Doug Duren and Nathan Ihde critique industrial farming’s decline, tracing it to Earl Butz’s 1970s policies that crushed small-scale operations with milk prices plummeting from $15 to $9 per hundredweight. They defend grass-fed meat—richer in omega-3s (studies confirm) and safer (20K vs. 6.3M E. coli)—while rejecting Cowspiracy’s blanket veganism, citing regenerative models like Shepard’s Restoration Agriculture or Salatin’s rotational grazing that heal soil and ecosystems. Duren’s farm restored trout-filled streams through grazing shifts, proving sustainable farming can coexist with wildlife. The episode blends primal diets (Rogan’s 2-week sugar craving drop), unconventional foods (lutefisk, smelt feeds), and ethical hunting debates—from baiting risks (chronic wasting disease) to bow vs. rifle ethics—ultimately arguing that traditional, land-based food systems offer healthier, wilder alternatives to factory farming’s hidden costs. [Automatically generated summary]
But we're also going to talk about this one thing that came out today that I tweeted that they found that there's a huge difference.
Not just a little difference.
Because people have always wondered, like, does it matter if you buy grass-fed food?
Does it matter if you buy...
I mean, does it really matter?
Well, apparently it does.
There's a new study that found clear differences between organic and non-organic meat and milk.
And this is the largest study of its kind.
An international team of experts led by Newcastle University in the UK has shown that both organic milk and organic meat contain around 50% more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids than conventionally produced products.
Which is pretty fascinating because a lot of people have speculated that it's all BS. That you go and you buy grass-fed this or grass-fed that.
Well, you know what's interesting to me about it is so much of it for me is intuitive.
I grew up with cattle and it makes sense that a ruminant, a cow, It eats grass.
You know, that's what it eats.
And you start putting all this other stuff into it, for instance, corn, soybeans, and that sort of thing, that's not what they were made to eat.
And so then you take that a step further and have it be, I think they're referring in this organic that they're talking about grass-fed.
And so they're eating what they're supposed to eat, not what we somehow along the way decided, well, this is what they're going to eat, corn or soybeans, because they'll put on that fat that we all like so much.
Everything from how they put on weight to how they look to...
Efficiency.
Yeah, the efficiency of how they'll put weight on.
If they're dairy cattle, like Guernseys and Jerseys and that sort of thing, they won't produce as much milk, but it'll have a real high butterfat content.
So 100 pounds, which is about 8 pounds to the gallon, And in milk, you're paid by the pound.
100 pounds of 3.5% butterfat, for instance, is not worth as much as 100 pounds of 4.5% butterfat.
So there's this whole calibration system they use to do that.
So, you know, milk's being tested all the time.
Both organic, grass-fed, managed pasture raised, and, you know, more...
Modern, if you will, the confined animal facilities where they're milking a thousand cows in a real small area, confining them in a very small area, where Nate and I both grew up.
And you saw our farm.
A lot of pasture, fields, that sort of thing.
So the cattle are kind of walking around doing their thing out on pasture.
They come in in the evening.
You'd feed them sort of a supplement of it might be grain or it might be hay.
It might be these various things.
And it kind of depended.
And that all evolved over time and in my lifetime.
And you were always sort of aiming to get the most out of each one of those animals.
And depending on how you looked at the science, you know, people spent their whole life studying how to get the most out of a cow.
Depending on how you looked at that science, you made decisions about that.
Well, when I was a kid, there was a lot more of, and I mean a kid like in the 60s, in the early 60s, there was a lot more common sense involved.
And now it's much more, like in those big milking operations, that sort of thing, it's more science.
It's like, here's how we can get the most out of them.
So you remember this shift between what was like normal farming, normal dairy farming, normal meat cow farming, to this thing that we're seeing now that most people have a real big problem with, this factory farming installations where you have these cows jammed into these warehouses and chickens and the same thing with pigs and...
Those are the things that people have a real issue with when they see them on television, they see YouTube videos.
You know, something that's really interesting, if you look at that area where you came out and visited, the exact opposite has happened in population there.
There's half as many people in our area as there were when I was a kid.
Well, they can, you know, I mean, it makes sense, you know, on a business scale, you can afford to sell a product cheaper if you're doing it bigger, but the things you lose there are the quality and the sustainability and environmental impact of the process.
You know, you got these big farms where basically they have, they got to make more product, but they also make more shit.
The manure that's produced on our farm, like now in the winter, I'm feeding hay.
And they're confined would be kind of a strong word.
They stay around where the hay is, you know, and we've got fresh water there for them and it's spring water and I can talk about that later.
But they stay in that area and so that's also where they're, you know, And so I end up piling that stuff up and I pile it up and I compost it and I put it on everything from a community garden nearby to our fields to people want to come by and say, hey man, can I get a load of shit?
And sure as heck, I give it to them.
Whereas for a big facility, it's where do we get rid of this shit?
One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about this is because I think that most of us, when I say us, people that live in cities, have almost no idea of how all this stuff works.
And when people examine it or they try to watch a documentary on it or try to figure out how cows are raised, one of the things we get confused about is...
Stop playing with that same answer.
We get confused about is, how did it happen?
Like, how did these things become these gigantic sort of operations where it seems so inhumane?
It's a business model like corporations, like banks, like everything.
It's the same idea.
Interestingly to me, in our area, and Nate and some of the folks that he knows are an example, and I am to a lesser extent, because it's just a little bit different on our farm.
It's not something where I'm trying to make a living at it, you know?
That it's starting to go the other, it very much has gone the other way.
Things like community supported agriculture and those sort of things are happening.
What I try to do is, and my whole goal with my meat production, I mean we do a lot of other things we'll maybe get into later, but the meat production, I try to Take care of a certain amount of families, you know, and when they need meat, I have it.
I'm not really, I don't market it.
I mean, it's all, I have customers and they come to me when they want meat.
Some years ago when we were raising beef, one of the things that I did for my ex-wife and I did for my brother and sister-in-law was gave them a quarter of a beef for Christmas.
And I thought it was being real clever.
You know, the steers at that time kind of all had the same name.
The heifer calves, the female calves, I give them different names or different numbers and everything because we keep them around.
But the steers all had the same name and that was dinner.
So, I'm sorry, the story was that, so we gave Sarah and Art this quarter of beef, and we were making a presentation of it, and they had the neighbors over.
