these, um,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: Republican voters hate the idea of selling off public lands.
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: And they'll focus in the focus because like, oh, it's
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: only 3 million acres. But what people see lying there
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: is you're kind of like, I'm afraid it's not about that.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: I'm afraid that at this level, we're having a discussion
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: about the legitimacy of federally managed public lands, you know?
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: And so people they're not, they, they tend to not
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: be interested in the details. It's like American sportsmen at
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: the end of the day, American sportsmen want public lands.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: And they're probably, and they're definitely intellectually capable of recognizing
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: that it comes at some cost, but look at like
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 2: what conserved, like, if you look at like what conservative
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: values and conservative means, it's like, it's not going anywhere.
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: It's in it's it's our federal land. Right. If we
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: were to wind up in some national emergency, we're wind
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: up in an existential crisis as a country. And we
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: needed to utilize some of these lands for extraction or whatever.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: Like we were in an existential crisis, like a World
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: War II scale crisis for resources. I think you'd have
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: a very different reception if you were talking about the
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: need to industrialize some of our beloved landscapes in order
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: to address an existential crisis. But outside of an existential crisis,
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 2: it's there. It gets more valuable all the time. It
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: does more for the environment, more for people. It's just
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: a wonderful asset. When you sell it, you sell it
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 2: one time. And you sell it at market value. And
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: that's it. So this is just a calculus that gets run.
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: And I promise you, in 10 years, there'll be another
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: version of it.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: You think so? Oh, absolutely. You don't think they'll learn
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: their lesson?
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: No, I think there'll be another version of it. And
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: maybe someday, public sentiment. I don't see public sentiment on
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: it switching. Because it is a thing that galvanizes a
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: huge group of people. I got buddies that hunt fish.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: They like to ski. And they don't like the smell
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: of it. They don't like public land divestitures. It's just,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: it galvanizes people.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't hear anybody who wasn't in politics that
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: was for that.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: Not anybody.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 2: I have friends that are definitely, I have good friends
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: and some like big hunters that are definitely, that they
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 2: look and they're like, you guys are too absolutist.
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, where does it end? We do 3
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: million acres right now. Because that was the big thing, right?
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: It's just 3 million acres. We're only going to do
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: it right outside of the cities. And it's like, great. Okay.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: So that's 3 million acres that's going to become industrialized,
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: going to become housing, low-income housing.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: And the bill, the language in the bill didn't match
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: the rhetoric. Because when people went in and mapped out,
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: when people went in and mapped out what lands meet
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: the criteria, you could buy islands, you could buy extremely
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: remote islands and Tongass National Forest were like, would follow
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: the criteria of what could happen. Also, in the thing
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: it has to go to the highest bidder. In the end,
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: even Lee acknowledged this. In the end, he said that
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 2: the way the legislation was written was the government of
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 2: China could have been like, oh, we'll happily take 3
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: million acres of America. Whatever bid you get, a dollar more.
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: i i think in the end they couldn't prevent this.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: I feel like that was an excuse on oh we
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: overlooked this yeah oh you fucking overlooked that it was
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: you just happened to overlook that china's buying up all
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: our farmland and you know It was a pathway out
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: outside of military bases. Oh yeah. You just, you just
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: happened to, you found that out.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: Last minute and that's what it was a pathway out.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: It was a safe, it was a face saving mechanism,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: but it was a pathway out.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: Because your ass is about to get voted out of
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: office because you pissed off every outdoorsman, hunter, fishermen, skier,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: rancher in the fucking country. I'm sure that had nothing
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: to do with it, but it.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: Won't, it won't, it won't go away. It won't go away. And, and,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 2: I know that you also, from looking at your work,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: you love to look at things from a variety of angles.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: It wouldn't be honest to me to not say, of course,
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 2: I understand the perspective. I understand the frustration of someone
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: in a political position being like, look at all the
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: economic activity that under my tenure, know all the economic
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: activity that could be occurring under my tenure and that
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: i could go in front of voters and and be
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: like you know that i had blank achievements and job
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 2: creations in certain sectors if i could just develop that
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 2: stuff like i get it i get it i get
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: it i just i just don't agree yeah and i
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: don't agree.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah me neither me neither but well steve let's take
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: a quick break actually i'm gonna have you show me
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: how to shoot a damn bow oh you got a
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: lefty no I'll show you anyway. All right, cool. Let's
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• 1:32:54
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  Speaker 1: slash SRS. shopify.com slash SRS. All right, Steve, we're back
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: from the break. Thanks for the lesson out there.
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get one.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're fun.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get one. I'm going to get good
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: at this shit.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's fun.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: Next time you come, I'm going to out shoot you.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: I'm just kidding.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't be surprised, man. I wouldn't be surprised. I'm
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: not as disciplined as I should be about shooting. I
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: start shooting. I've been shooting pretty good now, but I
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 2: shoot in prep. I don't shoot recreationally as much.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: Oh, like a train up?
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll shoot like, you know, like hunting season's coming,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 2: I'll start shooting. My boy, he shoots league in the winter,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: Oh, really?
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: When hunting season's over, this is bad. I hate to
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: admit it, but when hunting season's over, I'll oftentimes, I
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 2: might not touch my bow for a few months.
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: Right on.
• 1:35:02
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm like, I like, to me, it's, I
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 2: shoot a bow in order to hunt. You know, it's fun,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: but I just, whatever.
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: You like to hunt.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I like to shoot. Like, I like to shoot.
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 2: I like to shoot guns just for the kick of it.
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: But just, I like shooting guns for fun, but I
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: don't shoot my bow as much as I ought to.
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: You said you shoot a 300 wind mag?
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: A lot.
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: The most time when you're hunting?
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, what that comes from is, It comes
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 2: from having, it comes from this just kind of like
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: desire to have one thing that you take care of
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: and know well and keep tuned up and rigged up. Yeah.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: And then I can use it for all manner of hunting.
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: So I like to hunt coos deer. Um, you know,
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 2: it's a, it's a small desert white tail. I mean,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: these things are 110 pounds, right. And I'll take the
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: same load. is I would kill a bull moose with.
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, hunting with it, yeah. Just shoot it back from
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: the shoulder. Watch out for the shoulder blade. Gotcha. Just
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: punch a clean hole in it.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: So you do that for consistency?
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: That's what it stems from. As much as I wind
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 2: up messing around with all kinds of stuff, I just like,
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 2: I'm just comfortable with it. Like, you know, I kind
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: of like basically also you get, I just kind of
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: basically understand the trajectory. You follow me? And it's just
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: a little bit ingrained. No, I get it. I get it.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: It's convenient. We have, like, my kids shoot 6.5 Creedmoors
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 2: since I got them started on something smaller. And those
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: are great to shoot, you know? But, yeah, if I...
