Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Aug. 26, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience

02:03:55

Joe Rogan Experience #1340 - John Nores

Participants

Main voices

joe rogan

26:08

john nores

01:37:06

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Show episode speakers

Speaker	Time	Text
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, bud.
unidentified		Ready?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Boom.
		Alright, we're live.
		Hello, John.
		What's up, man?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Hey, Joe.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		How you doing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for doing this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I really appreciate it.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Thanks a lot for having me, man.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It's great.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I heard you on Meteor Podcast, and it blew my mind.
		I mean, I could not believe.
		Let's just let everybody know what this is about.
		Right.
		is like you know you find a guy and he's got three trout when he's only supposed to it's normal stuff like catching people doing something they're not supposed to just make sure people follow the rules right along the way you guys started discovering these illegal grow-ups where cartels were growing marijuana And you turned from being a regular game warden to essentially, well, why don't you let us know how it worked out?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Joe, it was a crazy journey because you don't think of game wardens doing the type of work we were doing when it come to the trespass gross and the cartel issue.
		What do everybody think?
		They think game wardens check fishing licenses, check your deer tag or elk tag, look for too many animals, poaching, spotlighting.
		And honestly, when I started the job, I got hired back in 1992, That's what I dreamed of doing.
		You know, I grew up hunting and fishing and I got my hunter safety certificate with dad's help at nine years old.
		So I was all in the woods.
		You know, the woods are my church.
		I just loved it because three generations of family, my grandfather's career Navy, my dad, you know, as an army guy.
		And, you know, we just had conservation in our family, you know, for generations.
		So I got the job, did it, and I did all the traditional stuff to start.
		Came down here to Southern California to start my career in Riverside County.
		So I was just over the hill, you know, from LA here, and working all the traditional stuff.
		Fishing regulations, night hunting, you know, working deer openers.
		It was really cool to be a deer hunter for all those years and then actually go, you know, talk to guys on the other side and see all the good guys out there and some problems.
		And then in 1995, I got to go back home toward the Silicon Valley.
		That's where I'm originally from, born and raised.
		So I live in the suburbs, kind of the foothill areas of the Silicon Valley, south of San Jose there.
		And in 2004, I stumbled into my first cartel, what we call a trespass marijuana grow site.
		And, you know, to specify this stuff now, now that we're regulating, you know, the last couple of years here in California, these are not sanctioned marijuana sites.
		This isn't the legitimate industry that's doing it by the numbers and trying to.
		This is always illegal.
		These are always here, you know, on public lands, destroying our environmental waterways and our wildlife and on private land as well.
		And on that situation, I had a good friend of mine that I grew up with that was doing his master's thesis at San Jose State University, both of our alma mater, on steelhead trout, endangered species, red-legged, yellow-legged frog, and all the aquatics in these two creeks.
		And this was right below Henry Coast State Park, where I really met my first game warden that was an inspiration to get the job.
		So these waterways are really sensitive.
		Headwaters coming down through this stretch for like three miles.
		All these endangered species in it.
		Black-tailed deer.
		You know, all these other great animals we like as conservationists.
		They're thriving on this creek.
		And he called me one day in April and said, Hey John, this is weird.
		One of my two creeks is bone dry.
		And all the fish, the steelhead fry are dead.
		You know, everything living on this creek is dead.
		There's a bunch of like debris and plastic lining and looks like camping stuff that's down at the bottom of where this creek feeds out.
		So I get them in the truck and I figured, I'm thinking, okay, someone's diverting water up there.
		It's probably a rancher needing it for cattle operation, whatever.
		We go to the top of the hill, Joe.
		Then we start the hike down.
		And I'm by myself.
		You know, I got my rifle, got my gear, don't have any radio coverage, don't have any cell phone coverage.
		And I have an unarmed civilian, my partner, biologist, with me.
		And we're expecting to find something very predictable that I'd seen up to that point.
		And that would have been a normal water diversion.
		And when we found the water source in a beautiful canyon, I mean, crystal clear water, Trout Creek, the whole nine.
		We start hiking down it, following this, we see the dam, we see the waterline.
		We go about 100 yards down this beautiful little Grand Canyon-like creek, and there's a bunch of marijuana plants.
		And they're short because it's early in the season, they're only about two feet tall.
		And we see two growers.
		And they're not the growers that I would have suspected.
		These guys are, you know, they got rifles, they got handguns, they got knives, and they're kind of cruising, working their plants, coming toward us.
		And that was that, oh shit, moment.
		You know, if something crazy goes down right now and I got no backup, I got a civilian with me, these guys are armed, they're not your typical poacher that I've ever encountered.
		And we didn't get seen.
		We kind of hid out, you know, he's a hunter, I'm a hunter.
		We stayed, you know, using our stocking and stand to the creek bank and just watched as these guys worked their plantation and went on up the hill.
		And I looked at this and went, what did we just walk into?
		This is crazy.
		We got out safely.
		And that's when I started to bring in other agencies, narcotic groups, task forces, the sheriff's office.
		You know, started to learn other agencies in my area.
		This is really on in the game.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What did you guys do about that one grow up?
		Like when you found it?
		Like how did they resolve that?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Well, we got a team together as fast as we could safely, and usually it takes a couple of weeks, and I want to say within a month we were back there.
		Now, the interesting part was game wardens aren't known for doing this type of work, just like you said at the start, right?
		So they're like, well, you guys know the area, you went in there.
		Help us find it, get us into the area, but we're going to lead the raid.
		And we'll say, of course, this is your jurisdiction.
		We don't normally do this type of stuff, so go for it.
		So we were the bird dogs.
		We kind of guided them into the area.
		We had like 20, 30 officers.
		We kind of led them down to the canyon, got them in there safely.
		We found the two growers.
		We spooked them.
		They didn't get caught that day.
		They ran down the canyon.
		Nobody pursued.
		Some of us wanted to, obviously because of the environmental damages.
		But The biggest thing that changed the game for me that day was seeing the environmental damage.
		So that was a 7,000 plant garden.
		And at the time, we didn't know about these banned toxic substances, these insecticides, carbofuran, that they're bringing up from Tijuana and transporting, actually smuggling from across the border to put on these plants to keep everything living off of it, not to impact their cash crop.
		And that was out there in some extent, but it was so early, we weren't really aware of the level of toxicity to this stuff and how damaging it is.
		So it was all new.
		But we eradicated that garden.
		And then when we were done eradicating it, we had all this mess in the creek, right?
		We had camp trash, we had fertilizers, pollutants, propane tanks, all over in this beautiful channel that's now dry because it's been diverted.
		Unbeknownst to us, all that water was totally poisoned, that they were diverting to water the plants.
		That's why that creek was so dry.
		And we eradicated everything, and then it was like, okay, we're out of here.
		And I looked around and went, wait a minute, man.
		I know we got the illegal marijuana out, but what are we going to do about all this environmental damage?
		And nobody was reclamating the damage or cleaning up any of this mess.
		So the first thing I thought was, we have a resource issue that's crazy.
		I mean, I've spent my whole career up to this point protecting wildlife, preserving waterways for all of us to enjoy.
		You know, conservationist, enthusiast, whatever side of the fence you're on.
		And nothing was getting done on that.
		So kind of the light bulb went off a little bit that we need to do more to this if we're going to get involved and we need to get involved in these type of grow operations because it was the biggest environmental train wreck I'd ever seen.
		And I'd worked a lot of traditional game warden stuff to protect those resources.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So once they had gotten everyone out and chopped all the plants up or did what they did, did they try to reclaim the creek?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did they try to remove the dam and get the water to run back again?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		At that time, no.
		No one was doing it right.
		And that's exactly what really, really kind of upset me.
		And again, we were new at the game.
		We were the game wardens.
		Nobody really thought of us as mainline law enforcement or narcotics task force guys or anything like that at the time.
		So I wasn't going to make waves.
		We just wanted to integrate and work together.
		We wanted to unify these teams.
		And what I really wanted to do at this point is...
		Get back with my command staff and my bosses and go, hey, we got a big, big problem out there, man.
		There's more of this going on.
		And we need to be involved, even though it's not traditional, because we're sworn to protect our resources.
		Well, besides everything game wardens do that you think of from the wildlife standpoint, we're mainline law enforcement just like every police officer, right?
		We go through the same training.
		And then what people don't realize is we go through two more months of additional training in a really long academy that's all wildlife specific, wildlife forensics, wildlife ID, weapons identification, all the things you really need to do the game war inside of it with wildlife in the backcountry, so to speak.
		But we needed to integrate with other agencies and kind of bring them into our world if we were going to participate.
		So that one case started the change in me to try to build those relationships and get into tactics and tactical circles with some of these, you know, SWAT and special operations units that would go in and do this job.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Under normal circumstances, if that was just being diverted by a rancher, so if a rancher had done that and the creek was dry, how would you fix that?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We would have got with him, and it's what's called a streambed alteration violation.
		And it's 1602 in our Fish and Game Code is the section, and it's a very common section because water's diverted for a lot of reasons.