And so everybody's sitting around the table, and there's a couple of Girls, young women, maybe 10 and 14, something like that.
I don't remember their exact ages.
But I had this Polaroid picture of that steer and said, you know, and I had it in quotations, dinner, and I made a presentation of, well, we gave you this meat, and here's this wonderful steak that we're having and everything, and here's the before, and here's the after.
Apparently, I turned one of those girls into a vegetarian that night.
But some of the folks that buy meat from me, they come out and they take a look at the place.
And, you know, I mean, you've been there.
You've been there at maybe the nicest time of the year because it was cold and all of that.
And the cattle weren't out in pasture.
We had them confined in the barnyard.
And they're out walking around.
They're laying on the hillside.
They're chewing their cud.
Man, they're just happy as they can be.
And they're looking at me, and they're looking at the cattle, and so I'm going to have some of that meat.
And it's just like there's that connection.
If I don't get anything else across here during this conversation, I'd encourage people to know their farmer, know the guy who's raising that, whatever it is, vegetables or meat or whatever for them.
Well, it's very difficult for someone who is not used to the idea of an animal being alive and then being dead and then cut up and then portioned into steaks and then cooking.
People that are used to going to the supermarket and buying it already done for them, to be sort of forced to look at that whole process as an adult.
It's a little disconcerting for a lot of people because we're faced with this very convenient world where we're completely detached from any of this stuff.
Now, as a guy who's been around it your whole life, that's got to be kind of frustrating when you see the hypocrisy of people who eat the meat but really kind of don't want to know where it came from.
There's a reverence to it that you have in these smaller...
I mean, I could see where if I had 500 steers that I'm raising to 1,250 pounds, I might not have the same reverence to those animals, but they're giving me something.
You know, I'm taking it from them, but that's my deal, you know?
Well, that's a similar argument when you're talking about large populations of people, that there's sort of this diffusion of responsibility that comes with interacting with 20 million people versus 20 people.
When you're around 20 people, you have a town of 20 people, you know everybody.
You know, and the relationships are kind of important.
Whereas 20 million people, you give the finger to somebody on the road, what is the idea?
Now, I would confidently never sell you any of my beef if I butchered it myself, but I would confidently give it to you and say this is as, I mean, you've seen how we do it out there.
The place I go to is called Driftless Meats in Viroqua, and it's a really...
Like, when they bring in a cow, like, one of the big problems with these slaughterhouses, Joe, is, you know, a lot of them, you bring your cow in the night before, and there's...
Who knows how many cows jammed into a pen and they're stressed out.
They're rutting around, bumping each other.
These guys up there, I think the max they take in on a slaughter day is four.
And so these cows got their own pen.
It's very stress-free.
It's very relaxed.
So the process, and that's what's so important about all of this and the sustainability and environmental impact, it's all about the process.
Fortunately, there's a really strong movement in that sector of the processing is going on.
That's what I think is unfortunate about the exaggerations of some of their claims, because I think that if they just stuck with what's absolute and reality, it's very disturbing.
The sustainability doesn't look good.
But what's interesting is...
Here's some things that you disagree with strongly.
It's one of the reasons why we got into this conversation.
One thing, the amount of acreage that it takes to grow a cow, to raise a cow.
So I think what happens is someone told them that, that sounds great, they went with it.
Look, they made a great documentary, but when you make a documentary you also have a great responsibility.
They have an agenda, it's very clear.
Their agenda is to promote veganism.
It's because they feel very strongly about it.
Whether you agree with it or whether you don't agree with it, that's their point of view.
That's what they're trying to get through in this documentary is that if you just grow vegetables and you live off vegetables, you don't need as many acres.
You could feed more people and it's a healthier way to do it.
That's just their perspective and their point of view.
So they sort of, they lean towards that in a very strong way while highlighting some irrefutable facts that are very disturbing.
But how about the fact that scientists have done very clear studies on ancient humans, and the reason why we became human in the first place is the consumption of meat.
It literally changed the amount of brain tissue we have.
And then hunting changed how crafty people had to be.
It changed the innovation of these lower primates, these lower hominids.
They had to innovate.
They had to figure out tools.
They had to figure out weapons.
Not just to defend themselves from humans, but in order to hunt animals.
So I think, if I could speak for them, if I could play the devil's advocate, they're Point of view is now we have evolved to a point where we don't need to do this anymore.
We don't need meat anymore.
We're very intelligent.
We're also aware.
We're also faced with this overwhelming amount of evidence, this overwhelming amount of information that we have now because of the internet, because of our access to it, we've never had before.
So you can look at some of the statistics and some of the things they brought up and you could say, well, this is their argument for promoting a vegan lifestyle.
See, I can go with that.
The problem is that a lot of these guys, they say things like, human beings can't process meat.
Or we had this guy that Rob Wolf was arguing on Twitter who said, animal fat is toxic.
What the fuck are you talking about?
How do Inuits live?
How they've been around forever?
They just eat nothing but fat.
These fucking people.
And if you look at their diet and you look at their diseases, the only fucking Inuits that are getting cancer are the ones that are smoking cigarettes.
That's true.
It's our nasty fucking western habit that we've passed up to these poor people.
That's how they're getting cancer, and they're getting cancer in higher numbers than they ever have before because they weren't getting it before at all.
These people were eating blubber and fat and seals and whatever fish they could get, and they can't grow a goddamn single vegetable, and they weren't getting cancer.
Because recently, I don't know if you've caught the whole red meat and cancer thing, and they came out and they said, you know, definitely your smoked meats and your cured meats.
The problem is, your bacon, if you sat on a shelf, Nesca, Oscar Mayer bacon, if you put them both on the same shelf and sat for a week, Oscar Mayer would look the same.
And that animal is choosing to eat, an elk is choosing, well, it's obviously a product of its environment, so it's eating what's available, just like a white-tailed deer is.
I remember when you and Brian were out, and I think Brian held up one of the backstrap steaks, and he goes, oh my god, this is like...
Where Doug lives, opening day, like in the morning, when we were out in the blind, and as soon as the sun starts peeking up over the horizon, you hear...
You know, one of the things that these folks were addressing in that documentary that I think didn't get to the heart of it all, but the heart of it all really is the amount of human beings.
