WE ARE FIELD ETHOS, Interview with Jason Vincent and Mike Schoby | TRIGGERED Ep.131
WE ARE FIELD ETHOS, Interview with Jason Vincent and Mike Schoby | TRIGGERED Ep.131
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Hey guys, welcome to another huge episode of Triggered.
Tonight, we're going to do something a little bit different.
We're going to take a detour from the usual heavy, hard-hitting politics, and instead, we're going to be focused on one of my major projects, one of my pet projects, a fun one, The Field Ethos Journal.
Sort of my outdoor publication, multimedia brand.
I know I've talked about it on the show before, but, you know,
Many of these, even hunting magazines, shockingly enough, have gone sort of woke or just super apologetic.
So, me and a couple friends, we decided to build our own.
And we'll be joined by my co-founder, Jason Vincent, and our chief operating officer, Mike Scobie.
These are true animals.
They'll be a lot of fun.
I imagine I'm gonna be sitting here embarrassed in the not-too-distant future, so we're gonna have some fun.
Who knows where the conversation's gonna go, but, you know, we talk about building our own, we talk about taking on the people who have gone woke, we're doing it, and this is yet another example of that.
So I promise, even if you don't necessarily love hunting, it's not just that.
It's fishing, it's adventure, a lifestyle, it's just, you know,
Being a dude, all that kind of good stuff.
And if you're a woman, you can still actually appreciate that in 2024.
I know that probably makes you a misogynist or some shit, but like, I think you guys will like it.
So guys, make sure you're hitting the like button, share, subscribe.
Let's keep getting the message out there.
The rest of Big Tech is...
As we all understand and know, stacked against us, so we have to work even harder to make sure we break through all of the noise and grow the movement.
Also, remember, you can get Triggered on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, if you miss the show here, or if you know people who perhaps get their podcast that way, pass it on.
Get it out there.
A big theme of this episode is going to be about
Building your own, taking on that establishment, and just going for it, just like we did with Field Ethos.
And honestly, just like we did with Public Square, which is now an official sponsor of this show, guys.
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But joining me now is Philip Patrick, actually of the Birch Gold Group.
And so, Philip, thanks for being here.
And I want to talk a little bit about inflation with you today.
Thank you so much for having me.
So, Americans are noticeably and visibly upset about the rising cost of living.
It doesn't seem to be getting any better, candidly.
It seems to be getting worse.
I notice it.
Honestly, if I notice it myself, and again, I understand where I'm from, I'm the son of a billionaire, but if I'm upset when I go to the grocery store with my kids or to a fast food place, you know, what's going on?
What's the latest inflation update?
I mean, it, as you know well, has been a disaster under this administration.
The March Consumer Price Index numbers came out on the 10th.
The All Items Index rose 3.5% year over year.
Core CPI, which is all items less food and energy,
Yes, absolutely.
The Fed lowering interest rates anytime soon at this point feels a little bit absurd, particularly when we factor in inflation is currently double the Federal Reserve's target.
At this point, it feels like a sign that inflation has become entrenched.
Essentially, prices are not coming down anytime soon.
And it seems realistic.
But as you know well, it's been a consistent theme under this administration.
Cumulative inflation under the Biden administration has been about 19% total, averaging 6% a year.
We're good to go.
Just a little bit slower than they were before.
Yeah, no, they only talk about the rise in the rate, not actual inflation, and they have sort of their lackeys in the press doing the same thing.
You know, Paul Krugman, he's a Nobel laureate economist.
He goes, you know, inflation's actually coming down, I think it was if you took out energy, housing, transportation, and food.
I'm like, well, like, honestly, like, what else is there?
Like, that's wonderful.
We'll take out literally
Everything you need to survive in America today, and then it's like, oh, the numbers outside of that stuff, outside of everything, they look wonderful.
I mean, so, I mean, this is a serious problem, right?
The Fed started raising interest rates over two years ago.
Inflation clearly has not gone under control.
You're talking about, it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon, given sort of where we are in the metric.
You know, forget about lowering interest rates.
Could the Fed go back to raising rates at this point?
I mean, look, if they really cared about fighting inflation and that was the only focus, then the answer would be yes.
But I don't think it's on the cards at the moment.
We've got to remember major banks recently reported very disappointing first quarter earnings.
And that's a problem because when interest rates go up, banks lose money, right?
Both on the value of the assets that they hold and the fact that they have to pay depositors more.
The US banking system is already in trouble.
We're sitting on about half a trillion dollars in losses.
And, you know, any increase in rates threatens to cause another wave of bank failures.
I think that's why the Fed were forced to stop raising rates after SVB failed.
So it's kind of a tough position the Fed are in.
They can do nothing and let inflation smolder, or they can raise rates to fight inflation and risk destabilizing the banking system.
I think given the choice, they're always going to choose systemic stability over the American family.
We've just got to think about who got bailed out in the great financial crisis.
It wasn't the people.
Well, I mean, I guess with all that in mind, what makes gold a smart investment right now for people who are looking to diversify their portfolio to hedge against some of this insanity and the inflation?
You know, why is that a smart move?
Look, it's sadly the realities of the Biden economy.
Look at the problems we're facing, the sheer number of them.
We're talking about inflation.
We're seeing a world running away from the dollar at the moment.
Very concerning.
We have recession on the horizon.
All of these problems are killers for those sitting in traditional assets, if you will.
But they are very positive drivers for safe haven commodities like gold and silver.
Central banks around the world, 22 and 23, were the single biggest years for gold buying by central banks ever in history.
And it's for the same reasons.
They're holding dollars, they're seeing a loss of purchasing power, and they're hedging that exposure with gold.
We're good to go.
Well, Phillip, I appreciate it.
Thank you.
And guys, again, if you want to learn more, if you want to educate yourself, if you don't want to just sort of sit there, stick your head in the sand, text Don Jr, D-O-N-J-R, to the number 989898.
That's the Birch Girl Group.
You can learn about it, educate yourself, make an informed decision for yourself, and ultimately, learn more.
Protect yourselves.
Don't let this insanity swallow you whole.
And I guess with that, guys, joining me now from Field Ethos, my outdoor sort of brand and publication, we got Jason Vincent and Mike Scobie.
What's happening, boys?
What's up, Don?
How are you?
I'm doing well!
Like I said, I'm going to have to sign up to the above because I've been a little bit sleep-deprived, as I told you earlier, so I'm going to make you guys carry most of this one because I'm a lazy bastard.
Dude, Scobie and I can carry this, no problem.
Actually, you can go ahead and sign off.
Yeah.
How about you guys have at it?
I just want to do a pre-recorded intro, and I'll just let you take over the podcast.
It's so much easier than actually putting in the work and the time.
I gotta say, Scoby jumped onto this one with all this stuff in the background, and I thought he went somewhere really cool to record this episode, and he's actually just sitting in his living room.
Scoby, is that the only corner of your house that's not just, like, piled up with guns and ammunition?
This house is either guns, ammo, or kids toys, and it's hard finding a clean spot where there's not Tonka trucks and Barbie dolls and mixed in with all kinds of sporty gear.
So, it's the one clean corner of the house I could find.
Yeah, I mean, I'm looking.
I see Kipling in the background, Hemingway.
It's almost as though, like, you're a sophisticate, which we all know to not be the case.
Yeah, there's a few books there that actually that to stay on brand that Hemingway book, the big one is a first edition of the Hemingway Rye.
So if you open it up, it's actually just a bottle of rye in there that may or may not be empty.
Well, as long as we're day drinking, I mean, it's early enough in the day, especially in Montana where you're at.
So that's a good start.
I'm pretty sure every book that you can see behind Scobie is full of some type of whiskey.
Or a gun.
Or a gun.
But, you know, maybe a good place to start, actually, and your sponsors will, I'm sure, love this, but I would like to actually talk a little bit about the two sponsors you just mentioned.
Because Scobie and I first, we actually had a meeting with Wellness Company this week.
They sent us a message to our Instagram, which
If you're not following our Instagram, we're very active there.
But Scobie, I had actually seen the wellness company on your social media and just kind of took a glance at it and went, well, kind of seems cool.
You know, you can get prescriptions for travel.
And Scobie and I had a meeting with them this week.
And basically, if you, you know, Scobie just got back from, where were you, Scobie, last week?
Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
Jungle, Mexico.
Yeah, no access.
Not like Cancun, Yucatan, like the actual jungle.