		And you can divert water with a permit in certain circumstances, but you can't completely denude a creek that has wildlife thriving that's a waterway of the state for everybody to enjoy, which this one was.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And if normally the case would be that they would have to just have the flow come back to exactly how it was before, to remove the dam, and that would be up to the rancher?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That would be up to the rancher, be part of a penalty.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You know, it could be a civil, it could be a criminal, it could be a probationary, fix it and you're okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So there was no real, there's no law involved, or nothing in place rather, when you found these grow-ups, like there was no previous precedent?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right, exactly.
		It was completely brand new.
		And this was, you know, one of the first grows, I think, that any of us had found throughout the state of California as Game Horns.
		I mean, there were other guys finding some things and working, but being from the Silicon Valley and being inspired by those wildlands to everything I became later and what I stand for.
		It was home, you know, and it hit home.
		But seeing that and getting to meet certain guys from the sheriff's department in my first book goes into this whole learning experience of, you know, ad hoc jumping in with other agencies and doing it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is this the Hidden War?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		This was the first book, War in the Woods.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		War in the Woods.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you wrote War in the Woods and then Hidden War is the new one?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Hidden Wars, the brand new one that just came out, and they're basically 10 years apart.
		And the cool part about that, Joe, is when you look at the differences, we do some major comparisons, and what War in the Woods covers is that chapter one's that first mission I'm telling you about right now, because that was like, bing, here it is.
		You know, we're not in Kansas anymore, so it's crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So the people, the higher-ups that were in charge of...
		Trying to eradicate the grow-up and take the cartel guys down.
		So that was their job, was just handling that.
		It was just handling the marijuana aspect of it, right?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And the armed cartel guys.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So there was no one in place that was supposed to take care of the waterway?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		There wasn't.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That seems so crazy to me.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It does.
		It was one of those things that it was based on the fact that a conservation group from an agency like Fish and Wildlife, like us, we just weren't involved where we would be looking at those environmental damages, right?
		But from a narcotics officer's standpoint, you may see the damages, but it may not register.
		There might not be a mandate or even objective to clean that stuff up.
		And back at the time, DEA was funding all of our states and all of our county teams based on the number of marijuana plants we eradicated.
		So there wasn't any recognition of the environmental damages and any type of funding based on how much reclamation and cleanup you did.
		Now, that would change, fortunately.
		And we were a big part of making that change, fortunately.
		And there wasn't a lot of funding or point kickback or value to catching bad guys, to catching some of these guys that were doing the damages.
		So a lot of teams then were dropping in on helicopter lines, cutting plants, getting a big plant count, getting funded for it, taking the weed out.
		And that was it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so crazy.
		Like, I would imagine, I mean, obviously I don't work in law enforcement, but I would imagine there would be one person who would, like, detail a plan.
		Right.
		And I would think that, well, what happened?
		Well, we found out that this creek was dry.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, we've got to resume the creek.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't that be, like, part of the plan?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It would.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You would think it should be.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is all basically new territory.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Completely new.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so we're only talking about 15 years ago as well, which is really crazy.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was the start of a big shift in my career because I saw this as a big problem.
		I also, up until in 2005, we were on one of our first, second, third operations since this one we just mentioned in 2004. And on August 5th of 2005, the game completely changed because that's when we were involved in our first gunfight.
		And that's when my partner, Warden, who I trained in the academy, we were partners in the squad.
		I had promoted to be the lieutenant for two and a half counties, the Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County, Monterey, part of San Benito, 20 days before this incident happened.
		And I had young Wardens that wanted to participate and do some of the stuff I was doing with the other agencies on the marijuana operational front.
		And this was, you know, right above the tech capital of the world, right there in Silicon Valley in Los Gatos.
		We were in really steep, arid country, you know, August, right before the A-Zone deer opener.
		We were all gearing up for that.
		And it was three game wardens, three sheriff's officers, good sheriff's officers that we met on that first operation in 2004. I just gave you the story on.
		And they were in harvest time.
		They were fortified.
		They had heavy weapons like SKSs, the AK-47 derivative, sawed-off shotguns.
		And they had the grow setup where they were basically defending it.
		And when we came in, there was an ambush shot from one of the growers, and that was the one shot the bad guys got off.
		And unfortunately, that's the shot that hit my partner through both legs.
		And that bullet went through the right thigh and tumbled through his right leg, then kept going through his left.
		So he's down, and we're trying to keep him from bleeding out of four holes for the better part of three hours waiting for an air rescue.
		And we didn't, you know, nobody in the country from the standpoint of a law enforcement team had ever been counterattacked by these growers.
		We'd, you know, we'd chase them around, they'd run away, sometimes we'd find weapons, oftentimes we wouldn't.
		But so this was just a real eye-opener, like, what the fuck did we just walk into?
		And plus, my partner was real close to not making it.
		And fortunately, he did survive, or I don't know that we'd be sitting here telling this story and talking about it.
		But that day, when I saw how well they were equipped, the type of weaponry they had, and the fact that I almost didn't come home that day, I went, okay, this is super dangerous.
		We can't do this as standard patrol game wardens.
		We can't do this doing just the traditional stuff.
		We should stay involved in it because aside from being so violent, the environmental damages, Joe, were the worst I'd still ever seen, and they just kept getting worse and worse the more operations I'd work in my home county, right?
		So we learned a lot from that.
		There were a lot of tactical lessons, there were a lot of team lessons, a lot of things we could have done different.
		And that kind of changed the game where we eventually got to what we're going to talk about a little bit later.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, since 2004, have there been plans implemented to clean up and also restore waterways and all the different...
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So now there's like a whole, they realize this is an issue, and so there's precedent, there's...
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Very much so.
		And that largely came from what we saw, you know, in those early years, the 2004 first stop down there on Dexter Canyon Creek, and then what we had on Sierra Azul when my partner was shot in 2005. About then, we started to also see the banned poisons in these grows, like the carbofuran bottles.
		And just to give a background, this stuff is so deadly.
		It was made as an insecticide or adenicide just to kill anything that you put on any type of agricultural product.
		And it was made originally back in, I think, like the 50s for legitimate agriculture.
		And then they found out how toxic it was, and EPA banned it from use or even possession.
		It's a felony to have it in the country and use it anywhere without special licenses through legitimate channels here in America.
		And they banned it like 15 years ago because it was so nasty.
		But because it does keep everything off the marijuana plants, I mean, nothing can even get near it without dying almost instantly.
		They still get it in third world countries.
		They can get it in Mexico.
		And it gets smuggled across the border with the grow groups, the drug trafficking groups, because it's so effective, regardless how poisoned it is.
		And we were starting to see more and more of that stuff as we were starting to ramp more of a specialty to doing this job more, you know, thoroughly and safely and get into the cleanup.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is one of the many things.
		I brought this up with Dan Crenshaw the other day, and I talked about you, because he's against making marijuana federally legal.
		And I said one of the problems with it being illegal is this.
		And I was explaining these grow-ops that for the rest of the country where marijuana is illegal, Illegal.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The vast majority, like what was the number that you said, the percentage that is grown in California that's illegally sold through the rest of the country?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		70-80%.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So 70-80% of the entire marijuana population or marijuana product that you're buying if you live in a place like South Dakota or wherever it's, I don't even know if it's legal in South Dakota, wherever it's illegal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're buying it from here.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's because One of the reasons is because our state laws say that...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, first of all, we're close to Mexico, so the cartel members can come up really quickly.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then the other problem is that our state laws, when we made marijuana legal recreationally here, we severely lowered the penalty for an illegal grow-op.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It became a misdemeanor, correct?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That was the thing.
		When we started the department's special team, the spec ops marijuana enforcement team that Hidmore goes into...
		Part of my job as being the co-founder of that and the team leader was outreach.
		So I was speaking to legislative groups before we legalized under Prop 64 and then the tighter medicinal marijuana laws that came about that same time.
		And I was talking to anybody, conservation groups that you and I would be part of, preservation animal rights groups, high school kids assemblies, right?
		Watch out, if you're using weed, make sure you're not using this stuff because it's so nasty.
unidentified		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Things like that.
		And my whole point was, if we're going to regulate guys, we see it coming.
		Let's just regulate smart.
		Let's not lessen any penalties for the trespass grow that the cartels are doing in our public lands and private lands and also the other gang groups.
		And there's other groups, you know.
		To a smaller extent.
		But unfortunately, when we did regulate, and all that was passed two years ago, they did water it down.
		So public land cultivation went to, like you said, a felony to a misdemeanor.
		And if you're a juvenile cultivator on public-private land and one of these juvenile cartel members, and there's a lot of young ones learning, it's an infraction.
		And that took a lot of emphasis away from that part of the problem and left us out there basically alone with a couple other agencies to fight it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, for the average person, that would sound, before you knew about the cartel grows, that would sound like a good idea.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, hey, if marijuana is legal, what's the big deal?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Then the other problem is, these people that are buying this marijuana in the rest of the country, it's highly likely that they're going to have some of that pesticide on it.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And how bad is that stuff?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Has that stuff ever killed someone from smoking this illegal marijuana?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We don't know if it's killed anybody directly, because by the time it gets distributed throughout the country, it does dissipate a little bit, but it's still highly toxic.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		To put it in perspective, about three years ago, we had two federal officers back east, not even in California, in a public land grow that had all that toxic on it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they have cartel grows out there?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		They do.
		They do.
		On the East Coast.
		We have them in about 25 to 27 other states to a much lesser extent.
		And something we need to look at is California.