The only reason why, like if there was only, if Casanova was the world, you wouldn't need a fucking factory farm.
The cool thing is, and Doug and I have been talking about this, and he mentioned earlier, like, we're sitting here talking about this really interesting stuff because we don't want to come off on this podcast as a bunch of, you know, Knuckle-dragging mouth breathers eating meat.
Well, one thing, we've been talking about a lot of awesome people and really digging deeper into this, but there's guys like, you know, Doug can expand on this more because he's read more of the book, but this guy Mark Shepard and other guys, I mean, people contend that we can raise enough food sustainably, but part of that equation is...
And that's what maybe we could unify with these guys, like guys from Cowspiracy is, you know, let's not talk about ending meat.
That's an unachievable goal.
That's never going to happen.
Let's talk about educating people to say, hey, let's not eat quite so much so we can sustain, you know?
One of my favorite stories is these former FBI agents who were retired and they were arrested because they were growing hydroponic plants and vegetables in their basement and, you know, the DEA passes by houses and they scan.
These people bought hydroponic When you buy hydroponic equipment, they flag you, and they follow you.
It's so fucking insane that growing vegetables has become a crime.
Because so many people grow a pot, they assume that if you're growing a plant with some sort of a plant system, that you must be growing an illegal drug.
So with no evidence whatsoever, two fucking former FBI agents, they break down their door, guns a-blazin', and they arrest these people and then find out they're fucking growing tomatoes.
His point being that when we grow one crop on a farm field, Corn, soybeans, organic or otherwise, or vegetables, that sort of thing.
In our area, in the winter, then that's a desert.
I mean, once the corn or once the beans come off, that's what it is.
I mean, you saw it.
The deer come out into the field and they eat a little bit of the stuff and all that.
And guys will pasture out on that.
But it really does become sort of that one-trick pony, which to a certain degree, vegetable gardening will be as well, although you can rotate crops through.
But like on my place, we're growing livestock.
We're enriching the soil.
Our pasture is getting better all the time because we're not over pasturing in any particular place.
So I'm pasturing, and you saw some of the pastures, some of the places where you hunted was pasturing.
There's wildlife in there, and we've got good, clean water.
When we went to a point on our farm where we weren't over pasturing, and it was just something that we, you know, we sort of learned, the streams were real wide.
When we were over pasturing, they were really wide.
The water was shallow, and it was warm.
No trout.
As time has gone by and we weren't over pasturing anymore, those streams narrow up because there's running water that's going to cut that and it starts to fill in.
The grass starts to grow.
Now you stepped across a creek that you used to have to walk through.
So there's trout in there now.
The cattle are going in there.
They're eating a certain amount of the grass.
We keep moving them through.
They're eating a certain amount of the grass.
They're keeping some of the invasive species down.
Deer are still living in there.
Songbirds are still living there.
Gamebirds are still living in there.
All of those things are happening and the Plants themselves are pulling the CO2, you know, the whole photosynthetic process, pulling that out and putting it back into the ground where it belongs to counteract some of that.
So, gee, I think I'm getting like three or four different positive results from having pasture, you know, hickory orchard with some bigger trees and that sort of thing.
This dude...
With permaculture, it starts to add multiple other things.
Layers of...
So if you think about an acre of land like this table, and if you're growing one crop on it, one vegetable crop, you've got an acre of land, 43,560 square feet of that particular vegetable, or those groups of vegetables.
But with the idea of permaculture...
You have your upper layers, trees, big trees, you know, big oak trees and, you know, you might have hickory for hickory nuts and that sort of thing.
So on that same, you know, chunk of ground, you've got this large tree.
It's producing wood.
This looks like a good oak table here that we're leaning on.
It's the same sort of thing.
The next layer is the smaller trees like fruit trees and that sort of thing.
Below that are shrubs that are going to be serviceberry, chokeberry, aronia, some of the antioxidant producing And then you go down to the next layer, which is going to be things like asparagus and rhubarb.
And it keeps coming down.
So now instead of just that one plane of plants growing, you've got it on that same acre.
You've just grown multiple acres of food.
And that is just something that needs to be thought about, the bigger thing.
He's then rotating through four different kinds of animals.
He's running beef through it.
And they're not in there all the time.
So it takes management.
After beef, and it's called a leader-follower grazing system.
After beef, he's running pigs through it, because pigs are a great cleanup animal.
After that comes turkeys, and turkeys are cleaning up the grubs and whatnot in the shit from the cows and the pigs.
He runs sheep in it, and last might be chickens.
So the intensity of management is incredible, and the amount of Layers of food that are coming off of that and then layers of acreage.
Well, suddenly we're getting, you know, in his scenario, I'm getting three or four benefits out of it.
He's still getting all that carbon sequestering and all that.
But now he's built that up to 10 or 12 different positive results from the same thing.
And one of them is from a wildlife perspective, which is one of the things that gets talked about all the time.
You garden at home.
I garden at home.
What's the one thing that every garden that has wildlife around it has?
A fence.
If you're going to grow vegetables for profit or for fun and put your effort into it, you can put a fence around it.
When we sat down, we're like, okay, this is going to be tough.
These guys...
We put forth a really good narrative and had some really irrefutable facts.
But one of the things we talked about, the water, talked about the acreage, but the wildlife thing, one thing that they said was, and where these livestock are living, that is area void of wildlife.
I mean, I look at my pasture, from the soil microbes and the worms to the bugs and butterflies to the, you know, field mice and moles, and we've got hawks, and we've, I mean, we see a badger and a fox.
The big thing here is, and the bigger conversation I think is, and that's something that, gosh, people that care should really, you know, shove veganism and, you know, meat eating aside and just, let's say, how do we make this work?
You know, and I think it's education.
I think...
People need to understand that you can't just go around eating meat, you know, Charlie's Chicken Fingers.
You can't be doing that.
You've got to have a balanced diet, and you can't be eating pounds of meat a day.
I mean, through the method of collecting nitrogen from the oxygen, I mean, from the air, the Haber method that they invented in, like, the early 1900s, that's how they figured out how to extract nitrogen, and because of that, a gigantic population boom ensued.
That's the reason why there's so many people in the world today.
This is widely accredited with the Haber method of collecting nitrogen.
Because before that, it was really difficult to fertilize soil.
Once they figured out how to extract nitrogen from the actual air itself, things got a little easier to grow food, and the population boomed.