I mean, you were, looked like you were hunting rodents along with oscillated turkeys.
A little bit of whatever the jungle provided down there.
But yeah, I mean, Jason and I were just talking about this, you know, we both are, we do a lot of international travel.
We have friends that are doctors that, you know, you can get some preventative prescriptions, doxycycline and amoxicillin, things like that.
But if you don't have that kind of friend network to say, okay, I'm going to Yucatan, I'm going to Africa, places where, you know, medical services are not widely available, it's a great idea to be able to prepack all this stuff, take it with you and have your own medical pharmacy with you.
Yes, Scoby sent me a picture from the cinder block shanty that he was staying in in the jungle because they actually took a, what is the Elon Musk's Wi-Fi thing?
Starlink.
You guys took Starlink down there so he could get pictures out.
He was trying to get me pictures for Field Ethos.
And it was this massive spider on his pillow in his bed and I just thought like we were talking about the wellness company and you could you can take all of these like prescriptions and things with you whether it's for some type of infection or a bite or burns or whatever else there's all kinds of different medicines in there and they're like man what a cool company.
Well, yeah, I mean, we're going to Africa next month.
You know, I know I was in Tanzania in the Maasai with Donny, you know, last summer.
We're going next month because of, you know, a thing we're working on with, you know, Rigby gun makers out of London.
So, I mean, yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense.
We're going to need you to get us some free kits, Don.
Listen, I'll work on that.
I don't know if, you know, maybe they'll hook me up.
Otherwise, you can get 15% using my promo code.
So, you know, get after it, guys.
Or you can buy them for us.
Why don't you give everyone who's not, you know, who doesn't know, because again, I've talked about it on the show.
If you follow me on social, you know, certainly on Instagram, you see me, you know, we'll put up, you know, I'll put up spear fishing videos where we're, you know, chasing after like 400 pound bluefin tuna with spear guns and, you know, sheep in Mongolia and, you know, eating sheep meat cooked over, you know, horse shit, you know, all over the world.
But, you know, Jason, give a little bit of the audience, you know, a background on Field Ethos.
I mean, sort of, you know, what it is, what it stands for, how it's even evolved in the last few years that we've been doing this.
Yeah, so it started really with
With us wanting to create something that actually spoke to us, right?
Something that you and I would want to read.
You and I were having a conversation on a hunt about how there was very little out there that, even in the firearms and hunting industry and that side of our lifestyle, there's very little out there that actually spoke to me and you.
And everything had just kind of gone
We're good to go.
We, you know, built a plan, figured out how this whole thing was going to look.
One of the things I wanted to do was leverage mine and your friendship to get me access to cool hunts that I wouldn't get to go on unless I went with you.
So, I used you.
Yeah, it's cool.
I used you in the early days.
Then we brought on some other friends, Dave Etter, Colin Jones.
We ended up in just kind of a random meeting with Scobie, and I had heard Scobie's name kind of thrown around before.
And to describe Scobie very quickly, I was talking to an outfitter in Africa one time, and I said, I think Mike Scobie is going to come work with us.
And this is a guy on the other side of the world, and he goes,
Oh man, that guy's a legend.
I've heard about him in my camp.
People talk about him around the campfire.
Usually in a bad way, but still.
You can still be a legend even if it's like you're a legendary dickhead.
It's fine.
So we had this meeting with Scobie and we were trying to figure out how to maybe work together at our two different companies.
We got off the phone and about 30 minutes later, I called Dave and I was like, man, we've got to figure out a way to hire that guy.
That guy is awesome.
And Dave said, well, it's funny that you say that because Scobie actually called me after the call and said, man, you know, keep me in mind for the growth of your company.
And so anyways, we brought on Mike Scobie and things just really kind of started to take shape.
Yeah, for people who don't know, you know, Mike basically was, you know, led one of the leading sort of publications in outdoor, you know, in sort of the outdoor space, guns, hunting, shooting, you know, for years, and literally just liked what we were doing, you know, left to join a startup, you know, probably, I don't want to say an easy job, but, you know, a cush job with sort of recurring revenue that was just sort of, you know, you're the king of the space to go work at this sort of little, you know, rabble-rousy kind of startup job.
So, Mike, what was that like?
Fun.
That's why I did it was fun.
I think not only was hunting and gun magazines getting really woke to Jason and your point.
Well, soft, apologetic, all terms there, but also
They're very vertically integrated.
So if you look at like hunting publications today, if you're interested just in whitetails, you know, there was a publication for you.
If you're interested just in, you know, whatever it might be, waterfowl, upland bird hunting, elk hunting, there's some kind of dedicate, that's all they cover.
And what really attracted me about Field Ethos, the nature of the guys around, it was fun.
That was always a draw, but we've created a brand that you can pick up any magazine, any one of our magazines, and it may have an African safari piece.
We're good to go.
We're just doing another whitetail story or this is just purely a duck story.
I always use the example that you know the article I've seen 5,000 you know 9,476 ways to catch spring bass I'm like or you know or the stories you know we we went on an elk hunt and we we saved the hoof so that we could carve chest pieces out of it because you know I guess you know that that had to be the justification uh for hunting as opposed to you know hey the meat's going to be used but we actually like to hunt and that's okay.
Or adventure.
Think about all of our conversations offline.
It ranges from literally watches, to motorcycles, to guns, to cheap guns, to expensive guns.
I mean, we have a broad breadth of interest, which I think is true of most of the sportsmen out there.
And of course, our followers are into that.
They like that broad breadth of things like we do, and it makes for a much more interesting conversation.
Yeah, and I feel like we were just hungry for a brand that
That basically reflected how we speak to one another around a campfire.
Those conversations, those personalities that show up when nobody else is looking, that you can just be who you are and live the life that we want to live regardless of what other people think about it.
That was how we wanted to form this brand and we've done that.
From the articles and our website, even our products, basically our personalities are involved in every aspect of our business.
An unapologetic brand that we're using to try to inspire others to live an iconic life and do it in a way that they don't have to be, they don't have to, you know, guard their words or change who they are just because people are watching.
And so we've done that.
And Don, you're kind of an expert at that, of kind of the unapologetic, just be who you are.
By the way, I had a
We're good to go.
I'm somewhat of the hot-headed one.
I'm kind of the gas, and Don's, a lot of times, the brakes.
He's just very contemplative, and she couldn't believe it.
Hey, contrary to popular belief, folks, it's not just fire and brimstone, though I can do that pretty well myself.
Yeah, but you represent kind of the unfiltered, unapologetic male in this country.
And you're very, very kind of out front with that stuff.
And you also have this whole other life, I think, that people are shocked to find out about.
I mean, you've been, you started shooting and hunting when you were like 12.
And you're a few years older than me.
So I mean, we've been, we've both been at this
Forever.
Scobie's been hunting and shooting since he was a little kid.
You know, you have been on some of the most difficult hunts in the world, sheep hunts and things like that.
Scobie has been on just about every hunt in the world.
He's probably the most traveled friend I have.
But really, it was an opportunity for us to go, all right, like, let's take this side of our lives that we love a lot and turn it into a business for all of us that we have fun doing.
And it's a lot of fun.
I mean, the three of us are going to meet up in, what, three weeks to hunt in Africa with Rigby Rifles, one of the most legendary rifle companies of all time.
And we get to go over there and hunt with these guys and hunt together and just goof off.
Yeah, you know, I don't know if we're allowed to even talk about it yet, but even doing a collab with a 200-year-old British company as a four-year-old brand, their first sort of like, you know, let's call it co-brand collab in its history.
I'm like, man, it feels like we're doing something right because of that.
Yeah, and Scobie will tell you, they approached us about that, which when Scobie told me about it,
He said, man, what an honor to have this company want to put our name associated with their brand.
I mean, honestly, I'm shocked that they have watched some of the things that we've done and agreed to even work with us.
I agree.
I'm like, wait, I thought it was like, wait, is it like?
April 1st?
Are you fucking with me?
That's just gotta be a joke, but it isn't.
But I think you're right.
We're also on to something, because I think one of the sort of statistics when I'm looking at field ethos is where we are actually with female following.