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: And it's a little... That 300 Win Mag thing is
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: a little bit perhaps antiquated as bullets have gotten so good,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: you know? Like, uniformity of bullets have gotten so good
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: that you can get away with shooting... much lighter rounds now.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: You know all this stuff, but like there used to
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 2: be a lot of talk about a flat shooting rifle,
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: but with laser range finders, it's not as relevant. Like
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: you wanted a point of, you wanted a gun at
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: 300 yards point of impact, right? That like anywhere from
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 2: zero to 300 yards, you're going to be within some
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: number of inches of right with a flat shooting gun.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: But with laser range finders, it's like, just call your shot.
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter anymore, you know? So there's a little
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 2: bit of, a little bit of it's antiquated, but yeah,
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 2: that's what I'm currently, that's what I currently hunt with. Yeah.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: I was, I was curious. I mean, like I said,
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: I'm not a big hunter, but I'm, I want to
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: get into it as soon as I clear up some time. But, uh,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: you know, I've been invited to elk hunts, moose hunts,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: bear hunts, gator hunts. Told you I took my first deer, uh,
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: last year, but I've, I'm always like wondering and because,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: you know, because of my background of, people think i
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: know all this shit i don't you know yeah and
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: so i'm always wondering like how the hell do you
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: know what caliber to use on a big on a
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: big animal oh versus you know something smaller yeah like
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: i've heard the most dangerous thing to hunt is water
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: buffalo is that true.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: Cape buffalo cape buffalo yeah you know what i was
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 2: talking about tanzania tanzania has a caliber restriction Oh, really?
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: Which you don't see in many states. In Tanzania, to
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: hunt Cape buffalo, it has to be a minimum of
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: a 375 H & H. Okay. So that's what I
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: shot was a 375 H & H. Right on. Sorry,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 2: minimum of 375. So they set minimums. But there's so many,
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's so many really good 30 caliber like
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 2: really good 308 variations yeah you know but for like
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: moose is the biggest thing you're the the biggest bodied
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: thing you're gonna hunt in North America's moose. And if
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: you're shooting 180 grain, a good 180 grain bullet, you're fine.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: It's going to work.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You're fine. That's, that's what I use. Yeah. And
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: I just like, I just like the versatility of it,
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: but listen, man, there's guys that'll go, there's guys that'll
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 2: go way deep on small little differences and things. Like
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 2: if you get into archery, you'll find you'll wind up
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: in all these conversations about like prepare yourself. for the
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: conversation about mechanicals, single bevel, double bevel, right? All these things. Yeah.
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: And it all matters kind of, but in the end,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: if you put it where it's supposed to go.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: Doesn't matter.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: It doesn't. You know, you make a hole through two,
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 2: you make a hole through both lungs on something, that
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: thing's got problems.
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter what made the hole.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: Have you ever had an encounter where you shot something and,
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: It didn't drop but came after you?
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Well, plenty of Connors where it didn't come
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: after me, but I ran, I one time shot a
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: moose in a pretty, eh, somewhat questionable shot. That was
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: with a 300 variation called a 300 short mag with
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: a 200 grain bullet. And I shot a moose coming on.
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 2: They got a huge brisket, right? I shot them coming on,
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 2: straight on, We called him in, so he's coming in.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: He knows we're there. And I shot him right like
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: this and didn't get in where I needed to get in.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: And it boogied off. We chased it little ways. I
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: shot at it again and didn't know, but missed when
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: I shot at it running off. Because once you hit
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 2: it once, it's like, once you hit it once, just
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: put lead in it. At that point, you already started
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 2: a mess, so you might as well Do what you can.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: So you might take a shot you wouldn't normally take
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: because it's the second shot and you already wounded it. Anyways,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: I get up there and through some incompetence, I had
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: cleared my chamber. Like I shot, I had three rounds
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: in the chamber and sat down without a round chamber.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: So I put one in the chamber. Now I got
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 2: one in the chamber and two, one in the chamber
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: and two in the magazine. I shoot the moose. I
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: then rack around, shoot at him again, and then instinctively
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: just rack around. But then I run up to the
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 2: moose and I racked around. So now I've spit out
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 2: my last shell. I ejected a shell, a live round,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 2: and I'm sitting there on an empty chamber. And I'm
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: not kidding, dude. The timing is so weird. This is
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: all filmed. Like, we've used this for a million times.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: But I get up to him, and I realize he's
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: kind of, like, getting up.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: And I click.
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: And, man, he gets up and just comes at me,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: you know? And he, like, he comes. I'm trying to
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 2: get away. I got chest waders on. I'm trying to
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: get away, and he bowls, and he runs over me.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: He ran over you?
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So then my buddy shoots him and kills him.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: He's chasing me, and my buddy kills it. And I
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: reach around, and he's got my back, you know? And
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: I reach around, and my hand comes up, and it's
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: got blood all over it. And I think he's punctured
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: me with his antler. But then I realized, because I'd
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: hit him in the brisket, that when he ran over me,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: the blood from his brisket had got up my back.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: So I go like this, you know? And I'm like, oh,
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: I'm dying. Shit. But I wasn't hurt at all. I
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: wasn't hurt at all.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: Any close calls with bears or anything?
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a few little. Here's the thing is everything seems
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: like a close call. And unless you could interview the bear,
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: you don't know if it was a close call or not.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: But I had a number of little mix-ups and things
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 2: that could have been stupid. There was one time we
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: were bow hunting elk. And it was kind of a
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 2: weird day. And I remember sleeping on a, we were
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 2: sleeping on a Ridge, just passing the hot part of
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 2: the day when nothing's going on, sleeping on this Ridge
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 2: and something woke me up from a nap and there's
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: a bull, a bull elk coming over the Ridge. And like,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: I wake up and my bow's laying there and I,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: and just me trying to grab the bow spooks the elk.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, God, what are the chances that would
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: ever happen? You know, I fall asleep again. I hear
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: something again and I wake up and here's a black
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 2: bear standing there and the dude in the same spot. Okay.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: I go to grab my bow. He spooks, runs down
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: the hill. I just forget, forget about it. He's gone.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 2: He spooked. Later that afternoon, it starts getting toward evening
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 2: prime time. And we go down, we go down, happened
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 2: to go the direction the bear went, but just coincidentally
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 2: went the direction the bear went. Get down to the
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: bottom of this ridge where this, where this, get down
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: to the bottom of this hill where the hill goes
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: down into a riparian area. And here, nails on bark.
