Cameron Hanes and Joe Rogan dive into ultramarathon training—his 102-mile Father’s Day run and upcoming 200-mile Bigfoot race—debating whether pushing through pain (like swollen joints) is self-destructive or a personal challenge. They contrast bowhunting’s precision (e.g., 50-yard water buffalo shots) with rifle hunting, defending regulated hunting as key to wildlife conservation while critiquing veganism’s hypocrisy in ignoring industrial agriculture’s ecological harm. Hanes’ podcast, tentatively named Keep Hammerin’, aims to bridge nature’s brutality and modern comforts, framing survival skills as a humbling antidote to urban detachment. [Automatically generated summary]
Those last 20 minutes, you're totally thinking about, it'd be so nice to just get the fuck out of this hot room, drink some cold water, but you just power through.
Most days, and this is just me, I can't expect anybody to be able to relate to my screwed up mind, but I mean, me personally, I can go run 15 miles, get a good workout, Go home and an hour later, I'm thinking I could have done more.
I'm not satisfied.
So the big thing for me is when I've done something like that for one of the few times throughout the year, I feel satisfied that I gave what I had.
Just because in that race, and I can try to have it make sense, I can be logical about it, and I can say, well, I went out really fast because I wanted to be as miserable as possible for as long as possible to prepare myself for the Bigfoot 200. So I can say, well...
I ran super hard for 4 hours hoping I was going to be miserable for 20 and I knew my pace would be slower and it would be more painful but in the big picture it will help me.
But that's just words.
To me I'm thinking I was in first place through 50 miles.
I did 50 miles in 8 hours.
And so I was on pace for a lot of miles.
I was second place at 62 miles and at 12 hours I had run, I think, 65 miles.
So I'm on pace for 130, so I really died.
And yeah, I can use words and say, well, it was a plan, it was part of being miserable and preparing myself for a greater challenge, but I also feel like, you know, I gave up miles and I could have got my most miles ever and I should have got 120 plus miles.
And so, yeah, there's always the feeling I could have done more, even though, but I'm a little bit satisfied.
Leading up, I was running about a half a marathon a day, so my body was, is pretty fit and pretty used to it.
So my recovery was much shorter.
I mean, I, and again, People aren't gonna understand this, but the day after I ran 102, I ran 13 miles.
And that was just because when I run the Bigfoot 200, I'm gonna have to be able to come back after, you know, multiple days of being hurt and banged up.
And that's the name of the game, you know, to cover 200 miles.
In a couple days like I want to, I'm not going to be 100%.
So I thought, well, I can't know what it feels like to run after I run 100 miles unless, one, I run 100 miles, and two, I run the day after.
So what you do is not in the best interest of your body.
You understand this.
You're very aware of this.
And you're a professional bowhunter, essentially.
But you have this thing in your head where you have to push yourself as far and as hard as possible to find out for yourself, to set goals, to try to push past this pain and endurance barrier that you have.
Is that what it all is?
I'm just trying to make sense of it because it's not like you're getting paid to do these.
No, but people have told me when I started doing marathons and running the mountain back home, like I said, I don't know, years ago, 15 years ago, and people said then, well, if you keep running like this, by the time you're 40, you won't be able to run.
I don't do what I do for anybody else just for me.
I feel like I need to do this.
I like pushing my limits.
That's why, you know, if I would have listened to people tell me what I shouldn't do or couldn't do or nobody could do, I wouldn't have done hardly anything in my life.
So the point is, I don't care.
I don't care what anybody says.
I don't care what anybody thinks.
I just, this is what I do.
I need to do it.
I like finding my absolute limit and seeing how much I can withstand, and that's all this is.
Yeah, I look at it more of just a competition with myself than with another racer or another person.
Of course, if I'm running, it would be cool to be first.
I'm a competitive person.
There's no doubt.
But what I do, my workouts are always by myself.
Nobody's pushing me.
It's just me.
And setting the goals to run Bigfoot 200 or whatever, that's just me.
I don't know if anybody, I might not even see anybody during that whole race.
So it's just like, you know, I think there's 75 or so people signed up, but it's going to be probably pretty spread out pretty quickly, just depending on how fast people go out or do whatever.
Over 200 miles point to point.
So I could go, you know, two complete days and not see anybody.
So yeah, it's not, it's not really, it's not like the Olympic 100 meter dash where you're lined up against, you know, eight other guys and you see exactly where everybody's at.
You know, we were talking today also where a guy that we know who's kind of an expert in a lot of physical things was saying, why don't you take EPO? All these people that you're racing against are probably taking EPO. It's not like they're going to test you.