In the hunting space, Mike, you can talk about this more, but if you had a hunting magazine that has 3% female following,
5% female following that would be like a huge win and we're at like 32-33% female following which is like it's almost like everything we're talking about like hey like chicks actually don't necessarily want like effeminate men like it's okay to actually be masculine toxic masculinity is a leftist soundbite and it's totally bullshit like everyone hates the toxic masculine guy until the shit hits the fan and they actually need them to save their ass
No, it's been shocking to see that and kind of harking back to what Jason was saying about getting called by London Times.
We've been profiled as a men's adventure lifestyle magazine by Slate, by Politico, by London Times, and all of them, I think, went into that conversation or that interview with a gotcha moment, a gotcha against Field Ethos, a gotcha against Don, you personally.
And at the end of the day, they all wrote
Pretty glowing articles about us because there was not a lot here.
It's just a men's adventure lifestyle brand and it's been widely accepted, you know, even among groups that normally would not embrace what we're doing.
Yeah, we honestly, both of those articles were very fair representations of who we are.
I was shocked about that, by the way.
I figured this late one was just gonna be like, you know, Don Jr.
is Satan, and these people are, you know, borderline retarded.
You're allowed to say that these days, that it's making a comeback, despite I'll probably get canceled anyway, etc.
It was like, I read it, I was like...
Yeah, like, you know, that's obviously left-leaning, but like, I'm fine with anything.
I'm fine with anything in here.
Well, both of them, both of the articles were written by liberal females.
And if you read the articles, you know, one of them, the writer for Slate, you could tell she actually likes us.
She didn't come out and say that, but she was like, you know, I like what these guys are doing.
I bought all their magazines.
Politico was very much the same way.
Rosie wrote an awesome article that I thought was very fair.
So to have,
Those two writers look at our brand and not absolutely trash us.
We felt like, all right, well, at least they get what we're doing.
They might not agree with it, but they don't hate it.
And I think that's because
It's just an accurate portrayal of who we are.
You know, Scobie will tell you that our female demographic following is largely there because we are putting ourselves out there as a masculine lifestyle brand.
And we're not pandering to anybody.
We don't want women to feel excluded.
We love it when they participate in our brand.
We have female writers and things like that.
Things have gotten so bad in our country and in the world that it's becoming popular again just to not pander.
I mean, it doesn't even really matter what side you're on, as long as it's obvious that you're just being true and not pandering to a group.
I think we've gone so far the other direction where you know oh she's a female hunter or it's a black hunter you know there's the entire organization's about black outdoorsmen and and female outdoorsmen shoot like a woman it's like how about just shoot how about just hunt how about just be a hunter you know I don't think we've part and parceled
those segments of the industry out.
We've just said you're part of the tribe, regardless if you're a woman, black, somebody of color, don't care.
You're a hunter, adventurer, fisherman, don't care.
And that's, I think, a major difference between Field Ethos and many other organizations today.
Yeah, no, I feel like so many of the other, you know, when they have females, it's like, here's a female in a bikini, exercising terrible trigger discipline, holding a gun that she's clearly never shot before.
And they're like, well, that's normal.
That's their female following.
Whereas ours are, you know, it's Rachel Carey, who's like a world, literally a world-class shooter.
You know, Kristen Oteo, who's a taxidermist, like does that for a living.
You know, they're not like, you know,
Here, you're going to be in the outdoors for the first time.
There are people that actually live the similar, you know, lifestyle to us.
I mean, the Slate article was sort of interesting because, I mean, it actually called us, uh, Field Ethos was strangely captivating.
And this was coming from, you know, obviously a liberal woman that writes for Slate Magazine.
Uh, what do you think?
You know, whether it was Politico or Slate, that it would have been different had it been a liberal man writing the article?
Like, is it the woman thing?
Because they're like, you know what?
Maybe, like, a little bit of that masculinity is actually what's missing in our lives right now, that they're all of a sudden fascinated?
I definitely think it would have been different.
I definitely would have think it would have been different.
But, you know, we've reached a point where
Whatever you're doing, as long as it's the truth and is refreshing and different, right?
As long as you're actually honest with how you're putting yourself out there, that's what's different.
We're not influencers.
We're not posting selfie TikTok videos with music, with our hunting gear on.
We're just being who we are.
And
You know, I hate the word ambassador, but we're bringing all these people into our, kind of our brand, into our community or whatever you would want to call it.
I mean, SCOBY is even, we even have a midget demographic because of SCOBY.
Drew?
Large, large midget, well, kind of a pun intended, large midget demographic.
Yeah, Scoby really has been an ambassador to the midget community, and he's kind of pioneering a midget voice within our brand, and so we're throwing out a pretty broad net these days.
But on this Africa trip, it's the first time the three of us have gotten a chance to hang out.
Quite a while.
I mean, obviously you're busy, Don.
We see each other briefly at like trade shows and things like that.
But it is the first time the three of us in maybe a year have gotten to hang out where it wasn't like, all right, we're on a mission to get business done.
So we actually get to spend some time goofing off and hanging out.
What are you hoping to get out of this trip, since you obviously don't get this many breaks right now?
Listen, just looking to chill out.
You know, the campfire time is everything for me.
It's actually much less about the hunt these days.
You know, I'll put myself through the ringer maybe later in the summer before, you know, on a sheep hunt, but that's like literally, you know, by yourself.
You know, in a tent, you know, no base camp, no nothing.
Like, it's more of an endurance challenge than anything.
But like, you know, in Africa stuff, when you can, you know, have a little bit more of a collective, it's a little less, you know, myopically focused on a single thing.
And, you know, it's just, it's so much fun.
So I'm just, honestly, I'm looking forward to the stories around the campfire.
I'm looking forward to that time because, you know,
Man, we live in crazy times.
I know my world's going to be pretty insane this year.
Obviously, there's going to be a lot less of the outdoor stuff that, you know, I got to do because, you know, I'm hunting something very different.
And it's, you know, it's going to be nuts.
So I'm looking forward to it.
Just like kind of downtime with friends and
Yeah, dude, that's the stuff that's sort of gone missing from it.
You know, these days, you know, I feel like so many of the public, you know, everything's about, well, you know, if you did, if you shot a 169 whitetail, but it wasn't 170, it's like, you didn't really shoot a whitetail.
It's like, it's become such bullshit.
You're chasing, you know, every quarter inch.
And it's, it's unrealistic for most people, you know, whether it's geographically or cost-wise or anything.
So, you know, the reality for me, it's, you know, I will say, you know, the hunting, fishing, outdoor shooting, all that stuff kept me out of so much other trouble growing up as a kid from,
Uh, New York City, because it was like, sort of hard to get in trouble if you're gonna meet a duck blind at 4.30 in the morning.
It's, you know, that, certainly, I was certainly no angel.
Uh, you know, but these things there, and that's the part that's not conveyed these days.
It's, you know, the camaraderie, the stories, the bullshitting, the ball-breaking.
I mean, the ball-breaking will be epic.
Uh, you know, that may even get to be too much for this show, especially once you incorporate, you know, like, let's call it, scoby levels of booze to the mix, et cetera, et cetera.
It's gonna...
Or, actually, or Jason, you know, there's some good stories there, too.
Yeah, I'm no stranger to the imbibing.
No, you usually get, like, thrown out of the trade shows after the first day, so, you know, it's solid.
Then it's like, so I gotta do all this shit here?
Like, this is, yeah.
So on our last safari that Scobie and I did together, he tells me that he gets in the Land Cruiser, and he's like, hey, I brought a flask for us.
And I was like, oh, great.
We'll open the flask a little bit later and have a good time.
I turn around, and Scobie has a flask that is about 12 inches tall and 10 inches wide.
It's called a fifth.
A whole two-fifths inside of it, actually.
I started laughing and Scobie said, I got an entire bottle of booze in this flask.
So we're bringing that type of energy to this Africa trip.
That's got to be the next Field Ethos product.
And I've seen it numerous times with TSA.
That flask is no joke.
It's that big around.
It's that tall.
It'll hold two fists easily.
We need to stamp that with field ethos, and then on the bottom, in big letters, say three ounces.
Because that's all TSA does is they flip it over and go, oh, it's under three ounces?
You can bring it.
Listen, for all they know, it's insulated.
It's something or other.
Therefore, it could very easily be three ounces, Mike.
I like this.
Yeah.
So that's, uh, we need a whole section of Scobie travel hacks.
Um, and when, when we, when we had that meeting with the wellness company this week, I told him we basically needed, um, a flask of whiskey and, uh, some hangover remedies in our wellness kit.
And she, uh, I don't think she took that very seriously, but.