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 2: something climbing a tree, okay? I watched this bear go
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: this way. So I'm like, holy shit, it's the bear.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: So I think he's still in the area, and a
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 2: black bear, you'll spook a black bear, he might go
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: in a tree. So I run up there thinking I'll
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: tree him. And if I tree him, I can just
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 2: get him with my bow, because black bears will climb trees.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: But I run up there and like, it's thick. And
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 2: I come busting in there trying to like be like
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: a demon coming in there to encourage the bear to
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: not come down, but go up the tree. Cause I
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: can hear her climbing and it's a, and it's a,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 2: there's a sow grizzly standing against this tree. And what
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 2: I had heard the claws up was her, was her
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 2: woofing her cubs up the tree. So when I come
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: busting in, I mean, I'm busting, I bust in like,
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, easy me to that painting you in the helicopter,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 2: you know? like damn oh and i start trying to
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 2: back out of there in a hurry you know and
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: and she that cub comes down the hill and i
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 2: remember she like legitimately she legitimately i could be hallucinating
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: this but like i know i saw it she she
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 2: swatted her cub to get moving she's like like this
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: and they kept spilling out of the tree and that
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 2: could have been like Yeah. That could have been just dumb.
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: Pissed off a mama bear. How the hell do you
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: get out of there? She just left you alone.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 2: She just got, I got lucky. She went woofing up
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: the hill. And then a couple of things like that. Then, um,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 2: and then one time I was involved in, uh, one
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: time I was involved with a bunch of other guys
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 2: in like a legit bear mix up, uh, on a
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 2: Fognac Island in Alaska. And we got, we had elk
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 2: hanging in a tree. And we were eating lunch under
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 2: the tree. This is a totally long story about being
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 2: an idiot, but we're eating lunch under a tree with
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 2: elk hanging in it that we'd left there for a
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 2: couple of days, the quartered out meat. And this bear
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 2: came in and my buddy Yanni, he had sat down,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 2: he had spray on his belt and he had his
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: pistol sitting on his backpack. And when that bear came in,
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: you know what he did? So he's got the pistol
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: laying right here. and spray right here you know he
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: does he smokes it across the nose of the trekking
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: pole i mean like right like i'm there it's here
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: and he flopped across the nose and this other guy
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 2: my buddy dirt fell on it fell on it and
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 2: rode it down the hill fell on the bear i
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: thought the bear was carried him down the hill when
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 2: he he was trying to get out of the way
• 1:46:46
  Speaker 2: and landed backward on its hump and rode it down
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 2: the hill.
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: Into an alder thicket. And we thought that it carried him.
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: We all read it, that it carried him down the hill.
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 2: So all of a sudden everybody's like lunging down the
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: hill and he comes squirting back out of the alders
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 2: running back up.
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 1: Oh my God, dude.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: And he rode it. It's this dude named Dirt, Dirt Myth. Damn.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: He rode the bear.
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 1: Holy shit. What did he say when he got back?
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 2: I don't remember what exactly he said, but it scared
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: the shit out of us, man. You know what's crazy
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: about that deal? So that's a draw permit on a
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 2: Fognac Island. You have to draw an elk tag. And
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 2: they're not, those elk, so if you're looking at a map,
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: if you casually looked at a map, you wouldn't think,
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't notice that Kodiak and the Fognac are separate islands.
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 2: There's a narrow straight that separates Kodiak and the Fognac.
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: Years ago, they brought up elk from Washington's Olympic Peninsula
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: and turned them loose out there on a Fog Knack.
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: So it's a draw permit. We had that mix up.
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: The next year, some dudes, and you'd probably be able
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: to track these guys down, and one of my friends
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 2: interviewed them. These Navy SEALs, a Navy SEAL drew that permit.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: They got attacked by a bear right there. But they
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: killed the son of a bitch. Damn.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: They killed it with a pistol. Have you ever seen
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: that video? I think it was that Russian. I think
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: it was a Russian dude. He has a side-by-side shotgun.
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 1: And this grizzly keeps attacking him from all these different angles.
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, my kid was showing me that. Yeah. And I
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 2: was trying to question how true it was. And he
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 2: was trying to fish out. But I don't remember. You
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: should just tell it because I don't remember the details.
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know any details. Somebody showed me
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: the YouTube video. And I was like, holy shit.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: What would you do in that situation? I do recollect
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 2: my kid showing me something about this. I was able
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: to determine that it was a Russian somehow. I think
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: it said in the description.
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: I can't remember. Maybe it was Reddit. I can't remember
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: what it was. But yeah, I would like charge him
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: and you could just, I don't know if the dude
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: had a GoPro strapped to his head or whatever, but
• 1:48:55
  Speaker 1: he's just running around this side by side and then
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: he'd come at him from another angle.
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, this is ringing a bell. And I remember
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: I try to teach my kids, I try to teach skepticism.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 2: And I remember like trying to, so my kid will
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: come to me and be like, hey, is this legit?
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 2: You know, we'll watch stuff and try to figure out
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 2: what we're looking at. But I don't remember the details
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: on it. But I got to include on the bear thing.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: I love those bears. Like I like, I like, I
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 2: love grizzly bears. I like them. You know, they're scary,
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: but I like them. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 2: an anti bear guy.
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: Do you get any other close encounters? I love hearing
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 1: this stuff.
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: Um, just little, yeah, a little like false charge. Me
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: and my buddy Cal, I mentioned him earlier around the
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: public lands issue. He and I got false charged by
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: bear one time, um, which was scary. And, And I
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 2: remember I had like a, I made like a line,
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: an imaginary line at which I would shoot. We were
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: hunting the grizzly bears. It was a sow with cubs.
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: And I had an imaginary line at which I would fire,
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 2: you know, and she turned off at that imaginary line.
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: But again, man, with those bears, it always seems like
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: everything seems close because you can just picture it, you know. Um,
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: but that's, that's kind of my, that's kind of my
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: main little run-ins. I've had them too, where they're coming
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: and you're just trying to scare them off, you know? And,
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: and I remember, uh, one was coming and we were
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: trying to shoot rocks out in front of it just
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 2: to get to not come into our camp. And I
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: remember it would run over to look at, it would,
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 2: it would run ahead to look at what it was.
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 2: It's like, what the hell was that? And I was like,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: that's not working.
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: Damn. How do you determine where you're going to hunt?
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like around here, I've been hunting before.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: I just never got anything. And it was always on
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: public land around the Midwest. And deer season in the
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: Midwest is like bigger than Christmas. You know, and I'd
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: go out and I'd be like, I'm out of here, man.