Those ultramarathon guys are seeking help with edible marijuana.
That's a big one lately.
Apparently it's big with a lot of these ultramarathon guys, where it just reduces inflammation in some way that they find very beneficial, as opposed to non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, which we'll probably get into too.
We should talk about that.
Because of the Rhonda Patrick thing.
But these ultra-marathon guys, now that it's becoming more and more acceptable to use cannabis, these people are coming out and talking about it.
It's interesting that it benefits them in that way.
Because jujitsu people have been saying it for years.
People always associate marijuana with you being lazy.
But with a lot of jujitsu guys, they find that it makes them more creative and more tuned into what they're doing.
And also able to, you know, jujitsu can be pretty painful too.
But although it's a different kind of pain, it's pain in short...
Short exchanges are painful.
You don't want to tap and you fight your way out of a choke or something like that.
But the grinding, monotonous pain of what you're doing is kind of a different kind of pain.
If I talk about what it would be like, I'm just talking out of my ass.
It's just, they just decide, like, even if you're doing your job well...
They still feel like they can test your body and find out what you're doing.
And it's also, one of the real problems is it's rooted in ignorance.
Because if you have this stuff in your system, like say if you smoke pot on a Friday, you get off work, have a joint, you know, go play baseball with your son, have a good time.
It's not like you're high on Monday when you show up for work, but it'll still be in your system.
Because we all know people that have had problems.
For me, the most disturbing one has been people that I know that have had pill problems, like speed and things along those lines, because a lot of times they're functional.
But just a little off.
And if you're dealing with important stuff, you could be making critical decision errors because you're impaired.
So they might have hired you based on your critical thinking and your reasoning, but then that's all being compromised by a drug, and there's only one way to find out what the fuck is going on with you.
Not in a sense that you catch it, you know, oh man, I didn't wash my hands, I caught Vegas.
You know, it's not like that, but it's a legitimate disease in the sense that it can fuck with your mind in a way that is almost out of your control, like a cold makes your physical health out of your control.
Like when I have a cold, I get upset at myself.
Because I'm like, you fucking dummy.
You let yourself get run down, you know, you didn't get enough sleep, you didn't, you know, whatever it is, you traveled too much, and here you are, now you feel like shit.
This is stupid.
Well, that's sort of the same thing that happens to people when they get a gambling addiction.
So, it's not a substance thing.
It's not like saying, you know, Cam, we're going to test you for gambling.
Did you play poker with your buddies over the weekend?
How much did you gamble?
Oh, ten bucks.
Too much!
You know, you can't do that to people.
You can't...
I think that there's a real problem with that.
And, you know, I mean, I guess you could say if you're the employer and, you know, this is the kind of people that you want and it's up to you to do that.
Well, I think they're a fair employer, so I think even if you did test for something and you were a good employee, they're going to work through whatever issues you have.
Can you imagine what it's like going to a rehab if you smoke a little weed and you get popped at work and you've got to go to a rehab with a bunch of stone-cold junkies?
There was a pre-workout supplement that we were talking about on the way up here, too, where they pulled it off the shelf because they found fucking meth in it.
Straight up meth.
It's like a meth-like substance that had never been tested on human beings.
And when your balls go on vacation, then it takes like a couple weeks for them to get back up to speed after you're done.
Because if you're on that stuff, like say if you're on for like six weeks, I think they say it takes like at least three for your body to get back to normal.
There's a bunch of different foods that make your body produce more testosterone.
Here's an interesting thing that a lot of people are finding when they're going on ketogenic diets.
And this is several people, including me, that have done this, where once you start going on these ketogenic diets and you get your testosterone tested, and this is people that are on testosterone replacement and people that are not on testosterone replacement.
I've had three different friends who have similar results, where your test just gets jacked.
So, what turns out that fats are one of the most important things, like healthy fats and essential fatty acids and even saturated fats and even cholesterol, is one of the most important things for your body to convert to testosterone.
For your body to produce testosterone, it needs those precursors.
It needs those important aspects of nutrition.
Which is really interesting because for so long, people thought that low-fat diets were healthy.
And low-fat was the way to go, and low-fat will make you have more energy, you'll be healthier.
But it turns out that's not necessarily true.
And it's weird because what was like doctrine 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, now they go, well, that's not the case.
I mean, when you start hunting elk in the backcountry or even deer in the backcountry or whatever you bear, you've got to get that thing back to the truck.
And so there's some guys who can just beast it, who don't train, who can just say, well...
I'll just take some time and I'll get it out.
There's a few guys who can do that and just one step at a time type thing.