Yeah, you, you can probably drink through malaria and kill that stuff if you go hard enough, but, uh, you, you may not be, you know, but.
Scobie's never gotten sick.
I don't think so.
Nothing can actually survive in that fire.
The mosquitoes bite him and just die.
The best travel hack I've gotten, Don, you've experienced it firsthand.
We were driving across Colorado, smoking cigars in the rental car.
Immediately upon picking up your rental car, you call Hertz or National or whomever and say, hey, this car smells like smoke.
I just picked it up five minutes ago.
And they go, we'll bring it back.
We'll give you a new one.
And you say, no, no, it's all right.
I'm already on the road, but I just want to note it in my account.
They go, okay, no problem.
And then you can smoke cigars the rest of the trip with zero impunity.
So Jason, I mean, we actually have sort of a whole thing going with rental cars and how far, you know, how far we can take it.
I mean, you know, some of those hacks end up in our Sunday stories.
Maybe talk a little bit about that and sort of the outward participation of others giving, you know, sending in their photos and, you know, that's what's sort of cool about the brand.
I mean, it's become sort of organic.
Guys that have never written, you know,
You know, professionally or otherwise, sending in an article that's just an absolute, you know, some incredible veterans articles.
That's how they got into fly fishing after flying like F-18s, and to, you know, just get out of the fog of war and stuff like that.
So, it's become this sort of just organic, you know, participation.
But, you know, to talk a little bit about the Sunday stories, for those, you know, you want to get a little taste of Field Ethos, you know, before you subscribe to the magazine or anything like that, you know, you can follow us along on, you know, on Instagram there, and we have some fun with it.
Yeah, our Sunday Q&As are a time to answer questions from our followers and our readers, and nobody is safe.
If you ask a stupid question, you're going to get a stupid answer.
There's travel tips, there's gun tips, things like that.
I kick a lot of them over to you, and when we're together, I'll actually get you to answer some of those questions sometimes.
But it's
People have a lot of fun with Sunday Q&A.
It's kind of our biggest thing in terms of participation with our brand.
We had a question recently that was, I'm in my 20s, what's the best way for me to actually find a woman I can marry?
And my response was, go outside the country.
White women under 40 are the most dangerous creatures on the planet.
And it obviously is a joke, right?
My wife is white and she's 39, right?
And what I said was, you're rolling the dice if you marry a white woman under 40, is how I phrased it.
Yeah, so that gave you just enough leeway to get out of trouble, right?
Yeah, rolling the dice, which means I'm not talking about all of them,
So we get this long email from this female follower and subscriber like, I'm canceling my subscription because of the way you guys talk about white women and blah blah.
And I was like,
First of all, I said you're rolling the dice.
I didn't lump all of them in there.
We would never do that.
That said, on a per capita basis, you're probably still accurate, right?
But I was basically like, you know, but you are exactly who I was referring to and we're happy to lose you as a subscriber.
So it's a way for us just to put ourselves out there a little bit in a real honest way and have a lot of fun with it.
We get probably
200 to 300 questions a Sunday, and we'll answer 75 to 100 of them.
And honestly, there have been times where I've had a few drinks, maybe on a flight, and I fire up the old Q&A, and the next day I look at them and I'm just thankful we still have sponsors.
Yeah, some of the times I'm like, I look at them and I'm like, oh man!
And again, it's not like I'm exactly known for like restraint or being like reserved, so if I'm like,
It'll basically be if you got drunk Don to answer a bunch of questions.
Yeah.
And sometimes that comes through, but yeah, it's a lot of fun.
The rental car thing, it actually, you know, promoting our unapologetic use of rental cars started when we were throwing dead coyotes in the back of a Tahoe in Kansas in the middle of winter, and I tagged Enterprise Rental Car in it.
And we kept showing clips of us piling up this Tahoe with dead coyotes.
And I had somebody from Rental Car reach out on our Sunday Q&A, and he was a high-level person with Enterprise.
And he was like, this is great.
I want to set you guys up with
A national account because you guys are obviously traveling a lot and you do work-related things.
But he's like, man, a couple of us have sent these around to each other at Enterprise and we love this stuff.
And then you guys kind of one-upped it with Chess McDowell.
Oh yeah.
We've got some really big, you know, black bear in North Carolina in the back of really small cars.
And we've all, you know, I think we had like three mule deer or like two white tails and a mule deer in a
You know, in a mid-size SUV, uh, just last year with, you know, with Spencer out there and...
In the Dakotas?
And Scobie with his cigar smoking, we're careful to show that after the trip, not during the trip.
I'm pretty sure Scobie has actually been charged for smoking in a rental car before, but yeah, we kind of take everything that we do while we're on trips and show everybody what we're up to.
And it's kind of the good, the bad, and the ugly, where
No smart media company would show the things that we show.
I think that's what's missing.
Everyone thinks that.
Everyone's worried about what HR is going to say.
I think people are sick of that shit.
We've sort of taken the opposite approach.
Let's just do what's actually happening.
Let's say the things that people are actually thinking.
Ask the questions or make the inappropriate comment that everyone's probably thinking about doing.
And when you do that, everyone, it's sort of, you know, we enjoy it.
And I guess we're also not beholden to that advertiser model.
Because like, one of the funniest things for this one is, that's like a business guy, you know, the amount of guys like, we want to advertise with you.
We're like, no, thanks.
Like, why not?
Because like, we'd never actually use your shit.
It's garbage.
And like having, you know, the brand tight that way is sort of nice.
We can just choose to not
You know, bombard everyone with all that crap that you see in so much of the other advertiser magazine, where there's 65 pages of, like, you know, ads for trinkets that are garbage.
Yes, Scopey turns down six-figure deals for us that don't represent who we are and our brand, and it would feel like we were just selling out to do these things.
Well, I think one of the biggest differences with us, and we kind of come full circle on the brand,
Being involved in professional media for 30 years, you're sitting around campfires with very known outdoor writers or television people or personalities, and they've got great stories around a campfire.
I mean, things you go, man, that is a fantastic story.
Yeah, I wish I could ever write that somewhere.
You know, you never could talk about that.
You're like, yeah, you can.
You know, we've created a brand that we do talk about that.
We do talk about all the good, the bad, the ugly, the funny, the off-colored, you know, the things, you know, Don, to your point, sitting around a campfire in Africa, that's where the best stories come out of.
And those are the stories that traditional media has tamped down, would never publish.
You know, I'm not a fan of sharing that.
They've got to always show hunting or fishing or adventuring up in this holier-than-thou light, and they're missing the real story.
And that's where I think we're very different in that.
It's the honesty.
Yeah, I think one of the best articles, I won't get into the details of it because I don't know if he wants us talking about it per se, but, you know, sort of this legacy, you know, outdoor writer, you know, written books and book on books and sort of, and, you know, you've heard the story, you know, greatest hunter, yada, yada, whatever it was, it's like, no, no, no, like, give us the article about like, when you, you shat your pants and like, couldn't, couldn't hunt.
And it was like,
Oh, I got that story, actually.
Like, let's see what it was.
And even for him, you get the article.
It's like, wow, this is cool.
It's amazing.
And even for him, it's like, wow, it was actually so refreshing, you know, writing, writing the article that isn't like, I'm the greatest hunter in the world and this is what it is.
And like, it was the just
The stuff that actually happens.
Like, you know, nothing's ever perfect.
I thought that was such a cool article and probably one of the only interesting articles I'd sort of probably read in recent time from, you know, that group of guys who've just sort of been recycling the same story for decades.
We've got a couple writers that, um...
That Scobie has worked with or that I've worked with before Field Ethos that we basically said, look, this is your opportunity to say whatever you want, right?
To tell this story the way you wanted to tell it without having to worry about ad dollars or pissing somebody off.
Now you can tell the real version of these stories.
And these guys, they love it.
And I would say maybe
10% or actually probably less than 10% of our articles are written by professional writers and guys that are from our industry or that make a living writing.
When we started Field Ethos, you and I talked about how we wanted to give everybody an opportunity to tell great stories.
We didn't care if you were a great writer, but if you had a great story to tell, we were like, okay, we'll work with these people to publish their stories.
So I would say 9 out of 10 of our writers are guys like
Like Josh Kwong, who's an English teacher in Mississippi.
Half Chinese, half American.
English teacher in Mississippi.
The guy's amazing.