And that's part of what we're dealing with here.
What we're dealing with here It's kind of, you know, when we talk about wildlife, we're talking about the 50,000 car accidents that are in Michigan every year alone because of the overabundance of deer.
This is sort of what we're talking about with human beings.
We have an overabundance of human beings.
Now, obviously, I'm not suggesting we have massive hunts on humans.
But we would, if we were some sort of an alien, and we looked at, okay, let's put it this way.
If chimpanzees were overrunning Chicago, like somehow or another chimpanzees figured out how to get to Chicago, they fucking swang from tree to tree, and they moved in and started setting up shop and overrunning the place, the part where people were getting in car accidents with chimps, would we kill them?
That would be very tricky.
I don't think we would.
Because chimps are way fucking smarter than deer, and we like smart shit.
So, we wouldn't kill chimps the way we would kill deer.
So, people obviously are smarter than- most people are smarter than chimps.
I know some people that probably aren't smarter than chimps.
When it gets to intelligent animals, that's when we get weird.
Like, nobody gives a fuck if you kill a bug, okay?
If mosquitoes contain Zitka virus and malaria and all this different shit, you can kill mosquitoes all goddamn day long.
And for whatever reason, nobody gives a fuck about mosquitoes.
Because we've all agreed that mosquitoes are the enemy, right?
Mosquitoes contain malaria.
Malaria has killed—this is a number I know is real—malaria has killed 50% of all the people that have died ever.
That's some real shit because I've been fascinated with malaria for years.
I've read a lot of shit on malaria, and I've had two friends that got malaria, including Justin Wren, our friend who was in here recently, who fights this weekend on Bellator.
Good luck to my friend Justin.
He's the best.
This guy is fucking...
You want to talk about an amazing human being?
This guy, he gave up years of his life to go to the Congo and dig wells for these people, these pygmies in the Congo.
He's just the salt of the earth, like the nicest guy ever.
But he got malaria when he was doing that.
And almost died.
So, nobody gives a fuck if you kill mosquitoes, which is my point.
You know, you could swat flies.
Vegans will swat a fucking mosquito, right?
You know, you don't go, please, namaste, injure my blood.
It's the blood of a carrot eater.
No.
You fucking slap that fucker down, but there's a certain level.
Like, okay.
If an ant is on your food, a lot of times a vegan will kill that ant and what do you do with the body?
You throw it to the ground, you ignore it because it's little.
You just fucking kill an ant in my house and if you went like that and brushed it off, I wouldn't say a word.
I'd be like, Doug's doing some acceptable behavior.
He killed an ant that's on his pants and he dropped it on the ground.
But if a mouse ran across my kitchen and you stomped it and then ignored it, I'd be like, hey, fucker.
The fucking splatter of guts and hair you've left.
I was living in the hills and I rented this house and I had a real rat problem to the point where I'd hear them banging around inside the rafters.
They're big, man.
Like the hills around Los Angeles...
Los Angeles is a very strange place because you have this city and then you have just outside the city pretty abundant wildlife including coyotes a lot of hawks and a lot of crazy shit but this place that I lived had a rat problem.
So I set out a rat trap, and I killed this fucking big ass rat, like as big as my laptop.
And I have this, in fact, talked to Yanis Patelis about it.
And his response to me talking about allowing coyote hunting on our place was, he goes, oh man, I just think they're trying to make a living too.
And, you know, they eat a lot of rodents.
They clean up a lot of the weak and the old of deer and that sort of thing.
But My buddy, Greg, who you may hear, Greg Kiefer, who you may hear, man, I'm a big dude, Steve talks about him all the time, recently had a deer run into his yard by a pack of coyotes, and they took it down and killed it in his yard.
You know, I have a chicken coop in my yard and I went out in the middle of the night to shut the coop because I let the chickens out and they wander around and I closed the coop.
And when I closed the coop, I was just outside enjoying the peace, looking up at the stars.
And I heard these deer running, like running, full clip.
And then something was chasing after them, full clip.
But it was dark and my eyes hadn't adjusted.
So I was trying to figure out what the fuck was happening.
But these deer were running and something was chasing them.
And I saw, I don't think so.
I'm pretty sure it was a coyote, but it could have been a mountain lion.
But I saw what looked like the silhouette of a coyote on the top of this hill.
And I was like, this is so wild.
There's a house here, and this fucking asshole over here is watching The Bachelorette.
And inside, this guy pulls into his driveway, his Mercedes, he's smoking his e-cigarette, and some fucking tooth and claw shit is going on right there.
Right there, these coyotes are chasing down these deer.
Because there's a series of oak trees down the street from my house where these deer tend to bed.
I see them there all the time, and there's probably five or six of them.
But you'll see coyotes, especially come spring, when the fawns are being born.
You'll see these fuckers hanging around, just looking for an easy meal.
You know, guys who raise cattle around me will talk about, and I don't know, Nathan, if you know anything about this, but to my knowledge, I've never had a calf taken by a...
By coyotes or anything like that.
I have had a calf that was born and died.
You know, it was stillborn or something that wasn't there the next day.
Wildlife ecologists I know in Wisconsin, when people would start to talk to him about, you know, I'm trying to get rid of this animal or whatever, having to make a woodchuck or something like that, he would always recommend a small piece of lead at a very high velocity.
In Madison, Wisconsin, where I live, on the edges of town, and we actually live near two parks.
We have coyotes.
Yeah, there's a certain group of folks who are like, well, you know, they're just out there trying to make a living, too, until, you know, mittens and fifi get eaten.
Then we've got a little situation we have to deal with.
It's a bizarre thing to see your cat in the jaws of a coyote as it's running away.
You know, there's the LA Museum of National History has this really cool exhibit on North American animals, and their exhibit, I had a picture of it on my Instagram, Jamie, of the coyote.
Their exhibit of the coyote in Los Angeles is a coyote with a fucking cat in its mouth.
That's in the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles.
The actual, you know, they have stuffed animals, they have buffalo, they show moose, and they have these, you know, so you can get to see, oh, that's what one of those looks like.
I was milking for a farmer one time, and one of the things with dairy farming, and I grew up dairy farming, but if a cow has a stepped-on teat, we usually say tit, but I guess it doesn't matter now.