It's, you know, when I killed that moose up in Alaska with Roy, you know, our last hunt together, a moose, and that was up over a big ridge into another canyon, you know, it was four miles, it wasn't seven like Remy's, but it was 600 pounds of meat, so how are you going to get 600 pounds of meat?
I mean, it's going to be 100 pounds at a time, and Up over the hill.
And he had cut some of the brush that was growing over the creek out of the way, so he sort of had a trail cut in there, and he came in there the year before.
I think he killed a bull back in there.
So we sort of had a trail cut in there, but the walking in the creek with the slipping and sliding and everything else, we went on the ridge and he's like, wow, this is way better.
We have ridden a lot and I remember I was hunting in Australia with Adam Greentree and they call them Brombees back there so it's just wild horses and we were sitting there under a tree as hot as I mean 120 degrees Fahrenheit it's crazy hot we're just sitting there boiling here's this white stallion coming A Bromby.
But his take on it was that as a person who goes out and takes a life and does this in sort of a public manner, you have an obligation to consume that animal.
And so I was saying to him, well, if you go over to Africa, He's like, well, I've never been to Africa, and I don't have a desire to go to Africa, but if I did, and I shot a lion, I'd eat that lion.
I go, you would?
He goes, yeah, I'd eat that lion.
So he won't shoot anything unless he eats it.
And he's actually been on many grizzly hunts, but he won't hunt coastal grizzlies, because he doesn't want a grizzly that's been eating fish.
He wants an inland grizzly.
It would be a brown bear when it's coastal and an inland when it's a grizzly.
And anyway, these deer, they're essentially almost like farm animals.
And they live in conjunction with people.
Like, their numbers have never been higher.
And one of the reasons is that we have these enormous farm areas.
People who are not aware, if you look at the United States, if you look at the areas that are known for being agriculturally strong, like Kansas, Iowa, those are where all the bucks are.
That's where all the deer are.
If you go to those places- It's great habitat.
Yeah, I mean, they live healthy and happy because of these farms.
But these areas in our country that are primarily agriculture areas that have these massive deer populations, that is the number one most hunted animal in North America is whitetail deer.
Most desired animal in America.
It's interesting how, like mule deer, which are also spectacular animals, but...
Conversely are almost totally wild.
Yeah, these are mountain animals and they'll occasionally go into fields and stuff too and near farms for sure but you're finding a lot of these animals like they're just totally completely wild and For some people those animals because of the fact they're wild become like a more desirable animal It's like The mountains are I don't want to say Romanticize, but people look at the mountains differently, it seems like.
You know, just being in the mountains is powerful in itself.
So when you're hunting an animal that is a mountain monarch, so to speak, a big bull elk, sheep, a very noble animal that lives exclusively in the mountains, and a mountain mule deer.
And bow hunters know, especially, you know, I don't want to say, I was going to say western bow hunters know, but any bow hunter knows that tries to go after mule deer in the mountains.
That's about...
As tough of a bow hunt as you're going to get.
I mean, because elk, for me, I've killed most of my bulls spot and stalk, not calling them in.
And to stalk an elk is Pretty easy, just compared to a mule deer.
Not easy in general, just, you know, not like easy is going to the store and buying a pop, but easy...
Yeah, compared to mule deer because they make noise themselves, so they're big animals, 800 pounds, kicking rocks, breaking branches, so they're making noises, so you can get away with some noise.
If a mule deer...
It's laying up in its bed on top of a rim rock.
All it is is laying there.
Its back is protected because it's backed up against a rock wall.
And it's looking down.
The wind's coming up so it can smell everything that's below them.
Nothing you can get at them from behind them.
And there with their big ears, you know, that's why they got the name mule deer.
Their big ears are there just listening.
All they're doing is observing, smelling the wind, and listening.
Yeah, and that's actually so an Achilles heel of a mule deer is those ears if it's windy.
Because all the hair in their ears.
So if the wind is really blowing and the grass where they're bedded is blowing around or even the wind is blowing the hair in their ears around, they can't hear.
It is interesting, too, that these animals that are more difficult to get to, and this is one thing that is contrary to the way a lot of people think about hunting.
At least at the highest level the the animals that are the most difficult to get to and the hunts that are most difficult are the most prized and it's one of the reasons why people like you gravitate towards bow hunting because bow hunting is far more difficult than rifle hunting and then the animals that are the most difficult to bow hunt become the most prized like for a lot of people like wild desert bighorn sheep, you know stone sheep.
When you have to go to these really crazy places that is really high up in the mountains, very difficult to get here in the first place.
And then, good luck sneaking up on them.
You're wide out in the open on this gigantic mountain with all this shale and rocks and...
