Cameron Hanes, a disciplined bow hunter, shares brutal solo hunts—like dragging 500 lbs of elk quarters in Oregon’s Eagle Cap Wilderness—while debunking Hollywood’s easy hunting myths. His 10% success rate for elk and extreme training (carrying 130-lb rocks) prove hunting demands relentless preparation, not just skill. They contrast raw wilderness dominance with modern survival struggles, like eating buffalo piss water in Australia, and defend controlled predator hunts as conservation tools. Rogan praises Hanes’ gritty philosophy, funding wildlife efforts through organizations like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, before teasing a potential reality show and previewing Aubrey Marcus’s psychedelic spirituality discussion next. [Automatically generated summary]
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I watched a lot of videos on YouTube, online, whether it's videos about anything that I find interesting.
And I saw this video of this guy carrying rocks in his backpack going up hills training for elk hunting.
And I was like, what?
What is that?
And I thought about it.
I was like, that actually is a pretty smart move.
I've never heard of anybody training for hunting.
I went hunting when I shot that mule deer with Steve Rinella.
That was the first time I ever went hunting.
And I was amazed at how tired I was.
I was like, this is ridiculous.
Like, I thought I was in really good shape.
But when you're climbing up those muddy hills and the Missouri breaks and everything's like sloshing and it's, you know, these steep hills and, you know, you're doing it for six hours in a row, like, man, you get exhausted.
Like elk hunting, you can get up at sometimes 5 in the morning to get to where maybe you put some elk to bed the night before and walk so an hour before daylight, then you're hunting all day, and then you get back to camp after dark, maybe at 8 or 9 o'clock.
Yeah, no, they're big animals and that's just, that's part of it.
But that's, When you can go into the mountains where an elk lives every day and, like you said, with a sharp stick, take it out, harvest it, so you're on its home court, and then bring it back to your truck and back to your freezer, that's a powerful experience.
The whole thing is hard.
Everything about it is hard.
But to be able to do that, it's given me confidence to know that...
Whatever everyday life, I can achieve things, you know, because that's about as tough as it gets for me.
Yeah, I've always said that adversity is a very important thing for human beings because if you don't go through adversity, you never know that you can.
There's always going to be questions, and every time you do go through adversity, it sort of adds on to your ability and your confidence in all walks of life.
It's like this tattoo that I have is Miyamoto Musashi, the guy who wrote The Book of Five Rings.
And when I was a kid and I was a...
Competing in martial arts tournaments.
I read the Book of Five Rings and I remember this one quote.
Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things.
And once you've gone through the kind of adversity that you must go through to, you know, hike nine miles into a mountain, shoot an elk, and then bring that giant beast back and then cook it, like, that is a, that is, you will develop confidence and you'll develop a sense of accomplishment that's very difficult to recreate.
And that's, to do that, I know how difficult that is.
And so in training, I try to simulate that as much as possible.
I mean, that's where the The carrying the 130-pound rock up the hill or, you know, for training I've run 100-mile ultra-marathons, you know, that type of thing.
Basically, I just want to simulate that misery because I want to know what being miserable feels like.
If you don't ever know, you never know how you're going to react.
Some people might fold up, quit, but so I try to get there as often as possible.
I just, I had been seeing this rock, you know, I run this mountain all the time, so I've been seeing this rock and I was like, man, I need to get that rock to the top of the hill.
And so I did this seminar at Cabela's and I said, hey, anybody who wants to come up, I'm going to go run the mountain because everybody knows I run this mountain.
So they came in for the Cabela's seminar.
And I told him, I said, if you run the mountain, I'll give you a free DVD. I just like to work out with people.
I like to see people sacrificing.
So I said, I'm going to carry this rock up and we can all go do it.
And I figured, I mean, the rock, I figured it was about 70 pounds.
I had no idea.
So I get up there, I have this empty pack and I have everybody there.
And I'm like, all right, just hang on for a second.
I'm just going to throw this rock on my pack.
And I lift, the first time I'd ever touched it.
And I was like...
Wow, this is more than 70 pounds.
And so I ended up getting it up to the top and then we tried to take pictures.
I couldn't even lift that thing over my head because a rock is just weird to lift.
And so I ended up taking it down off the mountain.
I'm like, obviously it's more than 70. I want to figure out how much it is.
So it was 130 pounds.
But it was just kind of on a whim, I guess, is how that came about.
Now, was this something that you had always done, and then when you got into hunting, you just sort of ramped it up, or did you, like, really get into fitness once you became a hunter?
So to get into bow range, you know, in their red zone, so to speak, you know, that 30 to 40 yards, that's difficult.
They're dialed in.
They're used to being hunted every single day.
I mean, they're never turned off.
And so, yeah, it's tough.
And then you have just basically a sharp stick, you know, one arrow.
You've got the arrows laying over there, and it's just...
It's amazing how lethal...
With a razor-sharp broadhead, an arrow can be.
And I've seen, you know, there's videos of huge bulls I've killed dropping in seconds just from that, you know, quicker even than maybe a rifle would kill them.
Well, one of the things about you is because of all your training, because of all this lifting and exercise that you do, you shoot a really heavy bow.
You shoot a 90-pound compound bow, which for folks who don't know, like a lot of people, they'll tell you, like, you don't need to shoot anything more than 60. But 90, I've never even heard of anybody shooting a 90. I never even pulled one until I pulled yours.
I mean, that's ridiculously...
I mean, that's pretty stout.
So you're sort of like adding to this whole reason why you're exercising and all this fitness and getting really strong and in really great shape.
You kind of have to be in great shape just to use the very weapon that you use to take these animals out.
There's women out there bow hunting who are very successful with a 50 pound bow.
It's true.
You can do it.
But, you know, I want to shoot 90. What I want on an animal is I want two holes.
I want that arrow blowing through so I have two holes spilling blood and that's how I'm going to recover the animal.
You know, an arrow kills from hemorrhage, so not from shock like a rifle would.
So to get that hemorrhage, whereas a 50-pound bow might go in halfway and it might get into the lungs and it might kill it.