But they have a stepped-on teat, or they get mastitis, which is a sort of infection.
It's very sore, obviously.
So you gotta strap up the milker and not put it on that one.
And I was in a hurry.
I was late for my other job, so I'm trying to hurry and I forgot about this one cow.
And this guy's cow didn't go in the right stall, so my head wasn't where it needed to be.
Our neighbor, the guy who I used to, well, he still does some farming for us, cuts and rakes and bales our hay, was almost killed by a cow that just freshened, just had a calf, and he went in there to deal with the calf, and she got him into a corner and beat the snot out of him.
Eventually, he was able to crawl out and get under a gate, and this is normally a very nice animal, you know.
So, it's funny to tell that story when I've been sending you all this shit about how nice my cows are and I can scratch their heads and stuff.
As you're walking out there, they all turn and look at you as you're walking in because it's on that outtake.
And then when you start shooting, they're all down in the corner being very in a defensive position.
And the analogy I think I use to you is imagine you're at home having dinner and four dudes walk into your house with cameras and guns, talking loud, doing their whole thing.
And then they start shooting.
Well, I'm guessing that you're going to probably go to a corner of the house in the defensive position.
Man, I was in Tejon Ranch with Rinella, and we were walking down this road, and we were pig hunting, and we got close to these pigs, and they didn't know we were there because there's this really thick brush and grasses, and we heard them fighting.
And they were...
Less than 20 yards away.
And they're going to war.
And I'm like, these are demons, man.
They're fucking demons.
They sound like monsters.
They sound like something from the Lord of the Rings.
And they're attacking each other for whatever reason.
And I think we have a real problem in this world with our idea of what an animal is.
You know, we anthropomorphize these things.
We think of them the same way we think about our pets.
When you have a dog and you think of your dog the same way you think of a wild bear, like, boy, they're playing on some fucking completely different fields.
Well, the way Rinella cooked it, he braised it and then slow cooked it like a stew.
And I'm telling you, man, it was like...
The best beef stew you've ever had in your life.
Rich and flavorful.
And again, just like we're talking about with organic beef versus regular corn-fed, this is a wild animal with a wild, natural diet and a real healthy, big, fat beaver.
If you're eating Cheetos all day or potato chips or whatever the fuck it is, that is literally supplying your cells.
And we don't think about it that way.
We just think about this tastes good.
I am me.
I am Doug.
Doug eats cheeseburger because cheeseburger tastes good.
But a cheeseburger literally is supplying your body.
You know, I started this diet recently.
It's called the Primal Blueprint Diet.
This guy on the podcast named Mark Sisson, and he is an advocate of no grains.
No bread, no pasta, no rice, no nothing.
Mostly fats.
You get your fats from avocados, from healthy fats, from beef and chicken or whatever the fuck you eat, and coconut oil, things along those lines, MCT oil.
And I've been on it now for two weeks, and it's pretty fascinating.
Pretty fascinating.
First of all, it took me a while to adjust from going on a carbohydrate-based energy to a fat-based energy, getting my energy from fats.
My body fat's decreased pretty significantly.
I lost at least six pounds now.
And I'm eating normal amounts.
But I'm just eating fat and proteins and a lot of vegetables.
And no sugars at all.
None.
Zero.
I'm not eating any processed sugar.
I eat an occasional piece of fruit, blueberries and things along those lines.
But it's mostly vegetables and meat that I'm eating.
And a lot of avocados.
Wow.
My cells, obviously, are getting nutrients off of this, off of healthy fats.
And that these healthy fats, like healthy fats for your body, like coconut oil, things along those lines, is really the best fuel for your body.
And your body gets into a state of ketosis, which takes about two weeks, which I just started getting into.
I just started getting into the state of ketosis.
And your body, once it reaches this state of ketosis, gets its energy primarily from fat.
And it's a more normal, natural way for your body to respond.
And your body can shift.
Your body is very flexible.
It can shift from a glucose-based, carbohydrate-based fuel system to a fat-based fuel system.
So this is what my body has just started to do.
And I committed to this.
I was going to do a month, but I just decided to make it two months.
So I'm committing to this for two months, and I'm going to talk about it and see what it's like.
But I'm sold two weeks in.
I don't like it in the fact that if I go to a restaurant and someone's got spaghetti and meatballs next to me, I'm like, fuck, I can't eat the meatballs.
Because of this shift, my body, taking plenty of probiotics, drinking a lot of kombucha, things along those lines, taking some probiotic supplements, you introduce healthy bacteria into your stomach and your gut, and because of that, it shifts what you're hungry for.
It's very strange.
Like, bread to me looks like, why don't you eat stuffing out of a mattress?
Like, it looks like nonsense to me.
It's very strange, because I used to see, like, bread.
Someone bring out, like, a restaurant, nice loaf of bread and butter.
I'm like, oh, give me that.
And I'd be all excited, slap some butter on that bitch and eat it up.
The staph was real scary because my friend Tate Fletcher spotted it.
We were at an airport, and we were hanging out.
Get ready to go on a plane, and I just had my foot sitting up on my knee, and he was looking at the bottom of my calf.
And he goes, hey man, what's going on with your leg?
I go, what?
He's like, what's all this?
I go, what is it?
It's like these little pimples on my leg.
I'm like, I don't know.
He goes, dude, that looks like staff.
I go, are you serious?
And he goes, yeah, I don't like that, man.
Go get that checked out.
Because he, you know...
He fought, has been grappling his whole life, and he had caught it before.
I had never caught it.
I had caught ringworm before, and I knew what that looked like.
And so I was like, this is fucking pimples.
Like, what is it?
He's like, I'm telling you, I think that's staph.
So I go immediately to a dermatologist, take his advice, and the guy goes, yup.
Get on some fucking antibiotics.
He gives me these horse pills of death.
This stuff's awful.
First of all, antibiotics, when you have staph, wrecks your entire system.
Because it doesn't just kill the staff.
It kills all the healthy flora, too.
So what they say to counter that is to take probiotics once you're done with your whole cycle, but also to prevent it in the future.
You take healthy bacteria, like a lot of acidophilus, different forms of probiotics, and you are essentially giving your body soldiers to fight off infection.
And the skin flora changes when you take high doses of healthy acidophilus and things along those lines.
It's also for people that are vegan, there's some different probiotics like raw sauerkraut.