I mean, those are the animals that people prize in some strange way that these hunters, like, the difficulty of the hunt, the tougher it is to camp out there, the difficulty in the conditions, the tougher those conditions are, the more people sort of, like, praise those kind of experiences.
Yeah, and it's, for people that don't hunt, they don't, they probably are not, not only are not aware of this, but it might not even make that much sense that this is one of the reasons why those animals are so, like, people say, oh, you know, it doesn't, like, how many times have I read this?
It doesn't take any skill, you know, what you're doing is horrible and terrible.
It's one of the most difficult things you could do in the world.
If you want to try to feed yourself with a bow and an arrow, a stick and a string, you want to try to feed yourself with that?
Yeah, well, I guarantee, you know, I know there's people out there who don't hunt who respect animals.
You know, I get that.
Those people could never have the same amount of respect, I don't think, as a hunter who knows what it takes to survive up there, what it takes to outwit the animal up there, what it takes to be successful, and to get the meat off the mountain after you've harvested one.
The amount of respect that whole process builds in a hunter, there's no way somebody who hasn't done it could appreciate or match.
I don't know whether or not they could appreciate it as much I just don't think they understand the experience I don't think they understand the beauty that some people find in that experience because I think in their eyes if you take life This is a negative thing and a terrible thing.
But the way I always kind of look at it, there's a storm going on out there, okay?
Close your door, watch Game of Thrones, sit in your air-conditioned apartment, drink your soda, and like, oh, life is beautiful.
I don't know why anybody would go out there and kill an animal.
There's a storm of animals killing animals out there.
While we're sitting in this beautiful air-conditioned studio here in lovely Woodland Hills, California.
There is a fucking storm where coyotes are killing deer and bears are killing each other.
And that fucking picture that we posted that you showed me that I said I was going to post later today of that polar bear carrying around that cub's head.
And all you're doing as a hunter is you're choosing to not go the factory farm route and to make this experience of gathering your food a massive challenge and an incredibly rewarding experience.
And you connect yourself to the wild in some really bizarre way that I never understood in Until I started doing it.
I always thought, well, this is probably the better way to get meat.
Well, it's just, it's kind of psychedelic in a way.
And people have gotten mad at me because I've said this.
And this is what I mean by psychedelic.
I mean, even hunting an animal and looking in its eyes is psychedelic in some sort of a weird way.
Because it's paradigm shifting and it sort of changes your view.
It takes you out of...
It's a perspective shifting thing.
Because when you're actually in this animal's environment, you're in this really quiet forest, and you're sneaking up on this animal, and you're pursuing it, and you're hunting it, and you lock eyes with this thing.
In this animal's world, this animal doesn't know anything about culture.
It doesn't know anything about your traditions, or your rules, or your ideas, or your ethics, or what you think should and shouldn't be done.
This thing is just trying to survive.
That's it.
In some very strange way where it is, not only is it trying to survive, it's trying to keep other things from doing what it wants to do.
Like, it wants to stab these other deer with its antlers so that they can't fuck the girls that it wants to fuck.
It wants to pass on its genes in some incredibly primitive competition.
They're not thinking about it like, well, what I want to do is pass on my name because my boys are going to be the Hanes boys and the Hanes boys never quit.
Now, what people who don't hunt don't seem to understand is that the people that do hunt are responsible directly for the population increase of all these animals.
And it's very contradictory in a lot of ways.
The people that don't like hunting but love animals don't understand that the numbers are where they are now Directly because of people contributing to wildlife preservation, to habitat preservation, and to making sure that wildlife biologists manage these areas properly.
And that's a hard pill to swallow for people who love animals, but the people who are spending the most amount of money to keep these animals healthy want to go kill them and eat them.
It seems contradictory, but hunters are why there's more—we looked this up last time—more deer, elk, bear, turkey numbers than there ever has been in North America.
I think elk doesn't occupy as much area as it used to be, but that was because— The assholes who were around in the 1800s who came along first, or the 16, 17, and 1800s, they just shot the shit out of them.
And they were doing it for meat to stay alive.
A lot of it was also Dan Flores, who was on Ronella's podcast, if you haven't listened to that, the Meat Eater podcast, listen to this one because it's sensational.
He's a wildlife historian and he talks about the history of wildlife in North America.
And the same guys that killed off massive amounts of buffalo in this country and almost made them extinct, they did the same thing with pronghorns.
They did the same thing with elk.
These were guys who came back from the wars and they just had no skills other than killing things.
And this is a way to make money for the market.
So they would go out and just slaughter, wholesale slaughter of these animals.
