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July 13, 2017 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:25:51
Joe Rogan Experience #987 - Ben O'Brien
Participants
Main voices
b
ben obrien
01:24:02
j
joe rogan
57:59
Appearances
Clips
a
andy stumpf
00:01
j
jamie vernon
00:11
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Speaker Time Text
joe rogan
Still out?
Okay.
Two, one.
Oh, and we're live, ladies and gentlemen, with the creator.
Are you the creator of this?
No.
ben obrien
Of Rybrain?
Yeah, now I'm thinking Yeti.
I was like, oh, I don't go that far.
joe rogan
Rybrain, though.
ben obrien
Rybrain.
joe rogan
Cheers, sir.
ben obrien
Thank you, sir.
joe rogan
The clink.
The famous...
ben obrien
The Yeti jingle.
joe rogan
The Rambler clink.
unidentified
Ooh.
joe rogan
What a great invention.
You guys were just getting hammered and throwing anything in there.
For folks who haven't been properly introduced, my friend Ben O'Brien is here.
He was in the podcast from Paradise when we were in Lanai.
One of my all-time favorites.
ben obrien
I mean, the island or the podcast?
joe rogan
The whole thing.
It was all awesome.
ben obrien
The whole damn thing.
joe rogan
But people are drinking those Cat Ladies now.
ben obrien
Which is...
It's not to be advised.
That's a terrible idea, dude.
joe rogan
When I saw Dudley making that, I was like, what the fuck are you doing, man?
He poured tequila and Red Bull into a glass of red wine.
And we were looking at him like, what is that?
ben obrien
And people...
Hashtags are wrong, man, when people are hashtagging.
Of course, I do it sometimes just to poke fun at everybody, but I've had probably a dozen people like, man, I tried the cat lady last night.
joe rogan
Yeah, people are just drinking it just to say they drank it.
ben obrien
Which is just, don't do it, people.
joe rogan
Don't do it, but rye brain is actually pretty good.
ben obrien
I can get that.
There were some meat, some Traeger, some bows involved, and stuff just got put together.
joe rogan
I've had these before.
They actually taste good.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
But there's like no benefit that you get from Alpha Brain when you mix it with whiskey.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
It's like all the science we put into Alpha Brain, all the non-science from whiskey.
joe rogan
Out the window, folks.
It's all out the window.
ben obrien
Well, I mean, we've made zero leaps forward, but we're good where we are currently.
joe rogan
I think maybe it might balance us out, though.
It might.
Maybe it keeps you from getting too stupid.
ben obrien
Which, that's an achievement.
joe rogan
It's a big issue with whiskey.
What is this whiskey we got here?
ben obrien
I don't know.
Jamie just kind of threw it out there.
joe rogan
This is some shit that some dude gave us at the comedy store.
It's called Angel's Envy.
ben obrien
Oh, that sounds like a...
joe rogan
I think angels are really envious of whiskey, though.
I mean, you're hanging out with God.
You can fly.
You're like, God, I wish I had some of that whiskey.
Meanwhile, you buy it in a store.
Angels don't have money?
Maybe that's how it balances out.
ben obrien
It's got wings on the back.
Maybe they're trying to co-market with Red Bull.
joe rogan
I don't know.
Those are always the wings on the back of a stripper that cries a lot.
ben obrien
And Angel and Envy are both names of strippers.
joe rogan
That's true, dude.
ben obrien
I've never seen that.
joe rogan
That's a really good point.
Yeah, the wings on the back is always a weird move, right?
ben obrien
Listen, if you're drinking whiskey with Alphabrain, you can do whatever you want.
You can put whatever kind of whiskey you want in there.
joe rogan
You're very open-minded.
ben obrien
Yeah, the Alphabrain cancels it out.
It could be the worst whiskey in the world, and the Alphabrain makes it better.
joe rogan
Have you taken this anywhere, this rye brain?
ben obrien
I have not.
I'm really counting on your listeners and Dudley's fans to do that.
I want it to be organic.
joe rogan
It's going to spread.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's going to spread.
The next time you go to some exotic location and they have a rye, like if you're in Nepal.
ben obrien
I'm going to Northwest Territories with your boys on your hat there, the Eastmans.
joe rogan
Oh, you really?
ben obrien
In like a week.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
What are you doing up there?
ben obrien
Caribou and doll sheep.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
ben obrien
So we're doing a film about their, a Yeti film.
Yeti presents film about their family history.
joe rogan
In the Northwest Territory.
It's like technically what part of Alaska is that?
ben obrien
So that's, it's east of Alaska, right east of British Columbia.
It's up toward the Arctic Circle.
So we'll fly into Norman Wells and go north from there up into the McKenzie Mountains, which are about as far north as you can get before you hit the Arctic Circle.
So we'll be sniffing the Arctic Circle most days.
joe rogan
But it's still, it's still Alaska, right?
ben obrien
No, no, no.
joe rogan
It's not?
ben obrien
It's its own territory.
unidentified
Really?
ben obrien
Yep.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
ben obrien
Same as Yukon.
I mean, you think Yukon Moose or whatever.
They're all their own territories outside of Alaska.
joe rogan
Oh, so Yukon is not Alaska?
ben obrien
We'd have to look that up.
I don't want to be...
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
I'd have to look at a globe and then Google it.
joe rogan
I'm not questioning like I know.
ben obrien
I don't know either.
But Northwest Territories is its own territory.
It's not Alaska.
joe rogan
So who owns that?
ben obrien
Canada, I guess.
joe rogan
Really?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, so it's like past Alaska becomes Canada again?
ben obrien
Yeah.
God, this is getting real deep.
I should have known to come in on this package.
You're like, tell me the history of Northwest Territories.
joe rogan
So here it is right now.
unidentified
There it is.
joe rogan
We're looking at it on a map.
ben obrien
So, Yukon Territories.
joe rogan
Okay, so the Yukon is slightly east.
Or east, rather.
ben obrien
East.
And then the Northwest Territories, of course, is further east above Alberta.
joe rogan
Wow.
ben obrien
So you're getting up there into the true Arctic.
joe rogan
So it is connected to Canada.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
But it's also connected to Alaska.
ben obrien
It's not.
It's next to the Yukon.
unidentified
It's part of Canada.
jamie vernon
It's one of the latest provinces.
ben obrien
I had it right.
joe rogan
I'm getting confused.
ben obrien
I was doubting myself.
joe rogan
Yeah, I thought that the British Columbia section, until I saw British Columbia, I thought that was part of Alaska.
ben obrien
You can read the Wikipedia, and it's always really dramatic.
The wild, mountainous, and sparsely populated.
joe rogan
It's crazy that it's north of northern Alberta.
People are like, you know what?
It's just not fucking cold enough here in the winter.
We've got to keep going.
ben obrien
Well...
They have lakes.
joe rogan
They have lakes for like a month out of the year.
ben obrien
Oh my gosh.
I think when we're up there, we were talking about last week, I think when we're up there, it'll be daylight 24 hours a day.
joe rogan
Oh wow.
ben obrien
I believe.
joe rogan
Now when you do that, do you bring one of those eyeball cover things?
ben obrien
Uh, yeah.
We'll have to.
unidentified
Yep.
ben obrien
A mask, eyeball cover things, or whatever.
unidentified
Yeah, you have to, right?
ben obrien
You have to.
You have to, unless you're really, unless you can get in a tent and just kind of zonk out.
But it's 12, I think it's 12 or 13 days up there.
So by the time you get to day 5 or 6, you're, I mean, you're living out of your backpack, you're carrying probably 50, 60, 70 pounds in your pack, hunting, climbing every day.
So, I mean, it's, by the time you get laid down, I don't think it matters what's going on.
joe rogan
Now, when you do something like that, how much gear are you guys bringing?
Are you living entirely out of your backpack?
ben obrien
So, in the float plane, the plane takes you to base camp, which I think in this case is not a float plane, so it'll be a wheel plane.
We can take 50 pounds.
joe rogan
50 pounds each.
ben obrien
50 pounds each.
joe rogan
Plus your body weight.
ben obrien
Plus your body weight.
And then six days in, they will either come in a helicopter and pick us up and move us if we're not having any luck, or they'll just drop us more gear.
So the plan would be take 50 pounds of essential gear and then have other gear as backup back at base camp.
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
ben obrien
So you fly into base camp.
It's like, for me, it'll be like Austin to Denver, Denver to Edmonton, Edmonton to Norman Wells, hop a charter to base camp, and then from there fly out into the hunting area.
unidentified
Jesus Christ.
joe rogan
How many days travel is that?
ben obrien
It's like two days and change.
joe rogan
Two days solid of just flying?
ben obrien
Just flying.
unidentified
Wow.
ben obrien
Because you're overnighting.
I mean, they run like one, out of Norman Wells, they run like one flight a day or something.
One or two flights a day.
joe rogan
You have to be really dedicated, this kind of experience, to travel, just travel for two days.
ben obrien
I want you to do it, man.
It's like the only way to go, though.
joe rogan
Really?
ben obrien
It's not the only way to go, that's douchey to say, but it's like the best, most...
When you get back, you're like, man, that sucked, but I wouldn't want to change it.
joe rogan
Something happens to people when they do those exotic location hunts.
Like when they go sheep hunting and they risk their lives.
I've seen some video of you guys when you were in New Zealand.
ben obrien
That was gnarly.
joe rogan
Rescuing your lives with every step.
ben obrien
It's the whole time, too.
It's not just like, oh, we got up to this one area where the sheep live.
We were in New Zealand with Green Tree.
When you get up into, so there's like Beechwood Forest, so you're looking at like a 3,000, 3,500, 4,000 foot mountain, right?
We stayed in a little hut in the River Valley.
And so when you're down there, you're looking up, you're like, oh, that's where the tar live, huh?
Oh, 3,000 feet from where we are right now, vertically.
joe rogan
And tar, for people who don't know, is a crazy looking animal that looks like...
ben obrien
Himalayan tar, yeah.
joe rogan
It looks like something out of Lord of the Rings or something.
ben obrien
It really does, yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
It looks like a woolly mammoth, but just a miniature version of it.
joe rogan
Yeah, really crazy, wooly, furry, shaggy hair.
ben obrien
Yeah, goat, essentially.
Like a goat slash sheep.
But, I mean, the funny part about all that is when you first...
joe rogan
There it is right there.
ben obrien
I've seen an image.
joe rogan
That doesn't even look real.
ben obrien
They look like where we were.
You would look across these little alpine valleys and you'd see them.
It looks like a black bear.
It looks like a giant black bear.
And you're just thinking, where am I and what is that thing?
joe rogan
God, so it really doesn't...
ben obrien
Because I'm not like, you have some really cool adventurers on this podcast.
That's not me.
When I see that thing, I think, what the fuck?
unidentified
And where am I? It's wild looking.
ben obrien
Yeah, and they live up in the Alpine.
So there you've got the Beachwood Forest, which is probably, if I would just say hiking, straight up for about an hour and a half or two hours.
joe rogan
And is that an invasive species for New Zealand?
ben obrien
They're feral.
Or not feral, no.
They're non-native.
So all the mammals on the island there are non-native.
joe rogan
All of them.
ben obrien
And they all were introduced by, and I wish I had really looked up some of the specifics, but they were all introduced by some other countries.
Europe sent animals over there.
Teddy Roosevelt sent some animals over there like, hey, here.
You're going to want these.
And so the problem over there, to get on a whole different subject, is that The people on that island, the residents of New Zealand, don't value those animals as part of the landscape.
They're just...
I mean, feral would be a good term just to the way they view them, to the value they have on them.
We have moose and mule deer.
That's part of our ethos as a country, right?
joe rogan
And our ecosystem.
ben obrien
Yeah, and our ecosystem.
They've been here before we were, at some level.
And so over there, they'll jump in a helicopter and mow down like 40 red stag on a weekend because...
They want to control the population, one, because there's no winter kill, no predation, all that stuff.
But they also just don't see a big red stag the way we see a big elk.
They just don't have the value for it down there.
joe rogan
Well, it's also, the weird thing about having no predators is, how do you handle that?
Do you bring in predators?
Like, if they don't, they risk disease, and there's all sorts of weird things that can happen, like they have in lanai.
ben obrien
Yes.
Yeah, and so that's it, right?
And we've done that in this country with bringing down the Northwest, what's it, the Timberwolf.
We brought him down and put him in the States.
While that may seem like a good solution, when we were in British Columbia hunting moose together, we saw some calf skeletons.
joe rogan
Yeah, I showed that picture on the podcast.
It was kind of fucked up.
See how that thing had just been decimated by those wolves.
ben obrien
And I saw in Montana one time, I saw them run in circles.
They run in like concentric circles.
They just run like a bullseye pattern when they're hunting, I feel like, the packs.
unidentified
And I just watched.
ben obrien
I had killed my elk on the first day of this hunt.
And I was watching.
And you would show there would be a different wolf kill like every other day in this valley.
And it's like the wolves were just running in circles.
And I did see a couple wolves fighting in that trip.
unidentified
Oh, really?
ben obrien
Trying to call them in, yeah.
joe rogan
You saw them fighting each other?
ben obrien
Yeah, two of them.
unidentified
Wow.
ben obrien
And it was like 1,200 yards away and I had a rifle and I was thinking about it.
But I mean, what you see when you see a dead fawn every day you go hunting, it's pretty new.
It may be not new to that day, but new to that week.
You start to think like, How?
If this pack worked this valley for a full year, what could they do?
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
And there's numbers to that somewhere.
Some people have figured out how many elk a year a pack of wolves can kill.
joe rogan
But on the other side, before the wolves were reintroduced, there was an issue with overpopulation.
ben obrien
Right.
So that's where I think that's probably where hunters come in.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
You know, I value that animal.
I'm willing to pay you for the opportunity to help you conserve that population.
joe rogan
Right.
But that becomes very problematic for people.
Like when you start talking about wolves...
unidentified
Yes, it does.
joe rogan
Because wolves look like dogs.
ben obrien
It does.
And you don't eat them.
Wolves are another one of those ones.
Black bears, too.
I mean, I think it's, you don't eat them.
I mean, you eat bears.
joe rogan
I think wolves more than any animal.
ben obrien
Yeah, wolves way more than any animal.
I was talking to, there was a gal at my work that I was talking to, and she lives in Austin, Texas, and is very, not a hunter, but works at Yeti, and so she's around hunting.
And we were talking about wolves.
And I just said, look, I don't have a really hardened opinion on wolves.
I've not spent enough time around them.
I just know that they're meat processors on four legs.
They give no shits about anything.
They're not just eating.
They don't just eat what fills their belly.
They eat, and then they eat more, and they kill more, and that's all they're wired to do.
I've seen that in action, so that's all I really know.
I don't know whether that's good for an ecosystem, bad, whatever.
And she just said, well, I didn't really know that.
Hunting has really bad wolves.
Wolves seem to have a good PR agent, and hunting and management have a terrible PR agent.
So I think that that's part of the problem, that there's a sect of people that are really glorifying a wolf for good reason.
I mean, it's an awesome animal, a majestic animal, but at the same time, there is a juxtaposition to that that needs to be told, too.
joe rogan
Well, I think a big part of the issue is that people know that they virtually wiped them out in North America at one point in time.
And I think people feel guilty about that.
ben obrien
Yeah.
Well, then they should feel guilty.
They should feel ashamed about the mallard duck and the elk.
People don't know about the ducks.
And the whitetail.
joe rogan
Yeah, but we brought those back to the point where the numbers are higher than they've ever been before.
ben obrien
Right.
Those same people don't know how that happened, though, right?
Those same people aren't aware of how.
They just see whitetails around.
They're like, oh, that's annoying.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
Hit one with the car.
They don't know that at the turn of the century, they were almost all gone.
Because we market hunted them to hell.
And so I think that's, there's just, it's just education, man.
I just think people need to seek the other side, which I always try to do, and you do all the time.
Just seek whatever the other side is, and hunting is not always the way to go.
joe rogan
Yeah, but it's inconvenient because it's hard.
Say if you're a vegetarian or a vegan, you're going to get your information from animal rights activists, and it's going to be biased in that direction.
Or if you're a hunter, you're going to get your information from hunting and conservation groups, and it might be biased in the other way.
I think wolves are a good thing because they're awesome.
You know, I don't not like wolves.
ben obrien
Well, and I think no hunter is like, wipe the wolves out.
I've never heard that.
I've just heard, like, what's the carrying capacity for this state, this region for wolves, right?
How many can there be?
And I know in a lot of cases, you know, the biologists would say one thing, like, okay, 100 wolves in this area.
And then when it ballooned up to 1,000, they argued for hunters to come in and help put that population down.
They were still a pushback.
Like, well, wait a minute.
We said, we agreed upon, Scientifically and biologically, you know, we...
joe rogan
Yeah, the problem is that it's negotiable at all.
It should have been like once the wolves hit 2,000, then you start a hunting season.
But then the real issue is it's incredibly hard to shoot a wolf.
It's not as simple as you go out and find a wolf and kill him.
They're really smart.
ben obrien
Think about tar in New Zealand.
If they're overpopulated in the area, you can't just walk up the hill and crack a couple.
That's a pretty big feat.
So they jump in a helicopter.
joe rogan
Do they gun down the tar that way too?
Really?
God damn.
So how do they determine whether or not they should be gunning them down?
ben obrien
It's, you know, and I don't know, like, the holistic method that they use, but I know our guide up there this year was just talking about he would go to the sheep stations or the ranch owners or some of the areas.
Some of those big mountain areas are owned privately.
And some of the areas where they were down a little bit lower, they would just say, go out today and kill 100. And that's what they would do.
And it was not...
It didn't seem to me to be too scientific in the way they went about it, but...
It's a private landowner telling you, hey, this is an infestation, essentially.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
And my argument to them was like, why don't you just...
These animals are here.
They're not going anywhere.
They're not going to swim over to Australia.
Why don't you just treat them like we treat our wildlife?
Why don't you just accept them?
And there were some people down there that agreed with me wholeheartedly.
Some people in the guiding outfitting community.
It's like, why don't you just accept these animals as part of your landscape and treat them like that?
And I think that's a swelling opinion down there, for sure.
joe rogan
Well, how do they accept?
I mean, would they just treat them like they're pests?
ben obrien
I wouldn't say pests, because they do have some value, because hunters from around the world would go down there like we did.
joe rogan
But don't they have a lot of, a lot of that is on public land, or excuse me, private land, in those high-fence places?
ben obrien
That's basically stag.
You can't really, it's hard to high-fence for shammy and tar.
They just live in places where you'd be dumb to put a fence.
If you tried, you'd be dumb.
joe rogan
But stag, that's a big issue.
ben obrien
Stag is a whole different deal down there.
Yeah, I mean...
joe rogan
Is it because they're so big?
Like, people want to go there and get a big rack of antlers?
ben obrien
To their discredit, like, they have harvested the bad parts of our hunting culture and marketed it.
joe rogan
Really?
ben obrien
They have.