		I mean, we're one of only six Mediterranean climates on the whole globe.
		So we are a great weed growing state, just like our wine industry, man.
		We got great weather for it.
		So we can grow outdoors and indoors.
		I mean, February to almost December, right?
		And that's why it's grown here, and that's why the black market, both in, you know, the private land communities and the cartels are everywhere across the country with this stuff.
		But they'll go wherever they can to, you know, diversify the network.
		So we do have it in other states to a much lesser extent.
		And then something we need to remember is, even though about half the country has these grows in them to a lesser extent than California...
		These same groups are under the same enterprise that are doing human trafficking, doing gunrunning, you know, to fuel the fight down in Mexico, methamphetamine production, and now the new synthetic fentanyl that's just killing thousands, especially on the East Coast, are coming from these groups.
		So it's all one enterprise.
		And of course, we focus on the cannabis issue because that's what's affecting our wildlands and our waterways.
		It's right at the hub.
		So yeah, it is.
		It's nationwide.
		It's not a California problem.
		And we made really, really careful, even though we're talking about a team in California, game wardens, we're trying to tell a nationwide story because the nation needs to know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it seems like you, I mean, not just seems like, it is.
		You guys were not trained for this, and there was no one else there.
		So it was like, hey, put it on the game wardens.
		They're going to have to handle this now.
		Which is really, to me, kind of insane.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It is, but then at the flip side, we're really passionate about protecting what you and I love, right?
		Our wildlands and our waterways and our wildlife especially.
		So we have a passionate interest in protecting those resources and not to mention keeping our public safe in the same breath.
		Because these are in public areas.
		I mean, we have a lot of these in national parks.
		We have like, not only you'd have the armed gunman that could shoot a hunter or a hiker or an equestrian, anybody in the outdoors that enjoys what the great outdoors have to offer, but you have all the other threats that come with that.
		You know, it's not just an armed gunman.
		They're putting punji pits, literally Vietnam-era punji pits on some of these trails.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Can you explain a punji pit for people who don't know?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		So, back in the Vietnam conflict, what the Viet Cong would do to deter our American soldiers is they'd dig a pit underground on a trail.
		It would be about 18 to 20 inches deep and, you know, square to kind of cover a whole trail.
		Then they'd cover it up with Bamboo or leaf litter, so it just looked like the trail.
		And then our soldiers would kind of walk and they'd step into that, and here's these sharpened sticks out of bamboo that are super sharp.
		And they're pointed upwards, so when you step into it, you're gonna shear a shin, you're gonna puncture your leg, maybe an artery.
		And they would put human excrement, excuse me, on the points to induce bacteria, induce infection, and basically take our soldiers out of the operation.
		What we started seeing in 2015, and the first one we found was actually in a national park up in Shasta County in Whiskey Town.
		And it was a punji pit going into a grow site on a public trail.
		I mean, it was hundreds of yards, Joe, from the grow, but anybody could have walked in on it.
		We were running an operation with Shasta County, and this is when we had our full-time dedicated team.
		in the Hidden War era And our point man was about to step into this thing.
		And our canine, Phoebe, that I'm sure, you know, we talked about it on Steven's show, a little bit on Meat Eater, and also Mike Ritland, who has a show called Mic Drop.
		And he's a SEAL Team 3 veteran and canine trainer.
		He really got into the dog stories, right?
		We talked about that.
		But Phoebe, amazing dog.
		She had been trained to sniff these banned poisons so she could smell it, you know, a mile out with that amazing nose our canines have.
		And right before our point man was about to step into it, Phoebe alerted.
		And Brian pulled everybody back, her handler, my teammate.
		And sure enough, he did some digging, pulled back the tarp, and then here's his punji pit.
		And it had the band toxics actually on the sticks.
		So what would that have done if one of us had stepped into it?
		So that was a real aggressive anti-personnel technique.
		That could hurt.
		That could have decimated a hunter or hiker or anybody else.
		Or wildlife.
		Or wildlife.
		Yeah, some of these pit traps for wildlife and these big wells they're digging in cisterns.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they're doing this to keep people out or they're doing this for animals?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What are they doing?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Something like that has to be targeted against people.
		But there's a lot of different things for animals, too.
		There's a lot of things to keep animals away from the plants.
		They'll dig big pit traps that are...
		They'll put garbage in them, or they'll use them like when we were in the middle of our...
		Really severe drought that we just came out of here in California a couple of years ago, all these mountain streams were just bone dry.
		So they would go to the lower lands and we were doing a lot of work, you know, in the Delta region, the Sacramento Delta and the lowlands.
		And they, even if they, you know, we're getting water from the Delta and the raised land would dry up, they would dig, hand dig wells, 20, 30 feet deep and they leave them open and they're getting water from them and pumping out water out of the bottom, but those stay open.
		So yeah, our big, our big game animals drop into those, or we could drop into them.
		So, multiple hazards.
		Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there an estimate of how many cartel members are growing in this country right now?
		If you say there's 27, 28 states, is that what you said?
		Is there a rough estimate of how many cartel members are here right now doing this kind of stuff?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's a real approximation because you only know based on who you catch or who you've been able to debrief.
		But like in California, we know from the amount of grows we deal with every year just on the trespass, you know, cartel front, and the number of operatives it takes to run a grow and get it started and then harvest it.
		I mean, conservative estimate 10,000.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		10,000 people?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just in California?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Just in California.
		And the reason we say that, and I always go very conservative because it's such a kind of a silent enterprise and it's really hard to get some of this data, but we've just validated it through the numbers of things we run across.
		You know, when you look at the fact that it takes two skilled growers that are vetted because they cut their teeth down in Mexico doing it effectively under the Federalist nose.
		And they grow well.
		And you mentioned this when you had Mike Baker on the show, which was interesting.
		And you hit it on the head when you said, man, these guys are really resourceful.
		You know, you've got to respect their work ethic.
		And you have to.
		Because they're hiking waterline.
		They're hiking infrastructure in.
		They're covering their tracks.
		They're out there for six months at a time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You said they were walking around with carpet strapped to their feet so they didn't leave footprints?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, in Hidmore especially, we have a whole lot of photos in that book about things we've seen on trail cameras, and they will put felt-lined, lined soft felt on their shoes, tie them up tight, and if they're walking like an old forest road that's got a gravel base, you'll never see that track.
		I mean, you've tracked big game, I've done it.
		It's the same type of technique, and if you don't have any sign...
		I mean, they're really good at disguising them.
		We actually found a guy, and I have a picture of this in the book and also in the PowerPoint when I teach to this throughout the country.
		Cow hooves actually carved out of wood because a couple years ago, we were, you know, the U.S. Forest Service, a lot of this grow problem is on our national forests.
		You know, Northern California, Northeastern California, not so much Silicon Valley where I started, but the rest of the state, even down here.
		And what these guys would do is there's cattle leases on those properties where, you know, ranchers can run cattle on part of the forest and, you know, or a joint on private property.
		And we were getting tips on a bunch of grows, you know, or you've seen them from the air or a hunter or angler would report them or we'd have a suspicion because of a waterway or we'd see some plants from satellite or whatever.
		And we'd go try to find this grow and we weren't picking up tracks.
		And we're, you know, we're pretty good at finding these things now.
		We've been trial and error in it for a lot of years.
		But we're seeing a lot of cattle tracks because we're running around with cows.
		And sure enough, they were putting on cow hooves and strapping them on top or underneath their boots, clomping around to disguise themselves as cattle.
		Clever, right?
		And then once they get way up into a deep canyon where they're going to put their grow, they just take them off and throw them in a backpack.
		And then the light bulb went off.
		We better look at our tracks a little more carefully.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So how do you guys try to go about finding these things?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you rely on people reporting them, or do you have aerial surveys?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It's a mix of all of that.
		We get a lot of reports from people on the ground, and our best reporting parties, or what we call RPs, are hunters and anglers.
		When it comes to the outdoor public, but anyone in the outdoors could run across them.
		But hunters and anglers especially, because...
		Where do we go when we're going to find a good waterhole for elk or we're hunting blacktail?
		We're not going to stay on the beaten path, man.
		We're going to go down to the headwaters.
		We're going to find a pristine area.
		We want to get away from people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they're the people that are going the deepest into the backcountry.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		Absolutely.
		And then they're finding the water source and maybe they're following it and it's dry or it's diverted like what I found in 2004 that started this whole craziness.
		And then they run into a grow.
		We also do find it from the air.
		You know, we do all agencies.
		It's no secret, no tactical reveal.
		We fly to look for this stuff from the air.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I have a friend who found one on Tejon Ranch.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		Yeah, a few years back.
		And I didn't think anything of it.
		I thought it was just some crazy person decided to try to grow pot.
		This is back before it was recreationally legal.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And there was no shootout or anything crazy like that.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Good to hear.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They got there after.
		Yeah, either they realized that their grow-op had been compromised and they took off, but, you know, Tejon Ranch is enormous.
		It's like 270,000 acres.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And just the gall of these guys to go deep into that ranch and set up this grow site.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And the guys who worked there, I guess they just stumbled upon it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think they stumbled upon it because of garbage, too, if I remember correctly.
unidentified		Right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that follows track.
		And the thing, now you're talking about a private hunting ranch that's got a cattle lease and all that.
		Tahone's huge.
