John Dudley, archery expert and bowhunter, joins Joe Rogan to showcase precision by shooting through a 2-inch kettlebell handle at 100 yards. They debate how discipline in sports like archery or hunting—where one shot decides success—outperforms passive education, citing Dudley’s use of Rogan’s motivational clips. Highlighting ethical hunting, they critique misguided activists ignoring ecological balance, like New Jersey’s "stop the bear hunt" campaign, and cite cases like Big Earl’s destructive grizzly behavior or Pennsylvania’s 1.5M deer-car collisions. Hunting, they argue, isn’t just sport but conservation, managing overpopulated species while respecting nature’s primal instincts. Rogan praises Dudley’s focus, urging listeners to embrace archery’s mental and physical rigor. [Automatically generated summary]
I've got an Onnit Kettlebell Primal and Kong is going to have to make a decision whether he's going to let this arrow pass or not.
I'm going to try to put an arrow through that two inch handle right there and actually at this distance of a hundred yards And the angle that arrow has to come in, I bet it's even smaller.
This is going to be an unbelievable challenge.
Definitely going to have to defy the odds.
My idea is to put them right here on this shelf and I've got a curtain right behind so hopefully it'll stop the arrow but also let it do its thing so that we can capture all this on tape right at dark.
unidentified
I'm going to put an arrow through a two inch gap in the handle.
Well, that's what I've been going into over these last couple of days with you, and it's one of the more fascinating aspects about this.
I don't want to call it a sport, because I think archery is a lot of different things.
It's a discipline, for sure, but when it's done correctly, in a lot of ways, it's almost like a martial art.
It's like a weapon art.
In martial arts, when you see someone do something, like if someone's really good at judo or something like that, Like when they execute a throw, and it's just perfect position and perfect technique, it's beautiful.
You know, there's like a beauty to it.
And when you see an archer, like I was talking to you about that, when I was watching and trying to get it in my head, this sort of flow that you have in what you do, it's super similar in a lot of ways.
And something that I really didn't predict, like...
I guess I just always assume that I kind of know what something is if it seems pretty straightforward.
Like, oh yeah, you pull the string back and then you let the arrow fly.
Pretty straightforward.
Like, I think that's most people's idea of what archery is.
But then when you really pay attention to the technical aspects of all the different stuff that's going on and all the different things you think about and how you literally cannot have anything on your mind other than All the technique involved your foot placement, your technique in standing, your breathing, how you're drawing it back, the position of your front shoulder, the position of your rear elbow, how you're pulling, how do you respond after the arrow is released?
There's so much going on that when you put it all together, it leaves no room for For homework.
There's no room for relationship bullshit.
There's no room for taxes.
There's no room in there, man.
If you want to make a nice shot like that, I guarantee you, if we could have a brain scan of your head, the second you release that arrow at 100 yards to go in that two-inch gap, there would be nothing in there other than what you did.
There would be no other cells that would be fired up.
And actually, yesterday when we were shooting, Towards the end of the day, you got to the point where your mind was clear.
It's almost like, for me, your family came home.
Things were winding down.
You knew that work was over.
It was right before dark.
For me, I love shooting at first light and at last light because it seems like that's when I'm not really worried about someone texting me or calling me.
I'm not worried about a problem at home.
And I shoot with a clear mind, and I'm way more efficient at my practice, and it is a form of meditation.
I mean, like you said, it's an art, and if you're clouded, then it will reflect that on the target.
I mean, it's like if your arrows are in one spot, then you know you have a single focus.
And it's almost like the more those arrows are spread, that's a representation of...
How many other thoughts and distractions you have going in your mind?
I mean, and I look at it that way when I shoot.
I'm trying to narrow everything down to just a movement.
And you look at good golfers, the ones that swing easy and it just literally looks like flow, they're such good strikers and they're so much more efficient.
When you see people that are trying to be robotic and almost like hack something, Then it's too systematic.
You see someone that does professional karate or something, if they're in a forms competition, if they're real rigid going around, it's just not what it's meant to be.
It's supposed to be a dance.
It's supposed to be literally a mental musical that's playing.
And if your mind is clear, then it's a form of meditation.
Yeah, I mean, you look at the Avengers, you look at Hunger Games, there's actually so many, even a lot of the sitcoms now, you know.
Obviously, crossbows are popular because of the Walking Dead, but when it comes to true archery, you just see a lot more archers coming in.
Lord of the Rings, Legolas was so popular because of that.
It's really such a cool sport.
I mean, it's an Olympic sport, and we actually have a phenomenal Olympic team here in the U.S. Our men's team is definitely going to be contenders for another medal.
And it's also for a guy like me, because I'm a gadget dork.
So it combines both things.
It combines the zen aspect of complete and total discipline and focus and looking at one task and drowning out the rest of the world.
But it also has, like...
Geeky stuff like different kinds of sights and this is a new cam that they just came out with and these are different kinds of strings and when you do this it makes this better and this is so much going on with it.
Oh yeah you can you know if I look back at the bows I started with and I've I've only been shooting professionally since 97 so I mean it's 19 years I guess it seemed I'm getting old now but um that's a long time the bows that I used then that are at the house You wonder how in the heck you shot that good with them and actually two months ago I was at the Olympic headquarters like the Olympic Museum so they have all these awesome Olympic artifacts
of like swim trunks people wear or like you know the javelin got to see the original recurve bow like j bars was actually on display and they constantly change them so if you're visiting the museum you're not seeing the same things all the time but You look at those pieces of equipment, the bikes, I mean, the bikes that people rode in the Olympic Games, it's like, holy cow, how are they that efficient?
It's almost more impressive because now we've gotten so advanced in our equipment that it's easier to be at the level, I think, than 20 years ago because the equipment just wasn't there.
You know, I almost wonder if those people...
Didn't have to put in two or three times the time and be just that much more elegant at what they did because their equipment was almost a handicap back then.
There's actually a lot of people in archery now that are pushing this envelope.
I mean, long-distance shooting is becoming super popular.
And, you know, to a lot of the real target archers that are out there that are listening to this podcast, see, when we go to a full FITA tournament, we shoot 30...
I guarantee you there's archers right now somewhere that's preparing for a World Cup event or something.
And there's people that literally have calluses and Thicker than most weightlifters just from grabbing a hold of that release.
I remember looking at an Olympic recurve shooter's fingers one time, and I remember his hands, his three fingers that he grabs his string with.
It looked like a frog hand because the tips were so big from pulling blood.
You know, I think because he and I mean these guys you look at the people that are like the Olympic training centers that are just there they get up they go eat and then they shoot until five or six at night and they eat and then they go and do a weight training session.
I bet you there's people that do a thousand arrows a day.
So you can build up some stamina.
It's really impressive.
But in saying that, I think with archery, you know that I'm really big into fitness as well.
I credit my fitness.
And my story as an athlete prior to being an archer as part of what's helped me be successful.
And there's a big difference between quantity and quality.
And a lot of people make the mistake I think with any sport of just trying to practice more or train more.
And even weightlifters.
You know, I see people that I go in the gym and they're like on one exercise.
And then when I leave the gym in 50 minutes or an hour, they're like maybe done two different types of exercise.
And it's just, it's not efficient.
You know, I think a lot of people as athletes sometimes miss the boat of quality over the quantity.
It's an imprint, and I think with any type of athletic, and it's probably that way with fighters, I'm sure, too.
If you get someone that's just really in a rhythm and in a flow, if all of a sudden they start making a mistake or doing something bad, as a coach, you try to get them back into that rhythm again so that you can weed out that imprint.
And that's tough as an athlete sometimes.
People that...
And I'm sure for fighters, you know, you look at people that come out and have a disappointing loss, it's almost like that's an imprint.
Well, when I would make something like that that would really trigger me into a pissed off realm, I would let one mistake...
Affect everything else after that.
And a lot of athletes, the really good athletes that I watch in any sport, tennis players, golfers, the key is when you have a negative moment to not let it affect what hasn't happened yet.
So, a guy came up to me one time after I made a bad shot and he could tell I was getting hot.