Raw sauerkraut is really good.
Kimchi is another one that's really good.
Fantastic probiotic.
You're essentially taking in live organisms that become a part of your body, and they're soldiers.
And these live organisms fight off against shitty bacteria.
Well, part of the reason I was convinced, other than I get my medical advice, is in the other work that I do, I build and manage athletic fields.
And there's a huge movement to go towards organic...
cultural practices in, um, on athletic fields.
You know, this one facility that I manage, um, before every tournament, we'll get emails and calls from parents who are bringing their eight year old and say, well, we're coming in from wherever.
And we want, would like to know what's been applied to your fields.
My son or daughter has a issue with herbicide intolerance or whatever.
And I'm real, I take that shit really seriously.
Um, we started using, um, compost from, uh, both a facility, uh, nearby from the County, but also from a supplier and applying that as a part of our, um, our regime.
Um, We were able to cut back on fertilizer and the other thing that was really interesting is that A lot of the pathogens that we have issue with, and you see them on golf courses, they get different kinds of fungus that affect the grass because you're putting water on it and you're feeding the shit out of it.
And by putting that compost on there and providing Essentially, the organisms that are good for the soil, we're feeding the soil, not the plant, which synthetic nitrogen does.
And so what ends up happening is we're feeding that soil, and so now we've got a whole environment there that that turf grass has got an opportunity to utilize everything that's in that soil, and it's healthier.
We're kind of going the other way.
We're going the other direction in everything from farming to growing grass for kids to play soccer on.
Well, I know a guy who lived near a golf course growing up, and the pesticides that they used on the golf course infected the water supply, and he got bone cancer and cancer throughout his neighborhood.
Everyone in his neighborhood was affected.
Someone they knew got cancer.
It was rampant.
And it was just people that were drinking the water that came from this area where it had been contaminated because of a fucking golf course.
And the one company that I work with has been part of a construction of a golf course that from day one was, and it's actually certified organic, but it's been a part of their process all the way along.
And they control the amount of traffic on it and all of those sort of things too, but it's a beautiful golf course.
And they haven't used any pesticides or synthetic fertilizers on it.
One of the things that they had brought up in that same article about organic meat being healthier was the incorporation of clover in with grass and that somehow or another clover helps sustain a nitrogen balance with the grasses.
In a pasture, we introduce clover into our pastures.
It fixes nitrogen into the soil that's then available for the grasses and white clovers and a lot of the things that I actually plant in some of the food plot stuff that we do for wildlife.
And it's kind of like what you were talking about when you were talking about these really interesting, diverse ecosystems that are created by these organic farms, like this one that you were highlighting earlier.
They're essentially grazing off acorns, things along those lines, and just giant areas where they roam and forage, and they eat just like a wild pig, and because of that, their flesh is very different.
Not very often, but there's one place, one restaurant nearby our place that I go to, and he finishes his beef with corn, but it's mostly grass-fed, but he's still sort of old school.
I taste the difference between, of course, you taste the difference between venison, because really, again, I don't have this wide experience of hunting in different areas and having meat from different areas, so I am excited about your elk.
So the venison to grass-fed beef to corn-fed beef.
Um, and it's been a long time since I've had something that I, like I said, where I didn't know where it came from, but I can tell you when it was, when it was, uh, fat cattle, they call them.
Um, I feel like after I get done eating a piece of meat like that, like I have a little prime rib or something when I go out on a Saturday night, I feel like I should take a knife and like scrape that fat off my tongue.
It just has a completely different taste and I just, I'm not interested in it anymore.
In the Norwegian areas of Wisconsin, they have these dinners, you know, lutefisk dinners for fundraisers and such, but they also have other things.
My whole thing was, out of respect, I'd take a bite of lutefisk, and then I wash that down with some Swedish meatballs and lefse, and just get it out of your mouth.
Well, we have this little lake, Lee Lake, there in Cazenovia, and one of the things that we do with the money that we raise is stock it with walleyes and other game fish.
So one of the things that we do is have this fishery which is on the ice.
So it's essentially an ice fishing tournament would be the wrong word.
Although there are prizes for like the biggest bluegill and the biggest bass and that kind of thing.
But mostly it's a thing where people come to and you have raffles and It's the social event of the season in Cazenovia.
And some of the stuff that we've also done is donated, bought and donated, like Hoyt Archery Bows or Matthews Bows to the school's physical education program.
Well, there's certainly a benefit to having a small community like that where everybody really does care about the welfare of the community and cares about all these different things like wrestling team needing money for uniforms and things along those lines.
We lose a lot of that when you have big cities.
There's so much to gain in a big city, but there's so much to lose, too.
It's like we were talking earlier about the diffusion of responsibility that you have when there's 20 million people.
You see somebody with their fucking car broken down the side of the road.
I don't even think about stopping.
I'm like, I hope this asshole is triple A. You know?
Passed by.
But if you're on some country road and you see someone broken down, you think one of two things.
I hope this guy's not a serial killer and I should probably try to help him.
People are weird, but cities are especially weird because I don't think this is a normal thing.
We've only had them for the last couple hundred years in this sort of magnitude that we have now, like with New York and LA and things along those lines, just to have so many people jammed into an area like this.
And as we started this conversation, have a complete disconnect as to where your food comes from and that the food is coming from life.
Whether it's plant life or whether it's animal life, your food comes from life.
It's one of the one things that people don't talk about, about living in urban environments.
You go to your car, you know that shit if you have a wheel and you see that stuff on the outside of your wheel?
You're breathing that.
You're breathing that everywhere, especially if you live in New York or if you live in LA and there's constant traffic going by you.
Every time they hit the brakes, a little bit of fucking dust gets up in the air.
And that stuff, you're dealing with millions and millions of cars.
This stuff permeates the environment.
It's terrible for you.
The Voluntary Coast Guard of Somalia, that's what the pirates called themselves.
The reason why they started doing pirating in Somalia is because they were fishermen.
They were fishermen and these assholes from Europe and Russia were dumping toxic waste off their shores.
Nuclear waste, toxic chemical waste, and it was killing all the fish.
So what they started doing was kidnapping the people that were in the boats that were doing the dumping.
So these fishermen who were fucking starving to death, because all of a sudden their waters were polluted, they started going after these guys and kidnapping them.