And when they ran out of buffalo, they turned to the antelope.
And for hide and for all these other things and you know human beings can be this incredibly thoughtless consumer and I think that that's that's that connection for it's unfairly Connected to hunting yeah in some sort of a way well now and that's you know hunters nowadays I think we're doing a good job of driving home the point hunting is conservation You know Rocky Mountain Elk is is helped they coined that term and it's true, you know
You know, hunters are out there doing the work, paying the money.
Yeah, we're killing animals, but it's to the benefit of the animals also.
And then this is a different world, too, because you were saying when you grew up that hunters were thought of as like, wow, this guy provides for his family.
He goes out and does this incredibly difficult thing.
Well, this is what I think is good about all this controversy.
When you were doing this, when you were young, there was no social media, and so you weren't engaging with people that thought in a contrary way, that thought different, that were upset by your actions, and they weren't engaging with you either.
And that was their perception, and your perception was based on your environment, where you're in, you know, this area that's pretty rural.
There's a lot of wildlife, a lot of hunters, and it's a super normal part of the environment, the culture.
So these people that are urban, that are just conditioned to thinking of animals as being pets that you love, and food as being something that you get from a grocery store.
Even the people that buy meat, they're not involved in any way, shape, or form in the killing of that meat, so they're completely disconnected from it.
So this, even though there's like this craziness going on where these animal rights people are saying, I hope your mother gets raped and killed and murdered and gutted in front of your children, and all this crazy shit that I've seen.
These angry, angry people that think of...
Well, I don't know if...
There's a lot going on.
I don't know if they're actually angry in as much...
In a logical progression where it makes sense, or if it's just they feel like they have the right to go after you because you're killing things.
I understand where they're coming from, and I understand their perspective as someone who actually does love animals.
I understand that this contradiction is very difficult to deal with, and that's one of the things that I think is important about this This new age of interaction is that some people are kind of getting the understanding.
They're getting the message like, okay, I thought that this thing was about these people that hated animals that went out and shot them and killed them, but now I'm seeing that this thing also has a lot of different layers to it, and there's a broad range of these people.
And the noble ones are actually doing not just a service to the wildlife, they're stewards of the wildlife and stewards of the land.
And they're also getting their food, they're getting the healthiest food that a person can eat from the wild.
This idea that you can somehow or another have no harm and do no harm to animals.
Well, that's not true.
You can't do no harm.
We say, well, you can do less harm.
Depends on what you think less harm means.
Because if you're talking about bugs or bugs life, if you're talking about rodents, if you're talking about things that get chewed up when they process grain, you're not...
in their ability to utilize recycled materials and maybe even possibly turn some of the waste that we pump out into the air.
There was discussion about that, about extracting pollution from the air and using it as fuel.
There'd be some way to do that.
I know that scientists are actually trying to come up with feasible methods of taking places that are just like really polluted and actually using that pollutant or those pollutants and turning it into some sort of a product that we can use.
But when people go back, and that used to be vegan, they say, fucking my whole body's falling apart, my hair's falling My skin is turning dry.
I have no energy.
And this is really common.
People say, well, it's because you're doing it wrong.
Not necessarily.
There's a lot of aspects.
I'm not saying you should or shouldn't do it, but there's a lot of aspects that if you talk to an actual scientist, real nutritionists, people who are experts in human biology and the direct mechanisms of absorbing nutrients, there's some real issues with plant versions of many different things,
including vitamin B12, A bunch of different fatty acids that although they are active in some plants and seeds and oils, which are probably good for you, they're actually not nearly as bioavailable as fatty fish and DHEA and a lot of different essential fatty acids, omegas, threes and sixes and all these different things.
They're more biologically available to human beings in animal form.
And this is just science.
Forget about the idea that you shouldn't do it.
Let's talk about what is good for the human body itself.
Boy, it's fucking hard to get the same stuff from plants.
And if it's important to you and you want to do it, you can do it.
Well, Sam Harris, who was on our podcast recently, he recently converted to being a vegan as well because of the honest concerns with factory farming and things along those lines.
But my point is, accepting the hierarchy of life, because if you buy commercial grain, you're directly responsible for an industry that kills a lot of beings.
Now, are the pesticides, unless you buy everything organic from a fucking hand-picked farm, and you absolutely know that no one had any, absolutely no pesticides were done, no one had anything that they put into the ground that's dangerous to any of the life...
That's not likely.
The likely case is that if you're buying pasta, or if you're buying rice, or if you're buying any of these things, you're buying these things from some sort of a farm that displaces wildlife, kills massive amounts of rodents and bugs and all these different things, and is a bug worth as much as the life of an elk?