And I think there's a lot of people down there that would push back on that, on that idea, but yeah...
joe rogan
But explain what that means, by the bad parts.
ben obrien
And not just the American hunting culture, because there's a lot of Europeans that go there, too.
I think the parts of the trophy hunting, the, hey, come down here and work on this 500-inch stag, we've got it here.
And they have agents that go around and sell those deals.
joe rogan
And for 500-inch stag, what we're talking about, folks, is the size of the antlers, not the size of the actual animal itself.
ben obrien
Right.
joe rogan
People get super obsessed, and they fetish...
Numbers like you know the score and what a score is for people don't know they take a tape measure and they go over very Specific sections of the antlers and they calculate all the measurements together and when they do that they come up with some number and there's these Milestone benchmark numbers like a 200 inch whitetails a huge deer or a 400 inch elk is a huge elk it is they get stags that go to 500 and more what?
ben obrien
That's insane.
joe rogan
Is it as big as an elk?
Like the animal?
ben obrien
Body size, not quite.
Close, but not quite.
joe rogan
Wow.
ben obrien
And one of the sheep stations we hunted with originally, they farm, they essentially farm red deer.
I mean, red deer and stag, same thing, are walking around in these...
joe rogan
They're the same animal?
ben obrien
No.
Down there, red stag, red deer's basically the same thing.
But you find red deer in Europe and they're different.
unidentified
Oh, okay.
ben obrien
Parts of the same genus.
joe rogan
Why do they call them a stag?
But isn't a stag a male?
ben obrien
Stag and hind, hind being the female.
joe rogan
H-I-N-D? Yep.
But you would call the animals a red deer?
ben obrien
I've heard it called...
I've hunted it in Europe, and they call it a red deer there, so I'm not sure...
Those deer came from there anyway, so I'm sure it's the same species.
joe rogan
So they came and they dropped them off in the 1800s just to turn the whole place into a giant, like, hunting provision, right?
ben obrien
At some level.
Yeah, at some level.
I'd love to read the history of that.
I don't really...
I haven't gone that far back.
joe rogan
How crazy is it that before they came, there was no mammals there?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, what a weird patch of land.
ben obrien
It's a weird, like, New Zealand is definitely coming from where we come from and all the things we have, and we just find it normal that we can hunt.
How many huntable species are there on this, you know, on this continent?
Going down there is just such a weird...
And they celebrate the outdoor culture.
They celebrate hunting and fishing almost in the way that we do.
And they have public land, much like we do.
And their public land is more revered and more well-managed and better taken care of, I think, than our public lands.
And it's more usable.
And so they have all these similar properties that we have in America.
But at some level, I think they just got poor luck.
They don't have native mammals to, you know, they don't have the bald eagle to put on their mast.
They just have these, you know, essentially shammy, tar, and...
joe rogan
But tar, they're not native either.
ben obrien
No, none of those.
joe rogan
Shammy's not native.
None of them.
ben obrien
None of them.
joe rogan
They also have Canadian geese that are not native, right?
Did you know that they used to have the biggest eagle in the world?
ben obrien
Really?
joe rogan
Yeah, they used to have an eagle called the Host Eagle, and apparently they killed them off in the 1400s, and they were so big, there's speculation they used to eat people.
ben obrien
I'd kill them off, too.
joe rogan
They had a 14-foot wingspan, I think, is what we figured out.
I'm not exaggerating.
ben obrien
If you've ever been over there, it really is like, it's a place where that kind of eagle would live.
joe rogan
That's what it looked like.
ben obrien
Holy shit.
joe rogan
That's what a host eagle looks like.
We're looking at an eagle that's literally the size of a big person.
ben obrien
My lord.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
Badass of the week.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Look at the size of that fucking thing.
And so this host eagle...
ben obrien
That can't be it.
Look, that's Gandalf.
joe rogan
I mean, look, if it's as big as a person, like that picture...
Go to that first picture again.
Like, yeah.
Look how big that thing is.
I mean, if that thing spreads its wings, that is what it looks like.
ben obrien
If you've been over there, the landscape over there in some of the alpine areas, it looks like a place where that would live.
joe rogan
That would kill you.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
That thing, if they caught you hiking, you'd be fucked.
It would just pull you off the cliff and just drop you off.
unidentified
Oh.
joe rogan
That's not a real host eagle.
The actual host eagle.
ben obrien
That's the problem with Google Images.
We're getting all kinds.
We got Gandalf riding an eagle.
joe rogan
Is that a golden eagle right there?
That one with the emus or whatever the fuck those animals are.
Is that an ostrich?
It's a fox.
ben obrien
Daddy's care, that one's care.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah.
So when did it go extinct, Jamie?
What does it say?
unidentified
Look at that.
joe rogan
Look at the size of the fucking thing.
There's a dude standing next to what, the skeleton of a host eagle.
ben obrien
And who is that dude?
That dude is awesome.
Look at him.
joe rogan
Yeah, he looks like a wizard.
ben obrien
Oh, he really does.
joe rogan
Look at his robes.
That's an ancient intellectual.
ben obrien
It really is.
joe rogan
Back in the day, I was a scholar.
1600 A.D.? Is that what it says?
The real thing actually lived on Earth.
ben obrien
And of course it was known as the Tiger of the Skies.
Tiger of the Skies.
joe rogan
Dude, that's not that long ago.
1600?
Holy shit!
I thought it was 1400s.
ben obrien
The Tiger of the Skies.
joe rogan
Six feet tall.
Oh, it weighed only 35 pounds?
And it had a wingspan of 10 feet.
Wow, that's crazy because they're hollow bones, I guess.
35 pounds doesn't seem that much, man.
How do you go back to that picture?
How the fuck is that thing 35 pounds?
ben obrien
There's nothing six feet tall.
joe rogan
Ten foot wingspan.
That thing's only 35 pounds?
That seems wrong.
ben obrien
I don't know, man.
joe rogan
Like a turkey's heavy.
Like you pick up a turkey.
ben obrien
Yeah, you can get a turkey in like 25 pound range.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Look at the size of that thing.
Oh, no.
You see how big it is.
ben obrien
Every time I'm hanging around you, I hear about these like evil mystical animals and Well, I think the real concern was that the host eagle, they might have killed it off.
joe rogan
The local New Zealand folks might have killed it off back then because they were eating people.
ben obrien
I do not blame them in any way.
joe rogan
See if that's the truth.
That might be a lie.
ben obrien
We need to know about this host eagle.
joe rogan
I do need to know.
ben obrien
We hunted at a place called Haast when we were over there, so maybe there's a connection.
Maybe we're really finding.
joe rogan
Maybe find some ancient eagle skull.
Big ol' hook bone.
Just see if it ate people.
Relationship with humans.
ben obrien
You can Google that.
joe rogan
See where it says relationship with humans?
Yeah.
Could have been possible.
ben obrien
Even smaller golden eagles are capable of killing.
joe rogan
Yeah, they said they kill humans, which scientists believe could have been possible if the name relates to the eagle.
Given the massive size and strength of the bird, even smaller golden eagles are capable of killing prey as big as sick deer or bear cub.
Yeah, that fucking thing killed a few people.
ben obrien
For sure.
joe rogan
Like a baby.
ben obrien
You didn't think, yeah, like a baby.
You don't think that a predator like that did not learn what it could and could not go get.
unidentified
Okay, so the sculpture's goofy.
joe rogan
Okay, the sculpture.
Is that the sculpture we were looking at?
ben obrien
Maybe.
Yeah, it was an approximation of it.
joe rogan
It says it's 7.5 meters, 25 feet tall.
No, that wasn't 25 feet tall.
Oh, with a wingspan of 11.5 meters.
ben obrien
38 feet.
joe rogan
Oh, okay.
That's the art park that we're looking at in New Zealand.
That's just a giant sculpture.
ben obrien
Of the animal.
Okay, I get you.
joe rogan
But there's a really cool eagle that lives in the rainforest called the Harpy Eagle that eats monkeys.
You ever seen that one?
ben obrien
I don't want to know about this stuff, man.
joe rogan
I think that's the biggest...
ben obrien
Because I'll probably find myself in a rainforest in a couple months, be looking up for harpy eagles all the time.
joe rogan
Well, there was a dude that was trying to put a camera in a harpy eagle nest, and he got attacked by a harpy eagle.
ben obrien
Well, that dude shouldn't have been doing that.
joe rogan
Well, he's a scientist.
ben obrien
Well, that's what he does.
Should have worked in a movie theater or something.
joe rogan
That's his fault, dude.
That was his thing, man.
ben obrien
We've got to stop looking at these terrible winged beasts.
joe rogan
The Harpy Eagle's cool looking because it's kind of white.
ben obrien
Look, and we were talking about this when we were in Lanai.
I have a problem swimming in the ocean because I feel like I look like a seal all the time when I'm in there.
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
And I feel like sharks will, they're like, look at that.
That looks delicious.
joe rogan
The guy just got both his legs bitten off yesterday in Florida.
ben obrien
See?
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
This is awareness, man.
joe rogan
Chomp.
ben obrien
Chomp.
And you're done.
So now I'm scared of the skies thanks to this.
joe rogan
Did you know that the bull shark swims so far upriver that they live in freshwater and they've been found as high as Illinois?
They go upriver to fucking Illinois, and they're the most aggressive sharks.
ben obrien
I heard that.
I've heard that before.
I used to live right on the Illinois River.
joe rogan
Well, they also are the reason why the movie Jaws wasn't inspired by a great white shark.
It was inspired by a series of attacks by bull sharks in freshwater rivers in New Jersey.
ben obrien
We gotta talk about something else.
It's freaking me out, Joe.
And they made the music?
Like, ah, it's terrible.
It gets in your psyche, that stuff.
What would the music be for one of those big eagles?
Same.
joe rogan
It would be death metal.
unidentified
He'd be out in the field and you'd hear that death metal music.
ben obrien
I've seen too much.
Over in Nepal, they have these big things called longergears.
It's a Nepali griffin.
It looks like a big old vulture.
Look that thing up, see what the wingspan are on those.
But we'd be up on some mountain glassing for sheep, and there'd be a giant thing with an eight, nine foot wingspan.
And you could see, the creepiest part to me was, you could see their heads moving back and forth like they were looking for shit.
And they take and kill baby sheep.
I saw a video after I cut back and I was kind of freaking out about these things.
joe rogan
And it's a vulture?
ben obrien
Yeah, it's like a Nepali.
They call it a langergar.
And when we were there, they told us, oh, you're going to see griffins.
So it had a variety of names, like everything there seems to have.
But it looks like a vulture.
It's like a giant vulture.
joe rogan
I didn't know that they hunted.
That's interesting.
ben obrien
I watched something on like Planet Earth about them and that they showed them in packs and they eat bone marrow.
So they would get a bone off the ground, fly up into the air and strategically drop it onto the ground so it would crack open, fly down, eat the insides.
joe rogan
Wow.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
I wonder how they figured that out.
ben obrien
The same thing, you could just see their brains churning.
A lot of times you see an animal in the sky, a bird in the sky, and you still get soaring around, but you could see the predatory brain of this Langergar as it flew above us, just churning as it looked around for what to get after.
joe rogan
Well, they say ravens are stupid smart, like as smart as chimps.
ben obrien
Yeah.
Well, you think about this bird.
I mean, this bird's brain the size of what?
I don't know, a lemon.
But it literally found out, I want to get inside that bone, I'm going to fly up and drop this son of a bitch and eat the insides.
joe rogan
Well, somewhere along the line, they figured a long time ago how to drop things off cliffs.
ben obrien
Absolutely.
joe rogan
They've been doing that with goats and stuff.
There's a ton of videos of them grabbing goats and pulling them out like eagles in particular.
Whoa, that's the longer guy?
What is that thing?
That thing looks fucking evil, man.
Holy shit!
Look at the face on that thing.
ben obrien
I think when I was over there, when we were in the mountains, I just wrote like a whole page about this longer yard we saw.
I don't remember it being that color.
It wasn't that color.
joe rogan
That's amazing.
ben obrien
That looks like one in the zoo.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
ben obrien
They were jet black, the ones we saw.
Imagine how scary that looks, but just being jet black.
joe rogan
Coloration?
What is that, a bone in its mouth?
A swallowing hole?
ben obrien
Yep.
joe rogan
Ugh, primitive creature.
Just no, like, complete emotionless eyes.
ben obrien
Yeah.
I vividly remember looking up at some point and seeing this thing floating in the breeze and looking around and thinking, that thing is savage.
joe rogan
How big did they get, Jamin?
What a weird name, Lumbergeier.
How do you spell it?
ben obrien
L-A-M-M-E-R-G-E-I-R. Over there they described it, originally our guy described it as a griffin.
joe rogan
But a griffin's like a mythological picture, right?
ben obrien
Yeah, I know.
That's why I was thinking I'm going to see this mythological picture.
That's what it was.
I was waiting for something to land and talk to us.
joe rogan
That's a place in New Zealand that's a perfect location if they ever decided to do some sort of a Jurassic Park type situation.
ben obrien
Well, even Lanai.
joe rogan
Right.
Four feet tall.
Nine foot wingspan.
ben obrien
There it is.
Wow.
joe rogan
Again, look at this weight.
Fifteen pounds.
That's crazy.
Nine foot wingspan.
unidentified
What is that?
Whoa.
ben obrien
That's the wise old wizard vulture.
unidentified
I don't want that.
joe rogan
The Egyptian vulture.
ben obrien
I'm going to have dreams about this podcast.
joe rogan
That's its closest relative.
What the fuck?
Isn't it crazy that nature just designed a really creepy, shitty looking animal to come down and eat all the dead shit?
unidentified
Where's that picture from right there?
joe rogan
I don't know, man.
Looks old as fuck.
unidentified
Whatever it is.
ben obrien
Looks like it could be in Nepal or Tibet.
joe rogan
Overhunting has led to the endangerment of the species.
unidentified
Hmm.
joe rogan
It's weird how nature has evolved these animals, or they have evolved, to develop that weird look.
Like, vultures look disgusting.
They do.
But look at that thing's face.
There's something about the way nature has evolved, or they have evolved.
ben obrien
And they're not, yeah.
joe rogan
They've evolved to look scary.
ben obrien
Yeah.
Cute animals are delicious.
joe rogan
Right.
A rabbit.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
Delicious.
Deer?
joe rogan
Deer.
Delicious.
unidentified
Delicious.
joe rogan
Gorgeous animals.
Right.
Like if you eat a bear, like some people think bear are cute, but you got to cook the shit out of it.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
Can we, let's address something right now.
joe rogan
Okay.
ben obrien
Bear meat is good.
joe rogan
It's very good.
ben obrien
It's very good.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
It can be very good.
joe rogan
Depending upon what they eat.
ben obrien
Depending on what they eat and where you're at.
Like if you're going in September to Prince of Wales, Alaska and you shoot one and it's just been eating salmon for a couple weeks.
joe rogan
Clams on the beach.
ben obrien
You don't want to eat that thing.
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
But if you go somewhere where good vegetation and it's, well, it's got a lot of fat on it, it can be good.
I would argue it's not to be celebrated.
It's not that good.
joe rogan
It depends.
Apparently, if you eat a blueberry bear, it's one of the best meats ever.
Yeah.
Rinella raves about it.
ben obrien
See, if Rinella does, I've eaten a lot of bears, and I like eating them.
I wouldn't throw them away or whatever.
So I would continue to hunt them, but I've never had that same feeling of like an elk tenderloin or elk backstrap.
Or axis.
Or an axis.
It's not in that category.
So I feel like maybe we overcompensate a little bit because there's so much pushback on bear hunting.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
We start talking about how great it is.
ben obrien
How great it is.
It's really good, but it's not like, it's not, it doesn't get to that next level.
joe rogan
Have you had smoked bear ham though?
unidentified
I have.
joe rogan
It's very delicious.
That's pretty damn good.
But that's one of those things where it's like it's smoked, it's brined, it's treated.
ben obrien
And that's the biggest thing, right?
Most meats that you're going to go hunting for, you look at the cut of meat and you treat it accordingly, right?
And so there's no, you have to, obviously because of trichinosis, you have to cook a bear all the way through to a certain temperature.
So that may be, because I love rare meat, that may be my problem.
I don't know.
But I think maybe a little bit we could address the fact that hunters are a little bit overcompensated for the fact that people are pushing back on them so much.
And then they're like, I love bear!
It's good.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
But I wouldn't choose it.
joe rogan
It's not my favorite.
ben obrien
I wouldn't choose it over a lot of other meats.
Not to say it's bad.
joe rogan
Like if someone told me you have to pick one animal forever, I'd probably say elk.
ben obrien
Yeah, and bear would be pretty far down the list.
joe rogan
Yeah, it wouldn't make it in the top three or four.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
It would be all...
Well, that's, again, the thing that you just said.
Like, I like eating things medium rare or rare.
That's where they taste the best.
ben obrien
Yes.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
And so, look, I'm not...
I would never put somebody down for...
I love bear meat.
I eat it all the time.
That's great.
I just...
That's a point I've always kind of thought in my head.
unidentified
It's not the best.
ben obrien
Yeah.
I've always thought in my head like, mm, okay.
joe rogan
It's like people like largemouth bass fishing, but if you go to a restaurant and they have largemouth bass right next to Chilean sea bass and you pick the largemouth bass, you're kind of an asshole.
ben obrien
You're lying to yourself.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
Like, come on, man.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It doesn't taste that good.
unidentified
It's okay.
joe rogan
It's edible.
ben obrien
It's edible.
It's really good.
I mean, if you...
joe rogan
It's a bad example because largemouth bass tastes...
Bear tastes way better than largemouth bass.
ben obrien
We're going down the track.
joe rogan
Like, largemouth bass just doesn't taste that good.
ben obrien
Bear tastes better than largemouth bass.
joe rogan
Have you had largemouth?
ben obrien
No.
joe rogan
It's okay.
It's like there's some delicious freshwater fish.
Delicious.
ben obrien
You go to Alaska, and they're everywhere.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah.
ben obrien
But yeah, I'm not much of a fish eater anyway.
joe rogan
John Barklow from Sitka was in Vegas this past weekend.
Love that dude.
Yeah, he's a great guy.
Him and Dave Brinker were there.
And he was talking about how...
I love that guy, too.
unidentified
I know.
joe rogan
I don't want to leave him out.
ben obrien
Oh, yeah.
Love you guys.
Miss you guys.
joe rogan
Love you guys.
But John was talking about how he actually enjoyed brown bear meat.
And I was like, really?
And he's like, he goes, it tasted like a mule deer roast.
He goes, I made it and I gave it to people at parties.
And he said, he cut it up into cubes and put little toothpicks in it and handed it out as hors d'oeuvres at a party.
And people were eating it and they're like, wow, this is delicious.
What is it?