You know, you might get 12 inches of penetration.
If I go clear through that bowl and it's, you know, maybe 24 inches across, well, there's a 24-inch wound as opposed to a 12-inch wound.
And again, we're killing by hemorrhage.
And so it's just going to be that much more lethal in my mind.
And then if I'm blowing through ribs or through a shoulder or it's quartering way hard, so I have to go through maybe 30 inches of mass, I'm going to be able to do that.
It's not necessary, so to speak, but it's what I'm comfortable with and I think it makes me that more lethal of a bowhunter.
Well, I just pulled it back, and I was thinking, when I was pulling it back, I was like, imagine pulling this thing back if you just climbed up the top of a mountain, and you're absolutely exhausted, and then you have this one opportunity.
Have you ever had that happen, where you're really exhausted to work to get to where the elk is, and then you're so tired you have a hard time pulling the ball?
You know, where I think would be more difficult is if you're sitting in a tree stand for hours, freezing, and then a buck walks by and you have a 90-pound bow, that would be hard.
Yeah.
That would be, because you're not warmed up, you're not, you know, active.
So that could be difficult, but...
I did use, I had that bow for a late season hunt back home and it was cold.
It was like seven degrees and I'd been up there for hours and I'm just like, okay, this is going to be a test now if I can pull this back and I was able to.
There's nothing wrong with that in any endeavor, whether it's a game or a sport or even martial arts.
I mean, there's nothing wrong with Taking a martial art class once a week just for exercise.
My friend Joey Diaz, he's big, he's overweight, he takes jiu-jitsu all the time.
He's not trying to get his black belt, he just wants to get his blood pumping, get a little workout in there.
There's nothing wrong with that.
And then I have another friend who's He's beaten world champions.
My friend Eddie is a black belt and one of the best in the world.
Both approaches are okay.
It's okay to be obsessed with something and pursue excellence, and it's okay to just enjoy it as a pastime.
The problem is that the people that enjoy it as a pastime, they're always going to get this little nagging thing in the back of their head, for some of them, especially the weak ones.
That they realize that you do it better than them.
Or they realize that if they went hunting with you, they couldn't keep up.
Or they realize if they ran with you, they can't keep up.
Or if they realize they tried to lift with you, they couldn't lift as much.
The number one problem with this world is people, instead of being inspired, they look to criticize.
People, instead of looking at someone who works hard and does something amazing, And looking at their own life, they find fault or they find weakness or they find themselves not to add up, not to measure up.
And so they get upset.
And instead of finding that inspirational and say, you know what?
I do have a belly.
I do need to get to the gym.
You know what?
I do drink too much.
I got to stop doing that.
Instead of that, they just start shitting on this one thing that causes them to feel insecure.
Not even realizing that that one thing has the potential to empower them.
I've felt all that, especially as a young man before I... Figured out how to train my mind and how to embrace someone who's better than me and embrace someone who inspires me and look for it amongst my peers, look for it even amongst my enemies.
I try to be inspired by people I don't even like.
If I find someone that I think is someone who's a bad comedian, who's a joke thief, but they work hard, I try to take that aspect of them that works hard And only concentrate on that and find inspiration in it.
Because then they become valuable to me.
Then I can see the negative aspect of their behavior and that becomes valuable to me because I realize it reinforces what's bad.
But then the good aspects of it, whatever it is, you could find something in someone that you don't even like.
You could find something that they do that can inspire you.
Like when a snake bites you, if a snake bites you for the first time, I mean, you're fucked.
You're sick.
You gotta go to the hospital.
You gotta get anti-venom.
You're in a lot of trouble.
But if you just get a little bit of venom...
A little bit of venom every day over time.
After a while, the snake bites you and you're like, bitch, get out of here.
That shit ain't gonna work on me.
You develop the ability to understand what it is.
I feel sorry for people when I just see ridiculous criticism.
I laugh.
Someone will come into my office sometimes.
My wife's like, what are you laughing at?
I'm like, some guy's making fun of me.
It's just hilarious.
Reading what they say about me makes me laugh.
If I really thought they were right, it would bother me.
But if I If I have done what I need to do and I've done all the work and I've assessed myself and I'm objective, then I can find folly in their weakness.
And I think it's cool, too, that you feel that people are inspired by these things, and it actually, like, motivates you to ramp it up another notch, to keep it going even further.
The other part about working out about the bad mood part is that your body sort of develops this habit of pumping out energy.
When you get in shape and you get your body really fit and you get your body used to exerting these big explosive bursts of energy like lifting or jujitsu or whatever it is, your body sort of ramps up for that And then it's like, hey, where's my release?
And I think our bodies are probably designed for a certain amount of that, being that we were...
You know, for who knows how many thousands of years we were hunter-gatherers and we essentially share the same DNA as those human beings that lived 30, 40,000 years ago.
There's not much of a difference between us and them.
There's got to be a lot of the old reward, the reward mechanisms of life, like still in our DNA.
And I think that people who don't exercise those reward mechanisms, you're missing out on a lot of what it is to be a person, a lot of what it is to be like excited by life.
It's there's something like pretty intense about just fulfilling those reward mechanisms.
And I think hunting is one of those that I didn't realize until I started hunting.
I really didn't realize like what an intense connection.
You're like your mind.
I want to say your spirit, but that's a word that's been hijacked by so many shitheads wearing crystals around their neck.
But it seems like there's something in you that opens up this weird path that like, oh, you didn't even know this was there.
This predator path, this path of connection to the animals, connection to the wild world, going out there and getting an animal and eating it.
And I don't even mean it in like a macho, like, look how cool I am way.
I really mean it in a spiritual way.
There's this weird spiritual connection you have to the Mother Earth when it provides for you, to the animals of the wild itself when you go out and you get one and then you use it for sustenance.
Yeah, and that's, you know, I have done, so I've had guides, like when I go someplace where guides require Canada or different places, but Where I basically made a name for myself was in the wilderness by myself on solo hunts.