And he looked at me and he said, you know, the only arrows you have control on right now are the ones that are still in that quiver.
And for me, it completely changed my outcome as a professional archer.
And I've brought so much of what archery has done to me as an athlete into my life.
And there's times where something really torques you off, and you have to just look at, okay, everything I do from here on out is the only thing I have control on.
Because...
That's history.
I haven't figured out a way, once that release goes, pling, to actually grab that arrow and pull it back and stick it back in the quiver or put it back on the string.
It's like a perfect representation of life.
You make a decision, if it was shit...
You have to reset and say, what do I need to do with myself to get back on track in life?
We make bad decisions at times, but how do we make a good decision to get back online?
Yeah, it's management of the mind in a lot of ways.
And one of the things that I also like about archery, love about archery, is that it's absolute.
You can't pull that...
Arrow back like it's flying through the air and either it hits the bullseye or you missed It's it's just it is what it is.
It doesn't care about where you live It doesn't care who your uncle is.
It doesn't care how much money you make a year It doesn't care like the arrow is gonna go.
It's an absolute discipline and I think you coming from professionals or coming from sports rather sports background played a lot of football and When you play sports, especially insanely competitive sports, you learn where all the edges are to be had.
You learn where all the edges are to be had as far as technique, as far as conditioning, as far as all the different things you have to do in order to be successful and to win.
And everyone knows that in most sports, especially in a physical sport like football, there's a fucking lot of work involved.
There's not a single person who jumps off the bench and You have to learn how to move.
You have to learn all of the different plays.
You have to learn technique involved in different aspects of the sport.
And I think coming from a competitive background in athletics, you've kind of translated that understanding of where all the problems are In archery, because there's a lot of people that don't have good coaching, and so they start off with a lot of really bad habits.
And then they have to figure out a way to either break those habits or they live with those habits.
And then they do the best they can with this sort of limited path that they've carved in and they seem to not be able to escape.
The same thing exists in martial arts.
One of the hardest things for me when I used to teach was teaching people that already had a bad technique imprinted in their brain.
Like they would have one way of throwing a kick or something like that.
And I would have to go, oh, Jesus, I got to figure out a way to break this guy of this thing because as soon as he gets tired or as soon as he panics, the knee goes down, the foot goes up, it loses all the power, the hips don't engage.
But if I could take a kid, like a five-year-old kid, and show them that from the beginning, their instinct would be to throw it correctly.
The instinct, even when tired...
Knee comes up, hip turns over, body extends, full power.
And those things are so hard to unlearn once you get like a bad path.
That's why I really do think that archery in a lot of ways is a martial art.
Well, you look at the whole Asian culture, and I've said time and time again, I've coached all over the world, and that's kind of what I do now.
I do a lot of coaching that most people don't even know about with teams that just would rather have confidentiality in whether or not they're working with an outside source, which is great.
But when I... Probably the best place I ever taught was when I went to India.
I was supposed to have 16 archers.
Once I got there, there was about 140. It was unbelievable.
Anyone they thought could be a potential winner for their team was there.
There were so many kids and adults that were there.
I remember I took several members of the team that had a bad habit of You know, punching the trigger and anticipating the shot, which is a big negative in archery.
And I gave them a device, same one I gave you.
I gave them a release that forces them to not think about actually aiming the front sight of the bow.
It's a device that makes them focus on the movement.
Of archery, pulling through the bow, letting the front arm go forward, the back arm to come back.
And I remember I gave them string and that release.
I took all their bows away and locked them up because I said, until you can do this, we're not going any further.
So I took those eight and I had them do that to the side.
And then I came over and I started trying to work on all these other people.
And there was like...
This person needed their bow worked on.
This person needed to watch me shoot.
People wanted to take pictures or video of me shooting.
Then we went to lunch.
Then the whole thing started over again.
Then when it came to dinner time, I told them, you guys all go ahead.
I'm going to pack up my gear.
Well, once the whole big crowd left, those same eight kids were still over there with strings on Pulling on that release and almost every one of them were damn near bloody in their hand from just executing.
And I came over, I'm like, oh my goodness, have you guys been here the whole day?
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
There's like, there's, there, that culture, there's, it's just no wonder to me why like martial arts is such a discipline, because that culture teaches discipline and hard work within that art.
Better than anything and I think that archery coming out of you know out of Asia I think all the like the Korean team are so strong because of their disciplines and I'm sure with the martial arts it's the exact same thing they're not afraid to take what the coach says and just do it until the coach says no and a lot of people here in any sport are looking for the shortcut.
People at the gym, they want Five-hour body.
Yeah, they want the shake that, you know, melts fat.
They want to be able to go in and get the machine that, you know, does four-minute abs or whatever.
And the reality is you have to have commitment and you have to have discipline in anything in life.
Otherwise, if you don't, you're just going to be another person bitching about why someone else has something you don't because you're not willing to put the effort in for it.
And then I should point out to a lot of people that there's a lot of people that don't want to get involved in anything like archery that aren't interested in it because they feel like they don't want to hunt.
They don't want to be a bow hunter.
I've heard that before.
I'm not interested in that.
I'm like...
You don't have to be interested in that.
That's the furthest end of the extreme spectrum when it comes to archery.
You could enjoy archery with just a yard.
A yard and a target.
You don't need to shoot anything other than a target.
Yesterday and today, we were just shooting targets.
Very fun.
Super fulfilling.
At the end of the day, you know, especially because yesterday we made a lot of progress.
At the end of the day, I was like, wow, you know, this feels great.
What I love about archery is, hopefully you can't hear that.
This is dang good.
By the way, when Joe does his commercials, which actually it's the only thing on TV I don't fast forward through the commercials because I love how you do them.
But when he talks about the butter coffee, take his advice on it.
I mean, when I talk about that movement, it's very finite.
It's a matter of an inch or two.
I think that's Jeff right there.
Yeah, there's Jeff Avery.
So yeah, when I did last year when I had to have my shoulder redone, I did not want to miss archery season and just really took it as a personal challenge to not put my head down.
And I learned to shoot.
It was actually my bow arm was the one I had worked on, so I had to learn to shoot with my mouth using my opposite arm and my non-dominant eye, which was...
I'm thankful for it.
People ask me all the time if I regret this or if I would do that different.
Screw that.
The past is the past.
I just want to look forward on everything.
When I messed up my shoulder, I was bummed about it, but in all fairness, I thought it was a really good challenge.
To look at a sport that I love from a new direction.
And that not just doing it, like say if you're boxing and you're working on your straight right hand, a lot of times when you do your straight left hand, It actually improves your straight right hand.
Because in learning how to do it in an awkward way, what you're doing is sort of programming into your mind the critical aspects of the technique.
How to throw the hips in, when to plant.
And then when you go over to your more coordinated side, it's just like super tuned in to the critical aspects of the movement.
So then when you throw a left hand, then you switch over to your right side and you're like, It's even better.
It's even faster.
It's even cleaner.
And I think that that probably makes sense with archery as well.
I bet a lot of people would probably benefit, although it's not a traditional thing to do, probably benefit from having both a left-handed bow and a right-handed bow and learning how to shoot left-handed.
Well, look at how many skateboarders get better when they learn to skate goofy.
You know, if they learn to skate with the opposite foot.
Back when I was a skater, you know, You either skated straight foot or you skated goofy.
But then people didn't really switch back and forth a lot at that time, like the freestyle skaters did back then.
But then when I got away from skating and started, you know, playing football for a while and then archery, and then all of a sudden, you know, the X Games happen, you start seeing guys like Tony Hawk or whatever, you realize that the whole skating world just completely went to like what the freestyle skaters were and just being you realize that the whole skating world just completely went to like what the freestyle skaters were and just being able to
And I think any athlete that's listening and, you know, what's funny is sometimes I've seen you say, you know, hey, I'm talking about hunting today, but some of you listeners might get pissed, but whatever, because some people just want UFC or some people don't like to hear that.
What's important is that people need to take some of these elements and apply them to their life.
And what I really believe is when I get better as an athlete is when I recognize whatever my biggest weakness is and that's what I focus on making my strength.
I call it selective cycling.