And he goes, it's a brown bear.
And people got mad at him.
ben obrien
Of course they did.
unidentified
Of course they did.
joe rogan
It's a person.
ben obrien
I love that he did it.
I love that he did it, though.
I fully support that idea.
joe rogan
Right, but I would assume that if someone like John, who works for Sitka, this is probably the number one hunting gear clothing company in the world.
ben obrien
And John is a wealth of knowledge.
joe rogan
Yes.
ben obrien
All the way through.
joe rogan
And, you know, had a considerable amount of experience in the military.
I would imagine the people that would come to his house for a party would be normalized.
ben obrien
What would happen in LA if you did that?
joe rogan
God, they'd go crazy.
ben obrien
Yeah, there'd be riots.
joe rogan
Yeah, you should see the look on people's faces when my kids tell them that they've eaten bear.
Because, you know, when the kids are like five and six, like, I've eaten bear!
I ate a bear!
It was awesome!
unidentified
Woo!
ben obrien
Do they have that, like, fierce look in their eyes?
Like, you just had, like, I ate a bear!
joe rogan
Yeah, they think it's fun to freak people out.
ben obrien
I do like that part of it.
And your daughter's so cute.
That's a wonderful thing coming out of there.
joe rogan
It's weird, right?
The bear thing is a very strange one, and I definitely don't like hunting them like I like hunting anything else.
ben obrien
I struggle with that.
As a hunter, I feel like coming on and talking as a hunter, I don't want to...
joe rogan
Disparage.
ben obrien
Disparage anything, but I also just want to be 100% honest about every part of it.
And hunting is this really complex activity, and I feel conflicted about it almost every time I go.
Like, not about killing the animal or hunting, but just about little parts of what's going on.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
And so bear hunting...
joe rogan
Which also, sometimes you just want to...
Like, Ranella said this once, and I never understood it until it happened to me.
He's like, I just want to watch them sometimes.
ben obrien
I don't really want to hunt them.
What is hunting anyway?
Is hunting killing or is hunting getting close enough to shake their hand?
joe rogan
Or is it the whole thing?
ben obrien
Yeah, it's the whole thing.
I think my opinion on that specific point is...
One I would go back to, I always ask myself two questions.
Why are you going?
And does this hunting benefit the place and the animal that you're hunting?
And if I can't answer those questions myself, and I always strip away conservation and meat from the first question.
joe rogan
Well, you have a very good way of looking at this.
I think it's very honest.
I think this is super important.
Is that conservation is essentially a side effect of hunting.
ben obrien
It's a byproduct, right?
joe rogan
And to pretend that it's the whole thing.
It's almost like a weird...
It's a disingenuous approach to the argument.
ben obrien
It really is.
joe rogan
People saying you shouldn't be hunting will say, well, hunting is conservation and hunters are the best conservationists.
Okay.
ben obrien
Part of that's true, but it's not...
joe rogan
Part of it is true, but it's not really why you're doing it.
ben obrien
And here's the biggest point to make.
There's semantic chinks in that armor, right?
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
We've built up over the years as hunters, like, they use organic meat and conservation as this, like, armor, right?
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
That insulates why we go.
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
And I think there's just chinks in that armor that if we don't recognize those points, especially the conservation one, I think that's a bigger deal.
Like conservation, hunting is a tool for conservation.
It's the same way as translocation is a tool for conservationists.
You can move the animal to get him away from a certain situation, reintroduce the animal.
That's one way.
Or bring in hunters and help banish the population that way.
But that first question, right, is why do I go?
And I always say it's like, We've had experiences, you and I, together in the woods that we couldn't replicate anywhere else.
Like, you've done a lot of cool shit.
And there's some, like, when you ran down the road after I shot my moose.
Like, there's just something about that for me that is way more fulfilling and enriching to my life than any other thing I've experienced.
I haven't experienced everything, but all the things that I've done.
joe rogan
Well, it's so primal.
ben obrien
Right.
And so it's that.
It's learning about animals.
joe rogan
You're in the woods, too.
You're also in a really almost like you're a visitor in an alien world.
ben obrien
Exactly.
And so you learn about these animals.
You develop skills.
I feel like you wouldn't develop any other way.
And on and on it goes.
I mean, there's probably a hundred reasons that I discover a new one every time I go.
And so I always say, like, that's the answer to the first question.
Why do I go?
It's not like, man, I'm real hungry and I want to control the population.
I'm aware as I go hunting that those two things are byproducts of my efforts.
And they're always going to be byproducts in my efforts, unless I'm poaching.
You know, there is a biologist, a state wildlife biologist, federal biologists that determine what tags go where, what animals.
They're moving pieces of the puzzle around to keep this thing the way it is, right?
Keep it healthy, keep it stable.
But they're also looking at what's the economic impact of that.
All that's going on while I'm out there thinking, I've got to kill this big buck.
But I'm not thinking, while I'm out there with my bow, I'm not thinking...
Well, I'd like to kill that one because that'll really stabilize this area.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
I'm out there and I'm, ah, kill that one because I really like backstraps.
I know those two things are happening, but they're almost like, you pull that away from what's actually going on and focus on why you're there.
Like, why did you go to Lanai?
If somebody said, why'd you go, what would you say?
joe rogan
Two reasons.
One, to bow hunt for meat.
For sure, because I wanted to eat axis deer.
And two, because I think that it's great practice.
One of the hardest things about bow hunting is just you can practice all day on a target, but it's almost like never sparring.
Like you could practice all day hitting a heavy bag, but you've never hit a person.
ben obrien
Right.
joe rogan
Like once you're in front of a person, things get weird.
ben obrien
Well, and there's a chink in the armor, right?
So you say, I practice on an animal.
That's terrible.
I would say to that, like, that's just another chink in the armor that we all know is happening.
Like, if we were conservationists, we would never pick up a bow.
joe rogan
Yeah, but I'm not practicing on an animal like I've never practiced before.
ben obrien
Practicing may be being the wrong term.
Like, there's something in there that, like, the experience of stalking an animal is pretty visceral.
And if you've never done it, you can shoot in your back or the hell you want.
joe rogan
Well, I say practice in terms of, like, when you compete as a young martial artist, it's not really practice, but it is.
Like, you're involved in competition.
So, like, are you hunting or are you practicing?
Well, you're definitely hunting, but that hunting is practice.
For other hunts where you don't get nearly as many opportunities as you do in Lanai.
Lanai is one of the best examples of a place that has no predators and a real problem with overpopulation.
You weren't with me and Dudley that one time where me and him and his son were hanging out and we were there at last light and we were watching these axis deer come off the mountain and we saw I don't know how many hundreds.
I mean, it might have been seven, eight hundred deer coming off this mountain.
And we were like, what the fuck?
It was just crazy.
There's ten more.
There's five more.
There's six more.
There's eleven more.
There's a herd of twenty.
Like, what the fuck?
It got to the point where we're like, this is crazy.
So in a place like that, I feel like you have a great ethical argument for they are going to shoot these animals, period.
And the only other way to get around it is you bring in wolves.
And if you bring in wolves, guess what?
unidentified
Then you have wolves.
joe rogan
Then you have wolves.
These people also have dogs running around on the streets.
You know, like pet dogs.
Those dogs would get fucked immediately.
They're going to get killed by wolves because wolves want to take out all the possible...
You can't have wolves on the nigh.
It's a stupid idea.
ben obrien
Hey, everybody, we're never gonna do that.
joe rogan
But, so, it's one of, in terms of, like, since the animals are there, and there's no talk of eradicating them because they have a real value, the people that live there live off of them.
Like, all those folks that we were hanging out with, like Roman, and a lot of the people that work at that place, they eat Axis all the time, and it is, without a doubt, not an, it is the opposite, it is the most delicious game meat in the world.
If it's not I gotta say it's number one.
If it's not number one, it's number two.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
It's amazing.
It's so good.
Like, we ate it at the restaurant.
They served it at the restaurant.
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
ben obrien
Remember the burger we had at that one lunch?
Oh, my gosh.
joe rogan
Insane.
And then the steak place at that place, terrible.
ben obrien
Terrible meaning good.
joe rogan
Terribly good.
ben obrien
Like, so terrible, I can't get it out of my mind.
Those sliders are insane.
Oh, yeah, that's what it was.
joe rogan
They were sliders, yeah.
But the restaurant serves tenderloin, and it is phenomenal.
ben obrien
It's so good.
So that's one thing I always try to separate.
And I try to do it only because I think...
I try to look at it from someone else who's a non-hunter and is hearing us talk or hearing me talk or whatever.
And maybe thinking, like, that's a weird part of that.
Like, that's strange.
And so I feel like if I can say...
Yes, the meat is delicious.
Yes, they gotta kill these things.
Yes, the local people value the animal because hunters exist.
They wouldn't just gun them down because hunters will pay to go out there.
All those things, I think, set aside...
What am I there for?
Like, we were, that group of hunters we had in camp was probably, I mean, I've hunted with a lot of awesome, talented folks, was probably the most skilled group of hunters I've ever been around.
joe rogan
Well, think about who we have.
We have John Dudley.
He's arguably, if not the best bowhunter in the world, he's in the top three.
I think it's like, it's like John, well, there's like top four.
Like, John, Cam, Remy, and Adam.
Adam Greentree.
ben obrien
Yeah.
Of all the people I've hunted with, that's the top four, I would say.
joe rogan
They might be the top four in the world.
They might be.
If they're not top four, they're in the top ten.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Come see us.
ben obrien
If you think you're better, come see us.
joe rogan
It's a clan of killers.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I mean, and then you got Shane Dorian, who's a great bowhunter, too, and the best big wave surfer in the world.
ben obrien
You gotta say about Shane, he's fanatical.
Oh, yeah.
I'd be like, hey, Shane, you want to go take a break and get a sandwich?
And he'd look at me like, what?
joe rogan
Yeah, he's like, no.
ben obrien
We could be hunting.
Why would we be eating sandwiches?
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
He was out there all day.
ben obrien
Every day, all day.
joe rogan
He didn't even come in.
He didn't come in during lunchtime when everybody else was in because it was 95 degrees outside.
He's out there on his hands and knees crawling through the bushes.
ben obrien
Just crawling.
joe rogan
Hoping to find one slipping.
ben obrien
Just crawling.
Just forever to crawl in.
So for me, one reason to do that...
Stripping away all the things that I know to be right right in my own mind Was that was those people getting them all together and then like meeting Roman and meeting Brandon and meet Alec all our guides and all the locals that were there like Those are things I and I learned more about The quick twitch muscle on a guy to hear oh my god than I've ever learned so I feel like I've learned something I spent time with these people that that made me better at not just hunting but everything and Well, for people who've never been around an access deer before, they evolved with tigers.
joe rogan
So tigers hunt them.
I mean, you've never seen an animal more fast in your life.
How about that one deer that we shot?
I shot at this deer.
It was 60 yards away.
It was looking at me, and I was like, I think I'm going to shoot it.
It's just standing there.
By the time my arrow got there, it was four or five deer away.
ben obrien
It was swimming to Maui.
It built a boat and it was rowing over.
joe rogan
So 60 yards away, the arrow's going 275 feet a second.
And it was nowhere near it by the time it got there.
It's like, bitch, please!
They're so fast.
They're faster than any animal I've ever seen.
ben obrien
Well, that lets you say, like, what a weird scenario to be hunting an animal that has been trained by tigers to avoid you.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
You know, what a weird thing.
So, like, that's my appreciation.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
That little exchange of, hey, me and tigers both hunted this thing.
unidentified
I know.
ben obrien
Like, that's something cool to me that's outside of this thing.
So, you talk about that all day.
joe rogan
And then the meat.
Look, if you're a person who values animal protein, if you like ethically sourced animal protein, there's no better way to get it than a place like Lanai.
All the pieces are in check.
Do they need to kill them?
Yes.
Is there an overpopulation problem?
Yes.
ben obrien
Does it provide jobs for locals?
unidentified
Yes.
joe rogan
Yes, all the good things.
I mean, there's a lot of positive sides to it.
And again, if you're someone who enjoys bow hunting, like, look, it's an uncomfortable thing for some people, but I enjoy it.
I like it.
I like getting my meat that way.
I don't like, I feel bad if I get bacon from a store.
I feel like...
ben obrien
What are we talking about, like, as predators?
Like, we are predators.
Like, you look at, you know, it's been millions of years we've been killing and eating things.
unidentified
No, humans are herbivores, and that's all a lie.
ben obrien
I don't know.
I've done some reading.
joe rogan
You don't have to be a predator.
Look, you don't have to be a predator.
You could live off of...
ben obrien
But aren't we, though?
joe rogan
Some people.
But look, you could live...
My point is, if you wanted to, I don't want to disparage the way anybody lives their life.
You could live off of just pure vegetables.
By the way, there's a real moral and ethical argument if you are a vegan to eat mollusks, folks.
Because mollusks are more primitive than most plants.
They don't communicate as much as plants do.
They don't have any sense of feeling.
They have no nerve endings that would allow them to feel pain.
They're incredibly simple organisms.
The only thing that we have against them in terms of like when we think about them as being an animal versus, you know, like a plant.
People think eating a plant is cruelty-free.
Eating a mollusk, you're killing a living creature, right?
But that's just because they move.
But a fucking Venus flytrap moves too, and it's probably ten times smarter than like a scallop.
Like, they're not smart.
ben obrien
It's hard to regulate that morality.
joe rogan
It is, but I mean, I just want people...
If you're uncomfortable with eating chicken, I get it.
But eat clams and oysters, and those things are good for you.
They really are.
And it's sustainable, and the animals themselves are not feeling shit.
Yeah.
ben obrien
The moral entanglements of all of it is just...
And like, you know, we say, we humans, we wake up in the morning and you consume everything.
Like, you're just consuming.
unidentified
You breathe air, you pump out CO2. And every other animal does too.
joe rogan
They just wander around, chewing on the grass.
ben obrien
We're just consumption engines.
And like, for us to separate out one part of our consumption and then like, beat the crap out of it, even though we've been doing it for two million years, is in and of itself kind of weird.
joe rogan
Well, you know what I think happened?
Is your mic on?
That was so weird.
That was very loud.
It was weird.
It was like it was in my ear.
ben obrien
Jamie's on the ride brainer.
joe rogan
He's getting crazy.
But I think part of the issue is that people over the last hundred years or so have been so removed from where the meat comes from that when they can find a direct connection like, oh, you went and you shot a moose and then you ate that moose?
Like, you killed the moose?
Like, you didn't have to kill that moose.
Like, that becomes problematic because people aren't used to someone killing things.
People that they know in particular.
ben obrien
No, and I enjoy the ideological conversation.
I just enjoy the conversation.
I enjoy it because I think it's part of a human condition.
It's part of who we are and what we do.
So yeah, we should probably fight about it a little bit and disagree because it's pretty damn important.
This is an important piece of our humanity.
joe rogan
It is important.
ben obrien
That we're talking about.
So I feel very strongly that hunting is the essence of who I am as a human and has made my life better.
But I can see how somebody else would say, you're killing stuff.
joe rogan
I can too, and I also think that those people are important.
I think so.
I think having vegans and having animal rights activists and having to be able to have dialogue with them, it also makes sure that you keep people honest, like people that are hunters.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like, you know, like...
Because we all know unethical people.
There's people that are unethical.
ben obrien
Absolutely.
I always think about it, you know, if you look at the trend of hunting, in the 70s, hunting was doing great.
And then in the 80s, it started to tick down.
joe rogan
Fucking Bambi.
That's what happened, bro.
ben obrien
Well, I would say three...
We talked about this before, like three things.
Bambi, maybe Walt Disney.
He was maybe a dick.
I don't know.
And then urbanization.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
Which correlated with the decline in hunting.
And then hunters being the third one.
Messaging.
We're bad PR agents.
joe rogan
Some of them are bad PR agents.
ben obrien
Not all of them.
joe rogan
And then there's people like Grinella that are amazing at it.
ben obrien
We're way better now than we were five years ago.
We're better tomorrow than we were yesterday.
But I think in general, if you look at that line graph, right?
In the 70s it was going nicely.
In the 80s it started to decline.
And I think 2011 was the first time it actually went up.
joe rogan
Oh, really?
ben obrien
The number of, I think it's licensed sales or number of hunters participating.
joe rogan
I wonder what caused that.
I bet it's like the organic food movement.
ben obrien
There was a study that said Locovores, they're talking about more women, they talked about returning military members.
I remember reading the study.
I think those were the top three.
But I think Locovore was probably pushed out there as like, the way to reverse that second point, the way to reverse the suburban and urban rise, was to take that suburban male or female and say, you can hunt and get your food.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
And then that's a way to kind of reverse the decline.
And I think that's probably what was happening.
joe rogan
Hmm.
Well, everybody wants to go with locally sourced, locally raised, grass fed.
People are trying to go to farmers markets and connect with the people that are actually growing the animals.
And this is like one step better than that.
Instead of having an animal that's in captivity, go out into the forest.
But there's a rude awakening for a lot of these people that think they're going to just go ahead and try it.
It is not easy by any stretch of the imagination.
ben obrien
That's the other problem.
It's the Grand Canyon.
I would love to procure my own elk meat, and killing an elk is like being on two sides of the Grand Canyon.
There's no bridge to be built there.
You've got to take it one step at a time.
And for most people, they don't have time for that.
They don't have the want to do that.
So I would say, what is it, like 14 million hunters in the world or something like that?
Or in our country.
How many non-hunters who don't either have the wherewithal to get educated or want to, or just don't fall into the anti-hunter side, like the agnostic crowd?
How many of those are there out there?
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
I don't know.
But it's hundreds of millions of people.
There's a lot of them.
joe rogan
Well, urbanization, one of the things it's done, just careers, just careers in cities, it's eliminated almost all of your free time.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And if you wanted to go out and procure your own meat, first of all, if you wanted to do it with a rifle, that's going to take a tremendous amount of time.
ben obrien
Absolutely.
joe rogan
But if you want to do it with a bow, multiply that by a factor of, like, maybe five or ten.
Maybe ten.
Ten is probably pretty honest.
ben obrien
Honestly.
And then you're talking about one of the hardest pieces is access, right?
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
Even if you get with John Dudley and you learn how to be a great archer, and you understand that in your suburban area there are some places where there's deer that you may kill, you've got to get access to those places.
And then when you're done with that, you've got to figure out a way to get that thing from dead deer to meat and all the other things.
It's just so complex.
How would you ever expect somebody just to have a desire?
You were like that at some point.
joe rogan
Well, Rinella opened the door for me.
ben obrien
So you're lucky as hell to have that, right?
joe rogan
Super lucky.
Forever grateful.
Because when he took me into a wild backcountry Montana deer hunt.
unidentified
Yeah, you got kicking the nuts the first deer hunt.
joe rogan
In the Missouri Breaks, in October, nine degrees out, freezing your dick off every night in a tent.
ben obrien
It seems like lifeless Steve Rinello.