And, you know, to tell you the truth, I was worried.
I think, let's see, I wrote an article.
It was either 99 or 2000. I went with my buddy South Cox.
But the thing about that is I don't need anybody to be into it.
So, I was just like...
So, my buddy, Roy, who I started hunting in the wilderness with, he moved to Alaska.
And he's just a stud.
He was my partner.
We both, like, had the same mindset that there's no sacrifice too great.
We can't be in enough pain.
It doesn't even matter.
And he moved.
So, I'm like, okay, I need to find...
I tried to find somebody to take...
And eventually, I figured out...
There's nobody like Roy Roth.
So I'm just either going to quit hunting there or go on my own.
And so I just was like, it's on my own.
And so that's where I started doing the solo wilderness hunts.
And like I said, it's a good thing about you don't need anybody else.
People don't like doing it because...
You're so far out of your comfort zone.
We're so distracted with everything that's going on in the regular world that being in the wilderness where there's nothing is overwhelming for a lot of people.
Yeah, just being alone in the wilderness has got to be a very rare experience.
People freak the fuck out when they're alone in the wilderness.
That's a scary thing for them because...
They worry about getting trapped.
They worry about getting injured, not being able to get out.
No one's going to be able to find them.
Like, if you don't have a satellite phone and a backup satellite phone and a handgun, there's a lot of fear involved in being in the actual wild itself.
I didn't go back in there in the mountains for a 10-day solo hunt right out of the gate.
I went for, like, one night.
Like, I went on a scouting trip and then stayed one night, then came out.
And it just kind of baby steps into it because it's, you know, if you polled, you know, I don't know how many people there are here in L.A., but how many people have stayed out overnight in the mountains by themselves It's not going to be very many people.
Like, my wife tried to tell me some stupid celebrity shit the other day, and she was going on about some things.
Can you believe that this said that and that?
I'm like, I don't give a fuck.
I literally don't give zero.
I give zero fucks.
Let's stop talking about this.
There's so much shit to talk about.
But those salacious, gossipy things, it gets people so interested.
It becomes so fascinating.
It becomes overwhelming.
I'm guilty of it too, man.
Somebody put some thread on my message board the other day about, it's probably bullshit, but it might be true, that Bill Clinton had an affair with Elizabeth Hurley.
Did you see that?
I thought about that shit all day.
I thought about it all day.
I kept going back to the thread, seeing what new developments.
First of all, I got two things out of that.
First of all, Tom Sizemore can't keep a fucking secret.
Whatever you do, don't tell Sizemore who you're banging because that motherfucker spills the beans.
Good about being that guy, because obviously he was kind of a creeper.
You know what I mean?
Bill Clinton was one of those weird guys that would just like whip it out on girls.
Like if you talk to, I didn't talk to, but if you read some of the accounts of some of those women that were like really angry at him from Arkansas, he would get alone with them and just whip it out.
The problem, of course, is that this is supposed to be some sort of a community.
Our country is supposed to be some big giant community and the people that are running this community that are in charge of dictating the rules and the regulations are clearly screwing it up.
Clearly.
This is not the optimum way to run any country.
I don't know if it's possible to optimally run a country with the mess that's been created before the people that got into power, in power, before they got into positions of having any control.
There's probably so much Bureaucracy and crazy shit behind the scenes as far as like special interest groups and lobbyists and the massive web is probably so deep you could never hack through it all, clean it all up and come up with some sort of a rational system.
So you got two options.
One, you could obsess on it and work feverishly until your fucking heart stops beating and then you die an angry person.
And your heart blows in your chest and you fall down and shit your pants and die in agony.
Or, you just live your life saying, okay, I'm going to leave that shit to somebody else, let them run it, and I'm going to go wandering through the woods with pointy sticks and I like your approach better.
I think if they were a martial artist, they'd probably be a better commander-in-chief.
I mean, I'm not a huge fan of Putin.
I think Putin is kind of a psycho, but I respect the fact that he's a black belt in judo, and he's a real martial artist, and he sort of carries himself in that way.
Like, if Obama and Putin were gonna throw down, Putin would fuck Obama up.
That bothers me.
That disturbs me, you know?
I wish my president could kick a little ass.
Not that it's the most important thing in the world, but...
Supposedly he plays pool, and I'll fucking give him the six out and the breaks.
Anytime he wants to gamble, let's do it.
Let's do it, Obama.
Come on.
You got a spot.
I think, um...
I think that any very, very difficult thing that anybody does, whether it's bow hunting or martial arts or anything where it's incredibly difficult to accomplish something, it sort of separates the people that will quit from the people that figure out a way to succeed.
And that's really, that overcoming adversity, that's where character comes from.
And that's the things that we all admire.
And that shit's hardwired into us, man.
The admiration of that, like...
Just as simple as me watching your video of you carrying that rock up a hill.
I mean, is it important that you carry that rock up a hill in the greater scheme of the universe?
No, it's not.
But to me it was.
Because to me that day I was like, this motherfucker's doing some shit that I probably can't do right now.
And when you see that, it makes you like, I want to be able to carry that rock up the hill.
All right, well, if I'm going to fucking start out with a 35-pound plate, I'm going to carry that up the hill.
I'm going to work my way up to that big rock.
And that inspiring each other and the ability to push yourself to these incredible heights is really one of the more exciting aspects of being a person.
It's one of the things that makes being a man or a woman, I mean, I guess being a woman, I'm not a woman, so I don't know.
I thought about it sometimes, what it would be like.
But it makes it, it gives you thrills.
It gives you excitement.
It gives you these feelings of accomplishment when you achieve things.
They're some of the greatest moments in life.
And I feel bad for people that have never stuck their neck out.
I feel bad for people that have never taken chances.
Not because they're less.
Because they're not less.
They're just, they haven't reached their potential.
It's not that their potential is less.
I feel like probably inside all of us, we all have the potential for greatness in one way or another.
As long as we don't have any obvious physical problems, we didn't get dealt a terrible genetic hand of cards with a disease or something like that.