		We've done a lot of good stuff with Tahone Ranch and supported, you know, good hunting programs there.
		But an interesting statistic, when I retired last year in December in 2018, you know, I mean, we keep stats ever since.
		One of the cool things about our specialized team starting in 2013 is...
		We solidified all the documentation to be spot on.
		You know, reporting was kind of haphazard throughout the state.
		We weren't sure what other agencies were doing, but we knew what we were doing now.
		And so I'm keeping that data.
		And there was a real shift in just public land presence of these cartel growers.
		And by the time I retired last year, it was almost a 50-50 split.
		So ranches like Tahone Ranch, a private hunting club in the Silicon Valley, one up in Shasta County.
		So You know, where they're doing big-time conservation projects to get blacktail and mule deer and tule elk and everything else up in numbers.
		And now they've got this presence on their hunting club hitting one of their sensitive waterways, you know.
		So it's not just a public land thing, and it's really good for everybody listening to know that.
		You could find it anywhere, and you stumbled on it.
		And it's funny you mentioned the reporting parties.
		The cool thing, after I did Stephen's show on Meat Eater and talked to those guys, we started to get tips.
		I actually got a tip, and it's in play.
		I won't say too much more about it, but we'll be talking when it's all over and done, but it's going to get handled.
		It's so cool to see the guys like you and I that hunt and love it and love the passion of what's out there are out there stumbling on this stuff and getting out safely.
		We're fired up enough not to wait.
		We're calling people to say, hey, it's out there.
		Can you help us?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or it's the warden, sheriffs, or Are you guys getting any incidents of hikers or anyone getting shot at?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's happened.
		It's happened.
		Fortunately, it doesn't happen a lot where we have a lot of fatalities.
		But I want to say about five, six years ago, we had a father-daughter combination on a deer hunt up in one of the D zones in northeastern California.
		And they were shot at by cartel growers going in on a deer opener to try to harvest her first deer.
		You know, she was coming up through the program.
unidentified		Jeez.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was horrible.
		Unfortunately, they weren't hurt.
		They got out of the area.
		They reported it.
		We've had people run out of gardens by some of these growers.
		We have had other shots fired, and we've had people just stay out of areas because once they see it or they see a guy holding a weapon like that in...
		A marijuana plantation they know isn't legit, they're out of there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there an area where they, I mean, it's all public land mostly, and private land, ranch land, but is there an area of the state where there's more of them?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You know, that's what I thought when I started.
		I mean, you hear about the Humboldt, you know, Trinity, the Emerald Triangle, right?
		Just the hub of it.
		And I thought it was more prevalent there.
		And it's certainly massive up there.
		But I mean, from Silicon Valley, where I'm from, you wouldn't think of those foothills in that part of the state, you know, being so overrun.
		And during those, what I call, you know, the formative years of learning this and getting involved in it and specializing in it, we were really, I got to give a shout out to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office and the guys then that took us on as equals.
		And my partners that really brought us in as, you know, not only tacticians, but tracking and able to identify sign as wardens doing the hunting thing in the woods, where we could go and really specialize at this and be a lot safer and do it a lot better than when my partner got shot in 05. And we were doing 25...
		Public and private land cartel grows in the Silicon Valley at least 20 to 25 a season.
		Jesus!
		That's a ton!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's insane!
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And that doesn't seem...
john nores ▲ ● ▼		I mean...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So for folks who don't know what the season is, explain that.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the eradication season, what we call the gross season when we operate the heaviest, is usually...
		An early start would be sometime mid-May, and then we go all the way to about the end of September.
		I mean, there's some wiggle room on both ends of that, depending on water and how long the winter goes.
		But from May to pretty much the end of September, it's going on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So just somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six months, and you're looking at 25 different operations?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that's in just Santa Clara County as an example.
		And when we formed the full-time team in 2013, and we had representatives, and we have representatives on our marijuana enforcement team, our agency-specific team, We have guys covering every part of the state and responsible team members spread out covering every county.
		And as of now, and we've been, well, we had six full operational years before I retired.
		Now it's in good hands and the team's doing fantastic work.
		We've had at least a grow, if not several, in every county in the state, and most counties multiple.
		So to put it in perspective, on an average, your team would do 125 missions, if not more.
		So that's 125 grow sites that we were responsible for doing the workup, the planning, going in and doing the apprehension, the stalking to catch these guys with our canines and with our tactics.
		Then doing the eradication, and 90% of them are all, you know, tainted in that ferdan and the carbofuran, sometimes to the point that it's so freshly applied that we can't touch the plants for a couple of weeks.
		We can't even, even with protective gear, with nitrile gloves, face protection, masks, the whole nine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that dangerous?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It's that dangerous.
		And no exaggeration to put it in perspective, the two officers on the federal level that were exposed just ingested some of those fumes, and you get blindness, you get nausea, you can't breathe.
		They were out of circulation, fortunately not fatally, but they were out of circulation for weeks, sometimes months.
		And federal OSHA came down with the Forest Service, and of course working closely from the state level, We suddenly were under a lot of protocol on decontamination, what we couldn't touch, and new basic tactics for our safety, for human safety, came down, and it changed the game.
		So these guys putting this stuff on there, we may not be able to even touch the plants or even cut them safely or put them in nets and contaminate all our gear until it has a chance to dissipate a little bit, and that's 14 days.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what would you guys do if you stumbled upon something and you knew that it was freshly applied?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Would you just have a bunch of officers stand by and guard the area to make sure that these guys didn't come back to try to reclaim the plants?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		As best we could.
		Because here's the problem with that.
		You get a big grow and you know you can't go in and touch these things for a couple of weeks maybe.
		It could have been applied that day.
		It could have been applied four days ago.
		We hit it.
		We're not sure.
		So we'll give it a 14-day window.
		We'll keep an eye on it.
		But at the same time, we're doing all these other missions.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And we're not getting everything.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And how deep are we talking in?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, would guys have to camp there?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Sometimes.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, sometimes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you're guys.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Park and hike.
		Yeah, we've sat on grows.
		We've camped out overnight for several days.
		We've surveilled drop points and watched these guys come and go and try to make sure they don't come back.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you have limited resources to begin with, right?
		So you guys are the initial jobs to protect wildlife, and you're supposed to be doing that.
		So how much of an impact has that had on wildlife because you guys have been diverted to these illegal grow-ups?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, you hear the term the thin green line, right?
unidentified		Yes.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And kind of what I'm all about, being a game warden, and now in phase two in retirement, I'm really trying to speak more nationally to what the thin green line is.
		It's never been thinner.
		And the thin green line basically just represents game wardens and forest rangers, border patrol, but from the wildlife and the military, of course.
		But from a wildlife protector standpoint, now that we have this cartel grow problem, and you just hit it on the head, brother, look at the resources it takes.
		And all that traditional stuff that we used to do that we still do, those problems aren't going away.
		So we still have to check, you know, the night hunter.
		We still have to deal with commercial wildlife sales and all this, the ivory importation issue and the wildlife trafficking that's just blowing up.
		So we're getting thinner and thinner and stretched further and further.
		Game ward numbers aren't growing very much anywhere in the country.
		Yet the population and the impacts of people destroying wildlife, especially on this cartel front, just keep exacerbating.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You guys are in charge of ivory importation as well?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We deal with all that, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we have teams now in our agency, and most of the states do, called wildlife trafficking teams.
		And it was a good program that came out of the Obama administration that all the states had to do it.
		We were kind of already doing it, but we had to formalize a little bit.
		And that was an added challenge that happened right after we formed the whole cannabis enforcement program, which started with the tactical unit that I co-formed.
		And then all these watershed enforcement teams popped up for cannabis regulation to check the new licensed growers, people trying to do it legitimately, and water use and make sure there weren't abuses.
		Then wildlife trafficking became a huge issue.
		The commercialization of wildlife is a huge billion dollar industry worldwide on everything from abalone to sturgeon row to black bear gallbladders, and now ivory especially.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The black bear gallbladder one is so weird.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Isn't it crazy?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's like a Chinese medicine thing, right?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's an aphrodisiac.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it's not.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's not real.
		But in Alberta, I think it's B.C.? No, in B.C., even though black bear hunting's legal for food, you can't open up the stomach contents.
		They don't allow them to gut it because they don't want people to be incentivized to sell gallbladders.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		To grab that gall, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So strange.
		So you can eat the bear, but you can't even open up the cavity, the body cavity.
		So like the heart goes to waste, other parts that people might eat.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		Which we never like to see.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So strange.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		But again, it gets back to greed and profit in the market, right?
		When a gallbladder can be worth $40,000 or more overseas.
		What?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		$40,000?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Really?
		That's how much a gallbladder can be worth in the black market.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Holy shit.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Is that freaking crazy?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it doesn't do anything.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's crazy!
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		But because it believes that it does, and it's one of those exotics that I've got to have, and I can't get black bears.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like rhino horn, that kind of thing.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
		Like rhino horn things.
		I did a lot of that type of work before I went into this Metfocus.
		And it just shows you how many challenges game wardens have to do.
		And it's not the old traditional game warden just out checking those licenses anymore.
		And overwhelmed.
		We're overwhelmed.
		Yeah, that's no exaggeration.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, because this is now a problem that people are aware of, have there been significant resources that have been allocated to try to handle this stuff?