That's kind of what it's like.
joe rogan
He loves it.
He loves suffering.
He loves it.
But I love that he loves it.
He's as legit as they come.
ben obrien
He really is.
I think that's it, right?
There is just this big gap, and my father got me into it, but my brother doesn't hunt, but he has respect for it and understands what's going on.
I think at the time that I was introduced to hunting, my brother was more interested in going out with his friends than Saturday mornings were not for getting up early.
And so we're essentially the same person, but I just went this way, and he didn't go that way.
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
So it's a weird...
So you could be in the same house with somebody and go a different way.
joe rogan
Well, Rinella has a real good way of looking at it, too.
He's like, I don't expect people to go out and get rid of their own sewage.
Why should I expect them to go out and hunt their own food?
Like, you don't have to.
ben obrien
Well, I think he probably said this at some point, or somebody smart did.
It was, like, I choose, I believe it, I choose for meat to be the one thing that I grabbed a hold of to bring into my skill set.
I don't knit my own clothes.
I don't make my own shoes.
I don't build my own houses.
We were just looking at some construction stuff a little bit earlier.
I'm like, dude, what?
joe rogan
Yeah, what are they doing?
ben obrien
What are they doing?
I couldn't do that.
I just picked this one thing because it's also part of my passion.
You couldn't just ask someone who's a construction worker to go hunt, get some meat.
I know you have a desire for that.
That's just another hard part about hunting, and non-hunters by proxy are essential to hunting, always.
In industry, in opinion, because we could legislate ourselves out of being able to hunt.
That could happen.
Hunting is a privilege, man.
That's not a right in a lot of ways.
joe rogan
So that's another whole nother can of worms, but it could it could go away Yeah, I think the the issue is that so many people are opposed to it because they're so removed from the realities of the wild and They just feel some sort of moral superiority by either not eating meat entirely or by not killing their own meat They're not killing their own meat is really ridiculous.
Like my wife was having a conversation with someone They were out to dinner with a bunch of people while I was on an elk hunt and The guy was eating a steak.
A guy from England.
In England, they don't hunt.
Or they do hunt.
They use, like, foxes and horses and shit.
ben obrien
They wear, like, tweed pussies.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
No, sorry, England.
We love you.
joe rogan
This guy's carving a steak, and my wife goes, he's actually out elk hunting.
And the guy goes, he hunts?
That's deplorable.
The guy said, that's deplorable.
While he's carving a steak.
ben obrien
I was saying something the other day, like...
And I got a lot of, like, people were looking at me like I was weird at work.
One of my buddies at work was eating a chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A. And I look on the bag and there's a cartoon chicken on the bag.
And in my mind, I'm like, that's like building a swimming pool by the lake.
It's fucking weird and irony that we're like...
Saying, hey, I'm eating a chicken, but here's a cartoon version of it so we can celebrate the fact that we just murdered this chicken and we fried it up.
joe rogan
That doesn't make sense.
Like a swimming pool with a lake is probably smart because there's parasites in the lake.
ben obrien
The rye brain's wearing off.
joe rogan
Time for a refill.
ben obrien
Yes.
We can put chlorine in the lake.
As long as you know what I mean.
joe rogan
Well, we definitely like to cartoonize these weird...
Is that a word?
Not really.
Cartoonize?
ben obrien
Personalize?
joe rogan
No.
Well, anthropomorphize is you take an animal and you give it human characteristics.
ben obrien
Personify?
joe rogan
No.
Cartoonification.
Is that a word?
ben obrien
Let's just go with it.
joe rogan
Just turning it into a fucking cartoon.
ben obrien
We're creating drinks, we'll do what we want.
joe rogan
A sweet little cutie pie, when really a chicken is a ruthless little fucking dinosaur that lays eggs for you every day.
ben obrien
But is it weird to be eating a chicken, and like, there is on the bag where that chicken came from, it's like a picture of the chicken.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
It seems like a weird way to handle it.
joe rogan
It is weird, but we like cartoons.
People love cartoons.
ben obrien
Well, that's like the personification of animals, I think, is part of the bear situation.
unidentified
Yes.
ben obrien
Because my kid, my son's nine months old, and from before he was born until now, there's cartoon bears everywhere, and there's like this, you know, personification of these cute little creatures that come along with being a little baby.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
And then you look at so many Pixar and DreamWorks films that personify animals.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
I think that's, I mean, there's some indoctrination into that, right?
There has to be.
joe rogan
There is, because in those magazines, or rather those movies and books even, those animals are never like eating each other.
ben obrien
Pooh Bear never goes up.
joe rogan
I mean, if Yogi killed a hiker, if a hiker fucked up on one of the episodes of Yellowstone and just took a wrong turn and Yogi's eating his ribcage, a bunch of people show up and- Like Pooh Bear and Yogi are just fucking going at it.
Just ripping it apart.
ben obrien
Eating cubs.
joe rogan
Yeah, eating some dude asshole first while he's screaming and- Swatting at it with his fucking hiking sticks.
ben obrien
And they're playing the circle of life in the background?
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like there's some indoctrination, and maybe that's what happens.
I just don't know.
I have no idea why bears get this thing, because bears are around.
It's not like there aren't bears around.
They're in almost all states, aren't they?
joe rogan
Yeah, but what it is is people that don't experience them firsthand, and when they do experience them firsthand, usually they're in their car like, look, a bear, and they drive by.
My friend Tommy...
ben obrien
That one bear that was walking on its hind legs, and that was cute.
joe rogan
Oh, that one that had a broken front paw?
ben obrien
Yeah, I've been friends with that bear.
joe rogan
They called them, like, petals or something like that?
That's awesome.
There was, um, my friend Tommy, who lives in Connecticut, sent me a picture of these bears that were in the middle of the street duking it out, uh, in Connecticut.
Like, they're invading Connecticut now, and they don't have any pressure.
So here's the thing about bear hunting as opposed to anything else.
Like, California's weird in that they don't hunt mountain lions, but what's good about that is California has very little deer.
Now, it's not good if you like to hunt deer, but it is good if you like to drive down the street and not slam in a fucking deer.
Like, Iowa doesn't have mountain lions.
But they do have a shit ton of deer.
And when you drive late at night in Iowa, you gotta have your foot on the gas, ready to hit that fucking brake at any second.
ben obrien
Nah, you just get the ranch hand grill guard and just plow them up.
joe rogan
Mad Max grill.
People, like, everywhere you look, in, like, Iowa and Montana, these people have pickup trucks with these battering ram front grill things that they put.
ben obrien
Well, how many deer did we kill in Lanai?
Were you in any of the deer?
We must have hit...
With a car?
Oh yeah, with Brandon's truck, I think we hit at least two or three deer.
joe rogan
Did you?
ben obrien
While we were on Lanai.
We were there for five days.
joe rogan
We never hit any.
Roman's a better driver than Brandon.
ben obrien
He must be.
joe rogan
That's what's going on.
ben obrien
Brandon, if you're listening...
We never hit any.
joe rogan
We didn't even hit one.
ben obrien
Yeah, we hit multiple.
joe rogan
But they were telling me about them.
They were like, people just slam into them all over the place.
ben obrien
So there you are.
I'm sure the insurance industry would really enjoy.
joe rogan
Well, in Cam's town, last year, a guy died because a guy in front of him hit a deer.
ben obrien
Oh, right.
joe rogan
And the deer flew through the air and went through his windshield and brained him.
ben obrien
Oh, that's poor luck.
joe rogan
That's a shit luck.
ben obrien
That's like having a longer guy.
joe rogan
Do you hear a story like that?
You're like, I would have ducked.
Do you hear that?
You're like, pssh, I would have ducked.
unidentified
That guy's a pussy.
ben obrien
I'd have been like, I don't know.
joe rogan
People think stupid shit like that, right?
ben obrien
In the moment, I would have been driving my car and I would have seen this deer flying through there and I'd be like, well, it was a good run.
Like, there's a...
There's nothing I can do about an airborne deer.
Like, that's just bad luck.
joe rogan
Yeah, 150-pound blacktail.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
Hurling through the air.
ben obrien
What the hell?
joe rogan
Full of antlers and hooves.
ben obrien
Yeah, I'd have been like, well, I lived all these years without this happening.
That was lucky.
joe rogan
That's probably more lucky, right?
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
But that's, I mean, you know, you start to, like, break down those things.
Like, more animals, less animals, the value of them, and all these things.
What a complex freaking thing to have to figure out.
I always just get, the more you read, the more you jump in, the more you go, you know, going to New Zealand.
Going to, you know, Northwest Territories, going to Nepal, you go to these places and you just realize that everybody has the same essential problem.
Like, how do we cohabitate?
How do we live with these things that we were in some ways meant to consume?
Like, there's evidence of two million years ago in Tanzania.
Humans, early humans, hunting.
And so 100,000 generations of people have lived on a hunter-gatherer diet.
Then you had the Industrial Revolution.
A couple generations of people kind of were introduced to a new diet.
And then the last couple generations, you have processed foods.
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
And so everywhere that I've ever been, you find people struggling with that thing.
It's just not us in America.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
Right, but you can exist on a plant-based diet.
I mean, I know a lot of people that do it.
unidentified
Absolutely.
joe rogan
It can be done.
ben obrien
And I'm sure in those 100,000 generations, there was plenty of people that didn't, you know, exist on the hunter-gatherer diet alone, but the majority of humans...
joe rogan
I wonder how many there were, honestly, because I feel like people were just really super opportunistic back then.
I mean, if you were just trying to survive and struggle, I don't think you could say, like, hey, I don't want to eat that rabbit because I feel bad.
ben obrien
No, that rabbit is...
The way I live.
And then you have to wear its pelt, and that's a different deal.
I was writing a piece one time, and I got into reading about these basket weaver people that were in Valley of Fire State Park in Nevada, which is really close to Vegas.
And you should go if you've never been up there.
joe rogan
Basket weavers?
ben obrien
Yeah.
Basket maker or basket weaver people.
joe rogan
Are they like Native Americans?
ben obrien
Yeah, they were essentially a roving band of nomadic hunters.
I can't think of the year.
You can probably look it up and find it.
But there was different generations of this essentially roving band of tribes.
In that area, next time you're in Vegas, it's like an hour drive north.
There's a bunch of petroglyphs there that depict deities and sheep and all these different things there.
joe rogan
And you could just go visit them?
unidentified
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
You know what's fucked up about those petroglyphs, man?
They're not protected.
There's a ranch in Texas that a buddy of mine went to, and he's like, you could just go over there and touch these things, and they might be 5,000 years old.
ben obrien
I did that when my wife and I went up there.
You could have had a can of spray paint.
How fucked up is that?
It's strange.
It's strange that you wouldn't find a way, but also probably...
It's probably okay because it's a natural place.
You don't want to put fences up or have a guard standing there.
joe rogan
It's actually pretty badass that no one's fucked with it so far.
ben obrien
You go up there and you see these things and you're like, holy crap.
So I started reading a little bit about those people, and they were part of a nomadic band of hunters, gatherers, that lived in caves and essentially followed desert bighorn sheep, much like Indians of the plains followed buffalo.
So they essentially followed these things into this valley.
Eventually the Anasazi Indians move in.
They start cultivating the land and planting crops, and you get this, like, oh my gosh, agriculture and hunting.
Which one is better?
What do we do?
And so the whole story of that interaction is interesting to me because it's kind of the evolution of our culture, right?
Hunting has created this social structure, ways for us to communicate.
It's created all these things, ways for our body to grow and expand as we were, you know, early humans.
Ways for our brain to expand and grow and function differently.
And then you have this like, oh, it's a lot easier to plant crops in the ground than it is to go kill a sheep, right?
Guys?
Anybody?
Is this easier?
So then you get into this weird thing about what do we do now?
And so I think their story was very much like the Anasazi Indians.
They go in, and they cultivate this area, and as long as they can grow crops, that's what they did.
So this nomadic band of hunters kind of settled in this area.
I'm sure they still hunted to get meat, because they have to, because you can't grow.
A whole year's worth of food for a valley like that.
But I think agriculture kind of won out a little bit in that scenario.
And as it would, it's an easier way to live.
joe rogan
Yeah, yeah.
ben obrien
That's an evolutionary, easy way to live.
joe rogan
I mean, the whole thing is filling your belly.
That's the whole thing.
And everything, you know, you can do to do it, whether it's with deer, or whether it's with corn, or whether it's with tomatoes, or whatever you can grow.
And, you know, you just have to eat.
I mean, that's the whole picture of staying alive back then.
That's not our whole picture today.
So that's where it gets really complicated.
And that's where I think that hunters have done a really good job over the last...
X amount of years, describing to people, like, if you're going to eat meat, this is the most ethical, the most cruelty-free, and the most natural way to do it.
And you're talking about an animal that literally, like, okay, here's a perfect example.
That deer, that mule deer that you're looking at right here, that deer had no idea I was alive until it died.
And it died instantly.
It was boom, one shot, it dropped.
Right where I shot it, and that's it.
And then it becomes steak.
You know, and it becomes delicious food that we ate.
And that's way better than any other animal that you're ever going to buy in a store.
I don't care if you're talking about farm-raised, grass-fed, you know, locally sourced.
ben obrien
I feel like your evolution as a hunter has been accelerated more than most, probably because that's how you do everything.
But you went from, when I first, when you first hunted in British Columbia, it was three years ago.
joe rogan
Three years ago?
Yeah.
ben obrien
To where you are now, I mean, you've evolved in this, like, what you see as hunting and in our community and in our world and doing different things.
And in some ways, you evolve from, when I was a kid, we just shot deer.
Oh, here's a spike.
Here's a four-point.
You shoot this deer, and that was a great day.
We drag it off and eat it, and it's great.
Now, I understand way more about what I was doing then and what I'm doing now.
And I think what, at Hunters, we need to be cognizant of and comfortable with is you change.
Your sensibilities change over time.
You don't become a trophy hunter.
You're not a trophy hunter, but you do appreciate The difference between a small antlered animal and a large one, in terms of its maturity and how awesome it is to see a 380-inch elk or a 200-inch deer, your pursuit is different than it was when we shot that moose.
joe rogan
It is also, but also part of the pursuit that's different is that I understand that the benefit of going after mature animals is if you're getting a mature deer, you're talking about a deer that's five years old, that deer has had five breeding seasons, has spread Spread its genes.
And by killing it, you're going to give a chance to the younger bucks that are coming up to breed.
So it's done its part.
It's spread its genes.
It's created its progeny.
And now you'll take it out of the mix.
And this is the right way to do it because then you ensure a healthy herd.
Especially for bear.
That's the big argument.
You want to take out the dominant males.
Because the dominant males actually eat the cubs.
ben obrien
They're marauders.
Animals.
joe rogan
That's the craziest part about it is, by shooting a boar, you're going to save the lives of many bears.
In many ways, it's kind of a catch-22 because you're talking about controlling populations.
ben obrien
Well, isn't it a catch-22 that a younger deer tastes better?
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
And so you're out there like, I really love access to your meat, but when we're over there, they're like, we have certain call bucks and there's certain things you want to shoot.
It's like, I really love access to your deer, and if I was out there just for meat, I would have shot the youngest deer.
Probably not the youngest, but I would have picked a certain age group.
joe rogan
Yeah, but I'll tell you, here's the argument against that with axis deer.
That deer I shot was not young.
That was a big-ass deer, and that fucking thing's delicious.
unidentified
It's delicious.
joe rogan
Like, if they're better than that when they're younger, I don't even need that.
ben obrien
It's a fact that a younger animal is more tender and is a better cut of meat than an older animal, for sure.
In most cases.
It's not all cases, but that's the general...
joe rogan
That giant elk that I shot where you saw the antlers back there?
ben obrien
They're all delicious.
joe rogan
That's amazing!
I've been eating that thing for eight months now.
It's fantastic.
ben obrien
Yeah, I do the same thing.
joe rogan
Elk is great no matter what.
ben obrien
Yeah.
Even a seven-year-old elk.
Yeah, you're talking about two animals that it'd be hard to mess it up.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
But in general...
That's the fact of the matter, right?
joe rogan
See, I don't like that argument, though.
You know why I don't like that argument?
I don't mind chewy meat, and I like eating what I kill.
So, like, it feels good to me on top of it tasting good.
Like, if I eat a deer that's a six-year-old deer, there's two things going on.
One, there's a satisfaction that I know that a six-year-old deer is very difficult to hunt.
Yes.
You know, so most of the places where you hunt, other people are hunting as well.
A six-year-old deer has seen people that are hunting deer, period.
That's right.
So that deer is going to be on point.
That's a tough deer to kill.
So by killing that deer, you get extra satisfaction.
That's one.
And then on two, you're eating this animal that you have this connection with.
So it tastes good because of that.
I like meat that tastes like meat.
I don't want filet mignon.
I like a deer steak.
It's the best.
A sirloin from a mule deer.
I'd prefer that.
unidentified
It's the best.
ben obrien
and organic meat, right?
And you said, I'm going for, I understand both those principles.
I'm going hunting.
Everything's great.
You're shooting that six-year-old mule deer, right?
If you remove conservation, you're probably not going to shoot that six-year-old mule deer.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
Because you're going to get a younger deer that's easier to kill, more tender, more delicious than you're going to shoot that mule deer.
unidentified
Right.
joe rogan
You know Eduardo Garcia, the chef in Montana?
He gets shit from other hunters because he'll shoot a spike on purpose.
He's like, look, I'm here for the meat, guys.
He goes, I'm grocery shopping.
ben obrien
That should be, in general, that should be okay, but there's principles that say shooting a mature animal is more beneficial to the herd.
So...
That's yet another complexity that we should all just say, like, man, this is here, and we've just got to continue to talk about it.
joe rogan
That's important.
I think the way you approach it is very important, because you're entirely honest about the good and the bad and the bear thing.
It's not the best meat.
It's good meat.
unidentified
It's good.
joe rogan
But it's not as good as elk.
ben obrien
Yeah, I'm not going to stand up and be like, hey...
Pussies.
Eating a bear is the best thing ever.
It's not.
joe rogan
Some people love it, though.
I don't know if they're telling the truth.
ben obrien
They're telling the truth, but I would assure them if they would dabble in some other meats, they'll find one that's better.
I'm pretty sure.
joe rogan
Well, I guess it depends entirely about the way to preserve it.
unidentified
And taste.
joe rogan
Prepare it, right?
ben obrien
Taste or whatever.
joe rogan
But the thing about this, an argument for hunting bears is different than the argument for hunting any other animal because you do eat them and you need to kill them because they don't have a natural predator.
The problem with bears is, especially if we went in Alberta, Jesus Christ, they are everywhere.
People that think there's a shortage of bears need to go to Alberta.
ben obrien
People that want to have one of those experiences where you walk away from that and be like, Did I just do that?
joe rogan
Yeah, are there 20 fucking bears hanging out over here?
ben obrien
I've been sitting there with Cam.