Jimmy Ewing.
Born and raised in Georgia.
Homeschooled.
Just amazing writer.
And he's not a writer.
He doesn't write for a living.
I mean, we brought him... Well, Pat Hemingway Adams.
I mean, Hemingway's actually a great grandson, and he's like, hey, I've never really written before.
Let's take a shot at this.
It's like, holy crap, it's really good.
Pat and I talked on the phone and I, so yeah, he's Ernest Hemingway's great grandson.
Pat and I talked on the phone one day, a couple of years back.
And he had found us on social media and I reached out to him and just said, Hey, let's, let's talk.
And I, and we, we talked and I was like, man, this guy's got just a great personality.
And I said, why don't you, why don't you write something for us?
And he said, well, I guess I could try.
I've never written anything for anybody before outside of school.
But let me, let me take a crack at it.
And he sent me an article and I called him and I said,
We can't run this online.
It's too good.
We've got to save this one for print.
I said, write another one, maybe make it a little bit shorter, but write something that we can put on digital.
And he wrote another article and I went, well, we're not putting that online either.
And finally, his third article, we ran online and saved the first two for print because they were so damn good.
But there's a lot of guys that end up on the pages in our magazine that have never written anything before.
We're good to go.
The dad went out on a mule deer hunt.
It was just this incredible mule deer hunt, and he told the story to his son.
His son wrote the story for us.
We published it, and unfortunately his dad had passed away before it went to print, but several of that guy's friends reached out to say, man, this is so cool that you published this story.
This is my buddy.
It means a lot to him, and it would have meant a ton to his dad.
So just
Just cool stuff like that where we're making our audience the storyteller and nobody really seems to do that.
It's a much heavier lift on the edit side, but we're producing, we've built kind of this culture around our brand of, hey, this isn't just a representation of us, it's a representation of you and your lifestyle as well.
And people have latched onto it because of that.
Well, I mean, it sort of started off as, I mean, it's a pretty eclectic crew when you talk about, you know, the guys and the partners in this.
I mean, it started off, obviously, you and I having a conversation, and then, you know, you had another friend, you know, who was a former SEAL sniper.
You were, you know, a game warden and federal law enforcement officer.
You know, Dave Edders, like,
The best-looking WASPy guy in New York City, of all places, runs a bow-hunting company out of Park Avenue.
And then it sort of just grew from there.
If you look at some of the team, we can't even talk about what some of them do, but it is sort of an interesting mix that you get all sorts of perspectives, all sorts of different backgrounds, all sorts of experience that I think, in the aggregate, really makes a big difference in terms of being able to tell that story.
Scobia, you can talk about
You know, working in even the outdoor space, like, how few people, at least that I've met, actually have, like, much outdoor experience in outdoor publishing.
I know Dave, you know, he was one of the only guys, when he worked at one of the publications that you eventually were running, like, as his first job out of school, was shocked that he was the only guy that had ever killed a deer that worked at a hunting publication.
It was, like, how is that possible?
It's shocking.
I mean, there's exceptions to that, right?
I mean, you've got bodies in the world that are very experienced hunters.
They've done everything.
And then I've seen the absolute bulk majority on the other side where it's like never have gutted a deer.
Might have killed a deer on a guided hunt out of a tree stand and, you know, with a rifle and then had somebody else take care of it for him.
Had never, probably did not know how to set up a tree stand, you know, for that matter.
Never hung one themselves, you know.
So, you see the whole breadth of that, you know.
I've just been thinking about, it's interesting in the hunting world that you touched on it about being in Africa.
The killing, once you've done enough of it, it's still fun.
It's still why you go there.
It's still, you know, the reason to existence, but it's that shared camaraderie.
It's the family time.
It's the, you know, spending time with guys you like and hearing these types of stories firsthand that really is the draw and the attraction.
But on the flip side of that,
I just got back from Mexico, as Jason was saying.
That is an absolute one percenter, lonely hunt.
Kind of talking, like you were talking about sheep hunting.
The guys that were in camp there all have shot multiple grand slams of sheep.
They're worldly, worldly, whether it be contestant level, whether it be award-winning contestant level hunters.
And they all compare trying to get a broccadeer, which is what we are really ultimately looking for in Mexico, to getting sheep.
It was that difficult.
And it's,
I thought about how miserable, not miserable of a hunt, it was an amazing hunt with really cool, you know, experiences in the jungle.
But as far as that camaraderie, it was non-existence because you are up three hours before daylight, you are climbing up into a Machan, their version of a wood tree stand.
And you would sit there all day and eat rolled up tacos in your stand, and you would come out at dark and ride back to camp, not talk to anybody all day, ride back two hours.
You'd get back into camp and have dinner at 11 o'clock at night, and you'd roll in to get bit by bugs all night, as Jason was saying, spiders, ticks, fleas, whatever.
And then you'd get up and do this again.
And I did it for eight days, never saw a broccadier, never had much of a conversation.
And you talk to some of these Weatherby guys that are trying to get this Weatherby award.
They've been there six, seven, eight times.
The guy before me had been there for 25 days straight and never saw a broccadier.
That's a totally different focus port of the hunting community that is not very enjoyable, honestly, you know.
Yeah, the guys that go, you know, they're chasing like the tiny ten in Africa.
They've spent 67 days, you know, in Uganda, in the jungles, like looking for, you know, a deer that's literally this big.
And I'm like, I don't know, man.
That's how these broccadier were.
Like, if you told like my in-laws, you know, I came back from this hunt and told them, like, what's a broccadier?
I'm like, you know, they're expecting like this 400 pound, 200 inch deer.
I'm like, no, no, they're about, you know, Brittany size.
And a good one's got, you know, spikes on it this tall.
That's it.
That's a broccadier.
But it's all the, it's all the cool things that happen on a trip like that, that you won't get anywhere else if you don't, if you don't pursue something like that.
You know, Scoby, Scoby almost died on a dirt bike because they didn't bother to tighten down the axle screws.
Um, on, on the, on the front fork.
So like, you know, he got to see the jungle from a dirt bike for a week.
Um, and got to see people setting up roadblocks because they couldn't get water in a Mexican city and, and they blocked every, every section of roadway.
So Scobie didn't even know if he was going to be able to get to his, get back to the airport on time.
Um, and all these adventurous things that happen because he was hunting brocket deer, um, and in this weird place.
I've tried to impart that into non-hunters or people that don't understand our lifestyle.
It's a gateway to adventure.
It's not the fact of killing a broccadier.
It's the fact you're looking for a broccadier or a tiny tan or whatever you're going for brought you to these really weird places in the world that if you were just a tourist, and I've done the tourist thing in Costa Rica, which we were
Real close to Costa Rica slash Belize, Guatemala there.
And you would take a tour bus into a pretty much paved path and you'd walk through the jungle and you'd see parrots and you'd see monkeys and howler monkeys and then you'd come back to a five-star resort at night and have a phenomenal meal.
This is the antithesis of that.
You know, you're staying with the locals in a cinder block hut, getting bit up by bugs, riding on the back of, you know, horribly dangerous motorcycles or, you know, the backs of trucks that aren't roadworthy.
If you weren't doing something stupid like looking for a brocadier, you would never subjugate yourself to this, whether that's Africa or Asia.
It's the excuse to put yourself in an uncomfortable position.
I mean, Jason, you had that with me a couple, what was it, last summer, you know, in Mongolia.
It was like, you know, you travel for
Yeah, 36 hours, you land in Mongolia only to hop in a car and drive off-road.
Like, because there's not even roads.
It's like, when one road gets worn out, they just move to the grass on the side of that for, you know, 27 hours.
And I put it in, you know, in one of the GPS apps, and we're driving at night.
I'm like, how do they know where we're going?
And I literally looked, and we did a 100-mile off-road loop only to cross our path.
And I'm like,
We just drove for four hours, 100 miles off road, and like, we were here four hours ago, and now we're going.
I was like, I'm actually shocked we ever found our camp.
You and I were standing there at three o'clock in the morning, crossing a river, and laughing, because we had just pushed a minivan out of a riverbed so that we could get across to the other side of the river.
And we're standing there in knee-deep water,
Pushing a white minivan out of the mud and we're just like, how the hell did we end up here?
You know, in, in the middle of nowhere, Uganda.
Um, but man, that was Mongolia, but yeah, that's what I meant.
Maybe Mongolia.
Yeah.