But if you don't have that, I think all of us have potential.
I feel bad for people who don't at least attempt to reach a potential in some way.
Yeah and that's you know for me I don't I didn't feel I don't feel like I'm any different from anybody else you know because I've been back in my early 20s I remember I signed up for a 10k race 6.2 miles back home and quit I mean I always had been partying I was I don't know what 19 or 20 and uh it's just whatever not in shape and I'm like why am I doing this and stepped off the course And I'll never forget what
that moment felt like being a quitter.
And that is crazy.
But the point is, so if I've been that guy who quit a six-mile race, and I've come and now have done what I can do or what I finally...
Believe or figured out I could do anybody can you know what I mean?
I'm not like crazy talented or or have all this ability that just is natural It's just but it's what I what I'm doing and what I chase and what I work for every day and I've been able to achieve what some might consider you know Big accomplishments.
You know, I mean, if you stop and look at, like, as far as, like, exercise, like, think about, like, what people used to do for exercise and now what people do now.
And it was very unfortunate for Uriah in a lot of ways.
First of all, he went into that camp right after the McDonald fight, and he had an injured knee and an injured hamstring entering into the Burrell fight.
So he had a pulled muscle in his hamstring, a partial tear, and his knee was fucked up, so he couldn't wrestle.
So not the most optimum conditions to be fighting, not just for a world title, but against...
Easily one of the four baddest motherfuckers to walk the face of the planet.
That Hennen Barrow, he is a beast.
That kid is so good.
And he hit Uriah with one leg kick early in the fight.
And you see Uriah's leg give out.
You see that limp.
There's a limp that a guy gets when you know that shin really slammed into the meat of the muscle.
There's this stutter step that they give.
It's like, oh boy.
Long night for Uriah.
And then he got tagged.
Yeah.
Even worse that, unfortunately, he got Steve Rinella.
Yeah, but I mean, what I'm saying is to compensate for that.
Not just doing that and carrying the rock, but is there any other, like, do you do those Roman chair exercises or something to strengthen your lower back?
Yeah, I would imagine that there's a lot of crazy muscle groups involved in not just carrying that rock out, but just in shooting that bow, do you balance out your body because you're pulling so hard on your right side?
Do you ever pull your bow just with your left side just to balance it out?
Yeah, my friend Steve Maxwell, who's a pretty famous strength and conditioning expert, he works with a lot of people that have imbalances, like kickers in the NFL, and he gets them to kick on the opposite side.
And one of the things that they found is that when you use your weaker side, like say if you have a strong side, and they found this with jujitsu as well, it actually enhances your ability on your strong side.
So if you, I find that playing pool too.
I shoot pool left-handed sometimes.
Like if I'm playing my daughter or if I'm playing someone who sucks, I'll shoot pool left-handed.
And then sometimes when left-handed comes up, like there's a shot that I can't reach right-handed, I'll shoot it left-handed.
And if I practice left-handed, then my right hand becomes better because I have to concentrate so hard to use my left hand because it doesn't know how to move right.
It's all goofy.
It's not thinking right.
And my right hand just falls right into place.
They say that using your weak side actually enhances your strong side, using your less dominant side.
But I found that, like, shooting lefty, like, practicing left-handed, it made me, like, so happy that I could go back to right-handed because I was so much better at it.
You know?
I think that if you, well, you're so good at shooting bow and arrow anyway, but if you did start shooting left-handed, I bet it would make your right hand better.
Jamie, pull that video up so you can see that water buffalo.
It's a long stalk, a long patient stalk on this buffalo.
And I would imagine you would want to get a bunch of trees between you and him just in case shit got hairy and you had a duck behind one of those trees.
So if they're not looking while you're moving, they can't pick that up.
So it's about going slow.
And then if he looks, of course, I stop.
So it's just about right here.
So I stop because his head's up.
And so he can see out of his eye.
I'm not moving.
He puts his head down.
One thing that I figured out on these things is they might put their head down and pretend like they're eating, but really they're looking.
So you've got to be able to tell.
He'll have his head down, but if he's not ripping grass side to side, he's not eating.
He's just testing me.
So he might have maybe picked something up, but he put his head down, but his mouth wasn't moving, so I just stop.
Okay, you're trying to catch me here, but as long as they don't see you move, you can walk right up right there.
I'm not sure what we're filming here, but we get to 46 yards.
The crazy thing about this is I wanted to let his leg go forward so I can slip that arrow In as it's legs forward opening up his vitals and I waited too long and you can watch this arrow and it clips a tree in between me and it and it hit the arrow hit a little lower than what I wanted because it hit that tree but because I have you know 90 pounds and so much force it was it ricocheted caught a little bit of energy from that tree it
was lessened but it still went in and Heart shot on that buffalo.
Yeah, it's a little bit different on those animals than what were here in North America.
And so you see he's going to run into a tree here.
He's pretty wobbly.
And so I don't know how many seconds this was, but you've got a 2,000-pound animal with just a razor-sharp stick, and he's down in, you know, a minute, maybe a minute and a half.
That's That's a lot quicker than they're ever going to die in a natural habitat on their own.
And that's one thing that people need to understand when you're talking about animals and hunting animals and people that are opposed to it.
They need to understand first of all that In order to do proper conservation, to take care of these animals, to make sure that their herds, the population is strong, you have to cull some of the animals.
You have to.
Because otherwise they're going to die of starvation, they're going to get diseased.
There's a lot of issues involved if you're not introducing predators.
And if you introduce predators to take care of the population, well then you've got a whole other problem, obviously.
And they're actually seeing that right now in parts of this country with wolves.
When they reintroduce wolves, I mean, they're really ramping up wolf hunting now in Idaho.
Those are Asian water buffalo so they were brought over to Australia.
They're not native and so there's so many of them where there once was water and there's fish and all sorts of things now it's just basically a mud hole because those buffalo get in there and you know they they piss in there they do live in there killed everything so they tear up the habitat they tear up the water they ruin the water source And so now they just want them killed.