I work on this with a lot of my students.
I'll literally take the one thing that they do the worst and that's all I want them to do.
For almost a month, because a lot of psychology has shown that if you have a negative habit, it normally takes about 21 days to recreate a positive habit, right?
So you have to be able to take your weakness and mentally be tough enough as an athlete to be willing to make that your strength.
And I've had several things in my career that were my weakness that are now my strongest aspect.
You know, once you start changing angles, and once you start having to make shots in canyons, you have to learn wind, you have to learn trajectory, you have to learn cuts.
It would be, you know, the really difficult field courses are like throughout like cliffs and mountainous areas to where, you know, you have shots where they're straight up way over your shoulder where you're aiming on, you know, 50 degree angles and then you're aiming down or somewhere I've even had to aim straight down between my legs.
Those types of things are extremely technical.
If you had golfers that had to play in really difficult terrain, obviously they have to start learning draws and fades and they have to start learning clubs that play differently in the wind.
It would be the same thing.
It pointed out, just like when we shoot at longer distances, like, I mean, you were shooting amazing at eight, were we at 80 yards?
On your rubber deer, your rubber elk, you call it.
I always laugh at the rubber.
It's, but, um...
You were shooting amazing and then you would have one shot where something wasn't right, but it would show up.
And that's what field archery did to me.
It really started to open up my weaknesses.
And for me as an athlete, I'm always so competitive that I want to know what I suck at.
Because I think if you're really going to master something, regardless of the craft...
You have to be so well-rounded.
And I mean, the UFC is that way.
Even as a spectator, I'm not a fight specialist by any means, but I've always loved watching the UFC. And it's funny how the people who won the early UFC versus how rounded you have to be now to win...
One thing you said the other day when we were sitting there talking, you were talking about setting up moves for jiu-jitsu and how evolving it is, how it continually evolves.
And all of a sudden, a new move will get invented.
And you'll be practicing that, and then someone just notices, like, wait, there's a big weakness right there.
Do this.
And we've kind of eliminated someone getting that move done on you, and then it's like, holy crap.
But I think almost labeling these things in any other way than just calling them what they mean.
It is archery.
When you put them in categories, when you categorize things as this is a sport or this is a hobby, it almost trivializes the benefits, the positive benefits of it.
So for people that are listening to this, they don't understand.
But because there's so many different aspects of archery, there's where you're standing, what your posture is, how you're focusing, what you're looking at, what you're concentrating on.
Because of that, there's There's a tendency to anticipate the shot and it becomes sort of overwhelming because you're managing all these different things.
So what a lot of people try to concentrate now in the world of archery is getting what you call a surprise shot, meaning that this is just for the people at home, obviously not for you.
Meaning that when you pull back, the thing that you're concentrating on is just focusing on the target.
All of your technique as far as keeping the bow balanced and level and keeping it on top, all that stuff is something you've already worked on.
All you're working on now is pulling through the shot.
So you don't think about executing the shot like, ready, go!
And when you think of that ready, go, that pressing that button...
You have a tendency or a possibility of punching it, of hitting it wrong, of tweaking and twisting.
And we talked about that today because in a lot of ways it's like a fight in that when a fighter trains for a fight, you're training for something that is going to be a moment that's like months away from now.
So all of this work and effort then comes to fruition in this one moment.
Fighter number one, are you ready?
Fighter number two, are you ready?
Fight!
Holy shit, here it is, it's happening.
But at least in a fight, you've got a few rounds.
You can kind of settle in after the first minute so you can relax and get into the groove of everything.
In archery, oftentimes, all that training and preparation, whether it's for a tournament or even more critically, if you're hunting, it comes down to that one moment.
And that moment sometimes can be completely overwhelming because that moment, although your practice has been constant and diligent, that moment is entirely alien.
This moment didn't exist during any of the practice.
There was never the elevated heart rate.
There's never the freak out.
There's never the massive consequences if you make an error.
Everything has to be in place.
And those things are what make a discipline so rewarding when you actually pull it off.
All those things.
Like knowing that there's so many different factors involved and then this alien moment.
So those factors involved.
All the discipline factors.
You have to drill them into a point where they become a part of you.
They become ingrained in your genetics.
They become a part of your DNA. So that in that one insane, heart-pounding moment, you can execute it flawlessly.
And the best way to do it, which I'm learning from you, is by figuring out how to do it with a surprise shot.
So that way you take out the anticipation aspect of it.
The less you think about it, the more likely it is for things to happen.
You have to be so focused on the process that the prize happens without your expectation.
The really interesting part about what I've learned as a competitive archer is...
It's the fastest buzz kill of any sport I've ever had.
And what I mean by that is there's times where you're standing on the line, you realize, okay, archer number one, one arrow.
Archer number two, one arrow.
Closest to center decides a gold medal match.
You literally let go and you're, you know, you're sitting there, you know, shitting pickles, your heart rate's beating out your neck, you know, you're trying not to, I actually had this, I've had this feeling go both ways, but you let that arrow go and you have so much adrenaline that you can barely manage it.
And then you shoot and you see the shadow of that arrow hit out of the gold to where you know you lost.
And it's instantly gone.
You're not nervous.
You're not sweating or shaking.
You just knew you blew it.
And it's wiped so fast.
It's really, really strange that the release of one product of art form...
You instantly know that you screwed up.
I've been that way as a hunter, too, where you get nervous and all of a sudden that shot happens.
For some people, they make the shot and then they get like that.
But sometimes you make that shot and it's amazing how fast it's just gone.
It's such a rewarding thing when you can take, you know, that ball of just emotion and just say, I got this.
And you freaking clamp down on it.
And then you see that arrow go into the gold.
And it's just like, it's such a reward.
Like for me, that's what, you know, I think for you and your mentality and me and mine, You get so much reward for that that, for me, I never really worried about a trophy or a medal.
Or, you know, for that matter, the checks never really mattered either.
When I was younger, I needed them.
But, you know, I just came to the realization that, you know, every trophy I have at home is tarnished.
You know, they need cleaning.
You know, they just wilt away.
But what imprints I have in my mind of moments...
That's what pulls me through as a person, and it's a positive aura that I can reflect on.
I know that what's satisfying to me, and I feel so content with life, is these small little goals and accomplishments that I've had where I've controlled myself, not the situation.
I was in a gold medal match in Poland, and They had the gold medal match in the square of the main town.
You were shooting from the beach into the main square of the town.
And our match was first.
And I was the first archer.
So I stepped up.
We were in a team round.
And there were so many people.
I raised my bow.
I pulled back.
I was going into my shot.
And as I'm looking through my scope at the target...
About four people's heads come like looking in like this.
Because there were people lined all the way down.
And this is 70 meters.
So everyone's evidently was shuffling to try to get to see the archer.
Not realizing, like, okay, there's an arrow going over your head.
So I'm going from, like, mentally having a sight picture that I'm not nervous about to all of a sudden thinking, if I shoot someone in the face, I don't want to spend the rest of my life in a Polish prison.
I've been at places where I'm practicing and you're shooting and then someone else is at this club and you go down to pull your arrow and then all of a sudden you're sitting there pulling arrows and you're like, yo, what's up?
And obviously it's something that is a reward of hard work and dedication that I've put in through the year.
One saying that I made on my TV show during the first few seasons is...
I'm in target archer to become a better hunter, and I'm a better hunter because I'm a target archer.
I got into professional archery 100% because I wanted to be more proficient and ethical knowing that I was a bow hunter.
And I kind of had the, it was actually the same type of feeling.
I was, I was only 10, but it, or I mean, when I started competing, I started hunting when I was 10. So there was like six or seven years there where I wasn't competing.
But I remember having one hunt where I felt so much anxiety and I like blew a shot and I just completely missed and I couldn't explain why.
And it was at that moment that I'm like, you know what, if I'm going to do this, I need to be able to be.
Ethical at it.
So at that point, I was kind of looking for a way to become better.
And I was actually, it was right before I was supposed to leave for my first football camps for college, I was driving down a road and there was a sign on the road that said, 3D archery shoot.
And it was just an arrow pointing down.