Like, I wish we could get Cam.
Call Cam.
Cam, please text in.
joe rogan
He's at work right now.
Quit your job, Cam.
ben obrien
Quit your job, Cam.
joe rogan
Been telling you for years, quit your job.
ben obrien
You're too cool to have a nine-to-five.
Uh, it's...
joe rogan
He's got a seven-to-five.
ben obrien
Oh, my lord.
joe rogan
Takes two hours lunch to go work out and run the mountains.
ben obrien
Well, that's...
joe rogan
Savagery.
ben obrien
It is savagery.
He does pretty good for having a 7 to 5. He's a goddamn savage.
I gotta get my ass together.
joe rogan
He's a legit savage.
ben obrien
I know.
joe rogan
Every time I'm complaining about anything, I think about Cam Haynes getting up at 4 o'clock in the morning to run.
ben obrien
You think about that, like, 198th mile.
joe rogan
You're like, fuck.
205th.
He's gonna do 234 this summer.
ben obrien
It only gets worse.
My dad was an ultramarathon runner growing up, and it just gets worse.
It's like smoking crack.
joe rogan
Oh, they just get deeper and deeper into how much they can endure.
ben obrien
That's probably a terrible analogy.
joe rogan
Dude, I'm scared of it because I keep running further and further distances.
I'm like, what am I doing?
And I'm doing it more and more often.
ben obrien
What am I doing?
You're feeling the runner's high.
joe rogan
Well, it's a little bit of that, but it's also like I feel improvement, and I'm an improvement junkie.
ben obrien
Yeah, I feel you on that.
joe rogan
I know that I can keep...
I'm pushing further.
I'm going further distances.
I feel better when I hit the top of the hill.
ben obrien
Yeah.
But my dad, like when I was a kid, I remember my dad just being, you know, a regular...
He must have been mid-40s, maybe.
Late 40s.
And he mowed...
We had a fairly small backyard, and he mowed a little circle.
And he would go out after working his jeans and his loafers and jog around this circle.
What?
I remember looking out there and being like, what are you doing, man?
joe rogan
How big was the yard?
ben obrien
It was like...
Maybe an acre?
unidentified
I don't know.
ben obrien
It wasn't very big.
He was running, like, just little circles in this yard.
Let me get to the end of the story.
You'll get it eventually.
But that was his way to run.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
And so, after a while, he started running, you know, got running shoes and started to get into the actual sport of running.
And then it seems to me, like, three or four years later, he was like, I think I'm going to run this 50-mile race in the mountains of Maryland.
JFK 50-miler.
joe rogan
And had he run marathons?
unidentified
No!
ben obrien
No!
joe rogan
So a 50 mile race is like what?
It was not like- Six hours?
Seven hours?
ben obrien
If you're in really good shape?
Eight or nine hours, I think.
Eight or nine, I think, when he started.
Or maybe ten.
I think 12 is like the cutoff.
joe rogan
Isn't it interesting?
Like 8 hours for 50, for 100, it's 24. Of course it is.
It's like, listen, bitch.
ben obrien
75 miles in.
unidentified
Fuck this.
ben obrien
My dad used to run.
He used to run in places.
It was like the JFK 50-Milers up over this mountain.
It's not like...
I remember he used to tell me stories of people falling and busting themselves all up on these rocky cliff trails.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
And he would come in and...
This is going to make my dad sound weird.
He's not.
He's awesome.
But he would, like, save his toenails.
All his toenails would fall off during the race.
And he would, like, save them, put them in a little jar.
joe rogan
Oh, God.
ben obrien
His memories.
joe rogan
Did he save his boogers, too?
ben obrien
No, no.
Just toenails.
And he was almost like this, like, I can take that.
Right.
I could take this thing and then he ran 50 and then I think one time he ran 100 and then he ran the entire C&O Canal one time 183 miles and I was like I think it was in maybe a senior in high school and I had like had to drive to the checkpoints and like give him food and stuff.
joe rogan
So he never started until he was in his 40s?
ben obrien
God maybe 50s it was 40s probably I would say yeah late 40s.
joe rogan
So what did he keep does he still do it how old is he now?
ben obrien
He would still do it if his knees would allow him to.
He's mid-60s now, 65. His knees are fucked up.
But he'll still bike and he hikes all the time now.
So he still has that need to push.
And when he gets around one of his buddies in particular that they ran together, they're like old army buddies and talking about this experience that they shared together.
Like, remember that one time on Mile 94 when you trip and fail and And it's just like they're telling old war stories.
It's like this visceral thing that they share.
It's really cool.
He did it past...
I mean, maybe it's a midlife crisis, man.
I don't know.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
He wasn't predisposed to run 100 miles until he decided that he wanted to.
joe rogan
Yeah.
It's weird, right?
That compulsion is a very odd one.
The need for suffering.
Cam's got it bad.
ben obrien
It becomes a thing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
He's got it bad in a weird way.
ben obrien
I remember my dad, he got a knee surgery.
What kind?
It was ACL, I think it was.
Or was it the scope of his knee?
He had knee surgery.
joe rogan
Oh, scope.
Scope's an easy one.
ben obrien
They cut his knee open.
I can't remember what.
I don't want to say the wrong one.
But he had knee surgery in there.
Like, give it four or five days before you're up and moving around.
And he was like jogging around the backyard on day two.
Limping around.
You could just tell he was in pain.
joe rogan
Oh, that must have been meniscus.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
Something like that.
Some tendon of some sort.
But it was just like you could just see.
This dude is...
If he can't do this, man, it's not good for his psyche.
If he can do it, he's a happy guy.
joe rogan
Well, there's something that happens to you when you push yourself like that, where it makes regular life easier.
And that's part of the addiction.
ben obrien
That's real.
When I went to Nepal, man, that's exactly...
When I came back, I was like...
I brought back a sheep, I killed and all that stuff, but the perspective was what?
It was real.
joe rogan
When you were telling me how you were hallucinating when you saw a baby.
ben obrien
I did.
joe rogan
Tell me about that.
ben obrien
Alright.
joe rogan
So, how high were you?
ben obrien
We got, we'll have to start.
We were, there we were like 13,000 maybe.
13 or 13.5.
joe rogan
13,000 feet above sea level.
ben obrien
Yep.
joe rogan
Which gets sketchy as fuck.
ben obrien
It's sketchy.
It's not something to mess around with, I found.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
Especially on this trip.
So we were hunting blue sheep in Nepal.
joe rogan
Blue sheep?
ben obrien
Blue sheep.
joe rogan
What does that look like?
ben obrien
Look it up.
unidentified
Look it up.
ben obrien
It looks kind of like an all-dad.
It's got these like...
joe rogan
Oh, wow.
ben obrien
It's got really, really...
You can really see their annuli, like the age rings and their horns.
They go straight out.
They're short and stocky.
It'd be...
Cool to look at them.
They're a cool animal.
And it's one of those things where we went to hunt them and I didn't really have much of an idea of what blue sheep was until we started getting into the thing.
There's one.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
ben obrien
A boral is what they call them over there.
joe rogan
Wow, what a cool looking animal.
ben obrien
Yeah.
Yeah, mine wasn't quite that big.
And that one looks like it might be at a farm.
joe rogan
Because it's mowed grass?
ben obrien
Yeah, maybe.
joe rogan
But don't the goats mow the grass?
ben obrien
That looks like more...
joe rogan
I saw a very disturbing video of a goat eating a whole bucket of chicks.
Of little baby, uh, baby chickens.
Yeah, it was on...
ben obrien
What were you watching?
joe rogan
It was on an Instagram page.
I think it was...
ben obrien
Okay.
joe rogan
Either it was Jimmy Jew or Clown and the Homie.
Yeah, that's it right there.
Look, this fucking goat is just sitting there eating...
This is on YouTube and what's the name of the video, Jamie, there?
Um...
Amazing goat-eating, alive baby chicken.
So there's several bins of baby chicks, and this goat is just standing there, and it just reaches in, chews one down, and the goats aren't carnivorous, so they don't have the teeth for this.
And this baby chick's trying to fucking claw its way out.
Look at this.
unidentified
Watch, watch, watch, watch.
joe rogan
He reaches in.
ben obrien
Oh, he's just like, I'll get one.
Oh, I can't catch it.
joe rogan
He lost that one.
That one lived.
But look, he gets one.
Here we go.
I got you, bitch.
And he just starts chewing.
Just starts chewing.
Like, what?
ben obrien
What is happening?
joe rogan
Oh, look at this one.
Wild Impala fights back as its guts fall out.
ben obrien
I feel like we're really making the case to be Predator Hunter.
joe rogan
Yeah, look at this.
This Impala is getting chewed apart by this wild dog.
Oh, my God.
ben obrien
Don't do it.
Don't stop it.
joe rogan
Oh my god, but it's just lying.
ben obrien
Oh, it's in, it's in the cavity.
joe rogan
Yeah.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
ben obrien
That's like where the bacon is.
Oh, now it's up on his feet.
joe rogan
It's terrible.
unidentified
Oh my god.
joe rogan
Africa.
ben obrien
You're a dirty mother.
joe rogan
Look at this.
This Impala's like, come on, bitch.
You ain't eating me.
I'm stabbing you, motherfucker.
I know I got weapons on my head.
ben obrien
He's like, look at your tail.
joe rogan
Look at this showdown.
His guts are literally hanging out to the ground.
And it's standing up.
How tough are these things, man?
ben obrien
I mean, I would not want to get gored by that impala and horn.
joe rogan
The dog doesn't either.
ben obrien
Are they on a road?
Yeah, they sure are.
There's a road right there.
Paved road.
joe rogan
Look how it just circles them, too.
Looking to catch them on the flank.
ben obrien
Isn't it just messed up that, like, wolves and coyotes, they hit the back legs first?
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
They cause that shock and blood loss?
joe rogan
I'm a big fan of cats, because at least cats will grab you by your neck and kill you.
unidentified
They really will.
joe rogan
This motherfucker is not doing that.
This is weird.
ben obrien
There's a whole minute 30 left of this.
Oh, there's more!
joe rogan
A bunch more come in.
He's like, that's it.
That's a wrap.
Oh, and they just grab the guts.
Look how much more is falling out now.
ben obrien
Oh, how can it be alive?
joe rogan
Oh, I have no idea.
I don't understand.
And they're just going after the legs.
ben obrien
Here comes another one.
joe rogan
Yeah.
unidentified
Oh, no.
joe rogan
It doesn't know what to do, man.
Oh, God.
unidentified
It's so crazy.
Why are we watching this?
ben obrien
We're having some vegan dinner tonight.
unidentified
Oh, Jesus.
joe rogan
There's like, what, six of them?
Three, four, four, six, seven?
Seven wild dogs.
unidentified
It's dead now.
ben obrien
Hopefully it's dead.
joe rogan
Look at the chunks.
Oh, they just pulled the guts out in one hunk.
ben obrien
There's one watching.
joe rogan
Look how fast they tear that fucking thing apart.
Look at that.
It's just body cavity now.
Holy shit.
unidentified
What is the head?
ben obrien
Did they drag the head off?
joe rogan
Yeah, man.
They're no jokes.
And those guys are nothing compared to hyenas.
Yeah.
It's hard out there, is the point.
Like, if you get hit by an arrow, it's way better than that, folks.
ben obrien
That was like three minutes of terror.
joe rogan
Yeah.
We're going for the vitals.
We're going for double lungs.
We're going for a heart.
It's going to end nice and quick.
ben obrien
See, now this is the biggest problem with the internet.
You get from like, what's a blue sheep to that shit?
Like, two clicks?
joe rogan
Yeah, well, you can go way deeper than that, you know?
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
I saw a guy chop his dick off the other day.
ben obrien
What?
joe rogan
Just for a goof, I was looking at different hashtags online, and I looked for hashtag triggered.
I think I might have wrote hashtag triggered in something, so I looked for hashtag triggered thinking I could find a post that I wrote.
Oh, good luck.
There's millions.
One of them was this one dude chopping his own dick off, and they somehow or another got on Instagram.
And I was like, how did that- It got on Instagram?
Yeah, nobody caught it before they pulled it down.
Look, there's no way they can take down everything fucked up.
ben obrien
Just hashtagging it though, that's savage.
unidentified
You think the guys were like, they're like, well...
ben obrien
We're getting ready to get this done.
What do we do for the hashtag?
Because we've got to market it.
Like, we've got to have people...
joe rogan
Triggered.
Hashtag triggered.
Yeah, they have to market it.
Isn't that funny?
Marketing.
Marketing is a big thing, right?
You know what?
I was reading some...
ben obrien
Self-mutilation?
joe rogan
Some fucking YouTube...
Not even YouTube, rather.
Some Instagram person was talking about what they do to market their brand.
And all they were like a fitness person.
I was like, get the fuck out of here, man.
You have a brand?
You have 10,000 followers.
Are you a brand?
Or are you just some dude who does squats?
ben obrien
Yeah, you can't be like Tuesdays, arms and back.
That's my brand.
That's my brand marketing scheme.
joe rogan
Working hard on my brand.
It's like those kind of phrases, people use those a lot.
jamie vernon
They won't do something because it's off-brand.
That's an extra level of douchiness, I feel like.
joe rogan
Really?
It's not like my brand?
jamie vernon
I won't put that up because it's off-brand for me.
joe rogan
Oh, it's not like my brand.
unidentified
Right, exactly.
ben obrien
That'll fuck with their...
They're putting out there.
joe rogan
Yeah, that seems quite preposterous.
ben obrien
Social media.
joe rogan
So, tell me about seeing the baby in Nepal.
ben obrien
Oh yeah, let me finish.
So you go up there, you're looking for this blue sheep.
Yeah, so we're looking for the blue sheep.
So I'll start off by saying that we were hunting in a very rural, when I say rural, it's like six days walk from the nearest road where we were at.
joe rogan
Six days were the walking.
ben obrien
And I said, how many days walk to the paved road?
And they're like, I don't know what you're talking about.
We don't know.
We couldn't gauge that.
And so we're in this remote region of Nepal, in this district called the Rokum District.
And to say that the Rokum District is full of this, like, primal, these primal people and animals, I mean, it is really just out their place.
I think...
You know, to be out away from civilization, that was the furthest I think you could feel.
I mean, we were out there.
And the people there were part of a civil war, the Nepali Civil War, from 1996 to 2006. This district was maybe the epicenter of the rebellion.
There was a Communist Party rebellion against the government, against the monarchy.
And so the people there are...
Amazing, because they've lived in this abject poverty for their entire lives.
And not only that, they've lived through this Civil War in recent times.
I think we think about Civil War as this, like, thing we go to see at a national park.
So anyway, we're with these people, we're hunting, we go into, we get helicoptered into 10,000 feet, which is this just knob in the middle of nowhere.
We hike about a full day to our base camp, which is this little village called Dule Yarsa in the middle of, of course, nowhere.
It's like this terraced village.
And we meet our Sherpas and meet a bunch of locals.
And from there, we go up.
We're going to do, I think we had two or three more days of hiking just to get to the area where the blue sheep live.
So you're hiking from about 10,000 feet.
And at our highest, we are probably 16 or 16 and some change.
And so the first day, we go up and we acclimate.
We sight in our rifles.
We're hanging out.
And we go into this lady's little mud, dirt hut, essentially.
It's just like probably half the size of this room with a goat standing in the corner and a little fire pit.
We're sitting around this fire pit.
And she starts telling this story about how right where we were sitting during the rebellion, the police, the government police came in and shot six men right where we were sitting and buried them out back.
unidentified
Jesus Christ.
ben obrien
And this is like, this lady must be in her mid-50s and she looked like she was 80. I mean, she's just like, it was this transformative thing for me sitting there listening to this being translated like, holy crap, where are we?
And in the midst of that story they were passing around, they had made this moonshine, which they called Roxy.
It's just like made in a ceramic thing outside of where we were at.
And so we were all just drinking it.
I wasn't thinking much about drinking it.
And then we had one more day before we left.
The next day, everybody was sick but me.
I'm talking shit your pants, puke out the tent.
We had two or three people shit their pants the next day.
It was the Kathmandu flu.
Everybody that wasn't native to that area got sick.
I didn't on the first day.
So everybody recovers.
The next day we're going up the mountain.
We're going up.
We had probably climbed about 2,000 feet.
We go over this pass and I'm feeling good.
I feel like everybody else is probably feeling pretty crappy.
And we're going down this ravine and this river valley to go.
We're on these like two or three foot wide goat trails probably.
It's like if you go to the right, you're dead.
If you step two feet to the right, you're dead.
You fall off and you're dead.
We've got 24 Sherpas and porters.
We've got three or four mules with all our camp gear going up this mountain in a string of people, probably 30 people long.
I'm generally in the middle, and we stop at some point after we had crested this high point.
And we're going down.
And I remember feeling pretty good.
I got my trekking poles.
I'm going.
It's warm outside.
And I'm going.
I'm like enjoying the view and looking around just thinking, oh my god.
And then I remember pretty quickly being laying in the snow.
Oh, I'm laying in the snow.
That's cool.
I had no recollection how I got there, what was happening.
joe rogan
So you're hiking, and then you wake up.
ben obrien
I was laying.
I don't know that I lost consciousness, but I just didn't...
I don't think in my mind I understood what was going on.
I kind of maybe stumbled back against this rock wall and then just slumped down in the snow.
I don't think anybody saw it.
And so I kind of stood up, and I'm like...
You're okay.
You're good.
You fell down, whatever.
Maybe you're getting a little weird.
And I keep going.
And we had a little problem with the mules.
These mules were going over this snow pass, and the mules couldn't get through it.
So they had to turn these mules around and send them back.
joe rogan
They couldn't get through it because the snow was too deep?
ben obrien
Yeah, I got videos of snow's too deep, and you're talking a trail half as wide as this table, maybe.
And they're trying to get these, and you're, you know, a thousand feet down to the river.
And so, we stop.
We all stop a second time to let these mules go back by, and I had to hang onto a bush on the side of the trail as they went by.
And I got back up on the trail.
joe rogan
You're hanging onto a bush for dear life.
ben obrien
Well, I mean, you had footing.
But we had filmmakers with us that were doing all kinds of crazy shit, like hanging off cliffs and doing stuff I would do.
joe rogan
To make video?
ben obrien
Yeah, to make film.
Dedicated.
They were.
And so we stopped.
We start going again.
Most everybody gets out in front of me.
I'm slowing up and I'm feeling dizzy.
And I'm like, man, okay, maybe I just stood up too fast.
Probably didn't eat enough today.
I'm going.
We're going.
And at some point, I just, like, it snapped in the room.
It was just, like, spinning like crazy.
And I was thinking, and I knew about altitude sickness, and I knew that I live in a place that's basically sea level, and I was at a place that was 13,000 feet, and I've never done that before.
joe rogan
Did you prepare for it at all?
ben obrien
If you can, I mean, there's not really any...