So when I was over there, I killed three of those big old things, and you could kill 20 of them if you want.
No, but yeah, so it was good getting over there and seeing different animals and learning from, let's see, Adam Greentree and Owen Stronell were over there and they've awesome bow hunters and, you know, getting to new countries is just what I love to do.
Yeah, and the non-native species thing is a fascinating thing to me because that's what we're dealing with in North America with the wild hogs that have been introduced, you know, they were introduced with the Europeans and they've run rampant all throughout the I mean, California, we were in Tohono Ranch, where I went hunting with Rinella, and they have 50,000 hogs on this one ranch.
They're just constantly making babies, and so there's certain ranches in California, in Southern California, they're begging people to come on their ranch and kill hogs.
You know, in Texas, famously, they're shooting them out of helicopters.
The non-native species thing is very fascinating to me.
The understanding of population control is one of the things that I've really become fascinated by getting into hunting, understanding what the fish and wildlife, what they have to go through in order to figure out how many tags to give out, what the numbers are where they need to let animals recuperate, where they need to go in and take some of them and reduce them.
It's a fascinating thing.
And one of the most efficient programs in our country, as far as, like, you want to talk about, like, government programs.
Well, Fish and Wildlife is a government program, but damn, it's effective.
No, and the thing about, you know, hunting, people still...
If you're not a hunter, it's hard to understand.
Or some people still don't understand why in this day and age you need to hunt.
Well, you know, like I work with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
They're the number one conservation group out there.
And they've helped protect habitat, I think, over 6 million acres now of habitat for elk.
So that's from hunter's dollars, you know, conservation groups.
So hunters, the money we pay for tag and license and everything else to use to be in out there hunting with the weapon, that's what goes into helping these animals.
You know, elk numbers now have never been higher.
That's, yeah, we're hunting them, but we're also paying and contributing to the health and habitat and for elk and other wildlife.
And that's That's what people don't understand.
Without putting a value on those animals, then that's where, I don't know, that's where everything goes sideways.
But because we value them, we're willing to pay money and help.
And we've got outfits like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation that just do amazing work for us.
I understand where they're coming from, the people that are anti-hunting.
They're coming from kindness.
I mean, they don't want you to kill these cute animals.
They feel like it's a cruelty thing or that it's an evil thing to go out to nature and find these beautiful things and shoot them and kill them.
I understand the mindset, but it, like many things in life, is not nearly as cut and dry as everybody wants to paint it, as everybody wants to depict it.
Far more complex and complicated issue.
And they have a hard time believing that someone could have a deep love for animals while still hunting them.
The farm that we hunted on in Wisconsin this year is my friend Doug, Doug Duren, and he actually has cows on his farm as well and raises them grass-fed, gave us some of the beef.
Even not killing an animal, there's something to me about the mountains that's insanely appealing.
I love being in the mountains.
It gives you this weird...
It sounds very hippie, but I believe that when you are in these areas, like when you are in a mountain and there's all these trees and there's a river or stream or whatever...
I feel like there's energy coming out of those trees, there's energy in that hill, and that these life forms, these plants that grow there in the wild, and these vibrant things that have existed without any human assistance whatsoever, and we'll be here probably long after we're gone, there's something to them where when you're in that environment, you feel it.
You might not even know you feel it, but Sort of like you don't know when you breathe in smoggy air, you just breathe in smoggy air, and then you get to a mountain, you get that mountain air, and you're like, wow, this is different.
And then you're around those plants.
I feel like, I mean, it's not like they're communicating with you, but I feel like they give off a vibe.
You know, I've been, there's this place I used to go and camp by myself in the Eagle Cap, and it was just like on this rock shelf looking over this huge canyon.
And so I was sleeping there one night and, you know, stars are out.
And just before dark, I glassed about 300 yards away a bunch of bighorn rams.
And, you know, sheep are just like the holy grail of hunting, right?
And so I was watching these sheep.
And it's just like, it's just so, I don't know, it's so amazing that moment.
So I went to bed in my bivy sack there, and I woke up in the morning, the sheep were still there, except there was one less.
And I'm like, I wonder where the heck that other ram went.
Well, I went over there and found a lion had killed a ram the night before.
And so I found this leg.
I'm like, oh, okay, well, here's one reason why he wasn't with them.
But it's just like, those rams that they're feeding, One got killed by a lion.
They're still there feeding.
Nothing had changed.
I mean, the wind was still blowing.
They were still feeding, but one was gone.
And to me, it's just like, man, I could die back here.
Nothing changes.
I mean, you really figure out how you fit in.
Nothing cares back there.
It's just like, that's just the way it goes.
There's life and death, and nothing in the wilderness changes.
I mean, they're out there 365 days a year trying to survive.
So that's why I think about what they go through when I'm working out.
And it's just like, they're so much tougher.
I mean, we're so weak as a society.
You know, we're used to laying on the couch, watching TV, having everything, while a bull elk is laying out there in the rain and the snow and the whatever, getting so tough.
And so I always think about there's this gap between me and a bull.
I need to close that gap.
Because it's just getting wider and wider every day for most.
So if you can close out, if I can get tougher and tougher and tougher, I'm going to be more on an equal playing field and be more of a predator like a lion, you know what I mean, or a wolf.
Once you figure out the time, and, you know, you look at these bows right here, these are, you know, shoot, by the time you get this bow set up here with arrows and everything else, it's like $2,000.
And I'm like, I want to go do something I've never done.
So Hoyt hooked me up with Adam down there in Australia.
And I wanted to do...
Actually, when I first...
When I decided to go there, it was just going to be to give away a bow.
What I do with the bows after I get done shooting them for the year is I hold these contests.
It's like win Cam's bow.
And I just say, if you want to win my bow from last year, show up at this time and beat me at any challenge.
Beat me at the challenges I put out there and you can have my bow.
And so I was just going to do a win a bow in Australia because I have so many people that order my shirts and hats and And everything else from down there, I'm like, I need to get down there and see these people.
You know, I just wanted to, I just felt so much support down there.