		Are there new programs to train these young officers coming up?
		Is there a specific task force that handles that, and then the rest of the guys handle fish and wildlife, or is it just same people, but now you have a whole different level of responsibility?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's really cool in California because we are one of the most progressive game warden agencies.
		And it's interesting because I just spoke back in July, I spoke at the NAWIA conference, which is basically the annual game wardens conference for all of us from all over the country.
		So I get to work with all the states.
		And, you know, Florida has a tactical unit for some stuff.
		Texas has it.
		And we're the first state to have a dedicated, you know, kind of tactical unit for this cartel growth threat because it's so big in California.
		But to share that with everybody nationally in my world in the thin green line and for them to start having it happening on the refuges and even just to know this stuff's getting back to their parts of the world and poisoning their cannabis users, you know, unsuspectingly.
		Horrible information, right?
		But we need to know it.
		And a lot of guys didn't know it.
		And so that was one thing to see, hey, we need to have a baseline training.
		And the way we do it here in California is we all go through a really stringent academy.
		Everyone gets their basic tools, arrest control and defensive tactics, you know, and firearms training and all of that and get good at being the traditional game warden and doing all the traditional stuff.
		And they get, you know, get their feet wet out doing their own thing for a couple of years and And then we start to find the people that have the motivation or want to get onto a specialized unit, like our MET team or one of the watershed teams or the wildlife trafficking team.
		Very seldomly do we put a fresh person there because, you know, I think to really be a good game warden, you got to cut your teeth on all the traditional stuff that's critical of just having to check guys with guns all the time.
		You know, most cops look at that and go, that's crazy.
		I mean, everybody you check has a knife or a firearm.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Well, fortunately, 99% of them are guys like you and me that want to see a game warden, and the game warden wants to see us.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		But for that one felon that's on parole, and he's in the woods hiding out, and we run across that a lot, and I ran across a ton of that down here in SoCal at the start of my career, and I've got some interesting stories about that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So guys who skip bail, and then they go and hide?
unidentified		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		And they've got like a no bail warrant.
		They're wanted on some warrant somewhere.
		And so they're off fishing.
		They have an illegal firearm.
		Maybe they're a felon in possession of a firearm they can't even have.
		And now they're out in a remote area where no cop's going to find me here.
		And then I'm the new game warden in Riverside County, you know, all freaking motivated, really green.
		I don't know totally what I'm doing yet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And I'm in that truck cruising, and something I got into down here that was just crazy, but I will say this, it was a heck of a learning curve, and I'm really blessed it went out the way it did, and I was safe in it, but we would get gangbangers from LA here, and they would go over into Riverside County and get into my kind of rural foothills and on the edge of the National Forest, and they'd have AK-47s, and they'd have automatic pistols, and they would spotlight through these canyons Gunning for everything.
		They'd kill rabbits, they'd kill coyotes, they'd kill deer.
		They'd get to the end of a canyon that has an outlet of a dam, throw a gill net out, and spend all night there just gill netting fish, and hunting freely and shooting, killing everything with their spotlights.
		Grab their gill net, grab hundreds of fish, pack up, and then head back to the L.A. Basin.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Gangbangers?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		I'm not kidding.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Fishing gangbangers?
		Yeah.
		Almost commercial fishing?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It sounds nuts, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So strange.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what would they do with the fish?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Oh, they'd eat them, maybe they'd sell them, you know, who knows?
		Usually with quantities that big, they were getting sold.
		But the thing that was crazy is I would be, you know, alone.
		I'd be in my truck.
		I didn't have a canine yet, you know, and now I just, I just retired with, well, like you're a marshal.
		I have Apollo, yellow lab, English lab.
		She's amazing.
		I'm never going to bite a bad guy, but she's going to lick him to death and try to turn him our way.
		But I didn't even have a companion dog at the time.
		And I would go and run into these guys and go, okay, this is what I learned in the academy, that head-on spotlighting stop that you never want to have, or getting behind them blacked out and tracking them down.
		And next thing I know, I got AKs, and I got all these frickin' prohibited exotic weapons, and I'm going, this is crazy.
		I'm pulling these guys out alone.
		I don't have a lot of backup.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it was just you?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It was just me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How many guys did you run into?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Sometimes it would be two.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		One night I pulled like eight people out of a van.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh shit.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And I was alone.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh shit.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And they were all armed, and it was one of my heaviest, most intense cases, and I had been on one year.
		So this was 1994. And what we were doing in the Riverside squad is we were just saturating the area because we were getting everybody from over on the LA side here spotlighting all our games.
		So we're like, okay, let's saturate this.
		And back then, Joe, the game was to catch a spotlight or red-handed because they're so deliberate.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Explain spotlight to a lot of people who are listening to this.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I should have done that.
		But spotlighting is where you use an artificial light, whether it's a handheld spotlight, a flashlight, whatever.
		And you go into remote areas and you look to find animals at night because they freeze, they're really relaxed, their eyes glow, and then you shoot them that way.
		You kill them illegally at night after dark, which is never allowed.
		You know, it's usually in or out of hunting season because anyone's going to spotlight a deer nine times out of ten.
		They're not licensed or they're not going to do it during season like we do.
		So they're doing that.
		So in our world as game wardens, that's the ultimate wildlife criminal because they're going to kill does, you know, that have that unborn trophy buck for good genetics.
		They're going to kill a trophy deer way in the rut, you know, that, you know, needs to go another year or whatever.
		So that's what we focused on.
		That was like, if I can cut my teeth and get, you know, become a reputable game warden and going after the hardcores, that was the game then.
		So it was 94. And I'm pulling these guys out and calling them out on a loudspeaker.
		I've got my weapon on them.
		And I'm like, oh man, There's a lot of guys out there.
		I can't get them to jail.
		I'm calling back up.
		I got Riverside County coming in.
		I mean, we even had the sheriff's office helicopter come in several nights.
		Once we got to know each other and they realized, who is this game warden?
		And what are these game wardens in Riverside County going out into just crazy areas by themselves?
		They'd monitor our traffic and they'd come in on the helicopter and light it up and call these bad guys out on loudspeakers just to make sure we were okay.
		Feels good when the cavalry comes on those nights, man, let me tell you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, so in those sort of situations, they just didn't know that you would ever run into someone that's that armed, that many guys in the van or what have you.
		Eight people.
		So the reason why you're patrolling by yourself is because they didn't anticipate anything like this.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Well, and we didn't have the bodies.
unidentified		Right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		This was one of the things that was crazy.
		We get back to the thin green line concept and realize that one game warden is responsible for...
		200 to 250 square miles, give or take.
unidentified		Whoa!
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And you know how big Riverside County is on the Inland Empire.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		200 square miles?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Maybe more, you know, depending on what part of the state you're in.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One game warden?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		One game warden.
		So, a squad of seven game wardens, to put it in perspective, check this out, brother.
		When I was supervising traditional patrol before we started the Special Ops Met team in Santa Clara County, we always had vacancies because we were always low on bodies.
		We couldn't hire game wardens fast enough.
		We weren't funded for it or whatever the case may be.
		So we might have four or five game wardens for seven positions.
		And we had to cover all of Santa Clara County, which is everything from the city to all those foothills.
		And there's a lot of it in Silicon Valley people don't realize.
		All of San Benito County, which is huge.
		Hollister, Gilroy, right where I'm from in Gilroy, that whole area down to the south.
		That is just massive mountain country, full of wildlife.
		And then part of Monterey County.
		And I had five people and myself as a lieutenant.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That is insane.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I can't believe that.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		So to go out on a spotlighting patrol to that point and have a partner with you, just one other game warden, that's tough.
		You're basically pulling a whole other area.
		You can't work night hunters.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is spotlighting that common?
unidentified		It is.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It is still going on in the state, and it's going on a lot.
		Back then here, because there had been so little presence here in Southern California, it was off the hook.
		It was crazy.
		One week in 1994, I remember, I had a really good ride-along with me, a wildlife biologist, just a savvy hunter, great eyes.
		He became kind of like my right-hand man, Brian.
		And I said, we're going to catch a spotlighter every night this week.
		He goes, you think so?
		I go, it's that crazy.
		Let's see if we can do it.
		And so we went and worked all night long.
		We started on Monday night.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do you catch them?
		Do you look for a spotlight?
		Like, do you get to a vantage point in glass?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's just like glass in a big basin for elk, right?
		You get in a really good overwatch, you get the most visibility, you know, hide the truck, and you watch.
		And you find areas where it's likely to happen.
		And it takes a while to learn where that's going to be, just because you've got this huge district and you could have 20 places where guys spotlight.
		But until you get into the area as a new warden and really get to figure it all out, you don't know where to be and it's a trial and error.
		But, you know, it took me six months, give or take, just going out there and scouting hard and seeing where this road goes and how does that canyon look?
		What type of water do I have down there?
		What am I seeing at low light in the evening when animals are coming to water?
		Ooh, I got a whole herd of elk here.
		I got a whole herd of deer.
		I got some bucks.
		You know, I'm seeing other animals run around.
		This is going to be a hot spot because guys can get to it.
		And if you just put the time in, you just kind of lie in wait, you know, kind of put your little hide together.
		Just like hunting big game, eventually it starts happening.