I trained, I did, for about...
We didn't really know we were going to go until later, so I trained for about a month and a half.
But not...
You can't train, like, there's no...
They told me before we go, like...
Altitude sickness, there's no predictor.
You could be a rookie or you could be a veteran.
You can get it like that.
It's part of the way your brain loses oxygen at those altitudes, and there's no real predictor for it.
And so I don't think physically I was having any problems.
And I don't know that I had altitude sickness.
But anyway, the effects were...
I kind of sat down.
I just couldn't go anymore because I couldn't get...
I wasn't about to walk on this trail and I couldn't freaking stand up.
And so our medic slash interpreter slash...
Uh, producer, cameraman, um, Ben Ayers comes back to me and starts talking me through.
He's, you know, this dude's climbed everywhere, been everywhere, um, and is a medic.
And so he's talking me through a little bit of the situation.
He's like, this is not good.
Like, if you're too dizzy to walk, no good.
So let's get some water in you, let's rest, let's get some food in you, see what happens.
Meanwhile, up the valley go the rest of the crew to the next camp.
So him and I spent like 20 minutes just going really slow and I just couldn't do it.
I was like, I can't stand up, dude.
I can't catch my...
I can't get my head to get back on my shoulders.
And so we sit down and we're sitting there and I look across this little bowl in this valley and I see this wolf.
I'm like, oh, cool, man.
That's a wolf.
Get my binos out.
I'm looking.
I can't find it.
Put them back.
Look over.
I was like, Ben, there's a wolf over there.
I think I see it.
This thing is laying down.
He goes, shit.
I was like, crap.
There's no wolves here, man.
I was like, oh.
joe rogan
There's no wolves in all of Nepal?
ben obrien
He's like, you're not going to see a wolf here.
Basically, I don't know.
joe rogan
They don't exist there.
ben obrien
They don't exist where we were in that district, in the hunting area where we were.
It's like, that's not, nope.
joe rogan
So you were hallucinating.
ben obrien
I was hallucinating, but it was not one of those, like, you see it and then you shake your head and it's gone.
It was like, uh, looking at it.
And it was, you know, just this, like, what could have been a stump, but in my mind it was a freaking wolf.
And I was losing my shit a little bit at that point.
I'm like, this is not good.
And so then, I'm sure in his mind, he's thinking Diamox is a pill you can take to help with altitude sickness.
And he's thinking about, okay, are we helicoptering this guy out of here on day two?
What are we going to do?
Because it's, you know, pulmonary edema, cerebral edema.
That's nothing to mess around with.
joe rogan
And it was only day two.
ben obrien
Yeah.
Well, day two of the actual trip.
We were four or five days into being in Nepal, but day two of the trek in.
And so we sat there for a while and I'm just looking and I remember just looking after like 10 minutes and still being there.
Like, fuck.
This is not good.
And so we get up to go and I'm like, I can do it, man.
I'm going to do it because I don't want to leave.
I want to hunt.
And we get going a little further down this trail.
And at this point I'm trying to like find some levity in the situation.
Joking with him.
He's joking with me.
We're just like trying to be normal.
And when I know that my head's not normal.
We're going real slow.
And I look on this, like, side hill of this trail, and there's a fucking baby.
And I thought, that's...
unidentified
I thought, come on, baby!
ben obrien
Like, I didn't say anything to Ben about...
joe rogan
Was it naked?
ben obrien
I feel like it was a really big, naked baby.
It might have had a diaper on.
Ha ha ha!
joe rogan
Like, how big?
Like, as big as me?
ben obrien
I mean, like, it's like three feet tall.
I don't know, Joe.
unidentified
This is some dark shit we're getting into.
joe rogan
So it was unusually sized...
ben obrien
It was like a baby that...
If you saw it on the street, you'd be like, whoa.
joe rogan
What a whopper.
That's a serious baby.
ben obrien
Science should be studying this baby.
I didn't get that baby.
joe rogan
So this baby's just on the side of the road.
ben obrien
And so I'm thinking like, I'm not saying nothing to Ben because this baby is like my ticket at home.
unidentified
Like this baby.
ben obrien
If I'd be like, hey Ben, there's a baby right there.
He'd be like, cue the chopper.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
See you, buddy.
joe rogan
Right.
You can't make it.
ben obrien
And this baby, it wasn't like the wolf.
It wasn't like I saw it and I stared at it.
Like, I saw it and then I looked back and it was there and I looked back and it wasn't there.
So I kept going.
I'm like, you know what, baby?
If you're really there, fuck you.
You shouldn't be up here anyways.
It's not my fault.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
You got harsh?
ben obrien
Yeah, I got harsh with it.
joe rogan
What a fake baby?
ben obrien
What a fake baby.
I'm like, I'm just going, man.
I'm not...
Whatever, baby.
Stay there.
unidentified
Wow.
ben obrien
So I didn't say anything to Ben about the baby, like, right off, and we're getting going, and eventually I just kind of collapsed, and I'm like, look, man, you know, I was talking positively, and I wasn't hallucinating any more than the baby and the wolf, which is enough.
And we get down, we get going down this ravine, and the camp, you can start to see camp, guys putting camp together.
And, um, essentially he was like, just give me your pack, give me your trucking poles, give me everything.
And he held my shoulders and just kind of one step, one step, one step.
joe rogan
Wow.
ben obrien
For a solid hour and a half or so until we got to camp.
unidentified
Wow.
ben obrien
A lot of breaks, a lot of just him and I talking about, well, here's the scenarios.
Are you, is this really, you know, is it acute mountain sickness or are you, you know, what's going on?
joe rogan
Did you get sick like the other people got sick?
ben obrien
Yes.
So that happened the next fucking day.
joe rogan
So do you think it was because of drinking that moonshine?
ben obrien
I think we got sick because of the moonshine.
It could have been water in Kathmandu.
It could have been anything.
joe rogan
How were they making that moonshine?
ben obrien
I have no...
I have a picture of it.
It looked like in this big ceramic thing.
joe rogan
Probably spitting in it.
ben obrien
Yeah, the goat was walking over there licking out of it.
But we all did it.
Everybody in there got some level of sickness that wasn't used to that area.
It wasn't used to being in Nepal and eating the food and drinking the moonshine and all that.
So who knows if it was the moonshine.
joe rogan
That was my guess.
ben obrien
Could have been anything.
So we finally make it to camp, and we're doing a film, so they're filming me while I'm all messed up.
And I was kind of out of it.
I remember coming down this switchback trail to go into camp, and I remember not...
Much like when I fell, I was like, I'm aware that my feet are hitting the ground, and these trekking poles are hitting the ground, and I'm aware that I'm doing this, but I feel like I can't control it.
I feel like I could be floating through the air just as well as walking.
It was a weird, like, head-detached-from-body feeling.
joe rogan
Wow.
ben obrien
It was gnarly.
At the end of the day, I think what they thought was like it was the sickness that everybody else got coming on at the same time as altitude and it was just my body was fighting this battle against itself.
So we got back to camp.
I think I just kind of sat in a chair for a while and said a lot of weird stuff, and they filmed me.
joe rogan
What did you say?
ben obrien
I think I said, like, at one point I think I said, what's the name of this mountain?
Because you've got to know the name of what's going to kill you or something weird, like, dark.
unidentified
Whoa.
ben obrien
Like, this mountain's out to get us, Joe.
joe rogan
Were you thinking about your family?
unidentified
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
joe rogan
Right?
That's the first thing you think about is you're in a bad situation in the woods.
Like, why did I come here?
Why do I have to be this adventuring asshole?
ben obrien
Yes.
That, 100%.
I think I was more focused on levity and more focused on, like, making jokes and, like, making it seem okay.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
Because that's the only way that my mind could wrap itself around.
Like, oh, hey, you dumbass.
You trained for a month.
You went to Nepal.
What are you doing?
You're an idiot.
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
Like, you got a kid.
You live in Texas.
This is not it.
joe rogan
What the fuck?
ben obrien
What the fuck are you doing?
This is your brain and body telling you, like, hmm, dummy, don't do this.
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
But at the same time, like, I'm here.
It's amazing.
These people, this place, the feeling, the spirit, like, you know, you got to get through it.
Like, if there was anything to get through, then you, it would be this.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
And so I got hardened to that fact.
And I think, you know, eventually I had some water and I went to sleep.
And I woke up in the middle of the night and Ben, the medic, was in the tent clutching his little medical bag and was sleeping in there with me.
So I feel like that's serious.
And I think they had a discussion while I was sleeping about, do we just, does he wake up in a helicopter?
You know, does he wake up going back to Kathmandu?
Which was probably the right conversation to have.
joe rogan
That's a Bob Seger song.
ben obrien
Waking up in Kathmandu.
joe rogan
Damn!
ben obrien
That's a good song.
joe rogan
That's really, really where I'm going to.
ben obrien
A baby and a wolf.
joe rogan
Did you tell anybody about the baby?
ben obrien
Yeah, they knew about the baby eventually.
joe rogan
Eventually.
ben obrien
But right at the moment when the baby was there, I'm like, listen, baby.
unidentified
Wow.
ben obrien
Let's make a pact.
I'm going to keep you under wraps for a while.
joe rogan
So you're basically tripping balls.
ben obrien
Yeah, I don't know the science of it.
Somebody smarter than me could tell you what actually was going on, whether I was just a pussy or there was some actual scientific stuff going down.
joe rogan
I gotta fork a joint since it's illegal.
It's legal here in California.
This is hitting me hard.
Keep going.
ben obrien
I'll keep going while you're doing that.
So, the next day...
unidentified
There's more to the story to tell.
ben obrien
There's probably so much to tell.
But the next day...
We get up, and I'm feeling okay.
Feeling pretty weak.
It's like, ah, this is not...
I'm still not...
joe rogan
Pretty poisoning weak?
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
Like that weird thing where you feel like you can't really make a fist?
ben obrien
Yeah, like achy.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
Kind of.
So we did a little bit of filming in the morning, and it was like, hey, O'Brien, can you make it up for this acclimation hike, right?
Can you go up this hill right here?
unidentified
What it was?
Okay.
ben obrien
Uh...
Can you make it up this hill right here?
If you can, we'll let you keep going.
joe rogan
So they give you a test.
ben obrien
Yeah, I could test you, O'Brien.
And so, I get up there.
I go with one of the guides, Raju.
Let me get up.
We start hiking.
We get up over this rise.
I'm feeling pretty good.
I'm like, shit.
Okay.
That was a bad moment in time.
I'm going.
joe rogan
But we're back.
ben obrien
Sheep.
Come on, sheep.
Let's do it.
And we're going.
I think we probably had a five or six hour hike into the next camp.
We started getting into sheep country at that time.
And we're hiking.
And I'm feeling pretty good.
And we get to a spot where our main guide, Mon, had spotted some sheep and so we get to where he had spotted some sheep and I'm feeling tired I'm like that we're going up as we go so we may be there 14,000 feet or 13.5 at that point and We sit down, and he's glassing his sheep, and I remember glassing them, and like, oh, okay.
They're like, so far up, you can't imagine going that far to get them.
And then my stomach just like, oh, no.
Oh, God.
My stomach is completely screwed.
joe rogan
Does your butt start going?
ben obrien
You get that muscle, that butt muscle.
joe rogan
You know that butt muscle, like when you're holding a weight that you're going to drop?
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
That's what I was doing.
joe rogan
Like, oh Jesus!
ben obrien
Let me say this about shitting your pants.
Everybody on this trip was okay with it, because it was happening.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
It was, shitting the pants was like a...
joe rogan
It's not like you're on a plane.
ben obrien
Yeah, and it was like, our camera guy, one of our main camera guys, Renan, who's an amazing person, a whole other podcast about that guy, he shit his pants, I think, during, like, day one.
And I don't know how many pairs of pants he had, but I remember watching him scrubbing the shit out of his pants, thinking, oh shit, that's going to get interesting.
But by the time we got into sheep country, we were all okay with the occasional shart or whatever's going on.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
I think it's fine.
joe rogan
Because your body's just like, you're realizing that your mind has a directive, but your body is dealing with some pretty extreme conditions.
ben obrien
And I wonder, I always wonder now looking back on it, like how well I would have done if there wasn't sickness.
And like I had some stuff like go to Kathmandu and it's just dust and dirt and all this craziness.
And I had going into it like respiratory issues and then sickness and then visions of things.
And so by the time you get in there, you're like, shit.
joe rogan
You know, it really makes you respect the fuck out of Jim Shockey.
ben obrien
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
For people who don't know who Jim Shockey is, Jim Shockey is extremely respected in the hunting world, but let's just step aside with that.
He's an amazingly accomplished hunter.
But maybe even more important than that, he's got a show called Uncharted.
And his Uncharted show is so good.
It's so good that it really shouldn't be considered a hunting show.
Because what it really is is him exploring cultures in the most remote parts of the world.
Jim goes to these strange villages in the middle of Russia that no one goes to.
ben obrien
I've got all kinds of stories.
Like, last time I was at Jim's place up in Cannon, I'm like, what you doing this weekend?
I'm like, ah, fly home, hang out with the family.
What are you doing?
unidentified
He's like, ah, bison in Poland.
joe rogan
They have bison in Poland?
unidentified
I think that's what he said.
ben obrien
I could be mislabeling.
joe rogan
Not that it freaking matters.
But it's the same kind of thing.
ben obrien
Right, and when I was...
I saw Jim about a month before we left for Nepal, and Jim had been...
If you can find the full episode of Jim's Nepal hunt with his crew, it is...
They film, they're like doing self-filming, and it's kind of...
It's how I felt, just like you're just a...
You're just a mess.
You're just a mess.
And I said to him, I was like, I'm going to Nepal, Jim, in like a month.
And he goes, what?
I was like, what can I expect?
He's like, it sucks.
It sucks.
And when somebody like Jim Shockey, who's traveled the world...
joe rogan
Literally the world.
ben obrien
...it says, it's going to be terrible for you, little fella.
I was like, oh no.
This is real now.
I'm going to be in trouble.
joe rogan
Yeah, Jim Shockey has a...
A video or an episode of his show where he went to, I think it was Mozambique, where they were hunting crocodiles.
unidentified
The crocodile one.
joe rogan
Because the crocodiles eat all the people that live and work in this village.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
It is so crazy.
These poor people.
These people live under the threat of monsters on a daily basis.
Like, half the people in the village are either missing arms or they have a chunk taken out of their leg.
And while they were there, they lost a woman.
She was going down there either to fetch water or to wash her clothes.
And she got taken out, and these people were screaming and weeping.
It was so hard to watch, man.
To watch a bunch of people wailing.
Just wailing.
Because they knew this woman that they loved got taken under by a monster.
ben obrien
Do you remember the end of that?
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
The end of it where they cut the croc open and pulled, what was it, like a shoe or something out of the croc's belly?
joe rogan
Something like that.
ben obrien
A shirt or a shoe?
joe rogan
Yeah, something like that.
ben obrien
I remember we were talking about that.
Later on, and they're like, that should be on a different channel.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's so good.
ben obrien
It should be on Discovery or whatever.
joe rogan
What's his son's name that films it?
ben obrien
Branlon.
joe rogan
Branlon is a bad motherfucker.
He is a bad motherfucker.
ben obrien
The whole family.
Eva, their daughter.
joe rogan
But you know how...
Here's my criticism of outdoor, in air quotes, TV. There's episodes like Rinella's that are just brilliant.
I mean, Rinella's show...
Or shows, rather, like Rinella's.
Rinella's show is just a brilliant show.
I mean, it easily could be on any other network.
It's shot by 0.0.
The same people that shoot Anthony Bourdain's show.
The same people that shoot a ton of award-winning, Emmy-award-winning shows.
It's a brilliant show.
And then you got these...
Things that look like they shoot them with trail cams, a bunch of dipshits.
You know, the Lord blessed me when this bull came over the ridge.
You're like, okay.
There's a rampant anti-intellectualism, like an embraced...
Sort of like fake simplicity to it.
ben obrien
Yeah, there's like heartland pandering that goes on all the time.
joe rogan
It's pandering.
Pandering is a good way to look.
But then you've got Jim Shockey, who has this like legitimate appreciation for these cultures.
That he visits all over the world.
I mean, he goes to these incredibly remote places and communicates with these tribespeople that live in the jungle or in the mountains or wherever it is.
And you could tell that this is a guy, Jim is like, what is he, probably 60 or so?
ben obrien
He's getting up there, yeah.
joe rogan
And he realizes that he's lived a long life, he's experienced a lot of wild and amazing things, and now at this point in life, what he really desires are extreme experiences.
Of a human kind and also of a wild kind, like in nature.
ben obrien
And there's like a different level to him.
The outdoor TV thing is funny just because I do appreciate and have friends that fall into that...
Bubba zone.
Bubba zone.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
And I appreciate what they do.
It's not for me.
I don't watch it and I'm a fan of it, but I appreciate other Bubbas like it and it's a thing.
It's hunting.
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
But, I will agree with you.
joe rogan
He's on another level.
ben obrien
There's just a different level.
You could watch Rinella's Coos Deer episode, where he just kind of like, the whole theme is like sitting in silence.
And like, if you're looking for the right...
joe rogan
And talking about his dad, talking about growing up, and there's no music.
It's one of those brilliant episodes.
ben obrien
Oh, it's wonderful.
And so you could watch something like that, and then every once in a while you'll see one where you're like...
What the fuck is going on here?
And it's like there's such a juxtaposition between what Steve and Jim and some of these other, like Heartland Bowhunter, these guys are able to even cinematically produce.
joe rogan
Yeah, Heartland Bowhunter, they do a really good job with their editing and their footage.
They do a really good job.
ben obrien
And Remy, like Solo Hunter is really great.
joe rogan
Tim Burnett.
ben obrien
Yeah, Tim Burnett.
And so there is this really good, and I don't know if they're pulling up The ones that aren't so good or they're being brought down.
I'm not sure.
joe rogan
I don't think it's either or.
You know what another one of my favorite is Western Hunter?
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
That's an amazing show.
And Nate Simmons is fucking so good on that.
ben obrien
And I would say as a hunter, it's hard.
All you care about is hunting.
You just want to read, read, read.
There's a lot of bad information.
joe rogan
On television, you mean?
ben obrien
Television.
joe rogan
But then you've got Western Hunter, which is a lot of really good information.
It's public land, and what he does is go deep into the backcountry, hiking, sets up camp, and does it the hard way.
That's the real hard way.
There's a lot of...
Man, it's hard to tell people to tune into a show if they've never had any appreciation whatsoever for hunting.
ben obrien
It'd be hard, yeah.
joe rogan
What show do you tune into?
There's three.
I feel like Western Hunter...
There's a few Into the Backcountry's really good, too.
But Meat Eater's probably the one I would send them to.