There's actually, we stayed in this village from the Aborigines.
They were, we thought they were going to be there, but there's actually nobody there.
And we had to hunt, it's called traditional land, native land.
You have to get permission from the Aborigines to hunt it.
And what I was told is probably only 50 white men had ever been there.
Just because it's wild country.
It's just where they live.
But nobody's in the village, and we don't know why it was abandoned or whatever.
I guess if an elder dies, they will leave.
They think there's bad spirits in the village.
So they just leave everything and take off.
So we don't know for sure why it was empty, but we were just there by ourselves.
And we just basically slept on the porch of this hut out there.
Adam, who I went out there with, he was like, you know, when we took a helicopter out there, the only way to get there was a four-hour helicopter ride.
And I said, do we want to get any food?
He was like, I think it would be better if we just lived off the land.
And I'm like...
Yeah, that's cool.
I didn't know what was out there for sure.
Turns out there's not much.
And so that was not the best idea to try to live off the land.
Luckily, another guy, Owen, went and he did bring some food, but still we didn't hardly have any food.
I mean, I had a granola bar.
And I had some trail mix from the airport.
And Adam had a granola bar.
And then Owen, he brought some apples and oranges and stuff like that.
and you were telling me about this before the podcast started but for the folks at home uh what was that like yeah it was uh so the back strap is typically the best cut of any game animal it's right along the spine And there's no bones and it's just big solid meat and it's usually just like on an elk that's like as good as it gets.
Yeah and so we cut that off and we cooked that up and these buffalo so cut that up and cooked it up so I take a bite and I shoot my bow just middle of the day and I was shooting for probably maybe a half hour, came back, still chewing the same bite.
And so, the thing about these buffalo, because there's no predators, and we were trying to kill the biggest bulls out there.
A bull could be 30 years old.
Anything, any animal that old in those conditions.
The muscles are going to be...
So it's muscle you're eating.
The muscles are going to be, you know, whatever.
Just not very pliable.
Dense.
Yeah, dense.
And so I chewed that one bite of the premium cut for half hours, like, you know, eating a shoe.
Yeah, the alpha wolf, they battle over who gets the liver, and that's how they determine the alpha status of the pack, is that the wolf, who's the baddest motherfucker, is the one that eats the liver.
There was a documentary on this guy who lived with wolves.
There was an...
There was a contained area.
I forget where it was.
I forget what part of the world.
But this one guy lived with these wolves in this contained area.
And he was the alpha.
And the way that he became the alpha is he was with these wolves since they were little.
And he would always eat liver in front of them.
So he would have an animal that they would give to these wolves, and he would put a liver inside of this animal, and he would open up the Ziploc bag and pull this liver out and eat it in front of them.
So they knew that because he was eating the liver, he was the alpha.
Well, he went away because he had to deal with...
There was a local farmer that had a wolf invasion.
The wolf were killing his livestock.
So this guy had to assist this farmer.
And one of the ways he assisted him, he set up all these speakers where he had howls.
He set up as if there was a new pack that encroached into this area.
And he set up this whole elaborate thing to try to ward off these wolves without having to kill them.
And then some time went by, several weeks, and he went back To the wolves and a new alpha was there.
So he had to beg for his life in front of this new alpha.
He had a whimper and it was really intense because it was baring its teeth.
It was challenging him for the alpha position.
And so he had to get out of it by being a bitch because normally wolves will duke it out and find out, well, oh, you're the alpha now.
Well, let's see what's up, bitch.
And they would duke it out to see who this wolf was determined to eat that liver.
So he had to fight for his position in the pack by begging.
When I was young, I liked being back there because I didn't have to worry about...
You know, whether somebody liked me or whether I had money or whether any help from anybody, it was just like so simple and so cut and dry, just like that.
There's one alpha wolf in me.
Either are you tougher or is he tougher?
You know what I mean?
And that's...
I just like how black and white the mountains are.
It's sort of a famous wolf, but the thing about it is to make it snarl like that I took some elk steak up there, and I was going to give it some elk after it did this whole thing.
But to make it mad like that, you had to give it meat and take it away.
Give it meat, take it away.
And they said, okay, yeah, the trainer said, okay, we can make it mad and snarl like we need for the commercial.
But once we do that, we're done.
Because it's going to be pissed off.
For the whole rest of the day.
So that was the last thing.
So that wolf had been, I think they had it since it was five weeks old and it was 11 years old, but it's still crazy.
Yeah, they had a problem with that recently at this ranch in Montana where this pack of wolves just got a hold of these calves and just slaughtered a bunch of calves, like, you know, a ton of them, like, you know, 12 calves, and just left them.
I mean, ate part of them, but left a lot of them just sitting there dead, frozen.
And it was a really creepy scene.
It was on a television show that I was watching.
And when they're, you know, these calves that are mostly covered in snow, you see their bodies and you see the havoc that these things, They're too close to people, these fucking wolves.
People have a weird relationship with them because they look so much like dogs.
You know, it's a strange sort of a relationship that people who love wildlife have that they would be cured of really fucking quickly if they were out there in the woods and they saw a pack of wolves.
You know, and people, you know, just like that Timothy Treadwell up in Alaska when he was living with the bears and he thought, oh, bears are my friends.
I am a big fan of wolves, and I'm not a big fan of wolves.
I'm a big fan as far as them.
Just like I'm a big fan of lions, I think.
Even mountain lions.
I think they're fascinating.
Just wild animals, wild predators are absolutely...
They're chanting, in a way.
Just this idea that this thing exists along with us, with our lattes, and our electric cars, and our Wi-Fi.
Along at the same time, at this very same moment we're doing this podcast, there's some gangster-ass mountain lion in Arizona right now getting shit done on a mountain.
Sneaking up on some ram or whatever the fuck he can get his teeth onto.
And that's what he does every day.
And there's thousands of them.
It's not just one.
There's a whole community of mountain lions, and that's what they do.
Whether it's the wolves in Idaho that are destroying the elk.
They're really, really fascinating.
But...