And I pulled in.
I had like my hunting bow in the back of my truck, you know, kind of drive in.
And I see all these people like shooting on this practice range.
And then I see like groups of four going into this course to like shoot.
And it was all foam animal targets with scoring rings on them.
And you step up to the line.
You look at the target.
You try to figure out how far it is without having a range finder.
And then you make a shot.
And depending on, you know, all the scoring is within the ethical kill zone of an animal.
So after, I think it was 15 targets.
It was a 40-target course.
After 15 targets, I didn't have a single arrow left in my quiver.
I'd lost all of them.
And it was like a wake-up call.
It was the first time...
That I had ever felt defeated at something.
It was the first time that I had a very clear wake-up call of, maybe you're not good enough to be doing this, you know?
And for me, that was a trigger.
As a competitor, I think the standout athletes in any sport are the ones that take those moments very personal.
And change a direction to make it their best.
Or either realize I'm either going to be good at this or I need to find something else to be good at, you know, to focus all your energy to.
One thing led to another.
I went to an archery shop where I saw a lot of guys with like shirts on that said like the name of a shop.
So I knew they were like kind of local shooters for representing this store.
So the next day I was in that store and I said, hey, I want to get better.
I know a lot of guys here were shooting and a lot of those guys were in the range.
And I just started asking questions.
A lot of people didn't want to help, which is why I really want to help the archery world.
It's my way of giving back.
Because there were people that didn't want to help me.
But then I remember a guy came in and said, are my arrows done?
And the guy behind the counter said, let me check in the back.
And he kind of walked past me and he goes, come here, kid.
Because I had hung out in that store for about four days just kind of watching and looking around.
I didn't really have any importance.
so he takes me in the back room and he says you got to build these guys arrows for me because i forgot to do them and i said i don't know how to build arrows and he goes okay you take this feather you put in this clamp put glue right down this feather like this put the arrow in this jig you push down on it then you turn the wheel go to the next arrow after you get to the end Take the clamp off, put another feather in.
He literally gave me the thing.
I was in there trying to figure out how to do this.
I was there literally stalking people in the range.
I was the weird guy in the corner with the hunting bow that was probably my dad's hand-me-down.
I'm stalking all the shooters.
About an hour later, I came out with this guy's arrows that he probably paid $100 for and some snot-nosed kid that had never even built them built them for the guy.
And so he goes, alright, good job.
And he goes, here, now go do these.
And two weeks later, I remember telling my dad, hey, I think I'm not going to do the football thing.
And he's like, what do you mean?
And I said...
I got offered a job at this archery shop.
I'm going to do it.
And my dad's like, so you're not going to play college football and get an education?
You're going to work at an archery shop?
He goes, what's this archery shop paying?
I said, $4.10 an hour.
Yeah, that was...
My dad's been so good.
Both my parents have been so supportive on everything in life, but that was the one time where he looked me in the face and just said, this is a really stupid decision.
But, hey, I mean, you know, it's...
I just think it's a great story because it shows that if someone's willing to commit to a dream, then...
As long as you're able to put in the work and stay focused on it, There's so many people that make businesses out of dreams or careers out of sports that you would never even consider.
Great country to live in, too, here in the States, because you can take something that no one really might not believe in but yourself, and if you apply the work to it, you can make it happen.
And in traveling through all the different parts of the world that I've traveled, I've gone to places where you just, you know, you really wish you could give some of those people a chance, because you can tell that they have such heart and such desire, but they don't have opportunity.
That's sad.
Like to me, that's really sad that there's not opportunity everywhere.
And then you come here and you see someone that has potential or opportunity, but they're lazy and they won't put in the work.
You know, I think a lot of times for some people, when they're young, it's not enforced early on that when you work hard at something, it's really rewarding when it's over.
And it's difficult to work hard at something.
It's difficult to get your ass out of bed.
It's difficult to force yourself to get up off the couch.
It's difficult.
But once you do it, it's always good.
It always feels good.
And even if you do something and it doesn't work out well, like even if you're practicing archery and the shots don't go well, you're involved in the discipline and it's giving you something to concentrate on.
And that energy and momentum will translate to the rest of your life.
If you're working to improve at something, whether it's archery or...
Jiu-jitsu or anything.
When you're working to improve on it, I firmly believe that that motivation and that momentum of improvement applies to the rest of your life.
And it's one of the things that people love about any particular discipline is the aspects of it and the qualities of it that sort of transfer onto your everyday life.
You know, it's weird because until you and I communicated some on the phone, when I worked for an archery company and I was just a sales guy making calls, I never got to see faces.
All I ever heard was voices.
So voices for me are always triggers because for 10 years I was just making calls.
When you and I first talked on the phone and I heard your voice directly from my device, I actually realized, I haven't even told you this, but when I work out or when I shoot,
and a lot of times when I'm just working in my building, I've comprised Like, about five hours of an MP3 that's nothing but motivational sayings that I've heard someone say.
Whether it's...
And that's all I play.
It's my ambient sound.
And you were on there twice about just almost like what you just talked about.
Just a positive...
It was just a positive rant that you had about...
All people have to do is make a step in a direction.
You might look in the mirror one time and you don't like what's there, but you have the opportunity to turn around and go a different way.
One thing that I really try to drive to people, because there's times you talk to someone and you know that they're down in the dumps.
One thing I tell people is, You know, motivation gets you going.
Commitment keeps you going.
You know, it's no different than the New Year's resolution.
I freaking hate that.
I hate if there's any time I don't want to go to the gym, it's two weeks after New Year's.
Because it's like this swarm of people.
And to me, there's people in there who are like, you know what?
Good for them.
They're not in shape.
Good for them to come here.
But then it's so disappointing when it's like two days they're gone.
I think this is one of the conclusions that I'm coming to in life.
Is that people need to either find a way to motivate themselves through all the different stuff that's available online.
There's a million different websites and Instagram pages and lots of YouTube videos that show some motivation and they can help you.
But human beings learn from each other and I think most of the cultures in the past Not trying to glorify the past and say they had it nailed and we don't but most of them were in tighter knit groups and they Emulated the behavior and the patterns of the successful members of that group the leaders of that tribe that's where Traditions came from.
That's where skills were passed on and that's where ethics and that's where certain philosophies were passed down from generation to generation.
These were the most beneficial to the community as a whole, to the individual, to the culture, whatever it is.
This world that we're living in today, we're almost in a lot of ways Like you were saying, people with so much opportunity but too lazy.
We're almost, in a lot of ways, just lacking in a pattern, a correct pattern, and a coach or a mentor or a person who is...
Ahead of you, but honest.
Like, ahead of you as far as, like, maybe been alive longer, or maybe had more experiences, but very honest about the difference between you and them.
Because a lot of people think that you see something, like, we were talking about today, this is a ridiculous...
When I was on MTV, we were talking about Downtown Julie Brown.
And I remember thinking, while you were saying that, you go Downtown Julie Brown was probably on MTV back when you were on MTV. And I was like, yeah, but I was a peon.
She wouldn't know who I was.
I was on...
One of, you know, X amount of comedians on the MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour.
Like, I probably couldn't even talk to her, say hi to her.
And then I remember thinking, like, I put myself in that state of mind that I had back when I was 23 or whatever I was when I was on that show, and I felt, like, insignificant.
And like, whoa, that's downtown Julie Brown.
And then I've realized like now that that's nonsense.
Like now I know that's nonsense.
But in my head, thinking about that time, I felt like I did when I was 23. Yeah, I could see it.
And whether it's someone who's an aspiring archer that looks at your accomplishments and then looks at you back when you were this stalker kid hanging around a bow shop in comparison to how they are.
And I think that's a big help to people, to hear a story like that.
And to know that now you travel all over the world and you coach international teams and To see someone admit that I think is very important.
To see someone discuss that I think is very important to a lot of us because most people don't have fucking mentors.
And most people aren't even involved in a discipline that tests them in that manner.
A lot of people are involved in education, right?
You go through high school.
You go to college.
You get a degree.
You're studying.
You're practicing.