I'd be like, the narration that you're going to get and the intellectual understanding of how to present these subjects and how to...
ben obrien
Yeah, you know I mean that's what's important to me like as I get along in my life and career and like I have a son now and I'm trying to figure out what I want him to know and It's important to me that there's people like Steve Rinella out there representing my thoughts and feelings in a way that I probably couldn't.
So I don't want to struggle with that.
If he says, hey dad, let's watch an outdoor channel, I don't want to be like, oh, I don't know, man.
So I do appreciate Steve for what he does, and there's a bunch of them that are really good.
I guess I would say, at the end of the day, I've always struggled with Being in a room full of hunters and watching the Outdoor Channel because we're hypercritical of every little thing.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
Like, why'd he draw?
Why didn't he draw?
joe rogan
Well, there's that, but that's different to me.
ben obrien
You don't think that flows into the actual, like, the quality of the content and how you enjoy it?
joe rogan
No, because I feel like if I'm watching Nate Simmons or Steve Ranallo or Remy Warren or any of those guys, I don't think anybody should be second-guessing what those guys do in the field.
Because you have a level of proficiency.
Right.
To me, that's like the layman watching a UFC fight and go, why didn't Conor punch him there?
And I'm like, listen, bitch.
Are you fucking crazy?
You don't think he knows when to punch and when not to punch?
Like, this is a stupid way of looking at things.
ben obrien
So if you would compare UFC to hunting television, there is no meter for how you get on hunting television.
You have money and you buy airtime.
You're there.
There is no qualifier.
joe rogan
Well, explain that because most people have no idea.
ben obrien
So, on the Outdoor Channel and Sports Channel.
joe rogan
If you want to put a show on Comedy Central, you have to make a deal with Comedy Central.
ben obrien
They've got to be like, oh, this is good.
joe rogan
For real producers, for real writers, you have to package it.
They're going to invest in it.
It's a big deal.
They're going to launch it right after Tosh.0.
ben obrien
And they're going to be invested in it, too.
They're like, if this goes good, we do good.
Everybody can buy it.
And the cable channels that are...
Outdoor and Sportsman's channel is that the business model is not that.
You pay the network for the airtime, essentially, and you deliver them content.
They have very little oversight over what you deliver them.
There's rules, you know, how many times you can show a kill shot, there's like, there's, there's...
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
They have rules?
ben obrien
Yeah.
Oh, there's rules.
joe rogan
What?
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
Hold on.
They have rules on how many times you can show a kill shot?
ben obrien
I'm fairly sure.
joe rogan
So you can't, like, shoot a deer two minutes into the episode and just...
unidentified
For 30 more minutes.
joe rogan
Just watch the close-up on the deer's eyes as the arrow goes to its body.
Close-up on the arrow as it hits the rib cage.
ben obrien
It's a good thing we brought that red camera, Jim.
joe rogan
All death metal and deers dying.
Feet up in the air, kicking.
ben obrien
Chicken over the egg.
joe rogan
There could be a show like that.
I mean, there's a lot of nutty fucking shows.
There's a few that are kind of metal-inspired, like Fear No Evil.
ben obrien
But so there are...
Oh, God.
joe rogan
Right?
ben obrien
There are...
unidentified
I'm trying to be diplomatic here, Rogan.
ben obrien
There are some really good shows, but you pay...
And there are some shows that are owned by the network.
But that is the minority.
The majority of shows are people who are paying for airtime, and then companies come in and sponsor their show and pay that for their...
joe rogan
Isn't that weird, though, that a network on actual regular DirecTV, like you can get to a channel 605, 606, 604. You know what's interesting?
The hunting channels, which are, like, I would say...
Overwhelmingly Christian, like in terms of viewership and in terms of the people that are on the show, are literally two or three channels away from black dicks and white chicks on DirecTV.
The porn channels are like 596, 597, and then you go 604. It's like, hey, y'all, we're out here representing God's great earth and the beauty and the bounty of Jesus Christ out here in the forest.
unidentified
Well, you're always two clicks away from something terrible.
joe rogan
Black poles and white holes.
Next on DirecTV.
Click, click, click.
unidentified
Jesus has blessed me with this turkey.
ben obrien
We were two clicks away from Longergeier and a freaking hyena massacre.
unidentified
That's true.
ben obrien
You're always two clicks away.
joe rogan
But that's the internet.
This is television.
That's true.
Those lines are gonna get super blurred.
They're gonna get super blurred.
They're more blurred now than ever before.
Stephen Colbert said that the president of the fucking United States uses Putin's dick, like he uses his mouth as Putin's cock holster.
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Yes.
ben obrien
But Stephen Colbert is very religious, right?
unidentified
He is.
ben obrien
He said that?
When did he say that?
joe rogan
He said it on television recently.
Yeah, his idea was he was going to...
This is the inside story.
He was baiting Trump to respond to him.
And finally, after he said that, Trump did respond, called him second rate, not funny, all these things.
Ratings dying, ratings bad, all this stuff.
And then Colbert gets on TV and he goes, Mr. Trump...
Out of all the things that I know you don't understand, the one thing I thought you did understand was show business.
ben obrien
Oh, he's trolling him.
joe rogan
He's like, you responded to me.
That means I win.
ben obrien
He trolled the president.
unidentified
He did!
joe rogan
He trolled the president.
ben obrien
The fact that the president is trollable is an issue.
joe rogan
He's trolling as well as being trollable.
ben obrien
Yeah, that's true.
joe rogan
Like, Joe Scarborough and his fiancee, do you know that whole story where the president tweeted that the woman came to Mar-a-Lago, but she had facelift surgery, and she was bleeding very badly, and he did not hang out with them.
ben obrien
He tweeted that last week.
I gotta get back on Twitter.
joe rogan
It's so bad that Scarborough left the Republican Party.
ben obrien
What is happening in the world?
joe rogan
Scarborough's like, look, if you guys are gonna support this, he goes, I'm not a Republican anymore.
He goes, I'm going independent.
He goes, I still have Republican values.
I still belong to the GOP. Economically and socially.
But I'm not gonna do this.
ben obrien
We live in strange times.
joe rogan
The strangest...
ben obrien
The strangest of times, Joe Rogan!
joe rogan
That's why my tour is called Strange Times.
Go to JoeRogan.net for its house tour.
See you in Utah this weekend.
ben obrien
We'll be there.
joe rogan
Oh, you're gonna be there.
ben obrien
I'll be there.
joe rogan
Yeah, we're gonna be there for a total coincidence, my wife doesn't believe it, but the total archery challenge is actually there at the same time.
ben obrien
All hunting is total coincidence.
joe rogan
Total coincidence.
ben obrien
Joe's wife.
joe rogan
I can't believe this, baby.
ben obrien
It's amazing.
Can't believe I'm doing a show in the wilds of New Mexico in September.
joe rogan
I always wanted to visit this Native American reservation, and it turns out that they invited me to hunt bison there.
I mean, I don't want to go, but I don't want to...
ben obrien
There's 75 people coming to the show.
joe rogan
I don't want to be disrespectful.
ben obrien
Well, strange times it is.
I do every once in a while flick on CNN or something, but I'm not one of those people.
I've seen people in my life that get so wrapped up in that stuff that it becomes their reality.
I've never been affected by anything Donald Trump has done in my daily life.
The healthcare thing is a different deal, but...
But I think in my daily life, there's few things that directly affect me other than something that seems existential, other than the environment and freaking healthcare.
joe rogan
Right, but that doesn't even affect you where you feel it.
ben obrien
You don't feel it if you ignore it.
joe rogan
That's part of the problem is that we don't, like on a day-to-day basis, it doesn't touch your skin.
It doesn't make your nerve endings respond.
ben obrien
So you can choose.
There's a choice, right, man?
man, you can choose to not, you can choose to create some sort of bubble for that news and politics and let only what's important in.
That's kind of what I try to do.
I don't know if I'm always doing it, but I don't just turn it on and sit there and watch CNN and think, ah, Russia.
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
Oh, man.
If I see a Russian on the street, I'll punch him right in his face.
joe rogan
Well, you saw that news report where the reporter, he admitted that this whole Russian thing is kind of bullshit and it's just for ratings?
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
And I was like, well, I'm a journalism major.
I'm like, of course it is.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
Of course it is.
Of course it is.
unidentified
If it bleeds, it leads, Ben.
joe rogan
Yeah, I don't know what's real anymore.
I really don't.
I don't want to ever say, I mean, I want to look into things for sure.
It's not that I'm not thinking about it, but man, I watch House of Cards too much.
ben obrien
What you drinking there, Joe Rogan?
joe rogan
This is not a sponsor, is what's important.
It's Zevia.
Do you know what Zevia is?
ben obrien
I do not.
I would like to know.
joe rogan
It's a Stevia-flavored soft drink.
ben obrien
Mmm.
joe rogan
Yeah, it's 100% no sugar.
This one is their energy drink.
I think it has 120 milligrams of caffeine, which is like a good cup of coffee.
Not a Starbucks venti, I think it has 200. So it's not quite a Starbucks venti.
Not even a grande, but it has zero sugar, and it actually tastes really good.
Would you like one?
ben obrien
I would, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, young Jamie.
ben obrien
Let me chug down this Rybaran.
joe rogan
Let me get this motherfucker a Zevia.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
They make really good soft drinks too.
Do we have any soft drinks in the fridge or just the energy drink?
Throw some of those soft drinks in the fridge for the next...
ben obrien
I feel like as the first time visiting California, I gotta do shit like drink this Zevia.
joe rogan
Yeah, people in California just don't respect you if you haven't been here.
They're like, oh, you don't even know what to do here.
ben obrien
I've been to your many great airports, but never...
Like this morning, I went out and got like a parfait.
joe rogan
Ah.
ben obrien
Yes.
joe rogan
With granola?
ben obrien
Yeah, there was some granola in there.
And then I got, I went to the pool a little bit and did some emails.
joe rogan
Nice.
ben obrien
And drank a sparkling water.
joe rogan
Did you see any hoes?
ben obrien
There were, no, they were in different areas.
joe rogan
You've got to travel.
If you're going to travel, next time you've got to land in Beverly Hills, or at least go to a hotel in Beverly Hills.
ben obrien
Well, we have the rest of today.
I really need to see the comedy store.
I poke my head in there.
joe rogan
Damn it, I can't go there tonight, though.
Unfortunately.
Yeah, we would have been...
Are those cold or no?
Oh, they are?
ben obrien
Oh, beautiful.
joe rogan
So it is grape soda, but it's zero sugar.
Try one of those.
ben obrien
It's good.
joe rogan
They're delicious.
And by the way, not a sponsor.
ben obrien
I was gonna say.
joe rogan
Man, I get in trouble all the time for shit.
They're not in trouble, but people accuse me.
Send me one of those bitches.
They always think that for whatever reason, I'm getting paid for stuff.
People got mad at me about that Yeti thing that I did.
Which, by the way, my friend Ben worked for Yeti.
I'm gonna be honest here.
This is a Yeti Rambler.
He'll send me some Yeti things.
But I bought Yeti shit before he even worked for Yeti, and I was telling people how amazing Yeti You made that very clear to me, too.
ben obrien
I was like, man, I work for Yeti now.
You need a cooler or something?
Yetis, bro?
joe rogan
I already had two Yetis.
Big-ass ones.
ben obrien
Back off, O'Brien.
I already got Yetis.
joe rogan
They're the best.
If you've never had one and people go, they're so fucking expensive.
You're right.
You're right.
You don't have to have one.
But I'm telling you, if you have the money and you want a crazy fucking cooler, they are the shit.
ben obrien
This is very good.
joe rogan
How do you feel about the ones that...
There's one that...
That totally copied Yeti, like in every way.
But I mean, they copied the way...
ben obrien
It's very flattering.
joe rogan
The way the logo is, and someone was saying, hey man, this one is like half the price, and it does just as good.
I'm like, okay.
And then there was like this battle after I posted that in the comment section of Instagram where people are like, they're copycats.
You know, that's...
ben obrien
There is debate.
I mean, it's a good, robust debate on what's the better cooler.
It's funny that Yeti has kind of...
Well, yeah.
I created the premium, cooler category, and when you create a category like that, and become a business like Yeti is, you're going to have people that follow along.
unidentified
Copy, for sure.
ben obrien
And they kind of need us, and we kind of need them, and it's whatever, but as long as they're not infringing on the things that are intellectual property and things of that nature.
Patents and shit, yeah.
As far as that goes, I know as a company, man, we look forward.
We have stuff we're coming out with now, things we're doing.
We're not worried about people that are copying us because I'll just continue to follow along.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, look, coolers are coolers.
It's all good, but when I find something that I like that's good, I like to tell people about it.
And for whatever reason, people always assume...
ben obrien
Why is that such a hard thing to get their heads around?
joe rogan
Well, because they're cynical, and they should be, because people are full of shit.
There's a lot of people that are full of shit.
ben obrien
There are.
joe rogan
But I swear to fucking God, if there's ever a time where I have an ad, like the ads for my podcast, everybody knows their ads.
People pay for those ads.
ben obrien
When we were talking about it, that was my argument.
I'm like...
People pay for ads and Joe reads the ad.
He never just throws in during a podcast like, ah, let me just pull out this.
unidentified
No, no, no.
ben obrien
It doesn't happen.
And that's why people listen.
joe rogan
If I talk to Zevia, I have zero.
andy stumpf
I bought this.
joe rogan
I ran out.
I ordered these all on Amazon.com.
I paid for them.
ben obrien
It's very delicious.
joe rogan
Yeah, they're fucking great.
I drink this shit all the time.
You know why?
unidentified
It's good for you.
joe rogan
Because it tastes good, and it doesn't have any bullshit in it.
Like, this is all just zero calories, zero sugar, you know?
I mean, it's grape soda, but it's clear because you don't have any...
Look, see, it's grape, but look, clear.
It looks like fucking water.
ben obrien
It's like the Zima, right?
joe rogan
Yeah, it's great.
ben obrien
I used to love Zima.
joe rogan
It's not a Zevia ad.
I don't have any fucking...
Nothing to do with that company.
They're not a sponsor.
ben obrien
But isn't that the whole world?
Like, facts are...
You know, people assign their motives to facts and, like, everything.
I could say...
I work for Yeti.
I could say Yeti's a great cooler.
It's the best I've ever used.
I use him all the time, more than any normal person.
It's my job.
And I've found it to be...
I'm proud to work for the company because it's something I can stand behind.
I've still had people be like, ah, whatever, man.
joe rogan
Right, you're just shilling for your company, bro.
ben obrien
I'm like, I just...
joe rogan
But isn't it smart, though, that people are that cynical?
I mean, look, but here's a perfect example.
I rant and rave about the glory of a 1965 Corvette.
I don't work for 1965 Corvettes, okay?
It's just like there's a reality about certain things that are awesome that people have created that I celebrate.
And I don't say, I'm not going to talk about Zevia because they're not a sponsor, or I'm not going to talk about Yeti because they're not a sponsor.
It's interesting to me.
It's all interesting.
I like...
I like when people get it right.
ben obrien
You have this podcast where you're closing 1,000 episodes and if you remove all consumer products from the conversation, it would suck.
joe rogan
The problem is people boil down innovation to a consumer product.
They boil it down to...
A material possession that somebody has to purchase.
ben obrien
Right.
joe rogan
I'm not looking at it that way.
I'm being honest.
When I'm looking at something that someone creates, some new innovation, I'm looking at it like, oh, look what they did.
Oh, yeah.
ben obrien
I wish I could have figured that out.
joe rogan
I don't even think that because I'm not an inventor, but I do get excited about cool shit.
ben obrien
On the archery side of things, Bluetooth.
joe rogan
I heard about that.
Is that real?
ben obrien
See that link I sent you?
joe rogan
That is real.
ben obrien
It's real.
joe rogan
What's it called?
What's the name of the company?
ben obrien
Breadcrumb Tech?
joe rogan
Bluetooth Nox.
The problem is, I'm shooting 86 pounds, son.
ben obrien
You're too strong for that shit.
I'm blowing right through animals.
Look, man, listen.
joe rogan
There's not going to be any Nox poking out where you can track those things.
ben obrien
I've had a lot of people tell, you know, through me to tell you just to dial it down a little bit, Joe.
unidentified
Do they?
ben obrien
Yeah, a little bit.
For real?
Yeah, for real.
I've had a couple people say, like, Joe, you can't be promoting shooting that much poundage.
joe rogan
I just want you motherfuckers to check out the gun show.
ben obrien
My ears go this way.
joe rogan
I don't understand why people don't...
It doesn't factor into their mind that some people are stronger than them.
ben obrien
It's true.
joe rogan
Like, if you pull 60 pounds, I don't feel bad about...
I'm not upset at you.
ben obrien
Look at these things.
unidentified
Look.
joe rogan
So they shoot this arrow, and then with your phone, you can track the knock through a Bluetooth device that has some sort of a GPS locator on it.
ben obrien
Oh, you shoot it in the grass, which I do often.
joe rogan
He missed it.
ben obrien
That's Brandon Bates.
joe rogan
Brandon Bates from RMEF, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
ben obrien
Good man.
joe rogan
I think he's got an America hat on.
unidentified
America.
joe rogan
I got an America case for my phone.
America.
ben obrien
Nothing better than that.
joe rogan
Wait till we have the new studio and have America flag in the background.
That flag we got sitting back there, Jamie?
Goddamn glory!
ben obrien
Have you previewed the new studio?
joe rogan
Nobody knows anything.
ben obrien
Oh, okay.
There's not a new studio.
joe rogan
When it comes, it will be epic.
ben obrien
You guys don't worry about it.
joe rogan
But these knocks, it's going to be a good way to find arrows for sure, but what's interesting is it'll be a good way to track animals if you shoot an animal.
Like a lot of times, People shoot an animal, and the animal runs, and it's in thick cover, and you can't find it.
It's dead.
It died quick.
An animal can run 200 yards inside of a few seconds and die immediately, and you might never find it.
ben obrien
So if you shoot exactly where your aim and you put a hole in each of its lungs?
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
With a two inch diameter range broadhead or one and a quarter, whatever it is, it can run 100 yards.
joe rogan
Perfect example is that place we were at in Texas.
ben obrien
Oh, yeah.
joe rogan
This place had these scrub oaks that were six feet tall and you could not get into.
And the animals, you would shoot one.
The guys were talking to us about pigs.
Like, yeah, we had a pig contest.
We shot three, lost two.
ben obrien
Like, what?
What?
unidentified
What's wrong with you?
joe rogan
And it didn't make sense until you go there.
You go, oh yeah, how are you going to find that?
You can't even get in there.
ben obrien
Why would we go there?
Why would we do that?
joe rogan
Well, they just needed to trim that stuff.
Yeah.
ben obrien
We should have talked to them about that.
joe rogan
I think they kind of knew, but they were putting it off.
But it was just like, Jesus Christ.