I know you were in Uganda before that.
So yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so in Mongolia and then a few days later, we're watching a Mongolian cook a Marmot over an open, open, um,
That was insane.
Like, this is like their turkey.
Like, their national dish.
And, you know, I'll try anything.
It's a marmot.
It's a large rodent.
They were able to shoot one, and it's interesting.
The only, like, law enforcement I saw in all of Mongolia was, like, every, like, couple hundred miles, you'd cross, like, a town where, like, when I say town, I mean, like, a stop at a gas station, maybe, or barely.
And they'd have, like, law enforcement checkpoints there, and they're literally searching for contraband marmot.
Because it's like the national delicacy, and they smuggle them into the cities, but they also carry the bubonic plague, so every year, like, people die from their national dish.
And so these guys got one, and we're in camp, we're, I mean, hundreds of miles from the nearest town, in the middle of nowhere, at 14,000 feet, there's no tree line where, you know, they literally have to cook on horse shit because it's the only thing that will burn that you can collect.
And they got one of these marmots, and it was like a celebration in camp, and they literally skin it, but they leave it whole, so it's almost like a muff.
Uh, and they get like a fire of horseshit going and they put hot rocks in the horseshit, they take the meat out of the marmot while keeping the skin whole, then they sew back up any holes in the marmot skin.
And then they take hot rocks and the chopped up meat and stick it back into the marmot skin, sew it together, put it on the fire, singe off all the hair of the marmot, and
That, that is their like national dish.
So I'm going to go try it.
And our outfitters were like, no!
I mean, it was literally like, it was like, it was going to cause a serious problem.
I had no problem trying it.
I was going to do it.
And like, the guy's like, please don't.
Cause if like, if you die on this trip, like my life's over, I can't, I can't deal with this.
Not, you know, but like, apparently that's a real problem.
And so it,
It was just fascinating to see that kind of culture that you wouldn't get going into the cities, and the cities are surprisingly urban and this, so to actually see that culture, to spend time with true, legitimate, still 365-day-a-year nomads living in portable yurts following their sheep herd through the great Mongolian steeps, it's just absolutely incredible.
Scoby, will you make a note that Don and I are not allowed to go back to Mongolia after he just told that story?
I was already detained in the basement of the airport.
He had like one more round of ammo than you were allowed to.
Yeah, for about an hour and a half.
So I know that they don't take kindly to us goofing off in their country.
And now that that story is out there, I guess we just don't go back until we figure out the statute of limitations.
But
The Statue of Limitation, Uncondraband Marmot.
For the record, we were not the ones that shot the marmot.
There's got to be a thing there.
Well, they were actually hunting them with golden eagles.
I mean, like you're going to camp and there's like a golden eagle there.
I'm like, well, what's that?
It's like, well, that's like the camp gun.
I mean, that's, you know, the home of falconry and they're not doing little baby falcons.
They're, I mean,
It's pretty amazing.
New York will try to bring you up on Marmot charges now.
They haven't tried.
Well, I mean, they've brought me up on every other charge, so why the hell not?
I mean, it's like, you know, sure, you know, maybe they can get me for like a CITES violation for Marmot.
Well, I mean, we didn't kill it.
They presented it to us as a gift, so I'm sure that's fine.
But, you know, last summer you also took Donnie to Tanzania for Donnie's first safari.
Now, Donnie was with us in Mongolia.
He's been on a handful of hunts, but like you're already
Take a look!
My grandfather, you know, who escaped from communist Czechoslovakia, you know, brought me over there in the summers and, like, you know, taught me the basics and woodsmanship and time around a campfire.
That's where I learned to appreciate it at a really young age.
But, like, there was no hunting.
There was no this.
And then my dad, you know, New York City's a golfer.
Like, I just had to take every opportunity I could.
So, like, Donnie's doing crap that, you know, I could not afford or even aspire to when I was his age.
Yeah, so Scoby and I were on a call with Yamaha this week, and we're going to be working with Yamaha at Field Ethos.
We all love dirt bikes and off-roading, and Scoby said, well, you know, Don's got some property that he needs a side-by-side for, and Yamaha's like very safety-focused, right?
And they have to be.
And for the record, when I'm on a dirt bike,
I'm geared up.
But on a side-by-side, you know, that's more of like a beer drinking vehicle for me and Scobie.
And Scobie's like, Don needs a side-by-side.
And I was like, hold on, hold on.
Like, they just said that if we show side-by-sides, we need to have on helmets and safety equipment wearing the side-by-sides.
Yeah, I'm not going to lie, guys.
If I was wearing a helmet and a side-by-side, I'd have to cut off my own dick.
Well, I told I told the guy from Yamaha, who is awesome, by the way, I told Scott, I said, look, if you send Donna side by side, he is going to post videos of he and his five kids hanging off the sides of that thing while they're while they're riding around, goofing off.
And we're not going to be able to show any of it.
And so you're probably still getting a side by side, but we're going to kindly ask that you show none of that.
So, you know, your sense of self-preservation and at least Donnie's by this point is non-existent.
Highly underdeveloped sense of self-preservation.
But, you know, Donnie's getting into the moto stuff, so it's perfect.
I used to do a lot of that growing up.
I think that, you know, that was awesome.
It's sort of become something we're actually doing with the journal.
So now, you know, we got the places to ride and some, you know, awesome guys down here that are, you know, frankly, far better than we'll ever be.
So it's always great to ride with people who are better because you actually, you
You'll learn and improve, so he's super excited about that.
Yeah, it's gonna be awesome.
Scope is the reason why we have a safety third hat, and that's because of Don.
You know, it's literally the fieldie that's about, you know, safety third.
Like, it's important, but, like, it's probably not number one.
I mean, it's, you know... Rule number one, look cool.
Rule number two, have fun.
Rule number three, be safe.
Safe-ish.
Safe-ish.
But Scobie is going to do our helmet side-by-side content in Montana with a beer helmet.
And we'll be able to check that box off.
It counts as a helmet.
I'm sure.
I'm sure.
Well, by the way, speaking of advertisers, that's sort of a funny one.
Like we have had these stuff where it's like, you know, the guys that actually know what they're doing with certain brands, like call us and they're like, Hey guys, like we love what you did, but like people on our board who know nothing about what you're actually doing, they're not exactly thrilled.
So we're going to send you a letter, uh,
But we don't actually want you to change anything, it's just the note to file that we actually did something about it for either insurance reasons or otherwise, but we want you to change absolutely nothing with what you're doing, even if it's grossly inappropriate.
We're on constant probation with our partnerships.
Those poor bastards, they open up the magazine or like the Sunday stories or Instagram and everything, they gotta be like,
What's coming next?
But the thing is that they all know SCOBY and like they knew anytime they do something with SCOBY that the envelope's going to be pushed.
It's just now it's actually... Endorsed and condoned.
We're putting the content out there.
You know, in all seriousness, I'm just thinking, I've got good moto helmets, you know, good DOT 3 helmets.
I think I could epoxy, like, our Field Ethos koozies on either side of them and rig a siphon system, and that should count as a helmet.
You know, not the cheap plastic, you know, hard hat helmets, but a real helmet with, you know, drink holders on the side.
That's a perfect summer project for you.
For you and the kids.
Listen, if you're, you know, if you're on private land or something like that, I don't know that there's any rules governing those things.
So, you know,
I imagine they have not covered that in the fine print, although these days maybe the fine print covers everything, I don't know.
We need to make a plan to get Ron.
I mean, Yamaha's probably the biggest corporate group we've worked with, so we need to get Ron Dan in some of this content.
We need to have the minority box checked off.
Yeah, but just for you guys to know, Ron Dan, also known as The Ron Dan, is our Director of Diversity and Inclusion.
Actually, right now he's our sensei.
Sensei.
Okay, I guess it went from Director of Diversity and Inclusion to Czar of Diversity and Inclusion to Sultan of Diversity and Inclusion.
And he's the only one also with a picture in the masthead so that we get full credit for actually taking diversity and inclusion very quite seriously.
Yeah, so we put, you know, Ron's black, so we put him out front and center, obviously.
By the way, today is Brett Voorhees' birthday.
He's our other black friend.
Like what, like 3%?
I'm not, yeah, I'm not sure if you know that, Don, but he did a Ancestry.com thing, and he's like .0003% African American.
Hey, by today's, 2024 sounds legit.
He identifies.