But how much of that, what you're doing, has the aspects of the obsession with a discipline like archery or like jujitsu or something along those lines?
You're not getting the same intensity and focus.
You're reluctant to do the work.
You're doing it because you have to, because you've got to get a degree, because you've got to get a job, because you don't want to be a loser.
And so you're pursuing these things with a lack of passion.
And then you enter into the workforce.
Hopefully you're doing what you love.
Most of the time people are not.
Most of the time people are doing what they think is a good job that they can get by with.
And so they're committed to this path of not being excited, not being obsessed, and then not challenging themselves, and not rising above, and not gathering up some of the possible lessons that you can.
And it could be anything.
It could be anything.
If you want to make knives, if you love making jackets, if you like painting, there's no one particular thing that it should be for you.
You just have to find out whatever starts that spark in you.
For you, it was archery.
For me, it was stand-up comedy.
Or martial arts.
It could really be anything.
But I think we need things like that.
If people don't have things like that, if they just work and then they go home and they watch TV and they go home and they watch TV, you're not fucking living life at level 10. You're not going to hit it.
You're never going to feel that.
And I'm not saying you're going to be at level 10 every day, but there's going to be some moments, like when you were talking about being on the line, two archers, this is for one shot for the gold medal, and you're like, ah!
That feeling, those feelings are integral to being a human being.
The feelings of being challenged and of learning what you're capable of and what you're not capable of through those challenges.
You have to be able, when you've made that decision, the next thing that you should come to terms with is say, you know what, I'm going to push myself further than I've ever pushed myself.
And I know dang good and well there's going to be a block.
There's going to be resistance.
I heard in a podcast from you long ago, you talked about the book, The War of Art.
And actually, you know, with you learning this new release for your archery, I told you before you even made your first shot, there is going to be a point where you're not going to like this.
And you need to know right now that we're going to push through it.
So a lot of times when people make that determination and that decision in life of, you know what, I'm going to go to the gym.
I'm going to get ready.
You need to also think, you know what, there's going to be, I'm going to have a voice in my head that's going to tell me this is too hard and I'm going to have a point of resistance.
But I'm telling myself right now when I get that, That's my opportunity to go further than I've ever had in the past.
I know right now that when I get to that, I am pushing through it.
If you're only focused on one particular goal and not seeing the obvious distractions or things that you know are going to be in that path and mentally build Build up yourself to know when I get to that resistance, I'm driving through.
You know, I listened to that podcast with Steve-O and he talked about he knew he was ready to beat his habits.
And when he was in there and they're like telling him that he should be going, he's like, no, I want like...
He probably knew deep down inside that if he left, it was gonna be an opportunity for him to fail.
So he had already made up his mind that he was going through that.
And so many people in life Just don't push that one time and then they never really see how far they can go.
One time I heard Les Brown say, would you rather go through life aiming too high and miss or aiming too low and hit?
I mean, I would rather aim high and And fall short and still be further ahead than aiming too low and hitting exactly a low goal.
You know, I think you have to be willing to fail and get good at it.
I lost way more tournaments than I've ever won.
And some of the people that, like, question why I'm at, where I'm at in archery, they're like, well, you never won that much.
You know what?
I'm probably lost more than anybody that's good.
But I dang sure know that it made me a better person.
And when I lost, I was at the tournament the next week, making sure that I worked on whatever it was that caused me to lose.
I remember a guy one time saying, you haven't really figured out how to win yet.
Well, it's critical that moment that happens in any competition where you're worried about the event, you're worried about the outcome, and that worry can overwhelm your abilities.
There's so much to learn and so many different places to go.
And there's so many people that you watch TV. I watch hunting shows, much to the chagrin of my family.
I think it's hilarious.
But some of them are so bad.
They're such bad production.
Like, if you want to learn bad television, like, say, if you're a person out there that's aspiring to do a TV show, there's some hunting shows out there that look like they were made by blind people that were drunk.
And the animals, like, especially the archery shows, they fucking miss more than they hit them.
I mean, if someone from, like...
If someone wanted to make an argument against the ethical use of archery for hunting, all they need to do is watch some of those fucking shows.
But I think it's a difficult thing to do, and some people kind of half-ass it.
And some of those people that do half-ass it, they're on television.
Well, and that brings up a really good point, because I know a lot of people that probably are listening that Either know myself or know that you're a hunting advocate and a conservationist like myself.
We owe it to ourselves as a hunting community to realize that there's a big opposition pushing back.
And we have a responsibility to represent ourselves ethically and also appreciate other people's feelings and appreciate that there are people that might not like it.
And you really have an opportunity to either Do something that's going to really piss them off, or if you're going to maybe do something to where it'll at least let them keep an open mind.
I mean, I can't tell you how many Facebook messages and Twitter messages I've gotten from people that have told me that they had a particular view, a negative view about hunting.
Until they listen to, like, maybe a podcast with Steve Rinella or Cameron Haynes or Jim Shockey.
And they realize, like, oh, this is not what I think it is.
Not only is it not what I think it is, you must do something to control these animal populations.
And the one thing, I've said this before, but I'm going to say it again.
To anybody that thinks there's no reason to ever kill wild animals, I have two words for you.
Feral pigs.
You better do something, because if you don't do something, they will fucking overwhelm the earth.
Somewhere in the last 10 years, whoever was working for like American and United Airlines that made Economy Plus and then took the big dump on the regular economy seats, someone finally fired those people and then they started designing parking lots.
Because freaking you can't park your junk in anything anymore.
They never have an obvious way to get to the strip mall that's right next door.
They make you exit the freaking Pac-Man exit where you have to go around all the ghosts and shit to finally get to the one way to get out.
And then turn and go down to get into the next one.
If I get deeper and deeper with this, I'm going to open up an archery shop.
I think so, for sure.
I think an archery school would be the way to go, honestly.
I really think that there are a lot of different martial arts schools, and I've been involved in a bunch of them, and I think that teaching martial arts is gigantic, but one of the things that's a problem with archery, and most particularly with bow hunting, is the learning curve is extremely steep, and it's not obvious at all as to where to start.
The learning curve to start archery is just go to an archery store.
Go to a shop.
But, I mean, I've had experience with shops that didn't know what they were doing.
And I went there and I got bad advice from them.
And I saw people that really didn't exactly know what they were doing.
And they were telling me, oh, you don't need that.
Oh, you don't need this.
And there's so many people out there that probably would be interested in archery.
And I know there's a lot of people that are interested in hunting as well.
They just don't know where to start.
And I think having classes in a shop is probably a really good idea and probably something I'm going to get into in the future.
Your kid is perfect form, like a world champion archer.
The way he's got his posture, the way he released.
And when we were watching that, I was thinking, well, here's a kid that's learned from the beginning how to do it correctly.
So when you look at him as opposed to...
That picture that you sent me of the archer that's on television that has an arrow that he's pulling back, his string is deep tucked into his face, where for sure when you're pulling your string back and it's digging into your face, the pressure of your face on that string is going to change the path of the arrow.
You're never supposed to dig it into your face like this guy has it.
Then you look down, his arrow is not even attached to the string.
It's like hanging off and he doesn't even know it.
And this guy's on television, and that fucking picture was used for an ad.
The picture was on an ad, which means they took the picture, somebody looked at it, and they were so careless that they went, yep, good enough!
So in that picture, with that video with the alligator, he was 10. When you see that, as opposed to someone who's been doing it wrong their whole life, you realize the importance of original technique, like having it, like your original lessons, the first lessons you get, imprinting correctly.
And then, you know, the YouTube site, Knock On Archery, there's a lot of...
If you go through there, and if you're not a hunter, then move past that, because there's a lot of how-to stuff, and that's the direction that I'm really going to be going.
You know, it was a brand intended for people that aren't really necessarily wanting to say I'm a hunter, but I'm an archer.
And so much of what this show is geared around, and it took a long time for me to convince the network for me to dedicate, you know, right now I have three segments that are how to be better with your form in the dead center segment.
Then the field recon segment is how to be better in the field as a hunter, you know, some type of a technique.
And then I have the third segment called Knocked and Ready to Rock, which last year was literally how to buy a bow and completely set up the bow to start to finish throughout the whole episode.