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: There's like 50 people over here. I'm not doing this.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: So I'm just curious. I mean, how do you determine
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: where you're going to hunt? Because you hunt public land.
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, I hunt both. I hunt private land. I
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: hunt public land. I hunt everything I can get to.
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: I kind of have a, not an odd setup, but
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: at this point, I've hunted for a long time, and
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: I have so many friends that are really dedicated, disciplined
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: hunters that for me to do research on spots is
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 2: just very different. There's not many places you could point to.
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: There's not many places in the country you could point
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: to where I couldn't, within two phone calls, talk to
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: a buddy, a buddy or a buddy's buddy, that knows
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 2: the area real well. Gotcha. You follow me? So it
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: just winds up being different. And I hunt... We kind of,
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: in hunting... a way to split hunting opportunities would be
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 2: that you have over-the-counter, what we call over-the-counter hunting opportunities,
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: or you have draw hunting opportunities. Over-the-counter means you go
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: to the gas station or the sporting goods store and
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: buy a license, right? So most white-tail deer hunting in
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 2: the East, most states, you just buy a license. But
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: then there's a lot of draw hunts where there's greater
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: demand than there is supply. And so to allocate it democratically,
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 2: they do these lotteries. And they're generally, for a resident,
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 2: they're very inexpensive. If you're applying in other states, it
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: can be more expensive. But they're like, they're going to
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: release 20 tags for said unit. 100 guys apply for
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 2: that unit. So no one, there's no individual that routinely
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 2: hunts the spot.
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 2: So it's kind of new for everyone every time. Okay.
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 2: If I do that, I'm applying for a unit. Like,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 2: for instance, I mentioned going to a Fog Neck. I
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 2: had applied a bunch of years, eventually drew a Fognac,
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 2: but because of my social circle and professional connections, I
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 2: wind up with a buddy of mine who's like, oh yeah,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: me and my friends have hunted it twice. We landed
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 2: at this lake. You want to hike, you know, we
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 2: found them over here. If you can't find them there,
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: go look here. And it's just, it's a perk that
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 2: I can't act like isn't. So a lot of the
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 2: time that someone might normally spend needing to work from
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: the ground up, which is what I would do when
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: I was younger, a lot of times now I'm able
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 2: to ask a lot of questions. Another thing is there's
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: other spots, particularly like public land spots that I like
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 2: to go to. It winds up being that there's spots,
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: I tend to go to spots I know really well.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: And I understand seasonally what they're like. I understand the
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 2: impacts of pressure on those spots. And those are the
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: spots I go to often. And one of the reasons
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: I like them in return is I kind of understand
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: the rhythms of the area. Oh, God. Do you know
• 1:54:17
  Speaker 2: what I mean? Like, late November, it's going to look
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: like this. They'll have been there. Like, things that were
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: there are probably over here now because of pressure– Weather,
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 2: when I say pressure, I don't mean barometric pressure, but
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: hunting pressure, weather, whatever. And so you just kind of
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: get trained up. But at a time, I had a very,
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: you know, at a time when I first moved out west,
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: we just went out and figured shit out. We were
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 2: very comfortable with failure and had a lot of time,
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: not a lot of money, and just went. and went,
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: and that's the guys, like that, the young guys now
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 2: that I look up to are the guys that are
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: in that phase of their life where they're just figuring
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: it out. And they got, they're not bitter yet. I
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 2: look at my kid and his buddies. My kid and
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: his buddies, man, they're just in the exploratory phase. Do
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean? They're like, we're gonna jump
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: at that bridge and go try to get ducks. I'm like, man,
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 2: that's cool as shit, man. That's great, you know? And
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: if they come back with nothing, they don't care. They're
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: just in the exploring phase. And they'll someday be like me,
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: and that phase will wind down a little bit for them.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: And they'll kind of have their habits. They'll have their
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: habits and their honey holes.
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 1: Just gain an experience.
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Nice. And it's a blast when it happens. And
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: I look back on it quite fondly. But at this
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 2: point now, I just kind of have, you know, life's
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: different for me. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about hunting and health. Mm-hmm. being in the outdoors,
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: the difference between game made and, you know, the shit
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: we get at the grocery store.
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: Wherever you want to start.
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh, outdoor fitness. Um, one thing I have, the
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: other day I had to run, a couple days ago
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: I had to run in the airport. Um, I'd left
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 2: my bag and the dude's like, run and get your bag. Um,
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: So I had to run back to the gate to
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 2: get my bag and, uh, I don't run. So even
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 2: just running around in the airport for a while. And
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I got a shin splint dude from run,
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 2: but I can, like, if I have a physical specialty,
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: like to brag for a minute, um, I am very
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: good at just walking for a long time. Like I'm,
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 2: I'm an expert. Uh, I'm an expert, just Walker, like
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: one foot in front of the other. And that's like hiking.
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 2: Like I like to hike, I can hike, um, I
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 2: can out hike people that would beat me up. I
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: could out hike people that would outrun me, whatever, but
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 2: like I've, I'm hiking across rugged ground and hiking in
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: Hills and something, something I enjoy a great deal. And,
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: and I've, that ability comes from just traveling in the mountains. Um,
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 2: and so that's kind of a little bit of a,
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 2: for me, like a little bit of measure. like the
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: way people might measure fitness, you might talk about whatever
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: you can bench or you can deadlift this or do
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: this or that. For me, it's like, if I was
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: gonna ask someone a fitness question that would, if I
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 2: was gonna ask someone a fitness question that would mean
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: a lot to me, it would be like, how long
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: can you walk on how little water? That's like something
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: I'm interested in. The food stuff, we eat like when
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: we're home we only eat wild meat no kidding in
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: our house so family of five like when we're eating
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: in our house we only eat wild meat now and
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: then i'll come home and my kids be like don't
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 2: tell mom i'm telling you but we had a chicken
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 2: you know my bought a chicken she doesn't want you
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: to know but yeah we're real strict about it like
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: we eat wild meat in our house why is that
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: well because it's just cooler it's it's a better it's
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: just better it's a it's that's what i like to
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 2: eat that's why i want to see my kids eat
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: i can't sit and tell you with a straight face
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: i can't tell you chemically like how it's different do
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: you know i'm saying but it's like it just it
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: feels very good to eat it but i can't so
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 2: i i can't separate out the emotional spiritual psychological aspects
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 2: of what it's like to eat your own food and
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: how good that makes you feel compared to like the
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: biochem the the biochemistry aspects of of eating wild meat
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 2: yeah okay there's a ton of talk about you hear
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: people talk about something being organic well if you're I
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 2: hate to tell people this. If you're hunting deer in Wisconsin,
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: I have a lot of friends that hunt deer in Wisconsin,
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: you're probably not eating organic meat because those deer are in,
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 2: they're eating GMOs. Those deer are eating GMO corn. They're
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 2: eating GMO soybeans, perhaps, that if it was certified organic,
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't be able to feed it. You can't control
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 2: what that thing's eating. He could be raiding like, you know,
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 2: he could be raiding old lady Thompson's garden where she
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 2: just put a bunch of, where she put a bunch of,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: sprayed a bunch of glyphosate. You don't know what it ate.