Then they realized, hey, we get way more fucking money from kidnapping people than we do from fishing.
They became pirates.
And so they also started taking this stuff called CAT. And this is a narcotic.
It's a stimulant that they take.
It's like a plant that they chew, and it's like a fucking meth-type plant.
I don't know the exact...
Pull that up.
I think it's K-H-A-T, but it's a stimulant that they chew all the time.
It's one of the reasons why these people are so...
There it is.
Cat to be banned in the U.K. You see, like, this guy's eating, chewing on these leaves.
And it produces...
Pull up a website or a web description instead of an image.
You know, I mean, my initial reaction when I said, except Somali pirates, I mean, that's how we tell history is from, you know, Captain Phillips' side.
And so then, you know, and the farmers, you know...
They didn't want to be taxed or anything, so I believe there's a compromise where it wasn't a road tax, but they made them have another axle so it spread the weight out and wasn't tearing the hell out of the roads.
So you put this tar down and then go over the top of it.
With pea gravel type thing.
With pea gravel stuff and it all binds together.
And then over time people keep driving on it and over time it actually seals it up.
And if you're just driving over it with cars and pickup trucks, it's okay.
But now here comes...
You know, a big tanker truck or a big tanker behind a monster tractor, and it's breaking down the sides of the roads, and it ends up being an issue for us.
And as Nate said, they're having to haul this stuff further and further, because you can only put so much shit on so much ground, and the shit that they are putting out there is...
You know, it's liquid manure that's going into these tanks or into these whole facilities.
So you've got this massive amount of liquid manure, you know, and they're not going to store it, they're not going to compost it or anything like that.
So, like, right now, we've got a nice snowpack, 12 inches, and they're sprinted on top of the snow.
And just to illustrate the double standard, I got family that is in the septic business.
So if they go out, if they spread this shit on a certain slope...
They used to have one axle, and it was just too much on the road.
So a septic dude, he goes out there to get rid of this human shit, and if he does it on a certain grade, he'll get a giant fine from the DNR. But a farmer...
First of all, I think something that you would probably agree with and I agree with and those people in the Cowspiracy documentary certainly agree with is that there's something evil about these ag-gag laws.
It gets in the air and goes into people's houses and I think some of the neighbors are saying it gets in their house and they can't even breathe and they need to leave the area.
And it's when, all of a sudden, these things don't get treated like a life, they get treated like a commodity.
I guess there's levels, right?
To people that are vegans, they would say, well, any animal that you would be willing to raise and then ship off and sell, like, why are you any better than this guy who's got these things stuffed into this thing?
I mean, yeah, your animals are living a normal life, but then eventually you're going to kill them anyway.
Well, that's the thing that wolves do, and then they're having a real big problem with this in Yellowstone and a lot of places that have elk, is that they don't kill, like a cat will kill a wolf, or a cat will kill an elk, rather, and he will eat that elk for a long period of time.
He'll bury it, and he'll eat it, and a wolf kills it, eats a little bit, and then kills another one, and then kills another one, and kills another one, and they do whatever the fuck they want.
And one of these guys that I know at Hoyt was telling me about this wolf that had killed this cow.
And the way it did it was it attacked the cow elk, attacked it, tore its guts apart, and then backed off and just watched and sat.
And watched this thing struggle and tried to walk away and tried to walk into this river.
Try to get away and then go after it again and tear it apart a little bit more and then back off again.
They do it for fun and it's what they're designed for.
They're killing machines and they enjoy it.
They're beautiful and I'm not saying that they're evil and we should kill them.
All and eradicate them from the face of the world, but there's something strange about that kind of animal.
They're not environmentalists, they're not conservationists, they're fucking wolves.
And wolves are dangerous.
They have an essential place in a very diverse ecosystem, but the top of the food chain is fucking human beings, period.
And when human beings decide, you know what?
There's too many of these goddamn wolves that are killing 100-plus sheep in a night, or my friend...
Mike Hawkridge, who lives up in BC, his neighbor, their fucking cow got taken out.
A cow got taken out by wolves.
In BC, where he lives, there's no tag limit for wolves.
You can shoot as many as you want.
You can shoot wolves.
It could be your hobby.
What do you do?
I go bowling.
I shoot wolves.
They're fucking trying to take out as many wolves as they can.
Well, they're very different than the mule deer that we were talking about before, the show star that Rinella killed, that was on a show recently, which is enormous, beautiful, majestic, public land mule deer that he killed.
Mule deer, they've found, will travel 150 miles during a season.
An older a deer gets in our area, at least my experience has been, so the older a deer gets in our area, the less it moves.
So if you have a buck that you're managing four bigger bucks and you start seeing one that maybe has a distinctive antler or something, so you can tell it from other ones...
You'll begin to realize, you know that great big one that I shot?
Yeah, you know, Old Forky and, you know, whatever.
And they'll have names for these animals and they'll target them.
We're looking for Lucky.
We're trying to get Lucky.
You know, and they'll have these shows.
And, like, this is so bizarre because it's in a lot of ways you're, like, kind of farming because they have these gigantic pastures that they call food plots.
So what they'll do is they'll plow the land and they'll grow a lot of clover, a lot of different types, alfalfa, different things that they know.
I mean, part of what I do in my land management service for people is to help their property become more wildlife friendly.
One of the things that I try to push to people is that when we're doing things like timber stand improvement or invasive species management or providing wildlife food plots, we're planting wildlife food plots, just not deer food plots.
And a lot of those guys, you know, what I really want is deer.
So we shot, starting this Thursday, there'll be three episodes in a row that were shot on the farm.
The first one's actually Steve taking apart a couple of the deer that he finally shot a couple of deer on our place, and technically he'll say something else, but during our hunt he killed two deer.
But he took them apart, so it's a really informative episode about The different kinds of cuts.
Well, one, how to just do it.
And then the different kinds of cuts and the methods for doing this stuff.
I just watched it and I'm just really impressed by it.
He's so goddamn important because in my mind on television, he is the most prominent intellectual voice for wild game management, wild game conservation, and for hunting.
He's a true conservationist.
He's a guy who really, truly believes in public land hunting and goes way out of his way.
I mean, he gets plenty of offers to hunt on private land.
He prefers to hunt on public land, and he prefers to do his best to try to do whatever he can to help keep those lands public.