We need to make this discussion.
This is an important distinction.
Is a mouse worth as much as a white-tailed deer?
I don't know if it is, but I know that millions of rodents are killed in this country every year with green combines.
I used to live near an ashram in Boulder, and the fucking lady who ran the ashram was poisoning ants.
And I go, hey, what are you doing?
And she was using ant poison.
She's like, well, we do what we have to sometimes when we have ants.
I go, you're a vegetarian, she's a vegan, and you don't believe in killing life unless there's these cunty bugs that try to invade your camp, and then you kill them in mass with toxic chemicals you spray from the sky in these canisters of death.
I mean, what a weird...
Sort of a game you're playing in your head about life and death.
And is an insect's life worth less than a mammal's life?
I was watching this guy give this argument about how human beings are not designed to eat meat.
That's why we can't kill an animal with our hands and our teeth, and we have to cook it in order to process it.
That's the only way our body consumes it.
Well, guess what, fuckface?
Try eating wheat.
Try pulling rice out of the ground and eating that.
We process everything, man.
We process wheat, we process rice, we process many grains and beans.
We process a lot of shit because we're smart.
We figured out how to use tools a long time ago.
That's our advantage.
Yeah, we figured out how to burn things.
It makes them more compatible.
And your body adjusted to the fact that you were cooking off the bacteria in these things all the time.
Your gut flora changes.
There's a whole process going on, man.
There's a whole evolutionary process involving tools and fire.
And that's why we have cities.
And that's why you have a fucking YouTube account where you can make these ridiculous claims in the first place.
It's all designed by people overcoming the wild environment.
Because I don't know if you checked, but we're fleshy little water balloons of blood.
That's what we are.
We're really vulnerable without all these tools and all these houses and all these fucking people that figured out fire and metal and all this shit long before you were alive.
The reason why you're alive today is because really ingenious, inventive, industrious people figured out how to survive in a world where we're weak as shit.
We're weak and vulnerable.
And animals come in and just are jacking things left and right, and we're out there with our little baby in this world.
Did you hear about the fucking 15-year-old kid that got pulled out of a fucking tent by a hyena by his face?
Yeah.
He got yanked out of a fucking tent by his face.
Oh, we're gonna go on a happy camping trip.
unidentified
This kid is just hanging out in the natural world.
You know like your friend Roy mm-hmm, so it's a yeah, I mean that's where I mean that's where I Feel most alive obviously because you have to be you know if you're not in tune Who knows what happens it seems like also that there's some some reward systems that are built into being a human being they get like little switches and That gets snapped on when you're out there that I didn't even know existed.
And it's what I've seen with many people who are very smart people who become hunters who then they start talking about it and they articulate really similar thoughts that it becomes the act of consuming becomes very different When you acquire it the hard way.
Same as there's a feeling that you get, there's a much more muted version of it, but there's a really good feeling that you get when you grow a salad and you're eating that salad that you grew in your own yard.
But that's a much more muted, it's a beautiful feeling.
It feels nice.
It feels satisfying.
But it's much more muted.
Like when I cook an elk steak, it's something that I was there for the entire time.
I was there when I got shot, helped cut it up and carry it out.
There's a memory attached to that.
There's a primal satisfaction attached to that.
And there's also this feeling like, I know that thing wasn't penned up.
I know that thing didn't get stuffed full of hormones.
I know that thing didn't get tortured before it died.
I know it wasn't corralled into this area and then they shoot a fucking piston into its brain while it's watching all of its friends die in the same way.
And I wonder if this new trend away from that, I wonder what's going on with human beings.
And if it is just a natural progression of creating structures and safety and society in the sense of civilization the way we think of it today.
I wonder if it's a natural sort of a progression to slowly but surely move away from that world.
Wild world and to get more and more custom with the idea of us creating our own food from some other way Like by detaching from how you grow your vegetables by detaching from where your meat comes from That we're like setting ourselves up to go further and further down this road of not really being an animal anymore Being some new kind of weird thing.
Because not just because everyone's full of shit, because they're trying to get you to think there's something they're not, so you put them in a TV show or a movie, but also because it doesn't rain here.
I don't think being comfortable all the time, I don't think, you know, LA and cities like LA, it's not good.
I mean, it's not good to eliminate All the challenges of being a human I mean, that's why that's why I like getting out there and just Being immersed in challenge because I don't know.
I mean, how do you appreciate how good you have it when you never have it hard?
That's a big point It's a big point that was hammered home for me when I came back from Prince of Wales from unsuccessful hunt Yeah, we're out there for five or six days I think And it was pouring rain every day.
It was cold as shit.