		And by 1994, and I've been in district a year down here, I pretty much had my spots figured out.
		My partners and other parts of Riverside did too.
		So we'd all be out alone so we could cover more area and talking back and forth.
		I mean, and I'm going to date myself here, but cell phones are brand new.
		So we all had those flip cell phones.
		How old are you?
		I'm going to be 51 in November.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm 52. Just don't worry about it.
unidentified		No, no.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		So we're right there, you know?
		All that era.
		So when I started, I mean, it was the flip phone, you know, the Star Trek communicator.
		I called my partner, Jerry, like, I love those.
		Where are you at?
		They're great.
		I'm like, where are you at?
		He goes, I'm over here in Thomas Mountain.
		I'm like, I'm over here.
		You see anything yet?
		I go, I got one light working.
		I gotta go.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But that's crazy.
		You're talking about enormous pieces of land that you guys are responsible for.
		It's hard for people to put into perspective that don't spend any time in the woods that you would be able to even find these folks in this enormous area.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah.
		It starts off as a needle in a haystack type thing, you know?
		But once you get into it, you get fairly good at it.
		But it always is difficult because, again, just the percentages of catching a guy on the right night that he's going to be out there.
		And then you got the guys that kind of get savvy to knowing where the game warden lives, driving by his house, looking for his patrol truck to see if he's out that night.
		Where's the truck parked?
		We start getting into that problem.
		So we always kind of maintain as covert as we can.
		We're known in the neighborhood.
		And the thing is, we live at home.
		We work out of our homes.
		Home office.
		We're closed to our community because if we kept our truck at a field office, we'd have no response time.
		All spread out.
		So we get very community-oriented in community functions, in conservation groups, and everybody knows us, whether it's a big city or a small little town in the mountains.
		So you got guys doing the cat and mouse thing looking for us and making sure, hey, is this truck there or is he out patrolling?
		Well, maybe I won't go out tonight.
		But that era, Joe, in 1994 was off the hook.
		I didn't get a spotlighter every night that week, but I got six out of seven.
		And one night I had a double, so it was crazy.
unidentified		Wow.
unidentified		Wow.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And seasoned a ton of guns.
		Some guys were going to jail.
		Some weren't.
		But a lot of wildlife was saved that night because they would have done a lot of harm.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, most of these guys, are they doing this recreationally for fun?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Are they doing it for food?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		The group I was getting into down here, it was recreational.
		It might have been to sell the meat.
		I couldn't prove that.
		Or it was just to go kill stuff.
		You do get people that need meat that do spotlight after dark because they need the meat and stuff like that.
		It's still a violation.
		We still deal with it as such, but if we ascertain that, we're going to be fair about it.
		We said, okay, look, you're poaching.
		I know you're starving.
		It's out of season.
		It's in season.
		You have a tag, but you just really got to get that meat.
		I mean, there are certain cases where you just kind of feel for that person to go.
		I see where the motivation was, you know, and a very small percentage of poachers are that way, but some of them are just, you know, they're just trying to feed their family.
unidentified		Right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And it's a whole different game, and we're going to be fair about it, or we should be fair about it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Were most of them gangbangers, or most of them criminals?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, was there an average?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Down here, 70-80%.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, had criminal histories, had illegal weapons, associated with gangs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it was almost like recreation for them.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It almost was.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was like practice.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
unidentified		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And I remember one case down here that was a pretty crazy one.
		It was three guys, pretty inebriated, pretty liquored up.
		And it was a head-on stop.
		And one of them had a $50,000 no-bail warrant for cocaine trafficking out of Mexico.
		And that was in that week that we had a crazy spotlight and things going on.
		So it was just the demographic of down here, where up north it wouldn't be necessarily that felon, but that guy that just wanted that trophy buck and to cheat to get it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If I could give you a magic wand, Okay.
		And you could, like, I could say, John, it's up to you.
		Fix all this.
		How do you do it?
		You have unlimited resources.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Man, that's a great question.
		And I'll go into the bottle, the genie right here.
		One, we put more game wardens in the field, because we do need more, and we pay them better.
		And here's the rub.
		Because there's this perception that game wardens just check fishing licenses or they might not be real cops, We're paid about 40% less than a county sheriff, than a highway patrolman, than a city police guy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You think it's because of perception, really?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Perception and public lack of knowledge, perhaps.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So as far as funds get allocated, they say, well, game wardens, come on.
unidentified		Right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		This is the going rate.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		This is what we've always paid.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		40%?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		That's horrible.
		We're in a constant, constant salary equity fight.
		We've been really pushing that for...
		You know, 15 years, plus or minus, something that really started to legitimize us.
		And in 2010, when my first book came out, War in the Woods, that's when the Wild Justice Game War and Reality Show and National Geographic Channel aired for the first time, and that was our agency.
		And that was the first of what are now a lot of Game Warden shows, and the more the merrier.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've never seen that one.
unidentified		Wild Justice?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Good?
		It's good, yeah.
		It was us, you know, so I'm partially a little bit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, but is it mostly busting people for wildlife, or is it you get into the marijuana stuff, too?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We do actually get into the marijuana stuff.
		Something the Wild Justice film crews really resonated with.
		A lot of the guys that are on the team now, myself included, ended up being featured like their main people for the better part of like three seasons because we weren't just bringing them the poaching cases, the traditional stuff which needed to get shown.
		And we didn't have our formalized team yet, but I was embedded with Santa Clara County.
		Brian and Canine Phoebe were up in Shasta, but we were getting brought together for the show, and he was starting to work down with me in the Bay Area and bringing that Wonder Dog Phoebe into the mix that he had honed for years.
		And we started to show this cartel marijuana stuff through the show.
		And that's what got the ratings.
		That was worldwide broadcast, the number one hit on Nat Geo for three years.
		And that opened the door.
		We needed that exposure.
		And it's the same thing with writing these books and doing the TV I do.
		It's a fine line between risking some exposure or getting the message out.
		Like I said, we're so thin on the thin green line, we need all the exposure we can get.
		We're a little agency, our funding's limited, but we're doing a multitude of jobs even outside of the marijuana stuff.
		So that started to help, and now we're starting to get the recognition of the professionalism and the capabilities we have, especially with this tactical unit.
		To hopefully help with things like salary and numbers.
		The magic wand, brother, is numbers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Numbers.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Just numbers of officers.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And that are paid well enough to live in the Silicon Valley, to live here in LA. That's hilarious.
unidentified		Right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No one's paid well enough to live in Silicon Valley.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, millionaires are moving out.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And that's where I grew up.
		And if I wasn't embedded there as a family member, I couldn't have afforded to stay.
		And I had great, great wardens come in and do fantastic work that didn't want to leave Silicon Valley, but they're like, I can't buy a house here.
		I've got to go to Butte County or I've got to go to Shasta County.
		I've got to get in the woods a little bit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Drive an hour to work.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So has there been discussion?
		Has anybody brought this up?
		Dan Crenshaw was not aware of this when I discussed it with him when he was talking about federally legalizing marijuana.
		It's not just about...
		saying it's okay for kids.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's about mitigating these problems that you have with cartels, because when there is an illegal opportunity to sell something that there's a demand for, then the criminals Exactly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And has there been discussion, like, to someone to bring this up, like, this is one of the primary problems with having marijuana federally illegal, with California having it state legal, that there is this massive confusion and this, you know, diminishing of penalties in California with growing illegally.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		There totally is.
		And, you know, you've got the opposite ends of the spectrum.
		And here's what we're learning with regulation.
		And I've always said this.
		I said, look, if we're going to regulate, and we need to regulate to stop this black market, Let's do it smart.
		You know, let's, for one, everything we really tried to push here in California was regulate legitimate cannabis the correct way, keep people safe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Test it.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Test it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Make sure those pesticides, the cartel pesticides aren't right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, man.
		And as long as people aren't hurting themselves or other people, they're not destroying waterways, we're not getting in gunfights over it, great.
		You know, no problem.
		But for like the, you know, the outdoor trespassing with these cartels, let's take that funding and put more effort into stopping that.
		You know, let's not water it down to misdemeanors and infractions and do things like that.
		And, you know, it's and even we can even take cannabis out of the equation, Joe, from the standpoint of I remember a few years ago, I was quoted by the Associated Press of saying, if cherry tomatoes were so desired on the black market and were illegal and people were paying four thousand dollars a pound for cherry tomatoes, we'd be having gunfights if cherry tomatoes were so desired on the black market and were illegal and people were paying four thousand dollars a pound for cherry tomatoes, we'd be having gunfights over cherry tomatoes and having banned poisons You know, because of the black market.
		So you can take, you know, cannabis even out of the equation and look at the environmental impacts and look at the public safety, but we have to do something to regulate this thing uniformly across the board, and we have to break the black market.
		But what I've seen, and I go into the last chapter of my new book, Hidden Work, extensively on this, is what are the challenges moving forward after seeing regulation in play for two years?
		Boots on the ground, watching it, and having a great relationship with legitimate cannabis growers.
		And I'll tell you a few stories that really opened my eyes and got us unified, right?
		Because the whole thing is we need to be unified on this concept.
		Not polarized left or right, anti-cannabis, pro-cannabis.
		Let's get unified environmental safety, public safety, all of it.