Coincidentally, I was in town the night before opening day, and I was so bummed out that I had scheduled it where I had to be in Colorado the next day, and I barely made it out of Madison.
So, we had such a good time with that, and I think when Helen and Brittany, who were beginner hunters, they wanted to have that experience similar to what you and Brian had in Montana.
You know, we don't take it easy on us because we're, you know, whatever, women or whatever it happens to be, and I would not take it easy on either one of those two for any reason because they're just...
Now, do you use one of those, um, iPhone calculator apps where, like, you have to, like, figure out, like, how far it is, the velocity of your gun, you know, what are you shooting at, 30-odd sex?
Yeah, and by the way, I should say these guys I know about this stuff because of Steve Rinella's podcast It's called the meat-eater podcast which I talked him into doing and now he's now he's addicted to it, too.
He's so good at it And yeah, you had the guys from vortex on there talking about different things and I learned a lot that day so anyway, I clean mist and I I know I've talked about this before on maybe the podcast.
I said I've never regretted a shot that I didn't take.
And Steve's like, really?
Because, you know, he's incredulous about most of the things that I say, but...
We watched it, my cameraman and I kept watching it on the thing, and so I went right down to the spot where I marked exactly where the spot was.
We had snow and everything, and I just clean missed, and it was a shot that in retrospect I kind of wish I wouldn't have taken, especially with what was happening right then.
Deer were starting to come to the field and all that, but anyway, and the point was it was from that blind that you sent me after that hunt, and so that's where it lives is up there on top of the hill.
And just like you and Brian, man, they gutted them, they cleaned them, they did the whole thing, you know, to the point where I think Helen was maybe a little regretful that she had, well, they had three deer.
Well, the thing about archery hunting for deer in our area is, you know, it's a very...
Well, but you've learned all this, too, hunting with Cam, is that it's...
They've got to be closer, and I don't care how many of them there are.
They've got to be close, and they've got to come, and you're going to spend some time out there, and not much has been going on.
But our archery season coincides with that first part of November, end of October, first part of November, where the pre-rut and rut is going on, so there's a lot of deer activity.
And so there are...
You know, you can call and you can use scents and all that stuff, and they're coming in.
As you know, it's a completely different relationship with the animal.
We actually have crossbow hunting.
Now you can use a crossbow, not a longbow, and personally that's what I use.
You know, who the fuck knows where that arrow's going?
You're shooting 250 yards.
But with a musket or a muzzleloader, you can put the crosshair on that thing.
You can accurately judge, just like you can with a rifle.
The problem is it takes you like 15 to 20 seconds to reload, as opposed to just going, if you want to make a follow-up shot with a rifle, you know, or there's a lot of people now that are hunting with semi-automatics, you know, where they're going, bang, bang, Bang!
And so I think about that when I hear the bowhunting purist friends who are just cackling right now about you giving me shit about bowhunting, which is great.
I actually think that Steve was talking about on this upcoming Butchering one about how they used to take the silver skin off of meat, and they'd get the long strips of it, and that's what they made their bow strings out of it.
I used to live near Lake Charles in Boston, and there was an area by the waterfall where the carp would pool up.
And it was incredible.
I mean, you're looking at these 20, 30-pound fish, and there's dozens of them just stacked together, and you see them on the surface of the water.
You know, but it's a junk fish to us, but a delicacy to people in the UK and in Asia.
It's very interesting.
Yeah, people smoke it.
Yeah, when one person decides it's a good fish, and then, you know, the problem was they're an invasive species in a lot of the North American rivers and lakes, and people don't like them for whatever silly reason.
But they're a very good fish to eat, apparently, if you prepare it properly.
Well, especially a real lean piece of deer, venison or elk or something like that, moose.
Same thing.
You want to barely singe the outside of it almost.
And knowing how to prepare it is a big part of the responsibility of hunting.
You don't want to...
Have this meat that you've got from this animal, and you have so much reverence for the death of this animal, and then you just prepare it like an asshole.
You have to put almost as much thought into the cooking.
It's one of the things I really love about Ronella's show.
The episode that I watched last night about that Idaho mule deer that he shot, this enormous deer, was really focused on, at the end of it, how he prepared it.
You know, he showed you how to prepare it and how to cook it properly and how you can tell when it's done and all this different stuff.
And he'll go through the butchering process, he'll go through the cooking process.
And that's something a lot of these shows, they don't even touch, man.
They get the deer, look at him, he's a real Iowa giant!
And they take a picture of this animal and they show the antlers, look at his fourths and his fifths and look at his brow tying and sticking up like this.
I heard an interesting discussion about that recently and one of the things they talked about is that there were these protein blocks being put out and that may have been...
they've never...
There have been a few different ideas of where it came from, and one is from the deer farms, and another is these protein blocks that maybe got put out, and it's got animal byproduct in it, and maybe that's how it jumps species.
And I've even heard it said that there are places where they were trying to improve the genetics of the deer herd, so they were bringing in bigger bucks and releasing them.
I don't have any proof of any of it, so those are just the things you hear.
You call them trophies, but essentially they're manipulating the genetics of these animals so that they have all these antlers so that these rich assholes can go and shoot these things in this 100-acre fenced-in area where they're letting these animals out of their pens.
I mean, I'm sure you could kill it and it would taste just like a regular deer.
I'm sure they're delicious.
But look at this, man.
So they're growing these insane antlers by feeding them supplements and feeding them the shit that makes their antler steroids, that makes their antlers grow.
Baiting bears is a big one because there's a lot of places where the only way, especially in the spring, you're ever going to kill a bear is if you bait.
So they have to control the population of these bears because the bears are killing moose.
They're killing calves.
They're killing fawns from deer.
They're killing all sorts of things.
And they're killing cubs.
They're killing each other.
I mean, the bears are killing machines.
So when they have these environments where they have to control the population, they allow baiting.
The reason why they allow baiting is to make a successful hunt.
And recently, I think in Maine it was, I don't know if they passed it, but they were trying to pass no baiting on bears.
And the reason why they were doing it is because anti-hunting people were trying to stop people from hunting bears.
So the way they would essentially make a hunt completely ineffective was saying no baiting.
Because as soon as you can't bait, you can't find them.
I appreciate you guys flying out here and doing this, and I'm glad we could have this conversation and get your perspective on things, because I think a lot of people have, you know...