Send him a culturally proper birthday greeting today.
We have built a cast of characters for Field Ethos and basically it is, we end up becoming friends with
Our sponsors and the people we work with and our writers.
And so even the companies that probably have us on probation, when they get out there and hunt with us, they're like, man, this is a lot of fun.
And the message is a bit controversial because it's different.
Not because we're doing anything wrong, but because it's just different.
But it's attracting people, though, because, like, you know, I always talk about, you know, when we do the trade show parties, and, like, we'll literally take, like, a suite at a hotel, like, you know, there's these guys that, and some of them are advertised, you know, they're spending, you know, $2 million on their shot show party in Vegas, and it's like, we literally were there being like, holy shit, we're out of natural light, like, we gotta do a beer run to 7-Eleven, because it was like, literally,
An iPhone hooked up to a speaker and natural light beer.
It was basically a low-budget, like, college fraternity party, and yet, like, you had, like, senators and congressmen and some of the biggest guys in outdoors, and you had MMA fighters, and, like, I guess the guitars were, like, Nirvana and Soundgarden.
Like, people from, you know, Dan Henderson, a couple of MMA fighters and MLB players.
Like, literally, by far the coolest and most eclectic group
Um, in all of, like, Las Vegas during SHOT Show, which is a lot of people, like, literally end up in, like, a small, you know, hotel suite, drinking natural light, and it wasn't like they showed up and were disappointed and left in five minutes because there was no entertainment or anything really going on.
They stayed till 5.30 in the morning, uh, because it was that much fun, because it was just, there's a difference between just putting on a show, you know, spending arbitrary money, and just hanging out with badass people doing cool shit.
And if you're lucky, you get Scobie's invite for the next morning, where Scobie will pay for you to have a full IV in an IV cart that you can roll around in the suite with Scobie.
That's always a fun after-party event.
Brings you right back to speed.
But if you recall, that Nevada Beer Light Run, we commanded the 60-year-old, I don't know if he's 60, 59, 60, CEO of a major sponsor to go on the beer run for us.
Hey, you want to be invited back?
Go get some beer.
Yeah.
For the record, I went with him as his underling to carry beer.
He pretty much just smoked cigarettes and made sure we got to the beer store in the right place in Las Vegas.
But, you know, what we do that's different is we underproduce everything.
Um, and it makes it, it gives you that authentic feel.
A lot of our content, especially the video side, um, like when Scoby was in Mexico, he was able to send me videos that he was just taking on his iPhone.
And so it's not that overproduced, um, you know, you know, refined hunting look that everybody is putting out there these days.
It's more of like, all right, you're looking at this through our lens.
Our parties reflect that as well.
You know, um,
It's real.
I mean, but that's the reality.
I mean, in this world where everything's like, you know, keeping up with the Joneses and, you know, it's, you know, you look at people's lives on Instagram and then you actually know them and you're like, ah, these two things are not the same.
Like, ours kind of are, because they're low budget across the board.
I got to our Dallas Safari Club party this year, and I walk in, and Scobie's already in there with a bunch of people, they're having a good time, and we've got a bar set up with really good bourbon.
We've got Chicken Cock bourbon up there, and we've got Lazy K bourbon and some other really good whiskeys and liquors sitting in a stock bar.
And I said, and after my behavior at the Dallas Safari Club before that, I stopped drinking liquor altogether.
So I walked up to Scobie and I said, Scobie, where's the beer?
And he goes,
Oh, just go into one of the bathrooms and the sinks are full of ice and beer.
So our party guests, some of these CEOs of big corporations, when they wanted a beer, they had to go into the bathroom and dig a beer out of the sink.
And they love that, you know, because it kind of reminds them of what they were doing before they became the CEO of a big company.
They were just hanging out with the guys.
And so that's kind of how we throw our parties and it just works.
I guess this is not ever part of our background.
It's very lowbrow, but fun.
Yeah.
I mean, we're part of what we've got to keep doing as a company.
And we have
We walk a fine line.
And Scobie and I, he's had to have several talking to's with me about the fine line of, okay, like, we can do these things, but we have to also be conscious that we are representing other companies and representing the people that work with us and support us.
So we figured out a way to do all of that with still being very honest with how we operate.
You had a couple talking to's with me as well, Don.
I think it was, what was it, DSC last year?
Yep.
You may or may not have gotten punched at the bar and the excuse was you were defending the honor of some gay guy at the bar.
What was really great about the story is that's not even remotely accurate.
We actually ran into the guy this year.
He's like, well, I'm the gay guy that Jason thought he was defending.
And he's like, I'm married with two kids and not even remotely gay.
So the excuse you came up with is kind of woke and whatever, but I see you the next morning with a black eye.
And I'm like, you're like, yeah, I'm going home.
I'm like, well, you know, it is day one of why we're here.
So like, it's great that you're going home, but we may need a,
There may be a time and a place.
There may be a time and a place.
First of all, it was day three.
No, it was not day three.
I had been drinking chicken cock bourbon.
The first day you arrived, second day, day three.
Okay, so I'd been drinking chicken cock bourbon non-stop since I showed up because we were trying to represent chicken cock bourbon and introduce it to the masses.
So every time I introduced it to somebody, I poured myself one.
By the time I get to the circle bar, there's this
It's kind of a funny story, and we figured it out this year.
So there's this guy from Namibia picking on this little guy, just really running him down at the bar.
And I was like, dude, why don't you leave the guy the fuck alone?
And he said something to me, and I turned, and I get hit.
And he was calling this little guy a very, you know, something you don't say, a name for gay people, you just don't say.
And he was calling the guy that, and I was like, you know, leave the guy the fuck alone.
And when I turned, I got hit.
And I stumbled backwards, and I looked around, and I saw this guy running away.
And so I was like, whatever.
Walked back out, saw Scobie, my eyebrows split open,
And so we need to add it into the show.
By the way, get us the photo.
We'll splice it in.
So I told Scobie, I said, he was like, what happened to you?
And I said, some Namibian guy just was being a dick to this kid at the bar.
And then he punched me in the face and took off.
So that was my version of what happened.
That was my reality.
Those guys came to us this year at Dallas Safari Club, like moments after we get thrown out for serving booze, I guess without a license, at the Field Ethos tent there.
So there's a recurring theme here, folks.
And those guys are like, hey man, I'm really sorry.
I'm the dude that punched Jason.
I didn't realize he was actually standing up for my friend, not the other way around.
I'm like, what?
So he shows up with a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label and comes up to me and he's like, I brought you a gift.
I'm like, what?
Hey, you know, nice to meet you.
And he was like, I'm the one that hit you last year.
And I was like,
Really?
You're not Namibian?
And he goes, no, he said, not even close.
I'm from like, you know, Michigan.
He said, he said the Namibian guy was the one being a jerk to my friend.
You said something to the Namibian guy.
I thought you were the one being a jerk to my friend.
So I punched you in the face and I took off and I'm really sorry.
And, and he's like,
I just brought you this gift to smooth it over, and I said, well, there's nothing to smooth it over.
Like, I thought it was really funny, even funnier now that I had a completely incorrect nationality.
And science.
When I heard the story first, the guy was 6'8", 6'9", 200 pounds.
He's 5'10".
Yeah, he was significantly smaller than me.
He's 5'10 with platforms on.
But so I still have a bone to pick with a Namibian, but the guy that hit me, no, we're good.
But yeah, so our behavior, my behavior has certainly taken a different direction after the next morning you called me and you said, hey, is everything OK with you?
Are you an alcoholic?
Don's like, are you OK?
And I'm like, I'm good.
I'm good.
Here's the thing, I only party like that when I'm with you guys and we go on these trips.
I'm like, my friends are here, the family's 500 miles away, it's time to cut loose.
That was the year before it shot, when Kim was pretty convinced that she could take Christian Craighead.
Yep.
That was pretty fun.
Just so you guys know, Christian Craighead is... Remember when, like, toxic masculinity was, like, a big deal, and you had the British SAS guy, like, that's, like, their Delta Force, who went into a school in Nairobi, Kenya, with either an AK or an AR, and, like, it was taken over by Boko Haram, and he went in there and killed, like, 30 bad guys, and then they tried to make him as, like, a bad guy because he literally saved the lives of all these schoolchildren, but, like, broke protocol by, like,
Just acting and doing the right thing at the right time.
So, Kim was pretty sure that she could take Christian Craighead, and that ended up in an interesting wrestling match at the party.