		But because of how we've regulated and the licensing fees and the protocol and everything else, we've had all of these black market growers in the 215 days that wanted to get legal and saw everything coming and the cost to do it and being on Big Brother's radar or law enforcement's radar.
		And they backed out.
		Like in Humboldt County, we had, I want to say, in the better part of 10,000 to 50,000 growers ready to regulate, and we barely got 1,000.
		And they went, you know, I can't afford to go through this permitting process.
		I can't afford the delays, so I'm just going to go back on the black market.
		I'm not going to be on the radar.
		And that has to stop if we're going to regulate, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		The thing that was really interesting, and I never saw this coming, but when we were about to roll out Prop 64 and it had been voted for recreational and the medical laws were tightening up, I was the first law enforcement guy, being from a marijuana enforcement team, to go into these California Grower Association-hosted grower meetings.
		And my first one was in Santa Cruz, right over the hill from my place, right?
		And I mean, I'm in the, you know, I'm in the BDUs, the camo bottoms, the polo.
		I'm going into my, you know, my training attire for Met.
		And the look on 500 Grover's faces when I walked into that meeting, just like, what's he doing here?
		Conflict of interest.
		He's working us.
		He's a guy's watching our license plates.
		And I'm just like, guys, everybody breathe.
		I'm going to tell you a story.
		I'm going to show you a PowerPoint.
		It's going to be graphic.
		I'm not here to work anybody.
		I'm here to unify.
		Just hear what I have to say.
		No judgment.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Were these guys aware of how big the situation was before you showed them that?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		I would have thought so.
		Because they're in the industry, right?
		They know weed better than just about anybody.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're high all the time.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		They're not seeing the cartel.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're not paying attention.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're just growing pot.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's all.
		I didn't see that guy.
		Was that kind of trail camera?
		Why's he got a backpack, like 300 pounds of pipe?
		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Explain that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		These guys literally would back in hundreds and hundreds of yards of pipe and of tubing for hoses on their back.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Oh, they're tough.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've got photos in the new book on trail cam with felt on their feet, covering their tracks with these sea bags, 100 plus pounds, and a spool of pipe going up, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People don't know how hard that is to do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if these guys just took a legit job, they'd be like the best employees you'd ever have.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Oh, they would.
		They would, man.
		They're tough.
		And they're, I mean, to look at the environment they live in for six months, man.
		They're all outdoors.
		But I was at this meeting, and I gave the presentation.
		I talked about it, and it was crazy to see a look of shock on these grower groups' faces.
		I mean, some women were in tears.
		Some of the guys were just, like, pissed off and pumping their fists, and they're like, that's bullshit.
		We are not about that.
		We're not about doing anything bad with our water.
		We like our wildlife.
		We just want to grow cannabis.
		We want to be regulated, you know?
		And...
		It was such a turnaround, you know, from the traditional relationship between law enforcement and the cannabis world.
		And to be the one guy there with all of the growing community there and then go from complete horror that I was there as an adversary or judgment or anything of that or, you know, to...
		To do anything negative from an enforcement standpoint, to suddenly having real talks of what was going out.
		And I could kind of see the authenticity, the genuineness on some of their faces, the way they reacted to my slides, to the videos.
		And so when I left that first meeting, I remember I just got flooded in my patrol truck.
		And I had Apollo with me, my little lab, and she's an icebreaker.
		I thought, well, it could be an interesting meeting.
		I should have the dog for pets, you know?
		And she jumped in, and all these growers were coming to my truck, and I'm packing up my stuff, and I'm like, wow, this is weird.
		And it was all these farmer supervisors from all over the state, Mendocino County, up in the Emerald Triangle, Santa Cruz, and they're just giving me their cards.
		I go, hey, Lieutenant, I have workers.
		I have resources.
		We will hike in and clean up a grow with you.
		Let us help the Met team.
		Let us help the cannabis program.
		Whatever we can do, and no charge.
		And that was genuine, man.
		I was really, really taken back by that in a positive way.
		And I realized if we get the legitimate farmers on our side, and they're aware of this, they will help market that message.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Also, they have money.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And they have money.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the legitimate farmers are making a lot of money.
		That would be a great way for, you know, I mean, tax-wise.
		I mean, there's extremely high taxes on cannabis as it is.
		But if we could allocate that taxes to you guys, that would be incredible.
		Where's the money going?
		Let's have a certain percentage of it designated for wardens.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That's starting to happen, too, because now that we've had a couple of years and we're seeing some of the regulatory funding and the taxes trickle back, I'm in contact with my team all the time.
		I still get to see them periodically and train and do things like that and really give them a shout-out for all the amazing risks they're taking and the work they're doing and promote their message of what they're out there doing.
		But the money's starting to come back to us now.
		So we're starting to get equipment.
		We're starting to get more bodies.
		We're starting to get overtime funding so the ridiculous long hours our small team works, they're compensated for.
		That just happened literally within a month or two of being on the show with you.
		So we're seeing some positives from that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Got it with those rates raised.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We're trying.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We're trying.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Alert the press.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		40% is disgusting.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Hey, this coffee's awesome, by the way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Shout out to Laird Hamilton.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Laird Hamilton, man.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		I'm not even a coffee drinker, and I'm loving this stuff.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's great stuff.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		I'm a convert now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It makes your mouth smack, though.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It gives you a little...
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It does.
unidentified		A little...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		You gotta clear your throat a lot.
		It's coconut oil and turmeric and all that jazz.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Healthy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Colorado was the first state to legalize it, and Washington State.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do they have similar problems?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		They still have a black market.
		And the thing right now, because we're not regulating federally, and so every state, anything that's grown stays in that state.
		Per law, right?
		But all the demand is back east in these non-regulated states where they don't grow it.
		So Colorado has an interstate black market that's done by the quasi-legitimate growers as well as the cartel elements.
		So there's still that black market thriving within the black market cannabis industry that isn't cartel public lands.
		We've got different mixes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so it's a different kind of a problem in Colorado.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they don't have as many cartel grows?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Not as many.
		They have some.
		They have some.
		I've...
		I've talked to those guys and worked with them a little bit and they do have some but again they're kind of like where I'm at Montana now Tight little growing window, you know early winters Late thaws so they don't have a very big growing season outdoors The conditions aren't prime like they are here in cali This is a giant issue that is largely undiscussed and it's one of the reasons why I was so fascinated by that podcast is that And this is one more piece of the puzzle when you're talking about border control.
		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This state in our country, this place in our country where some people want to control the border and some people don't want any borders.
		And you have to understand that this is the number one problem with the border.
		The number one problem with the border is cartel violence.
		Cartel violence, cartel crime, that's the number one problem.
		And the giant percentage of these people that are coming over and doing illegal activity are doing it because it's profitable.
		And the reason why it's profitable is because it's illegal.
		And so they can do these things and sell marijuana all over this country illegally because it's illegal.
		And if it was legal, we could regulate it.
		We could tax it.
		The money could go into schools and pay for guys like you and go to fixing this problem.
		And instead, we're playing this little stupid game where some states are legal and some states aren't.
unidentified		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And it's federally, it's still a Schedule I crime when there's millions of legitimate law-abiding, tax-paying citizens that enjoy it.
		And it's crazy.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		And to that point, you look at the discrepancy and just the inconsistency on cannabis regulation.
		Some states, some not.
		Federally not.
		But when you get to the border issue, you brought up that good point of it's not just that cartel element for this poison cannabis stuff or this toxically tainted cannabis is a better way to phrase it.
		It's the smuggling, the human trafficking.
		It's all those other crimes that methamphetamine production.
		So I get asked a lot.
		You had a great conversation with...
		With Mike Baker on this was, you know, are open borders going to work?
		And no, we've got to have some regulation.
		It's just not going to work.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, the world's not even.
		So that's why open borders aren't going to work.
		If the world was even and there was, you know, there's like...
		It's extreme crime right below us.
		And, you know, I had Ed Calderon on, who works for Mexico.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We just started dialoguing last week.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I like that guy a lot.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Good guy, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Boy, does he scare the shit out of you, though, when he tells you the stories about Mexico, about how bad it is down there.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's just an insane amount of violence that's going on down there, an insane amount of crime, and so much of it is connected to the illegal drug trade.
		And look, you're not going to kill at all if you make marijuana legal, but you would kill a percentage.
		At least it would make it a little bit better, and it would stop that.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and one of the things we get from getting that regulation, if we can stop that black market for cartel weed, we're going to save a lot of wildlife.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We're going to preserve a lot of waterways, right?
		Because all those other crimes are very heinous and very destructive, and I hate to see the human trafficking and all the meth problems and anything that relates to violence or a deterioration of a soul, but...
		I love the wild, man.
		The woods are my church.
		Yours, too.
		I mean, what you do for conservation, the elk hunting that you're doing, and all those different things.
		I mean, it's just magical out there, and it's just...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Most people just don't even know, I don't think.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		No, but I mean...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just don't get a chance to experience what it's like to actually be in the real woods.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Be in the real woods, which are getting shrinker, smaller, and smaller, and smaller, even here in Cali that has so much beauty.
unidentified		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		But I look at it this way.
		I said, look, if we lose all of our open space to a problem like this, and it compounds the problem, and we lose our wildlife and good water, you may not be in the outdoors right now.
		You might be a preservationist.
		You might be on your freaking digital device all the time and looking at wildlife through a screen.