People who are anti-hunting need to understand that just because a lot of people don't like to eat mountain lion or because nobody eats wolves, You still need to kill those things.
And it's important.
Because if it doesn't happen, they're going to creep into civilian areas the same way they used to back in the day when they were writing those Little Red Riding Hood books.
I've told this story on the podcast before, but I'll tell it again.
In Paris in the 1400s, wolves killed 40 people in Paris.
They had to corner wolves in the streets of Paris and kill them with spears and sticks and rocks.
Like, they're not to be fucked with.
They're not your dogs.
It's not a beautiful animal that, you know, has a relationship.
I mean, even the way we treat, like, killer whales.
Killer whales don't kill people in the wild.
They actually help people that fall out of boats.
You know, killer whales might be your friends.
We should probably be way nicer to killer whales than we are to wolves.
No, I mean, you might get attacked and you go, hey, you're less likely to do that, you know?
It doesn't matter.
So you never know.
A bear comes and any animal will make a decision right then on what they want to do.
You know, if it's a predator, if it's a dominant predator, dominant bear are more likely just to come walking right in like that and just say, you better leave because I'm coming in.
And those are the ones I go after.
I want the dominant animal.
And that one...
That one wasn't like one of the giant...
That was a big bear, but not one of the giant bear.
But there's something about being on the ground eye to eye with a predator like that that's...
So, like, if you have a bear that's living on berries and you get up there in the mountains and you kill it, it's going to be really sweet meat because it's eating blueberries or whatever else.
If you have a bear that's coming in to bait and, like, some people bait down here just with meat scraps or whatever, might have maggots, it's probably not going to be that good, you know?
But those bear in Alberta, mostly there's just grain is what we're putting out there.
Little bear cracks.
So those bear are really good.
I don't know what it tastes like.
It's more like, it's fatter meat, maybe more like pork, but it's good.
Yeah, I watched this episode of Meat Eater with Steve Rinella where he went for these fall bears that were fattening up before they would hibernate, and they were eating berries.
They were eating blueberries.
And it was incredible because as he was cutting this bear open, you see the fat is actually blue.
It's got like a blue tint to it from all the berries that this animal had been eating.
And that's, you know, you get those huge black bears or if they're eating fish, like in Alaska, if they're down where, like on Prince of Wales, they can eat a lot of fish that come in.
And those bears are huge because of all that protein.
I mean, just it's all about their diet and they get giant because they're eating solid protein all the time.
But those bears aren't as good from fish for whatever reason.
If you read old accounts from like pioneering Alaskans, I mean not even that long ago, even back in the 1950s, everybody would want to kill a big fat bear in the fall like this on berries.
Rinello was telling me about this moose that they shot where he had to carry it.
They did nothing but go out to this moose, cut it up, and carry it back for three days because it was like a nine-mile trip.
So they would go to camp, they would get up in the morning, go hike out to where the moose was, take pieces of the moose, put it in their packs, and then walk back.
So that's kind of why I like videoing the work and the effort and all that because you don't necessarily have to do what I do, but just respect it.
And that's the thing.
I mean, I don't show all that to try to get respect, but I just want people have an easier time with bow hunting for whatever reason because it seems like it's harder.
They'll easily say negative stuff about rifle hunting because they say, oh, you don't have to be close or you can shoot from 400 yards or whatever.
But with bow hunting, for whatever reason, we get a little more of a pass because it is difficult.
So, and rifle hunting is hard, too.
I don't want to say rifle hunting is easy because it's a whole different deal.
You're hunting in, there's more competition with the rifle out there, so you're competing against other guys.
The animals have been hunted a little more, so they're a little more wary by that time of year.
So rifle hunting is still tough, and those guys have my respect as well.
But just for the general population, it seems like bow hunting.
Well, for folks who don't even want to shoot anything, they don't want to kill an animal, you might be a vegetarian, whatever, you might just be fine, John Hackleman-style, going to the supermarket and buying your steak.
Nothing wrong with that, but I really love archery, and I've rediscovered it.
I did it when I was a kid.
I was in the Boy Scouts, and I enjoyed it then, but I never really got into it.
I just did it a few times, and I always thought it was fun.
But, man, since I picked up...
This bow, I guess I got it about a couple of months ago.
I really enjoy it.
I just enjoy shooting targets.
It's really fun.
Because when you're concentrating on that target, you're not thinking of nothing else.
It's very difficult.
You're trying to be steady.
And when you're trying to be steady, there's something zen in that.
In that Zen activity, there's something that's cleansing or something.
I mean, I don't know what it is, but in order to really be accurate with a bow, it requires so much discipline.
Yeah, there's a commercial that I make fun of when it comes on because it's so silly.
There's all these athletes, like there's this woman who's like a professional skier, I guess, and there's all these different athletes doing all this athletic stuff, and then there's a Duck Dynasty guy with this big fat moon pie face, and he's looking around, and they're talking about athletes, and he's blowing his duck off.
I mean, look, we have this Duck Dynasty show, right?
So it's a reality show, which is...
Let's be honest.
It's not really a reality show.
It's scripted.
There's fake scenarios.
But the premise of the show involves hunting.
And I think that's fascinating.
I think the show is ridiculous.
But I like the fact that it's a hugely popular show, and the show's about hunting.
And I think there's a real hypocritical attitude that a lot of people in this country have because of the fact that food is so readily available, because it's so easy to just go to the supermarket and buy food.
People say, well, why would you want to get it yourself?
You must be a cruel person that wants to go out and shoot animals.
I think even though it's a baby step, a show We're like a Duck Dynasty type show where you see these guys that are hunters and it's a hugely popular show where 16 million people watch it, whatever the hell it is.
That's good because that's slowly starting to integrate.
It's okay because it's ducks and people don't really have as much of an affinity to ducks as they do to Bambi.
A deer hunting show would be a little bit more problematic.
Okay, well talk to me about it afterwards and make sure they won't fuck you over because things get tricky in the world of reality TV. Yeah, well this is just for the pilot.