You know, right now, like, my dad's a psychologist, and it's amazing to me how many people will, you know, I've got friends that'll, like, go to the shrink for a 30-minute session, and then they're like, oh, yeah, I got some Adderall, dude.
I got ADD really bad.
When I got diagnosed with mine, I went for three different days and almost did like a psychological evaluation.
I mean, it was like questioning, questioning, questioning.
And I remember like reading through this thing that a true psychologist did to diagnose what I had.
And I remember one of the lines said, it was like one of the beginning lines, it's like...
John has always been a fairly normal boy.
He never had a problem soiling his linens or something like that.
I have a feeling that's what attention deficit disorder is.
People are bored as fuck.
Or that is a lot of the time.
There's this wide range of the way people think and the way people address situations.
You can even see it in your children.
My middle child is very outgoing and very loud and silly and she'll talk to anybody.
But my youngest child, if she doesn't know you, she ain't saying shit.
You can say hi to her, and she's like, whatever, dude.
She'll hide behind me?
I ain't talking to this guy.
She just has her own style of engaging with people.
And they both also have their own very distinct likes and dislikes as far as the kind of TV shows they like, or the kind of toys they like, or the kind of art that they do.
And I just think that that same variety applies to things that people are interested in and not interested in in life.
And we take these fucking kids, man, and this is a big part of the problem with education.
There's a lot of different jobs out there.
And the path for a guy who wants to be a professional archer versus the path for a guy who wants to be an audio engineer, these are very different paths and they involve very different amounts of data, different kinds of data, different stimuli.
And we take people, and especially when they're young, We make them pay attention to shit they don't give a fuck about.
And I don't think it's good for them.
When I was in high school, they always said, oh, he doesn't pay attention.
He's got no...
Put something in front of me that I care about, and that's all I pay attention to.
So it's not that I'm a fucking ne'er-do-well, but you make me feel like I am.
You make me feel like I'm a loser because I don't give a fuck about math or Spanish history.
Sorry it's not ringing in my 13-year-old head.
I'm thinking about tits right now.
I don't have time for Spanish history.
I don't give a fuck.
But you might talk to me about pirates and all of a sudden, for whatever reason, that spark gets lit and now I'm interested.
And now I'm obsessed with pirates and I want to read books about pirates and I want to talk about pirates.
There's all sorts of different things that people get excited about and interested in.
But the problem, I think, or one of the problems with formalized education and our For some strange reason, our need to diagnose certain styles of thinking and certain styles of approaching life as problematic, as ADD, or he's got ADHD. Oh, he can't stop.
He's in a fucking classroom.
They're teaching nonsense.
He's sitting on a plastic chair.
He wants to run through the fucking wall.
It's everything I could do.
I have a neighbor, and sometimes this guy corners me.
And he'll tell me some stupid shit about his son's basketball game or some other shit.
And I literally want to run up a tree.
I just want to...
And I don't have ADD. I don't have ADHD. I'm fucking bored, man.
And you're kidnapping me with this stupid goddamn conversation.
And I'm like, yeah, hey, look at the time.
Gotta go.
So I told him, you know, if you're going to get some time on that bench...
And that's how I felt when I was in school.
I felt a lot of that in school, and I think that's a lot of what's going on.
We're all interested in different shit.
And formalized education in a lot of circles and a lot of schools is just too limited for some of the kids in class.
I remember Harry, his first football team, I'm thinking he was like 9 or 10, and one of the kids shows up with like a big can of Monster, and he's like drinking it.
I coached that with teams, actually, because when I competed, the one thing that I think was, that I found really, really helpful is to be able to travel and keep yourself in your same daily routine with your rest and your diet and, more importantly, your garbage intake.
Because people will go to a tournament and then they'll, like, pop in and they'll grab, like, you know, A power bar.
You know, like the chocolate-covered power bar, and then they go to a tournament and they're like having a snack, and then all of a sudden like two target sailors are like, I don't know what's up.
I'm kind of like bouncing all over the place.
I'm thinking, you just had 40 grams of sugar.
And they're like, when?
And I go, well, you just ate that marathon bar, you know, 19 grams of sugar per serving.
Yeah, double it.
You know, you just like totally had a full-blown insulin drop, you know.
When I give seminars, a lot of times you have a lunch break, and I pay attention to the people...
When they hit the lunch break, I pay attention to what some people are eating.
Because you can tell a lot by a person by what they're throwing.
If you've got an option of something good or something crap, there's some people that just go right for the crap.
Then there's some people that go for the good stuff.
As soon as your session starts back up, and I'm sure you've done this where you give speeches or seminars, after meals, there's always four people that are out.
And they can't help it.
Because they ate a bunch of garbage, and they had this huge insulin dump.
And you know they've their bodies like trying to fight off all that and then they crash and a lot of times I'll like wake people up and I'll say okay I was waiting for that to happen because now is what I want to talk about the importance of nutrition during performance because the reason several people in here can't stay awake right now is because of what they did during their lunch break a lot of A lot of events,
sports-related events that are like all-day events, they have breaks.
Archery always had a break at noon.
I never wanted to be hungry at the break.
I tried to continually pick and hydrate throughout the whole event, just like I do at home during the day, so that I wasn't starving.
You see competitors that are leading the pack and they run to the frickin' concession stand And they want to like pound two or three burgers because they know that they're not going to get to eat till five o'clock.
And then all of a sudden their scores just start to peter out and they start making mistakes.
And then all of a sudden, towards the end, they come back again.
And they're saying like, I just had that freaking several ends.
Well, until you try to live clean, until you try to eat clean, and you don't eat cheeseburgers and shakes, you don't understand how much of an impact it really has.
Because I think people associate how they feel with just normalcy.
They think that, well, this is just what happens.
At the end of the day, I get tired, man.
I need naps.
When I started drawing this primal diet, the Marxism diet, and I brought my body into a state of ketosis, it was the first time ever that in between meals I didn't have that crash, where I didn't feel terrible, where I could go six, seven hours and not feel bad at all.
Because your body, when it hits that state, is starting to burn off the fat.
And so your body has a supply of fat, so it just starts converting the fat in your body to energy.
It's amazing.
And it's amazing that so few people eat and live like this.
Yeah, they don't understand dietary fats and the importance of certain amounts of healthy fats, of getting the amount of oils and fats that your body needs, healthy oils, super important.
And avocado oil and avocados in general, one of the most healthy fats you can consume.
Super, super good for you.
Getting the right amount of nutrients in your body has just such a massive effect on how the whole goddamn thing works and Again, I go back to the the mentor thing and the life coach thing because until you Have talked to someone that you trust that's that's done it and is there you know until you know some guy who's a competitive You know marathon or something like that and he says listen If you do this, your body will work better.
You've got to trust me.
You've got to trust me and try to clean up your diet.
If most people just cut out one thing at a time, they would see a big difference.
I've got a ton of success stories of hunters that were motivated by posts that I made with like food or you know they just see a post that I do and they're like I really I'm just tired of where I'm at as you know Billy Bob the bow hunter or you know I'm tired of where I'm at archery I've never I've been in it 10 years and I've never made progress what do I need to do you know I'll get some photos of them and a lot of times I notice that they're out of shape and I'm like listen If you're shooting on a line and you look down and
you can't see your feet, because you know a big part of my shot routine is the first step is really your feet, your stance.
Imagine martial arts.
You're trying to talk to someone about their stance.
They can't even see their feet.
It's like, okay, we need to address another problem as well.
You know, you might not want to hear this, but we need to address this problem.
And for me, when I started down that path, because I had about three years of my life where I, you know, it's funny how when it comes to like the path of an arrow or the path of life, all it takes is the smallest movement to get you going a certain direction.
And then all of a sudden, before you know it, you're like so far off the course and you're like, how the hell did I get here?
And I had a point in my career where I was that way.
I was like, you know, I was like, I remember I had to, I put on like a pair of 38 underwear and I was like, what the hell?
You know, I used to wear like 30, 38 pants.