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 2: It's a wild animal. So people would be like, oh,
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: you know, it's organic. I'm like, yeah, there's a lot
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 2: of places you can like, you know, you kill a
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 2: caribou on the North slope of Alaska. Some bitch is
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 2: purely organic, but a lot of game meat's not organic.
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: Migratory waterfowl. That's a tough claim to make, that it's organic.
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 2: But it just feels good because everything we eat, when
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: we're sitting around eating, everything we eat is like a story.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: It's a celebration. And we always acknowledge this is a
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 2: Rosemary's deer, right? And if I don't bring it up,
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: the kids will bring it up.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: That's pretty cool.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 2: Whose deer is this? This is Rosemary's deer. The other night,
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 2: we got back from our fish shack. We had a
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: bunch of Pacific cod. So the other night, I had two,
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 2: one of my daughter was away with her friend. So
• 2:00:21
  Speaker 2: I had my two boys, my boy's buddy, my wife,
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: and we ate, we were eating cod that we caught,
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 2: we were eating carrots that we grew, we were eating
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: green beans that we grew, we were eating zucchinis that
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: we grew. And like, that's pride. Do you follow me?
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah. It's like, we're like proud of that. And
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: it makes a cool story. One of the more interesting
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 2: aspects of health is the confluence of where your mental
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: life and your physical life collide. It's exciting to us.
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 2: And I take an immense amount of pride in it.
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 2: Even if someone came and told me that it wasn't
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: good for you, it wouldn't change my perspective. I got
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 2: a buddy, a very avid outdoorsman named Parker Hall, and
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 2: he likes to fish flathead catfish. Flathead catfish... eat fish
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: that eat fish. So they do a thing called bioaccumulation,
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: meaning if there's heavy metals in the environment, like mercury, whatever,
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: they bioaccumulate because when a little fish gets mercury in
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: its system, it's stored in its fat. And then imagine
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: that you magnify it, where here's a fish that eats
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 2: fish that was eating fish. So all of that, when
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 2: he eats a fish, he takes that load of mercury, okay,
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 2: or whatever heavy metal we might be talking about or anything,
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 2: industrial solvents or all these things, carry stuff. But when
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: he eats a fish, he gets that fish's stuff and
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 2: it goes into his fat. And then at the end,
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 2: when he's five years old, six years old, whatever, he's
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: got a lifetime of consuming stuff that was consuming stuff.
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: And so they get a heavy metal load. And the states,
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 2: they don't do this for domestic meat, but the states
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 2: will often come out with, they'll often come out with
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 2: advisories and Sometimes they're very detailed. Don't eat more than
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: one meal every month of yellow perch over 12 inches
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 2: in length from Lake Washington. It might be that specific.
• 2:02:23
  Speaker 2: I was saying to him one day, you're eating all
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: these flatheads. And he also likes flathead belly. It's like,
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 2: it's kind of a sort of a flathead delicacy is
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 2: the belly on a flathead, which they say is where
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 2: the heavy metals accumulate. This is a very turn into
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 2: a very long story. I was joking with Parker Hall.
• 2:02:38
  Speaker 2: And I was like, well, what do you think about
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 2: like the heavy metal warnings? on these big flatheads. And
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 2: he says, man, if I can catch and eat so
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: many flatheads that it kills me, I win. That was
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: where he was at right on now. So even if, yeah,
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: like even if I heard, and I've gotten sick from,
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 2: you know, I've gotten sick from game meat. It doesn't
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 2: change my view on it. You know, I just like it.
• 2:03:06
  Speaker 2: There's no, no one can tell me it's like, it's
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 2: just good. I feel best eating like, I feel best
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 2: eating vegetables and deer meat. And I like more and more,
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 2: I like to eat food. We eat like, when I
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 2: cook for my family, which is whenever I'm home, we
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 2: eat food that you look at and you know what
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 2: it is. It looks like something that came out of
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 2: the dirt. or it looks like something that you chopped
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: out of an animal. Like that in my mind is,
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 2: I can't tell you this scientifically, but that's how we
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 2: like to, that's how I like to serve.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: The way to live. Yeah, that's how I like to serve.
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 2: The way to live. Yeah.
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: So let's move into Meat Eater. How did that start?
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 2: That's a long story. Again, I came up as a writer.
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: I studied magazine writing, became a magazine writer. Out of
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 2: magazine writing, started doing books. Out of this came various
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: opportunities in television. The first show I did years ago,
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: I did a show, very short-lived. I did an eight-episode
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 2: show for Travel Channel a long time ago. I was
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: paired with a production company called 0.0 Production to do
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 2: this show. The show tanked, but out of it, the
• 2:04:25
  Speaker 2: guys I was working with, and 0.0 most famously worked
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: with Anthony Bourdain, They produced Bourdain's different shows over the years.
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 2: So I was working with that same crew of guys
• 2:04:35
  Speaker 2: that worked on that show. And they had all, in
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 2: doing our stuff, they'd kind of fall in love with hunting.
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 2: And so we decided, well, let's just do our own
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 2: thing that we own. We'll do our own show. It'd
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 2: be like very simple stripped down show about going out,
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 2: you know, on hunting and fishing adventures. And so I
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 2: had a little teeny kid at the time. My boy
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: who's 15 was a baby and I would read him
• 2:04:59
  Speaker 2: mostly books about animals. And I always liked, you'd be
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 2: reading about a T-Rex or a polar bear or whatever.
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 2: And it'd be like, this meat eater, this ferocious meat eater, right?
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 2: Just like a thing. And I was like, I just
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: called it that. And it wasn't meant as like advice.
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 2: It wasn't meant as dietary advice. I was like referring
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: to like these species that that's what they eat. So
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 2: we started doing the show and we owned it. We
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 2: only licensed it out. So we maintain the IP of it, right?
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 2: and then later did, launched a podcast and called it that.
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: It was the Meat Eater Podcast. We had a show
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 2: called Meat Eater. Did some guidebooks under that title and
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 2: eventually kind of built up this, you know, built up
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 2: a brand. Built up a brand, Meat Eater.
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: It's crazy.