Okay.
Either way, if you sign on for the pilot, you sign on for the rest of your life.
I have a friend who they asked him to do a reality show and fortunately for him, he has his own business and he's doing well.
But it was his girlfriend's idea.
She wanted to do this reality show.
And he read the contract, and he calls me up on the phone.
Like, they own him for, like, what they're realizing, because of all, you know, like, from Survivor to Fear Factor, all these shows on, is that they've realized, like, Fear Factor, Michael Yeo is probably the only person that I know of that became famous because of Fear Factor.
And Michael Yeo is a comic, and he's on E! Really, really nice guy.
Some sports channels are up in that area too, but it's just a weird area of the dial, and I think it's unfortunate.
I think that's the untapped area.
I don't want to say this for Hollywood because these same fuckheads who make fake scenarios are going to come in and ruin it, but a show like Meat Eater or a show following you around elk hunting with a bow...
There's so much drama and reality in that without having to add bullshit.
Someone's got to do something like that.
I mean, Meat Eater does, but someone else could do it too, where you make a pledge.
I've had that pitch to me recently about just showing, because not only the training for the hunt, but the camaraderie, getting out there like the challenges I do for my bow, giving back.
That is all part of the story.
And yeah, we're killing an animal at the end, hopefully, maybe not, because a lot of hunts end with no kill.
So, I mean, they're showing supposedly hunters out there.
They shoot this, I think it's actually Wolverine, as he was an animal, but shoot him with a poison pod arrow, which I don't even, I've never even seen a poison pod arrow, but so...
Having a show that would show that success on elk with a bow is around 10%.
So it's like 90% of the guys out there pursuing elk with the bone arrow are failing and it's it's not guaranteed it is really tough showing that struggle and that's why i mean that's one of the reasons why i train the way i do i don't want to be in that 90 you know my goal is to be successful every single year so if you do what the average guy does you're going to fail nine times out of ten if you do more than the average if you do more than anybody else or the the standard Then maybe you'll have more
success.
And so, as it is, I kill my bull every single year.
And it's just, I think, it's not because I'm any better, it's because I just work harder preparing.
So it's just, you know, But if people could see how difficult it really is and see that, you know, like we did film in Australia where we have no food, we have no water, it's 120 degrees.
I think, you know, that would make compelling TV because they're like, wow, this is a lot different than I saw in the Wolverine movie, you know?
And I don't know.
I think...
I think it'd be not, I don't know, I think it'd be important to get out there because hunters are the number one conservationists there are in sharing that story.
And, you know, some people find that contradictory.
It's like I had a conversation with someone when we were talking about people.
And I was saying, well, okay, if you could only, you know, if you only hunted, like, one person a year, but the rest of the people, you made sure you fed them and you took care of them, they got great education and took care of their environment, made sure the streets are clean, would it be okay to go out and hunt one person?
And so, like, when you apply that to animal hunting, it's, for a lot of people, that's sort of the same sort of feeling they have.
But what they don't understand is, as the apex predator, people don't like to think of us as the apex predator, especially if you're a vegetarian or if you're an animal rights lover.
But...
There's a war going on between all life forms on this planet.
We are just so far ahead of the other animals that we forgot it's a war.
And we forgot that we have these POW camps in our cities.
We call them zoos.
And that's what that is.
Those are prisoner of war camps.
That's what we dominate this planet.
And the reason why you can get out of this office and go walk down the street and not worry about getting mauled is because we paved this motherfucker and we killed everything that can kill us and we made sure that anything that comes in, we call the cops and they send helicopters and they fucking circle the area with a flashlight until they find that cat and then they tranquilize it and they get it the fuck out of here.
This is our domain.
And you don't like to think it's our domain because you don't have to do any of the work.
But the reality comes into you full force If you're alone in Idaho with a bow and arrow and you get circled by a bunch of howling beasts and they're trying to take the elk away from you.
But that's the reality of the situation, is that we're the ones, as the intelligent creatures that can communicate, we're the ones who have made an assessment, we've made a detailed analysis of all the different animals and the numbers, and we monitor them on a yearly basis.
And folks who don't know, they don't appreciate that.
I wasn't a hunter when I was young, and I didn't understand hunting.
And I thought there was something fucked up about it.
I would say, why would anybody want to kill a deer, man?
Deer are beautiful.
I was a fisherman.
I used to go fishing.
But that's where it ended for me.
I can't relate to a fish.
Fishing for me is like tricking aliens.
Like they live in this water world that I can't even see in.
I throw something in there, I pull it out and eat it.
Well, people that participate in the same sort of discipline, they enjoy that camaraderie together.
They understand each other in a way that maybe other folks don't.
You get that from a jiu-jitsu gym.
You get that from a kickboxing gym.
You get that from a CrossFit studio.
You get that from anything that you do where the people can sort of relate to this unusual activity that you partake in.
And I think that that's something about archery.
The place that I went to, the archery outpost in Los Alamitos, There's a bunch of people around there talking about, oh, have you seen the new Hoyt?
You know, they've got a new cam on the Matthews, and this has got, oh, they've got the Bowtech and Sandy, 355 feet per second, and blah, blah, blah.
You know, all that shop talk, and it's...
A lot of people are missing that sort of camaraderie in their everyday life because most days, from 9 to 5, you don't get to talk about what you want to talk about.
You have to talk about what you're getting paid to talk about.
You've got to talk about what your job entails.
For most people, they're trapped.
Trapped in this world like, you know, unfortunately, you said you are.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be back tomorrow with Aubrey Marcus.
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Tomorrow we will be with Aubrey Marcus, who is the CEO of Onnit.com, and a real psychedelic adventurer.
We will talk about life, spirituality, and he's a hunter himself.
We're going to have a good time, folks.
We've got a lot of cool shit going on, a lot of fun people next week, too.
We've got artists and comics and Joey Coco Diaz and War Machine is going to be here next week, a.k.a. John Copenhaver, and we're going to have a good time.
We love the fuck out of you people, and we thank you very much for tuning in.