Now I'm in a 38 freaking, and then I look at my legs because, you know, and I've got a pretty good story about Big Bird, but I always like, I've got Big Bird legs, you know, and I'm thinking...
Frick, that's how round my waist is?
As long as that frickin' leg, that's how big around I am?
So what I started doing was just halving.
And every time I ordered my normal meal at a restaurant, if it comes out and there's a burger, I took half the bun and then half the fries, I frickin' slid them off, and I gave them to the lady and said, can you take that?
And I would literally eat half the carbs that was on my plate.
I just halved everything as soon as it came out.
So I was in my normal routine in life.
If Sharon and I went to Applebee's or whatever, and I ordered my normal little meal, if it was a carb or junk, whatever they gave me as a portion, I halved it.
And I mean, just that and then getting rid of, like, soda.
And all of a sudden, it was just like, zoom.
In a matter of months, you've just completely changed your directional path.
And once you get to that point, you're motivated by what you're seeing.
And then it's like...
I'm going to have that again.
Like, normally I'm used to having this.
I'm going to have that again.
And, you know, there's times where I might feel like bread, like I told you that.
For the most part, I don't like, you know, I feel really good when I'm not eating starch or carbs.
I feel way better that way.
However, certain carbs are, I think, really critical for times where, you know, there's times where I'm needing to write or I'm needing to speak, and I kind of just feel fuzzy in the head.
And for me, sometimes I think it's like your cognitive is like craving some brain food.
Exogenous ketones have a big effect on mental function.
It's very, very healthy for you, too.
It's not junk, not stimulants, just healthy foods.
One of the ways that I got to know Cameron Haynes is because in being on a few hunts and going into the mountains and Experiencing what it's like just a hike at high altitude.
I just really underestimated the amount of stress that it takes on your body, how difficult it is to do.
And so then I started researching fitness and hunting.
I'm like, there's got to be someone out there that's really into it.
And then I found Cam, who's just a fitness fucking nut.
Looking at his sort of style of getting ready for the mountains, like pretty much all of what he does, whether it's weight training, whether it's just running, running mountains.
It's preparing him to be a better hunter.
And I don't think many people that view hunting consider that.
They think of hunting as being a fat guy who's drinking beer waiting for a deer to pass by so he could shoot it in the dick.
You know what I mean?
That's how a lot of people look at hunting.
They look at it as a bunch of cruel assholes or that dentist guy who goes over to Africa and shoots a lion and fucks it up.
That's how a lot of people look at hunting.
And it's one of the reasons why hunting has a bad rap.
Especially in terms of its benefit As a tool for conservation.
It's amazing how one or two pigs turns into an absolute problem really fast.
And even at your house, you know, there's people that give me slack if I posted that video of that coyote I shot.
And then you know about the wolf thing.
But people have a problem with that.
And it's like, dude, we were in your yard and your wife comes out and there's like two coyotes in the yard like scoping out your chicken house.
And then when she took the kids to school, she ends up telling us, yeah, there's a coyote running down the road with a freaking rooster hanging out of its mouth.
Frank used to do, he still does, he still does, but Frank and Arnold used to do archery as kind of an R&R, you know, from their bodybuilding.
That was kind of their zen, their stress relief was shooting.
And when I went to the Arnold and competed, Frank and Arnold ended up coming in to have like an old competition from the old days.
So they came into the hall to each of them shoot.
Well, what Arnold didn't know was Frank was so competitive that Frank actually talked to the coordinator of the event.
And he called her and said, who are there any really good archers coming that can coach?
So she asked around and ended up connecting Frank to me.
So when Frank and I talked, I was like a big fan of him because I was a fitness guy for my stress relief.
And he wanted coaching because he goes, when Arnold and I shoot together, I don't want him to think that I've practiced, but I want to freaking beat him.
So I actually worked with him a little bit, and he did end up shooting.
And then Frank and I became friends, and he's an animal.
He's down from South of San Francisco, I think.
And he never really talked negative about me when he knew that I was a hunter and stuff, but I could tell it wasn't necessarily something that he favored.
So I pick him up at the airport, and we're driving back, and he said, so do you, like, hunt deer all the time?
And I said, yeah, I hunt them all the time.
And he's like...
He's like, well, how do you feel about it?
And I said, you have to do it.
And he's just like, really?
And he never said anything negative, but I remember we were three miles from my house and a frickin' deer comes across the road and we're like in my little Hyundai accent and I frickin' smoke this thing.
And he's like, he's just like, holy shit!
Like, he's like, you know, he's never seen like a freaking animal smash the car.
And he's just like, that was a freaking deer.
We just hit a deer.
And I said, yeah, dude.
Imagine if 850,000 people in the state of Wisconsin weren't out hunting a year.
Well, we talked about Michigan on the podcast before that in last year or every year, 50,000 car accidents involving deer a year just in Michigan alone.
And so people that think, well, there's no other way to take care of that.
Then I realized, I'm like, we're in their freaking den.
And, you know, I'm kind of looking down.
I'm like, okay, well, I shot an elk.
Then I shot that.
I've got two arrows left.
So, and, you know, both my guides kind of had, you know, once we said, oh, there's wolves, they like grabbed a gun.
We kind of went down in there to see what was up.
Well, now this happens.
And next thing, after that alpha sounded off, it was like, ooh.
I think it was 12 sounded off all the way around us.
We're literally down, anyone who's been in Alberta, you know that the farmland is level, and then it falls into the river system.
So we're literally, they have the high ground, there's a dozen wolves, and we're in the middle.
And we're like, what the crap?
So I'm like, get your back to a tree.
So we kind of all spin around, and we're sitting there, and next thing you know, here comes two dogs on a Full-blown, I'm talking like full-blown like this, like freaking coming.
And I mean, it turned into chaos.
There was like bullets flying.
I mean, there's freaking arrows skipping off junk.
And we ended up shooting both of those wolves dead.
And there's a few gunfires going off.
Well, I'm down to like one arrow left.
And I told the guy, I said, how many bullets you got?
And he goes...
Well, I didn't, you know, I just grabbed the gun to a couple bullets.
Like, I didn't know we were, this was all going down.
So we're kind of like, we need to get out of here.
So we started backing up, and next thing you know, the Alpha sounded off again, and they all reported.
This time, there's only two, or two less.
So, next thing I know, I'm like, kind of, we're trying to back out.
I mean, they had to have known that you killed the elk, and they had to have known that you killed those other two wolves that chased you, that went after you guys to try to get the elk.
I mean, I have, you and I both have friends that are, grizzlies, cats, I mean, cats are notorious for stalking hunters too, because I mean, they are the ultimate hunter.
But grizzlies and wolves, I mean, you have to be on guard.
There's places now where grizzlies are strongly becoming such a problem when it comes to—they have to be controlled.
They're just starting to get to be too many, especially for the food source.
Well, there's people that worry about them being wiped out.
And I read this article about it recently, and it was just so filled with misunderstanding or misinformation.
We're talking about wiping out grizzlies that if they did open up back to grizzlies, grizzlies back to hunting again, they would be wiped out.
People don't understand how it works.
There's an allotment, a certain amount of tags that get distributed because wildlife biologists Deem that there's too many of them, and that it's problematic for all the other animals that live in the area.
You have to understand, when they put tag limits on white-tailed deer, or they put tag limits on wolves, they do it because they've deemed that there's an issue.
And there's obviously people want to hunt deer, but there's also an issue.
Like we were talking about the state of Pennsylvania.
There's some areas, I don't know if it's still the case, but there were some areas in Pennsylvania where they brought in hunters year-round, no tag limits.
They were like, just please come on down and shoot.
400-plus pound bears going to war in a residential community, knocking over fucking mailboxes and garbage cans, rolling out into the street, fur flying, biting each other.
What a lot of people don't realize, too, every year I go up, you always catch slack for being a bear hunter, but I go up to British Columbia every year.
And bear hunt.
And it's all spot and stalk there.
It's all fair chase.
But during the course of a six-day hunt, I remember one year I saw 82 bears on a six-day hunt.
He's up there where I hunt in B.C. He has stories of the wilderness.
He'd be the ultimate character for you to have on.