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: And then what's kind of cool about it is because
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: we were doing a TV show, we would get sponsors.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 2: And so some of our very earliest people that gave
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 2: us any kind of vote of confidence and backing, like
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 2: there was an apparel company, First Light, and I knew
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 2: the guys that started First Light and they just started
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 2: it kind of out of their homes in Ketchum, Idaho.
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: These are like big hunters, ski bums, and they were
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 2: making merino base layers for hunters. And so we kind
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: of grew up together. And then later on, our company,
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: Meat Eater, was able to, was able to acquire some
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: gear companies. So we have an apparel company, First Light.
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 2: We have an American-made accessory company called FHF Gear. We
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 2: have a game call company, Dave Smith, or sorry, we
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 2: have a game call company called Phelps Game Calls and
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 2: a decoy company, Dave Smith Decoys. And those founders are
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 2: still very much involved with their businesses. So we've become
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 2: like media and product. But the vast bulk of my
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 2: time exists around the media end of it being podcasts.
• 2:07:10
  Speaker 2: We still do print books. And I work in all
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 2: those kind of projects. Everything from I've done cookbooks, and
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 2: I'm currently working on an American history series.
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: What's that about?
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: Market hunting. So did Meat Eaters American History Volume 1,
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 2: and that was that story of Daniel Boone and the
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 2: deerskin trade.
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: Awesome.
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 2: And that covered 1763, which is the end of the
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 2: French and Indian War, to 1775, so right up to
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: the American Revolution, and then did Meteor's American History Volume 2,
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 2: The Mountain Men, which covers the beaver skin trade, which 1806,
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: so two years after the Louisiana Purchase, the return of
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 2: Lewis and Clark, which launched the era in 1840 when
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 2: that era and that market collapsed because of silk, the
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 2: advent of silk replacing beaver wool as the way that
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: hats were made. So the silkworm kind of killed that market.
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 2: We just recorded Meat Eaters of American History Volume 3,
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 2: which is called The Hide Hunters. It picks up with
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: all the displacement at the end of the Civil War
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 2: and displaced veterans, Confederates and Yankees going west and picking
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 2: up the buffalo skin trade. And it ends in 1883
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 2: when they killed the last herd in Northern Montana. And
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: from there, probably, from there we'll probably jump up to
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 2: the Great Depression and do the Alaska fur trade during
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: the Great Depression.
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 2: It'll pick up at the end. It'll pick up during
• 2:08:56
  Speaker 2: the Roaring Twenties. And it's closing year. If we do
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 2: the Alaska fur trade, it's closing year will be the
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 2: Great Depression.
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: Very cool.
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 2: Remember like the flappers, you know, like the Roaring Twenties,
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 2: everybody running around with all that fur? A lot of
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 2: that fur was coming out of Alaska.
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: It was like money. All these things, all these different
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 2: eras we're talking about are... the potential for life-changing amount
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 2: of money for people. And they're all markets that emerge
• 2:09:26
  Speaker 2: and then die and emerge and die. And usually, there's
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 2: usually a variety of factors that leads to their death.
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 2: With the Buffalo one, it died because they were gone.
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: And the crazy part about those guys is some knew
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 2: what they were doing and some were legitimately, they didn't
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 2: know what they had done. On the Texas Plains, the
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: hide hunters were convinced that a bunch of them had
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 2: run into Mexico. And there was more in Mexico, more
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 2: Buffalo in Mexico. In Northern Montana, they'd all gone into
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 2: Canada and they held out hope. And they waited around
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 2: one year, two year. And eventually it was like, you
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: know what I think might've happened, dude, is I think
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 2: we maybe killed them all. It's over, you know? So
• 2:10:15
  Speaker 2: that history stuff is something I didn't, Love working on, yeah,
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 2: the American History Series.
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: We built one hell of an empire, man.
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 2: I don't know what I'd call it, yeah. Yeah, we
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 2: make cool, yeah, we get to make cool products. It's fun, yeah.
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: How do you balance all the business and family and
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 1: all that stuff?
• 2:10:41
  Speaker 2: One of my, I'll tell you, like, if I have a,
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 2: Answering that question, I picture, remember the old cartoons where
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 2: there's a dude with the devil and the angel? You
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 2: know what I mean?
• 2:10:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 2: Like, if I carry with me a thing like that,
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 2: it's about what I've done and haven't done for my kids.
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 2: The devil is saying, there has been years in all
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: my kids' lives. There's been years. The devil's like, dude,
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: there's been years. when you missed half of their days, right?
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 2: You worked half their days or traveled half the days
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 2: they were alive. And the angel says, but dude, when
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: you were home, you were home. Like you were all in,
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 2: you know? And that's a debate that goes on. It
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 2: goes without saying, like, you know, I adore my children, right?
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 2: We have, I have a very strong relationship with my kid.
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 2: I've missed my kids. I've missed a lot of their lives.
• 2:11:57
  Speaker 2: But I've also spent some like extremely impactful times with
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 2: them where I'll be able to just be immersed with them.
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: We just spent two weeks at our fish shack where
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 2: they're like in my sight for two weeks. When I'm home,
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 2: I've pointed this out a bunch, just to other people
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 2: that have young kids and stuff like, and when I'm home,
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 2: I like, what I like them, when I'm home, they
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 2: see me serve, like they see me serve the family.
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 2: Do you know what I mean? Like I clean, I cook.
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 2: When I'm home, I make dinner. I lay dinner on
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 2: the table, right? I call them to the dinner table. We,
• 2:12:37
  Speaker 2: when I'm, they eat family dinner, whether I'm home or not.
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 2: They do it with their mom or we all eat
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 2: it as a family. But like, I want them to
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 2: know that like when I'm there, I'm there. And that's
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 2: one of the, That is the sort of like, that's
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 2: the compromise. Is that hard for you to switch it off?
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 2: You know, a long time ago, my wife came up
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 2: with this rule where she said, she's like, if it's,
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 2: I remember sitting when we first had a kid, it's
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 2: so funny to think about this now, because he's like
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 2: little enough where they're like hanging out in the bathtub.
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 2: And I remember needing to go out of town to work.
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 2: And I remember sitting there like weeping. I was so
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 2: sad when I had a little baby, when I had
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 2: to go out of town. And my wife said, you
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 2: got to button it up, dude. You got to tighten up.
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 2: This isn't what it is. You can't display this lament.
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 2: And then later she had said, it's not going to
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 2: be a big deal when you go, and it's not
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 2: going to be a big deal when you come home.
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 2: Meaning when you come home, you merge into traffic. Like,
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 2: it's not like balloons and shit, like, welcome home, dad.
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 2: It's like, you come in and you're in it, you know?