Every day your fingers are pruned up, and you're freezing your dick off, and you just can't wait to get back home.
And when I got back home to L.A., my God, it was glorious.
I called up Renell.
I go, dude, I don't think I've ever been happier in my life.
Every day was so nice.
It felt so good.
It was so nice to see my friends.
It was so nice to see the sun.
I called up Callan, and he said the same thing.
He's like, dude, I feel great.
I just feel so thankful to be back.
I feel so thankful to be in a city where I don't have to worry about where my food comes from.
And what a scrub bull is, is a domestic cow that got loose, you know, many, many generations ago, and now have become completely feral, and you're dealing with bulls.
And you know how, like, when you ride bulls, folks, that they buck and kick?
And you know how the matador stands in the middle and the bull just fucking charges him, tries to kill him?
Yeah, that's what bulls do in the wild times ten.
So you have these super hyper-aggressive masses of muscle.
And this is a video.
It says Cam's Raw.
What does it say?
What is the name?
Cam's Raw and Uncut Aussie Water Buff Heart Shot.
And this is you sneaking up on this massive animal, and you gotta walk super slow.
That's an important point, man, because shot placement is something that people that don't understand hunting don't know how difficult it is to not just have a shot on an animal, but have an animal be in position to take the shot.
I was watching a television show on guys that were hunting water buffalo with a bow and arrow, and I saw a guy take a frontal shot.
It's forward from an elk would be a little more back but basically you have to go right through that front leg and I shot a really heavy arrow a 90 pound that's a 90 pound Hoyt right there and you can see he's he's already weak so it's only been you know maybe a minute Not even.
So if it's two quartering away, their stomach's big and it's full of grass, so that could essentially be like for an arrow to go all the way through a bunch of grass, wet grass, I mean, probably not going to happen.
The only reason why I throw out that is because we filtered it, we SteriPened it, we poured it through a shirt, and it still smelled like buffalo piss.
I saw a sad thing, though, man, where this whale died, and when the whale was beached, they examined the contents of its stomach, and it was filled with fishing nets and plastic bags, because apparently whales eat a lot of squid, and they get confused at that stuff, like plastic bags and things along those lines, and they think that it's food.
And then they got intestinal blockage, so it died by being backed up.
So, like, the city and this transition that some organisms are going through from wild to civilized actually makes it possible for you to exist in the wild world.
Again, just like the whole hunting is conservation thing, how ironic.
And for a guy like you who is so invested in living in the wild and having this challenge of being in the wild, you need your nice Under Armour clothes to keep you comfy and warm and dry when you're out there.
I'm going to crush your fucking head with a rock, stupid, because I have an imposable thumb.
So after you stab me with your needle that doesn't have any venom in it because you want to play fair, oh, look, I grab you by your head, I smash you with a rock.
Well, it makes sense because I'm a human being, and I come from a long line of human beings.
And human beings have been thinking, and more importantly, we've been communicating.
We've been communicating with language, and we remember things that we learned, and we pass it on to others.
So I think...
What's going on now?
Even though it seems negative and it seems weird in the world of wildlife and hunting and hunters versus people who don't hunt, I think ultimately it all balances out really well because it all balances out in an honest way.
There's going to be people that don't agree with things no matter what.
Just like there's going to be people that don't agree with a lot of different things that a lot of people think are fine.
There's going to be disagreements, but in those disagreements we're going to find arguments that make sense and arguments that don't make sense.
We're going to find people that are disingenuous and that are not being totally honest with the scientific facts about nutrition, scientific facts about whether or not humans are omnivores or herbivores.
There's a lot of dishonesty.
Because these debates are not debates about facts and reason.
They're debates about ideology.
And they only promote and subscribe to ideas that benefit their ideology.
That's it.
And you get it on both sides.
That's one of the problems with the hunting is conservation.
By an act of Congress, back before they had fucking cars, wrap your head around that.
They figured out before they had cars, they're like, yo, we gotta do something about this place.
This is too good.
We can't let anybody corrupt this.
And this is what was wrong with where we came from.
Where we came from, everybody owned all the land.
It was all private.
And you didn't have a place where you could just go backpacking and just camp out.
We have all these designated areas, designated areas that are all public land, owned by the taxpayers of the United States.
And whether you appreciate hunting or whether you just appreciate camping or hiking or any of those things, we have a beautiful thing in this country.
The wild world, the actual beautiful environment of these forests in most of the areas, or in a lot of the areas, all the areas designated as public land, they're ours.
And even if the listeners aren't going to hunt, which...
Fine, not everybody has to hunt, but I would say get out there to Yellowstone or there's some national forests here in California, some great, just get out there and experience life.