We have so much bush.
ben obrien
Well, any place you hunt, especially when you think about a recovering game, even in Lanai, you think it's a fairly flat place.
If I shoot a deer, I'll see it go down or whatever.
It goes behind a bush or it goes over a rise and you go and you're like, oh, crap.
joe rogan
Well, how about the place that we were at the last day where the grass was six feet high and the animals were in the grass?
ben obrien
When you were trying to dropkick deer and stuff.
joe rogan
They were waiting.
What's crazy was, Ben and I were there, I shot at this one deer, and other deer that were like 30 feet away from us jumped out of the bushes.
Like, they were hiding.
They heard us talking, they knew we were there, and they just laid low.
ben obrien
Yeah.
Well, they, like, they laid low, and then you shot an arrow, and they were like, I know what that sounds like.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
And they ran off, and we knew they didn't cross into the next little paddock, like, the next across this road, so I circled around and got up on this, like, mound so I could see into the grass, and I could see them in there.
unidentified
They're just, like, talking to me, like, shit, what do we do?
Like, that's Joe Rogan.
ben obrien
And I was trying to get you to go in there, but you were what, like six feet away from these things by the time...
joe rogan
By the time we got to them, I was no further away than 15 feet.
ben obrien
Yeah.
And you're talking an axe deer that has swords growing out of its head.
joe rogan
Yeah.
ben obrien
Multiple points.
joe rogan
It was pretty crazy.
But they're just...
Animals evolved to experience whatever the...
Dangers of their environment are and their dangers are 100% people.
Yeah, that animal is probably four or five years old been around people for four or five years It's like oh I get it when people around they're trying to eat you man people have never got me in this grass Yeah.
ben obrien
Nobody has ever been able to do it.
joe rogan
So how did you, how did the Nepal thing end?
Did you get it together?
ben obrien
I did get it together.
I think we left off at, I started to get sick.
Well, the whole next day I was puking, shitting, and just, I had the flu everybody else got, but I just got it like two days later.
And so, it was that day, it was the first day we'd seen sheep.
So we were three, I think, four days into the trek.
And we were camping somewhere at 14,000 feet.
The next day, the other guy that had a tag, Cole, goes up, shoots a sheep.
They climb up 2,000 feet, 60-mile-an-hour wind bursts, microbursts, frostbite conditions.
These guys, when they came back, looked beaten.
Cole Kramer, who we went with as a Kodiak Alaska bear guide and a mountain hunter and is hardcore as he gets.
And I looked at his face when he got back, and I had just been in my tent all day puking and trying to stay alive.
And I looked at his face, and he's like, oh my god.
And I thought, I can't make it over there to the latrine, let alone up this mountain to kill a sheep.
And so I kind of had resigned myself to like, this is it, man, I can't.
I wish I was healthy enough to do it, but I don't want to get up there and then have issues and not be able to get a helicopter rescue.
And so, we talked about it, but the worst part, and I'll just have to tell this just because it's like the low point of my trip there.
The third night in it, when we got to camp, I was puking in the vestibule of my tent, and all the Nepali guys were, are you okay?
You okay?
No, I'm not okay.
I'm puking.
And then I fell asleep, woke back up.
I had to go to the bathroom.
Ben, the medic, is there.
He's kind of helping me to the bathroom.
I'm like, I'm not going to make it.
I can't stand up.
So I literally just kind of like huddled over in the snow and pulled my pants down and just right in the middle of camp.
Just let it go.
And I just remember just thinking, oh my god.
And I look up and there's all these porters and sherpas with their headlamps.
So I'm like, you okay, Mr. Ben?
You okay?
I'm like, look at me!
I'm dying.
And so that was the lowest point of the trip.
And that, I think the next day, Cole killed his sheep.
The day after that, I went up the mountain in midday just for another acclimation.
Could I make it?
unidentified
Thank you.
ben obrien
We got into a group of sheep, didn't make it happen, but I went up the mountain, basically.
Probably 1,200 feet, just a good climb.
Went back down, they're like, okay, tomorrow is kind of the last chance because we're almost out of areas to hunt these sheep.
And we went up the valley, I want to say like eight miles?
I got it written down somewhere.
joe rogan
Wow.
ben obrien
Eight miles.
joe rogan
After being on death's door two days before.
ben obrien
And I wasn't, to be 100% honest, I wasn't carrying a pack or anything.
I just had trekking poles and a bino harness, and I was just like...
One foot, one foot.
And we got into these mountain passes in these valleys where there was like, you know, two, three feet of snow and it was frozen on the top and you were just like, every step you would crunch two feet down.
Like, boom, boom.
And it was just hours of that.
And there was a time during that where we, we summited this, probably the highest peak we were at, which was mid-15s, close to 16. And I was just like, I can't, this is, I hope the sheep are right there because this is it.
Like, this is as far as I can go.
And we rested and we glassy sheep and there they are like a mile and a half away.
Down this other giant ravine and up on this other flat.
And I remember even the guys we were with looking like, he's not going to be able to go over there.
And I just remember thinking like, this is what, I'm doing it.
Like, I'm just going to go.
And we slid on our butts like down the side of this mountain, me and two guides.
Slid on our butts down the side of this snowy, icy bank.
Got up, walked a half a mile, popped up over this ridge, there at the sheet bar within 300 yards.
In about 20 minutes, I got on a big ram and shot him.
unidentified
Wow.
ben obrien
And there was no celebration.
There was no...
I wasn't even happy, I don't think.
joe rogan
Because you were so out of it.
ben obrien
Yeah, I think I just kind of slumped over on my pack.
I was laying prone.
I just slumped over my pack.
Okay.
joe rogan
Did you eat it that night?
ben obrien
Yeah, they ate the whole thing.
Not all that night, but...
joe rogan
Did you eat any of it?
ben obrien
Oh, yeah.
I was too sick.
Like, the spices, those curry spices, even the smell of that curry spice, I couldn't even take.
unidentified
Really?
ben obrien
So I ate a good bit of it.
joe rogan
Oh, they curried up your sheep?
ben obrien
They put that on everything.
But even the tent smelled like that.
So, like, the cook tent, I couldn't even really be in there.
It was...
I ended up just eating rice for a couple days.
I just couldn't...
unidentified
Wow.
ben obrien
I couldn't stomach...
It was just such a gnarly experience.
joe rogan
So everybody ate your sheep?
Like, you didn't even bring it back?
ben obrien
No, you can't bring the meat back here anyways.
So the point was, so they had mostly already eaten Cole's sheep within a day and a half or two days.
What are wolves?
How many people are there?
There's 24, 25 of them.
unidentified
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
Oh, yeah, they're burning through that thing.
ben obrien
And not only did they eat eyeballs, so Cole had shot a sheep and he was caping out the head, taking the hide off the head.
Pop the eyeballs out and I think jokingly handed to one of the porters like ha ha eat this and I watched that dude put it on the end of a stick and put it over fire and eat it.
joe rogan
Yeah, why wouldn't they?
I mean, that's meat.
ben obrien
So they I didn't see this personally, but they were picky.
Yeah, they took the punch that the gut sack and and cut it open flapped out the insides and And took it back and cooked that too, you know?
It's kind of like a haggis, tripe kind of thing.
And so, I mean, they just like, they just devoured the thing.
joe rogan
Would you go back?
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
Really?
ben obrien
Yeah.
I'm going to Northwest Territories.
That's going to suck.
There won't be altitude involved.
joe rogan
Will it suck as bad, though?
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
ben obrien
No, and I think about, like, I often think about, like...
What if?
I'm glad it happened the way it did because I got so much perspective.
Like on the way back, because we still had two days to hike out to get back to get picked up to go back to Kathmandu.
It was two and a half, three days hike out.
And hiking out, the first day we were hiking out, after I shot my sheep and I had a night's rest.
And I remember getting back at like midnight, I don't know, we got back at like 10 p.m.
and had left at 6 in the morning from killing my sheep.
And I was just so like emotionally, spiritually just, I'm fucked.
And I remember thinking, well, tomorrow they're going to give us a rest day.
And the guide was like, nope.
It's too hot.
We're all getting sunburned.
I had blisters on the roof of my mouth.
From the sun, my whole...
joe rogan
The roof of your mouth?
ben obrien
Yeah, from like...
Going up and the sun bouncing off the snow hitting the roof of your mouth.
unidentified
What?
ben obrien
Yeah, blisters on the roof of your mouth.
joe rogan
So you got sunburned on the roof of your mouth?
ben obrien
I did.
joe rogan
That's insane.
I've never even heard of that before.
ben obrien
Yeah, I feel like that's a pretty common thing for guys that go to that elevations, hikers and stuff.
unidentified
Wow.
ben obrien
It might not be.
joe rogan
So do you have, like, sunscreen on your lips and your face and all that jazz?
ben obrien
Halfway through I did.
But, like, I didn't really think about that.
Because I was hot, but I was in the field burning up.
But, like, there's photos I look at now and I'm like, my lips are cracking open and bleeding.
unidentified
Wow.
ben obrien
Like, it was, yeah.
And if you watch Shockey's episode when he was in Nepal, it's similar.
Like, they're self-filming and it's like this...
Pretty visceral.
joe rogan
Did you get something out of that though?
Other than the survival?
ben obrien
Yeah, I got so much out of that.
I've written this now.
I probably wrote like 20,000 words on the trip, but I got this amazing feeling.
First, being around people that are that, primitive is the wrong word, but that removed from society.
unidentified
Right.
ben obrien
They don't have, they don't really even have the option to be modern.
Like they don't have, they couldn't get a, they couldn't get a chainsaw if they wanted to.
Like they have an ax and they need to chop wood.
And like just being around that level of just primitive people and that they're, primitive is the wrong word.
I'll think of something better than that.
But their spirit was so infectious.
Like, they're happy people.
And you have these Sherpas and porters who, you know those big Sitka bags, the big roller top bags?
We took one to base camp because they told us, oh, we can leave it.
We won't take it in the hunt.
These guys would take, like, a 90-pound suitcase, put it on top of their head, and just go walking up these trails I was describing like it was nothing.
joe rogan
Put it on their head?
ben obrien
Yeah, they'd balance everything in a basket on their head, all these porters.
joe rogan
A 90-pound bag.
ben obrien
And they would do more than that, 200 pounds.
joe rogan
What?
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
On their head.
ben obrien
Head strap, basket back here.
joe rogan
200 pounds.
ben obrien
Yeah, if not more than that.
joe rogan
What kind of disc issues do those guys have?
ben obrien
They don't care.
I mean, like, and they're wearing, like, these guys are wearing, like, sandals, and some of them will be wearing, like, old sneakers, and they're just wearing, like, whatever clothes that they would be able to gather.
And they're doing these amazing things, and when they take a break from something that you or I could never conceive of doing, they're like, happy as could be.
Their perspective on life is only hardship and poverty.
That's all they know.
That's the only thing they'll ever know.
But yet, they're happier than I think maybe I could ever be.
joe rogan
That's a big part of Sebastian Junger's book, Tribe.
A big part of it is how living easy and not sustaining massive amounts of difficulty, like most people do in these impoverished communities, is one of the reasons why people aren't happy.
Is that people actually need struggle, which is very counterintuitive for a lot of people.
ben obrien
It is.
And I remember coming back, there was a bunch of moments, and I could describe all these moments where I'd be at my wits end just thinking, I'm just a regular dude.
I'm not some adventurer.
What am I doing?
joe rogan
Right.
ben obrien
And I'd get to a point where I'd be just completely exhausted.
And I would look over and here would come this porter, this, you know, 25-year-old kid with a basket strapped on his head with, you know, 100 pounds of stuff, wearing sneakers, and I got $400 Italian boots on and sick gear, and I'm like...
And it would always come at these opportune moments where I'd look over and I'd see that and be like, oh, crap.
Like, this person is...
Here I am.
I am in physical pain and things are happening, but, like, to have the mental fortitude that those people have...
And they don't even know they have it.
That's just how they're wired.
And so I came back after the whole thing.
And I remember hiking out, being in the front of the group all of a sudden, really feeling good.
My pack's back on my back.
I'm energized again, thinking, this is the best feeling in the world.
That feeling of overcoming that thing and being on the downhill slope.
I'd go back just for that feeling if I could catch it again.
joe rogan
I think a big part of the thing of that is just you don't really appreciate what it feels like to be healthy until you're not healthy.
I don't advise anybody to get food sickness or food poisoning.
But one of the things about it is, man, once it's over, you realize, you go, God.
Being healthy is so critical.
It's like everything.
It doesn't matter your status, your money, your friends.
None of that means shit if you're unhealthy.
unidentified
Yeah.
ben obrien
I mean, the people in Nepal live in this...
They just went through a civil war in the recent decades.
And these people were at the epicenter of it.
And they're, you know...
Our trip gave them jobs.
It gave them purpose.
It gave, like, there's a lot of things.
Our main guide, Mon Bahador, didn't have shoes until he was, like, 13. And they used to go hunting, and they would build their own guns.
And he described to us a couple times where, like, he remember hiking and hunting sheep, and, like, the gun would blow up on his back and blow his shirt off.
unidentified
Stuff like that.
ben obrien
They were, like, making primitive muzzleloaders and using matchsticks as powder, I feel like.
So there was all these stories like that.
joe rogan
Perspective.
ben obrien
Perspective.
And like, you can't...
And look, people say, oh, you trophy hunted that sheep.
Maybe.
But there was so much more to it that if anybody would ever want to...
joe rogan
What does that mean, though?
You ate it.
ben obrien
We ate it.
joe rogan
Yeah, I mean, what does that mean?
What it means is people make a distinction that you did not have to bring that animal back in order for you to survive.
ben obrien
That's right.
joe rogan
So that's the only way they allow you to hunt.
ben obrien
Well, they're assigning motive to me then, right?
If they call me a trophy.
And I would say this.
I would say, look, you go into a war-torn area of the world where after the war...
They don't have a lot of chance to make money.
Like, the tourism has kind of died once you've been through a war.
It's really not a happy place to be.
And plus, the place we were hunting in the...
I think the Doropatan Hunting Reserve is like the only hunting reserve in Nepal.
And it's heavily regulated.
Like, there's 19 blue sheep tags a year.
So you're thinking, like, everybody that goes...
How many people a year go to Mount Everest Base Camp?
Thousands.
I don't know what the number is, but it's thousands.
I think we were probably within a couple of dozen Westerners that had been to that area post-war and had brought 24, 25 jobs, plus the people that prepped that, plus all that stuff.
So, like, seeing that is pretty powerful to me.
And shooting that sheep and not even giving a shit whether the horns made it back or not.
I mean, somebody could question my motive all they want.
But within the system and the structure that's set up there now, hunting is one of the more valuable things that they...
one of the more valuable tools they have to get better at everything.
Their lives, that they're having...
joe rogan
It's their resource.
ben obrien
Yeah, it's their resource.
joe rogan
Yeah, and we can look down upon that, but it is a natural resource along the same veins as if you live in an area that has fracking, that's a natural resource.
If you live in an area that they dig minerals out of the ground, that's a natural resource.
It's not a good or a bad thing.
It's just the reality of their environment.
ben obrien
And so there's so many, I think that there is arguments against what we did.
If somebody like broke it down, like I always try to break it down from the other side, I think people say like, why don't you just take pictures of it?
What are you doing?
You just go up there, pay 20 grand or whatever you pay for a hunt like that.
Take some pictures.
joe rogan
Well, part of it is the challenge.
People don't understand how difficult it is to do what you did.
To do what you did and then have this final accomplishment, which is to get close enough to an animal where either it doesn't know you're there or you get in a good place where it can't wind you, it doesn't smell you, and you can take it out and kill it.
It's hard to do.
ben obrien
It's insanely hard to do.
I've got all my own personal reasons for wanting to kill that sheep.
And I would also say, like...
Present a better plan, then.
Are you going to pay what hunters are willing to pay?
And are you going to be a part of conservation regulation the way that hunters are, as a trekker and a photographer?
Like, give me a better idea.
joe rogan
Okay, but here's the problem with that.
Their response to that could easily be, you know, what about if you decided to hunt people?
If you paid a million dollars to go hunt a person, and that money fed all these tribespeople in Mozambique, is it okay to go out and hunt people?
ben obrien
No, you surely still have an ethical and moral obligation to do it.
joe rogan
But to them, to animal rights activists, you have an ethical and moral obligation to let that sheep live.
ben obrien
Yeah.
joe rogan
I'm on your side, but I'm just saying...
ben obrien
No, I like to see both sides.
Like, I really do, like...
Because we only ate it there because we didn't have a freezer full of back straps and because That thing didn't occur the way it normally occurs for me.
There was like some complexity in that of that Yeah, my mind right crap man, you know Am I really over here just to collect this sheep and bring it home and show people but you're also filming yeah, we may oh we made what will be hopefully an awesome film and so At the end of the day, I check myself, and I said, did you do it for the right reasons?
And after I look back at the trip, I'm like, man, there are a hundred reasons why I did it, and they're all good.
And what we did was a good impact on the place we went, on the animals that we hunted.
To me, it's all good, and I would love to have arguing with somebody that feels differently about that.
joe rogan
Plus, you go to trip balls and see a fake baby and a fake wolf.
ben obrien
People pay a lot of money for that shit.
joe rogan
Yeah, man.
Mushrooms are expensive.
And you might not see a wolf.
ben obrien
You might not.
joe rogan
You might not see a baby on the road.
ben obrien
I'm sure there's still a wolf-shaped log in Nepal or something.
joe rogan
Somewhere.
ben obrien
Some rock that looks like a baby.
joe rogan
It had to be something.
ben obrien
It was a wolf.
joe rogan
I'm not crazy.
We've got to wrap this up, man.
Let's do it.
Ben O'Brien, what is your Twitter that you don't use again?
ben obrien
My Twitter's at BenjaminOB, but I never use that.
So Instagram's always the better way to...
joe rogan
And it's BennyOB...
Yeah.
ben obrien
B-E-N-N-Y-O-B-3-0-1.
joe rogan
How did you get to 3-0-1?
ben obrien
That's area code where I grew up.
joe rogan
Oh, holla!
ben obrien
Holla!
joe rogan
Shout out to 3-0-1.
ben obrien
Yeah, man.
I created that handle when I didn't know it would be a thing.
I thought that nobody would ever see that.
joe rogan
Oh.
Well, now it's a thing.
ben obrien
Now it's a thing.
unidentified
Let's do it.
joe rogan
Well, we blew you up when you had that competition with the people you work with.
unidentified
I did.
joe rogan
All right, folks, we're out.
We're out for a while.
We'll be back next week with a one podcast with my friend Ari Shafir on July 18th, which is the release date of his new Netflix special, which is going to be fucking amazing.
It's a two-part special, Childhood and Adulthood.
Right?
Is that what it is?
That's what he calls it?
What does he call it?
Ari Shafir.
Look up Ari Shafir on Netflix.
All right.
See you soon.
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