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 2: And so, no, I find it easy to come back.
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 2: A challenge I've had, and dude, all this pales in comparison.
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 2: I was with a guy the other day that came
• 2:14:09
  Speaker 2: from your professional world of military, and his wife told me,
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 2: I was with him and his wife, he told me
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 2: that in the first three years of marriage, they were
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 2: together 200 days. So this is nothing like that. It's
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 2: nothing like that. But I do find some parallels with
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 2: people that have dealt with that level of being gone.
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 2: But no, I don't. My wife would tell you that
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 2: I don't turn it off. Well, I would argue that
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 2: I've gotten better at it. Do you take your kids
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 2: out with you now that they're older? Any chance I
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 2: can get, man. Any chance I can get. To business?
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: On business?
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm sorry. I think I'm going to take them
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 2: out in the woods and out in the field. Yeah, both, both.
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 2: My older one, I'm just now exposing him. My, my
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 2: 15 year old, I'm just now exposing him to, um,
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 2: I'm now exposing him more and more to what I do.
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 2: He's very interested in it. We never let him have
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 2: any kind of social media. Once he turned 15 and
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: he was taller than me, um, seemed weird to tell
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 2: him when he's taller than me, he's got like his
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 2: learner's permit. He takes a gun out of the gun
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 2: cabinet and goes shooting skeet with his friends. And it's
• 2:15:10
  Speaker 2: hard to be like, you're not allowed to have social media.
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: can take the shotgun but no facebook you know so
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 2: he has social media now and he likes to kind
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 2: of post about his outdoor adventures you know and and
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 2: i encourage that um and and keep a tight wrap
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 2: on it but yeah he's real curious in what i
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: do um he's uh i'm not a photographer he's very
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 2: interested in photography he's very interested in communication so i'll
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 2: be curious to see where that leads right on man
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 2: um but yeah the other ones man i i've For me,
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 2: the funnest thing now is to take them out hunting. 100%. 100%.
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 2: I don't even care if I get, like, to me,
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 2: it doesn't matter to get stuff.
• 2:15:49
  Speaker 1: Just time.
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just like to be, my buddies are the
• 2:15:51
  Speaker 2: same way. Buddies with kids, after a while, they're like,
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 2: you being the one that gets something, no one cares
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 2: about that anymore. It's good to see the kids have success,
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 2: you know? Yeah, man.
• 2:16:01
  Speaker 1: That's, like I was telling you at breakfast, I just,
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: we've been, I have an official with my son. He's
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: a toddler for almost a year. This fall, it'll be
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: a year. It's been so fucking cool to watch him learn,
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: figure out how to cast. He learned it like a
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: couple days. I mean, now it's just, it's like trying
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: to dodge bullets when he casts.
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 2: And all the untangling and stuff.
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: Somebody get a trouble hook in the nose. But yeah,
• 2:16:29
  Speaker 1: it's just, I love watching him reel a bass in.
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: It's so cool. I love being outdoors with my kids.
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's good. It's good to spend time. It's good
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 2: for them. It's good for you.
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. But, well, man, I just, I really appreciate
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: you coming in. I thought this was an awesome conversation.
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, well, thanks, man. Like I said, I've always enjoyed
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 2: admired your work and enjoyed watching the clips. My boy
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 2: likes watching the clips. We have a good time.
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 1: He does?
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: Oh, we'll give him some stuff to take home. Oh, really?
• 2:17:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man. No, he likes it. Again, like me, he
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 2: likes hearing from all the warriors, man. Cool. Yeah.
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: Well, there's a lot more coming on.
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 2: Good, yeah.
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: But, Steve, honor to meet you, man.
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, man. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. Cheers.
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 1: Is there anything we didn't cover you want to cover?
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 2: That's great. Thank you. Thank you. All right.
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was awesome. I really like that bow stuff, dude.
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 2: It's fun.
• 2:17:30
  Speaker 1: I could see how that could get addicting.
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of guys that find it quite
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 2: therapeutic to shoot.
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: What's your favorite animal to hunt?
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 2: For me? Yeah.
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 1: Or maybe the one you're most proud of.
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Well, I like hunting doll sheep, but I
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 2: don't get as many opportunities. to do it. But like
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 2: for day in, day out hunting, I like mule deer 100%.
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 2: I just love everything about them. Love everything about them.
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 2: But I grew up on whitetails. So it's funny because
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 2: I got friends out that grew up out west, and
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 2: they're like, dude, that must be so cool, tree stand
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 2: hunting whitetails. But then we grew up tree stand hunting
• 2:18:07
  Speaker 2: white tails. Like that must be so cool to hunt
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 2: the mountains for me old deer.
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? It's like, it has a
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 2: lot to do with that, but I like that. And
• 2:18:14
  Speaker 2: I've really gotten into, I've been, I've doing it for
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 2: a long time, but I like to hunt moose. I
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 2: like to call moose. Like on the 11th, I'll take
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 2: off to go with my brother, Danny, who lives up
• 2:18:26
  Speaker 2: in Alaska to go call moose, you know, which is
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: a total mind fuck. Man. It's a slow game. It's
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 2: a slow game. Like a moose might take days to
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 2: come to a call. He hears it. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah,
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: and he might be like, yeah, eventually. I'll eventually get
• 2:18:39
  Speaker 2: over there. Right on, man. Yeah, it's kind of funny,
• 2:18:42
  Speaker 2: you know, you see them and they're like aware of you,
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 2: but the time for them is different. You know, elk might,
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 2: he just comes ripping in. But moose is like, yeah,
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 2: I'll get over there in three days.
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: Is there, I actually meant to ask you in the interview,
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: but is there anything that you think the hunting industry
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: is getting wrong, like in the public's eye? Anything that
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: pisses you off about the industry or?
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 2: I think that, yeah, there's a handful of things, but
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 2: it's not anybody. But I think that a lot of
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 2: the commentary around relationships with predators isn't accurate. And I
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 2: think that people are, what our ask needs to be
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 2: in the West on wolves and grizzlies, well, not just that,
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 2: in the West, upper Midwest, what the aspect needs to
• 2:19:36
  Speaker 2: be on wolves and grizzlies is it needs to be
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 2: that they're going to be on the landscape The ask,
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 2: the days of it being that they're going to be gone,
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 2: that's not going to happen. The ask needs to be
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 2: that they be managed as game animals.
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: Gotcha.
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 2: It's like lamenting the existence of large predators or just like,
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 2: you know, this whole like smoke a pack a day,
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 2: you know, shoot, shovel, shut up, shit about wolves. I
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 2: don't think that that's productive. Gotcha. The ask is like,
• 2:20:09
  Speaker 2: the ask is like, get them off the ESA.