When I was in Montana this past week and went to the Yellowstone thing, I mean, you'd just be driving and you would just drive and just look down the street and go, fuck, this is crazy.
Like, you're taking in this incredible mountainside covered in trees, and the sunlight is hitting the trees, and it had just got done raining, and everything was vibrant and green, and you're like, this is a drug.
Like, I'm getting an eyeball drug by staring at this thing.
Like, it's doing something to me physically where you just go, wow.
It does put in perspective and I think it would be good for everybody including people that are really invested in these causes to experience this.
Yeah, because I think it broadens your perspective and And again, even if you're just hiking out there, like I said, the hunt that made me feel the most thankful was an unsuccessful one.
So all we were doing was hiking with guns.
So we went hiking with guns for five days in the rain.
And I came back and I felt so goddamn good.
And not just good about the ability to have food, to not have to go out and hunt it and kill it because we're unsuccessful, but...
That this is a really cool thing that we figured out how to do to escape that world.
That world of harsh, brutal nature.
The tooth, fang, and claw world.
But you're not going to appreciate that unless you go in there.
So let's talk about that because we're going to end this soon and we're going to start the first episode of the Cameron Haynes podcast, but we have to have a name for it.
Schirmer is a very famous skeptic and intellectual, and he's like, this is what they're doing.
They're signaling to the people around them.
Sort of like when an elk bugles is to let all the other elk know he's a bad motherfucker.
Well, by having all these anti-hunters, which is like, if you have an anti-hunter post, you're absolutely going to have a bunch of people to take your side.
Yeah, fuck those people, right?
But they also get to see how good your six-pack looks.
So you say fuck those people, but you're also oiled down and you're talking about, you know, cruelty-free, you know, awesome life and healthy living while you're like overhead pressing a lot of weight.
You look sleek and you probably get some pussy that way.
And that's what these guys are doing.
There's a lot of that going on.
It's not a coincidence that some of the cuntiest fucks are also some of the ones who are the most into their physiques.
He's a vegan, and he's talking about how awesome it is to be a vegan, and then he realizes in the middle of the video that the pizza has cheese in the sauce.
He's got his ideas, and maybe in his mind he's right.
But I just found the folly in watching him freak out over some cheese.
Yeah, I get it.
Look, man, if you want something to be upset about rather than hunters, it is absolutely the fucking dairy industry and agricultural gag laws, those ag gag laws that don't allow you to film these chicken factories where these things are stuffed into these horrible conditions or pig factories or factory farming.
Yep, and in that sense, all these vegans are right.
In that sense, when they're talking about how animals are being treated, where we're getting our milk from and our cheese from, in most of these large-scale factories, they're right.
They're 100% right, and I'm with them.
I just think that this whole conversation is really about human beings and civilization itself and our ability to diffuse responsibility, our ability to detach ourselves.
And just like we're talking about these people that consume grain and don't think about the consequences on life, these people that consume all sorts of vegetables that pesticides are used that are killing off bees.
This is a huge issue that you contribute to.
I do.
All the people that we know that eat fruits and vegetables most likely have in some way contributed to the large-scale death of a lot of different insects and animals.
It's just a part of being a person.
And you can't deny that.
If you try to deny that and say, well, I'm trying to do the least harm possible, that's great.
That's like trying to say, I'm a serial killer, but I only like to kill once a month.
He's the guy who wrote that book, The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Very, very fascinating guy.
He said that they have done research where they have played the sound of animals eating leaves and plants next to plants and somehow or another the very sound of those animals eating plants causes the plants to excrete defensive chemicals.
So, somehow or another, these plants, they're not just feeling that someone's eating them, they're hearing it, and they're aware, and they're reacting to sound in some sort of a strange way that is commensurate with the way an animal reacts to danger, in some sort of a strange way.
He also says that they produce some human neurochemicals, like serotonin and dopamine.
They produce commensurate chemicals, and we don't know why.
Plants can hear themselves being eaten and become defensive when attacked.
Researchers from the University of Missouri found plants respond to attack.
They discovered that the sound of caterpillars eating made them more defensive and plants that heard caterpillar sounds released more mustard oils which are unappealing to caterpillars and thus ward them off.
Wow.
But plants that heard the wind, despite having a similar acoustic sound, knew not to waste their defensive capabilities.
Whoa.
This suggests that plants are able to identify sounds in their environment.
That makes sense, man.
Most people don't give it a second thought when they're tucking into a plate of salad, but perhaps we should be a bit more considerate when chomping on lettuce.
Scientists have found that plants actually respond defensively.