He's like a real-life...
He's got stories, but there was a bear that kept destroying the camps and the cabins.
They ended up just kind of calling the bear Big Earl or something.
And they would come to the camps.
He would come in and they would have like a huge big door, you know, and they would nail in, you know, nine, 10 inch spikes through the door frame in three spots down the sides and then through the top.
They'd nail 10 inch spikes, pound them through the logs of a log home to hold the door frame in.
Well, they came to camp and they figured, well, this is going to keep him out because he was blowing through all the windows.
Every year he'd blow through the windows.
So they boarded the windows up and they had this door.
So evidently he got mad.
They could see where he was really mad about how they boarded the windows up.
So he literally grabbed the door and the whole door and, well, the whole frame with the door was like freaking laying off to the side of the cabin with 10 inch spikes bent on 90 degree angles.
And there was one claw there.
He had evidently reached in with two claws and freaking hooked the backside of that door frame and ripped a freaking door out of a log home.
He literally just got on it and squished that frickin' full-blown stove.
Just like we would a pop can under our foot to like squirt some extra grease out the side of that big Oreo cookie that he thought it was and licked it clean.
Well, it gets better.
So there was curtains over the sink in the cabin.
And the curtains were all gone.
And the other thing, too, I think there was two big five-gallon things of cooking oil that were in the camp.
So Bert told me that there was one claw mark in the cooking oil, and then the frickin' things, like a Capri Sun.
He had frickin' popped a hole in these five-gallon things of cooking oil and frickin' squirted them.
Dry like an old Capri Sun.
Threw those to the side.
Well, the curtains were gone, too.
Because Bert thinks because of cooking, like the grease and crap that got on the curtains, he like freaking, they were gone.
And that's the difference between, I think, people who are like really hardcore animal rights activists and people who are wildlife biologists and conservationists, like both agree that bears are amazing.
And that's where I think that these people, they have a misconception.
They think that hunters want to kill animals and they're vicious and they're mean and cruel and they have little dicks.
Yeah, I wouldn't prefer to be in the middle of a freaking wolf attack to see them.
But you see things, like I told you, the time where a freaking bull moose, probably about the size of the one that you've got over there, You know, literally watch this freaking grizzly square off to this bull moose and hit it.
The grizzly literally just hit the freaking top back part of a full-blown moose and just broke it.
Well, I've seen, and I told you this, and I actually, I shot the boar, but I spotted a big...
Bear in a field and I was hunting and it was spot and stalk and as I'm starting to stalk All of a sudden, a sow comes out and starts freaking posturing to the male.
And then all heck broke loose, just like that.
That's what it was like.
And I mean, I'm within 100 yards of it.
I mean, it's ferociously loud.
And then after they break up, the boar goes running to this huge...
You've seen the timber up there.
The timber's gigantic.
I think a couple stories high.
He freaking jumps on this tree and starts going.
And I mean, I'm talking like full speed.
Full speed bear.
I mean, it's like, it's an incredible chase and fight.
He freaking hits this tree and he's freaking going up it like bark is just ripping out.
And the black female is going right behind him.
And at the time, I still didn't realize what's up until he gets almost to the top and I see two colored cubs up there.
I mean, like, branches are coming off.
Like, nothing is stopping this dude.
He's frickin' going.
And right before he gets to the cubs, the frickin' female launches and grabs the ham hock and just lets go of the tree.
Well, as Ranella said that there's recent evidence that shows that these bears are looking to eat these things, like, almost immediately when they come out of hibernation.
Yeah, it's amazing to me, just the beauties that I've seen.
I love sitting in a whitetail stand, and I spend a lot of time in a whitetail stand, just sitting quiet.
And for me, it's like meditation, because it is so quiet at times.
Sometimes I've heard birds and noises where I'm like, I've literally never, ever heard, like, what is that?
Like, I've never heard that.
And one of the coolest things that I've experienced is I've been in the timber during the fall where there's just colors, like a painting, just colors.
You know how it is in the Midwest.
And there's days when, like, the first fall snap really happens when I believe trees just decide to let go.
Have you ever watched any of the Harry Potter movies?
You ever see that tree that just like freaking cleans itself off?
And then all of a sudden he just decides...
Well, I've been in the timber where it was like the trees were almost communicating and everyone just said, let go.
And literally, like someone just moved a fresh canvas.
And I think when they get that run down, it's no different than me.
When I'm traveling a lot, especially when I'm skipping time zones, and I really have a hard time getting into a sleep pattern and a recovery pattern, You just get sick.
You get the flu.
You get some freaking stupid little bug that's on an airplane from some guy like three seats over that's coughing.
I think you just wear your immune system down and you're vulnerable.
And then winter comes in and it's tough on somebody's deer.
Well, I found that buck that day, and then two minutes later, I'm walking through the forest like, oh, here's a cute little squirrel.
I see the squirrel like, and he's looking at me on the side of this tree like, is this person going to hurt me?
And all of a sudden, like...
Frickin' boom!
This like red-tailed hawk just frickin' pounds this thing and I'm like looking around like what the heck and then the hawk looks at me and starts to fly and then drops the squirrel.
And I went over and here's the squirrel with like two talon marks.
One through its eye, one through its mouth, and one up through the drum.
I'm a huge supporter to the Boone and Crockett Club.
I've really tried to become...
I've done what it takes to become a professional member now of the Boone& Crockett Club and I'm really focused on trying to give more back on the conservation side because there's so many important things that these organizations do for wildlife.
As much as people want to say they...
I've just never seen an anti-hunting community Come anywhere where I'm at and put in time establishing habitat and actually doing things that grow the population and, you know...
I plant food and I probably leave 5,000 bucks a year worth of food in my dirt to help grow deer and help my deer population.
Don't you think though that there's a lot of people that have opinions about animals and about wildlife that really spend very little time with animals and in wildlife?
They have this very convenient idea I told a friend of mine the number that we discussed in the podcast earlier about Michigan having 50,000 car accidents a year.
And he was like, you're lying.
And I'm like, dude, Google it.
And he looked at it and he just sat, he like literally looked at his phone and sat down, like plopped down.
Holy shit.
I go, you're not there.
If you're there, you would know.
Like it's overwhelming.
Because his opinion or his point of view was that these hunters are just these people that are just assholes that like to shoot animals.
Like they do need to do this.
Like they need to do this.
You might not think it, but there's no way you have a survey of the whole world or the whole country.
You just don't.
And if you did, I bet you'd have a different opinion.
Have you seen some of the numbers, like what Allstate Insurance posts about how many vehicle deaths and dollars and vehicle collisions there are just with white-tailed deer, with one...
My dad actually, he always wanted to have his teeth perfect.
And I remember he wore braces for a long time to get his teeth fixed.
And, like, no sooner than he had them done and was wearing a retainer, and my dad's like, he's got a truck at home, like a big truck, but he never drives it because he always, he, like, drove a little bitty Honda.
And he frickin' hit a deer.
He hit a buck, like, a month after getting his, like, finally the dentist saying you don't have to wear your retainer.
He hit a buck and The horns stuck through his windshield and the horns stopped on his steering wheel and the body came in and hit him in the face.
But in the whole scheme of things, you know, my wife...
My wife's from England.
She had never hunted.
Her family never hunted.
They have no idea about that stuff.
They have no relation to hunting, right?
So when she came over...
She was, you know, she knew I hunted and she was open-minded to it because I showed her numbers like this.
I said, okay, I understand you don't understand it, so let's talk about some of this stuff.
Do you realize this?
Do you know that at our house, if you drive around, you're gonna see a deer from your car like almost any time you're driving around our area after dark?
Or Wait until you see how many dead deer are on the side of the road during the first three weeks of November driving down the highway in Iowa.
You know what I mean?
So she kept an open mind and she realized really quick we couldn't grow a garden.
You know, in Wisconsin, they were like eating us all the time.
I mean, they were everywhere.
And she's just like, you know what?
I get it.
I never saw this.
I didn't see this much stuff in England.
We didn't have it.
That's why we weren't hunting there.
It's not because people aren't necessarily hunters.