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: What's that?
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 2: Endangered Species Act. They shouldn't be, they don't qualify for
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 2: Endangered Species Act protection, just like categorically. When I started
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 2: doing reintroductions on wolves and when I started doing protections
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 2: on grizzlies, all the people, all the stakeholders came together
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 2: and said, here's what recovery looks like. Recovery will be this,
• 2:20:32
  Speaker 2: this many breeding pairs, right? This level of distribution. We
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 2: hit recovery on wolves and grizzly bears 20 years ago.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 2: In some cases, even longer ago in some areas. And
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 2: there's still is this faction of sportsmen that thinks we're
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 2: going to go back to having those animals not out
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 2: there preying on deer. And it's fucking dumb.
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 2: Like the ask is delist and manage as a game animal.
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 2: That's the thing that people got to. And in order
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 2: to push their. viewpoint they kind of over they like
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 2: exaggerate human risk on things that there's not human risk
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 2: there's not like a reasonable human risk like wolves don't
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 2: well like wolves just don't fuck with people you know
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 2: mountain lions every now and then but predators need to
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 2: be there yeah they need to be managed as game
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 2: animals yeah we need to have hunting you know like
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 2: it's ridiculous right now that there's no wolf hunting in
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 2: the upper great lakes it's ridiculous Um, they need to,
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 2: you know, they delisted, then they listed again. That needs
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 2: to be a hundred population of wolves, but, um, they're
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 2: not going away.
• 2:21:48
  Speaker 1: What about, um, like invasive species and stuff like hogs
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 1: down South?
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 2: And I mean, um, I used to have a habit
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 2: of asking guys that own land that had hogs on it.
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 2: the bitch about the hogs. And I'd be like, if
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 2: you could wave a magic wand, I've asked so many
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 2: farmers and ranchers, like if you could wave a magic
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 2: wand and they would really be all gone, would you
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 2: wave it? And they're always like, I mean, I don't
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 2: want them all gone. Again and again, you know, I
• 2:22:18
  Speaker 2: don't want them all gone. I mean, that's ridiculous. Yeah.
• 2:22:21
  Speaker 2: But you know, the, A thing that hunters don't, if
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 2: you're going to look at from a conservation habitat perspective,
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 2: non-native plants are probably, I think that you'd probably get
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 2: buy-in on that statement. You'd probably get buy-in on that
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 2: statement from most people that non-native plants are a greater
• 2:22:44
  Speaker 2: risk to hunting in America than non-native wildlife. It's a
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 2: little bit, there are cases where one could argue that
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 2: because in the Mississippi system, the Asiatic carp, species have
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 2: to be having an impact on game fish but there's
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 2: no way they're not having an impact on game fish
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 2: so that's a huge thing in that area zebra mussels
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 2: in the great lakes is a big problem but non-native
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 2: um habitat that is becoming that it doesn't support wildlife
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 2: because it's got plants that wildlife can't utilize like that's
• 2:23:16
  Speaker 2: a problem whole fucking hillside i mean whole mountain sides
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 2: taken over by plants called like uh Spotted knapweed, leafy spurge.
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 2: Whole mountainsides used to support animals or hillsides used to
• 2:23:30
  Speaker 2: support animals. Now don't.
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: No shit.
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 2: I did not realize that. Canadian thistle. It's another one.
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 2: Like ecosystems that had game that don't have game because
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 2: they can't digest noxious weeds.
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: Interesting. I never thought about that. Noxious weeds are huge,
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: will be a huge problem in the future. I mean,
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: they're already a huge problem.
• 2:23:54
  Speaker 2: Like if you, anywhere, if you went anywhere and talked
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 2: to someone from like most states, if you went and
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 2: talked with someone, it's like, we got plant problems more
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 2: than we got animal problems. You're familiar with like the
• 2:24:05
  Speaker 2: pollinator crisis. No. Um, losing, losing all of our pollinators.
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, like bees.
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: I have heard of that.
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 2: From habit, the habitat and also habitat and then the
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 2: fucking pesticides.
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 1: Damn.
• 2:24:22
  Speaker 2: Herbicides and pesticides. And I'm not hacking it, dude. Like
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 2: people got to eat, you know, um, if you want
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 2: to live in a world with no herbicides and no pesticides,
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 2: you should probably plan on losing about half the world's
• 2:24:34
  Speaker 2: population to starvation. Right. It's like a real fucking conundrum. Um,
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 2: it could be that anyone that's poor dies because we
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 2: don't use herbicides and pesticides anymore, or we continue to
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 2: like wipe out insect species. and wipe out plant species
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 2: that are some of the foundation of, you know, all
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 2: of our environmental shit, you know?
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Man, that's an interesting aspect I never thought of.
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those, it's one of those hidden
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 2: things and it's like, and a lot of people, a
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 2: lot of people aren't hip to it, you know? But
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 2: I have the, like, I have the luxury of, I
• 2:25:14
  Speaker 2: have the luxury of just like occupying a world and
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 2: occupying a conversation. that some guy that works his fucking
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 2: ass off and gets to hunt a few weekends a
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 2: year and he's happy if he can hunt four weekends
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 2: a year, it's just like, he just doesn't have time
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 2: for hearing about all that shit, you know? Because he's
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 2: got whatever he's trying to fucking raise his family. And
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 2: so there's people that just, there's a lot of sportsmen
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 2: that don't know and it's not necessarily like ignorance, it's
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 2: just complicated. And so they might be like, what's wrong
• 2:25:46
  Speaker 2: with hunting? Why are you not seeing deer? And it's like, oh,
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 2: fucking coyotes. It's like, yeah, it's more complicated, dude. That's easy,
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 2: but it's more complicated.
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: Interesting.
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the predator thing is a, and you wind up
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 2: fighting both extremes. Like I wind up arguing, I'm always
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 2: arguing with people that think that like, I'm always arguing
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 2: with people that think that wolves fucking walk around eating granola.
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 2: or flowers, you know, and be like, no, dude, wolves
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 2: have a major impact. Coyotes have a major impact. And
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 2: then I turn around, I'm arguing with some guy that
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 2: thinks it's the only thing that matters is that if
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 2: we just killed more coyotes, the world would be overrun
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 2: with wild game. You're like, you guys are both fucked up.
• 2:26:35
  Speaker 1: Damn.
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 2: You guys are both wrong.
• 2:26:39
  Speaker 1: We go to grab some lunch?
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Cool.
• 2:26:53
  Speaker 1: No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan Show from, if
• 2:26:56
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• 2:27:00
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• 2:27:05
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• 2:27:09
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