That's because Kim likes to party.
Kim parties.
And Kim keeps it pretty buttoned up until it's time to have a good time, and then she turns into one of the guys and can absolutely hang.
I think that may have actually been one of the greatest fights Christian's ever been in.
I think he was greatly enjoying it at the time.
Yeah.
That's become a theme of the DSC parties, when it finally winds down and nobody wants to go home.
Two years now, it's turned into a wrestling, a physical wrestling match.
Well, you got banged up pretty badly wrestling Brett this year.
It was like five in the morning.
Brett Voorhees, who's the CEO of Taurus, is, I don't know, 6'3", 250, and was an NCAA Division I, like, world-class wrestler.
And Mike was convinced at 5 in the morning that he could take him, and, you know, you put on a good show for a little while, and then not so good.
If I had slipped with dress shoes, I think it would have been even better.
Mike was a college boxer, but he wasn't allowed to punch Brett in the face.
But Brett Voorhees, let's also backtrack a little bit.
This is the same CEO that almost got in a fight with Kid Rock at a Christmas party.
Not because anybody's a bad guy, but because we over-partied a bit.
Well, yeah, that was the year before.
That was my Christmas party the year before, and so it's like, let's call it 500 of Kim's friends, like 20 of mine, and of course,
Mine are the ones actually causing trouble, and Bob's a buddy of mine, Kid Rock.
He comes over, and people are annoying him with selfies, and it's driving him nuts.
And I get rightfully so.
He's like, hey dude, really appreciate it.
We're doing a thing for Toys for Tots, for charity, literally four boatloads of toys for kids in need.
And I was like, hey man, I basically put Mike in charge of like, hey, go get shots.
Let's show him a good time.
Basically drunk enough that he hung around and, like, he threw the DJ out of the DJ booth, took over the DJ booth, and then put on, like, a two-hour piano performance, like, singing and doing, like, like, one of my neighbors, like, you know, elderly woman, is, like, a Juilliard-trained pianist, uh, and she was, like, oh, my God, he's incredible, because it's not, like, this boy band marketing shit.
There's a reason he's been around for 30 years.
It's, like, he's actually a talent, and it was pretty amazing, but, yeah, I'm, like, hey, Brett, please don't, like, please don't fight.
Kid Rock at my party, I don't need this shit!
That's just the random stuff that happens when we all get together.
Yeah.
That wrestling match last year at DSC, that turned into a chicken cock, you know, match, or a cockfighting match, where I got beat by him, so he stayed up kind of in a round-robin scenario, and we were all betting, I don't know, hundreds of dollars, just throwing cash into a ring, watching dudes wrestle.
No, but wait, but didn't Joe beat him?
So no, Joe got beat too.
He beat about eight guys and then there was some little Alaskan guy that he was like the last man standing.
He goes, I'll wrestle you.
Brett goes, you ever wrestled before?
He goes, nope.
Takes his jacket off and pin Brett in about 14 seconds.
He's a sheet guy out of Alaska, we find out.
Now, he did have a pretty deep resume in Jiu-Jitsu, but not wrestling.
Scoby actually fought and won against a Maasai chief in Africa.
Did you not?
Yes, I did.
Yeah, for $5.
I risked.
I had cuts all over me from the brush and the thorns.
You know, the Maasai's, as good as they are, they have about a 50% AIDS rate, I think.
And I thought it was a good idea to wrestle around with one in the sand for $5.
But I did get our $5 back.
Safety third.
I mean, what could go wrong?
Seems like a small price to pay for $5, because $5 is $5.
It's not easy to make $5 in by dynamics.
So Scoby wrestled a Maasai warrior and got thrown in jail at an African border checkpoint.
And this is, this is, he's, he's taught Brassett field ethos.
So that's, that's kind of, um, Well, you got thrown in jail at a checkpoint in Africa.
Like, I mean, I, you know how many times I've bribed my way across the border there.
I'm not allowed to say that now, obviously because of our immigration policies, but like back in the day before immigration was a thing, like I've been held at gunpoint at the border of Zimbabwe, like at least three times.
No, I got actually arrested and thrown in jail in South Africa one time.
That was legitimate.
The other one, I was driving through Botswana.
And as you know, you get to those border posts in the middle of the night by myself, and they close them down at like 10 o'clock at night, you know?
And so I'm just sleeping in the Land Rover, no blankets, no sweatshirt, nothing, freezing.
As you know, it gets down to 28, 29 degrees.
Shivering and also there's a little knock on my window and I roll it down and there's a little short Bushman border crossing guy sitting there.
He's like, are you spending the night?
I go, yeah, until it opens six in the morning.
He goes, do you want to sleep inside?
I go, yeah.
And I figured it had like
You know, bunk accommodations for workers or something.
No, no.
All they had was a jail cell.
And so he walks me into the jail cell with like my blanket and pillow and it's a metal cot hanging off the wall.
Nobody else was in there.
Puts me in and he closes the door behind me and latches it.
And I went, oh, that's kind of strange.
Just got locked into a jail in Botswana.
And he goes, what time do you want to get up?
I go, six o'clock in the morning.
I hear like 545, him coming down the aisle with a tray with, you know, a tea service on and a coffee service and a full breakfast ready to go.
And he wakes me up and gives me breakfast and I was on my way.
It was one of the cooler experiences I had and kind of like I was saying, if you weren't out hunting in these places, that's the kind of thing you would never run into.
Yeah.
So well, Jason, you know,
We're gonna have to do this again and tell some more, just go full story hour, but you can find all this stuff at FieldEthos.
Jason, why don't you let everyone know, you know, where they can find it, how they can subscribe, how they can, you know, look us up online, etc, etc.
So, you know, if people are looking to hear more of this kind of stuff, you know, it's out there and available.
Yep, so FieldEthos.com.
We have a lot of articles, videos, you know, content on FieldEthos.com.
We also have an online store where we sell lifestyle products.
I'm wearing one of our shirts right now.
The Safety Third Hat.
Safety third hat.
This Zenith shirt, it's like a warm weather long-sleeve button-up.
It's got a bunch of micro holes in it so the wind will blow through it actually.
We sell our own footwear there.
We have a rabid following on Instagram.
It's at Field Ethos.
We also have Field Ethos Waterman, which is more of like
Spearfishing, saltwater fishing, a lot of that lifestyle that you live in Florida, by the way.
We need to come down and get on your boat soon and go fishing.
Let's go.
We need a Bahamas trip.
We haven't done that in a year, so we got to get over there.
Go.
Go to Walker's again or something.
Yeah, so fieldethos.com.
We also have Field Ethos Outrider where you can book a trip to go with us into the field on a hunting trip or a spearfishing trip or whatever we're up to.
You can come along with us by booking through there.
Or, by the way, just the guys that we've hunted with and sort of verify, you know, our goods.
So that's everything from like the most extreme sort of, you know, sheep type adventure or Africa adventure to like, you know, your first hunt or, you know, waterfowl or fishing.
So a little bit of everything at Field Ethos Outrider.
We have fielded a lot of people on their first hunt or their first international adventure.
We've put those guys in the field to that area of our company.
So over the next year, follow along, subscribe to The Print Journal.
It's $15 a quarter, so $60 for the year.
For four print issues and Mike has done a really good job of spearheading our print journal, which is in our opinion the best product out there in our lifestyle category.
So yeah, we've got several ways people can show up and support the brand.
Sign up for the email list as well, just at FieldEthos.com, right?
Yep.
Those are pretty fun, good short stories that may not be for the print journal or something like that, but always sort of a good couple-minute read.
I think we've got 270,000 subscribers there now with a crazy high open rate because the content on our email is just fun.
We don't send emails too often, and it's just kind of a break in the day that you read some short articles that come through in your email.
So yeah, that's the best way to kind of support Field Ethos and where we are right now.
Well, gentlemen, thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Everyone who's tuned in, thank you for tuning in.
Make sure to check out our incredible sponsors, Public Square, the marketplace for the Patriot economy, and download the Public Square app.
Public Square actually does a bunch
With Field Ethos, and you can find our products over on there as well.
So if you're already on the app or signed up, you can check it out that way.
Also, The Wellness Company, go to twc.health slash triggered.
Get 15% off their Restful Sleep formula as well as their emergency medical kits.
I'm going to have to sign up these guys because of the Africa trip we got going next month.
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