		But if you ever do go out and you get that peace and tranquility and you get centered like we do, run a trail, hike a LA County mountain trail or open space, don't even get that far in the woods, it's just soothing.
		It brings us back to our center.
		And if the new generations that aren't getting that from the cities can get that or they can get their kids doing it or their grandkids or hear about it, But it's not there to go to.
		That to me, man, we're just not paying it forward enough.
		So this is something I got to stay on and I really appreciate you and what you stand for because of the message.
		I think just so many people don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I just think that's a big part of it.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It's just they don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's interesting to me, too, is that the allocation of resources, it's so, when you have something that's illegal, you're not getting any of that money.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And if it was legal, there's an enormous amount of money that could go to schools and fix the roads, and we can allocate it to a bunch of different- Big time.
		Ways to spend it.
		And we're not doing that.
		And the reason why is because it's illegal.
		And this crime problem is very similar to what they faced during prohibition with alcohol.
		The rise of organized crime.
		That's where they were getting their money from, because there was such a demand.
		It's really a disgusting, dumb way to approach a problem that is, in many people's ideas, a social problem.
		That money could go to so many different positive things.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and when we're perpetuating it through that reason and many others, we're basically embedding the problem in our country.
		And Ed said this, Calderon, we were dialoguing earlier this week, and he said, you know, he's kind of looked at things from the border and south and the issues coming in from the border, from the cartel front.
		He said, you know, now I'm getting wind of your book and I'm starting to analyze what you guys are fighting on the ground inside the borders in California and the rest of the country.
		He goes...
		It's embedded now.
		I mean, it's not like it's just coming across.
		I mean, the enterprise is embedded here in the nation because they have the pipeline, they have the distribution, they have a market, and they don't have to deal with the border issue.
		And they're comfortable because of exactly where we're at and what people aren't aware of.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And in California, that it's just a misdemeanor, which is even more insane.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's got to change.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's got to change.
		I mean, it should be something horrendous.
		If you actually have a background in crime...
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially particularly violent crime when you get caught doing something like that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it should be severe, severe penalty.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It should absolutely be severe.
		Now, the saving grace of that is when we get the environmental crimes that we bring from the fish and wildlife standpoint to those charges for these guys, we get it back to felony status.
		Because we had an interesting thing happen.
		As soon as all that regulation started two years ago, and those trespass grow crimes were watered down to what we're talking about, district attorneys all throughout the state said, oh man, we're not going to be able to prosecute these crimes.
		I mean, we're not going to have a jury that's sympathetic to these issues.
		Right.
		But some sheriff's departments were saying, "Hey, we know how violent these guys are.
		We know your team's been in like six gunfights, man.
		Your partner was almost killed in '05 in the first one.
		You guys take these guys head on.
		You wanna protect your wildlife, whatever." But they're not stopping.
		And it's a misdemeanor and we can't convict 'em, so we're not gonna play.
		So the backlash of those crimes being watered down, Joe, was teams stopped working at except us and like the feds.
		And not only that, DAs couldn't prosecute.
		So I remember speaking for the California District Attorney Association on this and saying guys there's a solution.
		Everybody, no matter where they sit on the cannabis spectrum, everybody hates to see Bambi dead, water poisoned.
		Everyone has a little bit of environmental passion in them on both sides of the fence.
		And that's where I say here we can unify and not worry about where we sit on the for or against.
		And if you take these water code enhancements, if you take the felony and the penal code from the banned toxics like carbofuran, if you take a streambed alteration diversion or dead wildlife or littering close to a state waterway, you stack all those up, you get all these penalties.
		And you can convict on that, you know, even in a sympathetic jury on, say, a cannabis issue.
		So we started to prosecute these cases and they started to come back.
		And it's an arduous end around.
		It's more work than we should have to do, but we're doing it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, when they find these cartel members and they bust them and they do prosecute them for these felonies, what happens?
		They don't get deported, right?
		They stay in this country and they go to jail?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It depends.
		They'll go to jail here if it's a sanctuary-type state scenario and they're going to stay in our justice system and they will do jail time here.
		If we're working with ICE and our feds and Homeland Security, especially ICE agents, and they are classified as a deportable felon, they will get deported.
		They'll get on a watch list.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did they get deported to jail or did they just get freed?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're supposed to go back and be in custody over on that side.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Does that always happen?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Air quotes.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Supposed to.
		Supposed to.
		Operative word.
		Supposed to.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Especially if there's someone who's high up in the cartel or is making a good amount of money for the cartel, it's highly likely that with a lot of corruption they might go free.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Very, very true.
		And the cases happen where we've, you know, got some of these cartel growers deported.
		And a week later, they're in a different group in Northern California.
		We've had some situations where we've seen the same guy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		For 20 times.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		No joke.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you've busted them how many times?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We did, or another team did, or Forest Service did.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they've been busted 20 times?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they're still here?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And they're still here.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Holy shit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What a broken system.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's the jacked, right?
		And what you just said, it's like, because of the money involved.
		And we know, and I go into this and hit more a little bit, what I can talk about under, you know, just what we learned without putting names out there is, it's $4,000 to $7,000 for these grow organizations in these cartel cells to bring their best growers back across.
		And it's a drop in the bucket.
		And they don't even consider the border a border.
		They consider it like a speed bump on the 405 freeway.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So how do they get guys in?
		Do they use boats?
		Do they use tunnels?
unidentified		All of it.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		All of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Boats, I was always thinking, like, how the fuck are you going to protect the border when you just get a boat and just kind of like go past and pull in somewhere in California and hop out?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, something we learned recently, and it's been about the last five years...
		And it was really starting to hit the California coastline and the Oregon coastline heavy when we started our unit in 2013 was these panga boats.
		What's that word, panga?
		It's called panga, P-A-N-G-A, called a panga boat.
		And they're inside the Mazelan Peninsula and they're loaded up with 6,000 pounds of tainted weed but grown in Mexico.
		Same stuff they're doing here with the same toxics or meth.
		Or people.
		Or both.
		And a couple of growers or transporters and they'll run this boat.
		It's a one-way boat.
		And there's a lot of money in it.
		There's big four-stroke motors.
		It's painted kind of the color of the ocean so it's hard to pick up from the air.
		It goes kind of fast.
		It's made to carry big loads.
		And they'll take that thing around the peninsula.
		They'll fuel up offshore somewhere off the San Diego coastline, maybe 100 miles out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jamie's got one up there.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		There it is.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Nice, Jamie.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow, that's a lot of weed.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That's a lot.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I got some pretty cool pictures in the book.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So these guys just pull the boat in, and then, this is obviously one that got busted, and then they just have someone waiting for them, and they unload that stuff into trucks.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And they got a distribution network ready to go, and then that boat's just disposed of.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And again, ladies and gentlemen, this is all because of an illegal demand.
		Because it's illegal.
		This stuff wouldn't be profitable if we were growing it here in the United States and if the only way you would sell it at a store was if it was regulated and licensed and you knew that it was tested and it was all grown here.
		You had a certificate of where the farmer was.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Take that element out of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you take that element completely out of it.
		And they would...
		But, you know, obviously they're still selling fentanyl and all sorts of other shit that we don't want legal.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's so dark.
		It's such a confusing...
		It was a...
		Bang a boat found with $18 million worth of weed.
		That is a lot of weed, because weed is not expensive.
		How has a boat got $18 million worth of weed on it?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That's a heavy load.
		That's a typical load, too, Joe.
		And that was probably one of the Monterey boats we helped on, because we interdicted a lot there.
		Yeah, it's a daunting task when you look at...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That dude on the right, I say just shoot him.
		Look at his face.
		That guy looks super dangerous.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Very angry.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, very angry.
unidentified		Very mad.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Very angry.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Not tried and happy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, obviously, I'm kidding about shoot him, but their situation is just as grave.
		I mean, you're living in Mexico, and you're fucked, and there's no way for you to get by legally.
		And you're a young man, you get recruited into one of these cartels, and next thing you know, you've been in for 10 years, and you've committed a few murders, and you're involved in drug trafficking.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And you're down that slope.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're down that slope.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It's done.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do you get out of that?
		You really don't.
		There's no avenues for them.
		There's no established...
		Community outreach centers like, hey, cartel members, why don't you just grow cherry tomatoes instead?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Or, you know, there's no positive reinforcement for people that give a shit, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's horrible.
		Yeah.
		I mean, and a lot of that, again, is backed by illegal drug sales.
		If you don't have illegal drug sales, you don't have nearly as much profit or incentive, and you have less of that.
		And it sounds counterintuitive for people to make things illegal that are legal, or make things legal that are illegal, and you would stop the crime.
		But that is really how it works.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It is, and I always look at it this way.
		I said, look, regardless of where you sit on the emotional spectrum on this, against cannabis, for cannabis, let's all look at the issue of environmental purity, safety in America, and really be real as to what's going to help the problem.
		And you hit it on the head when you said, well, yeah, there's all that mess stuff going on and this, that.
		And there is, but I'm a realist and we've got to do something right now.
		And I think if we're going to federally regulate to any type of consistency, we're still many years off from that.
		So what are we going to do in the meantime if that's going to happen?
		We've still got to deal with this grow mess going on in predominantly California and all this stuff getting out to our public and being tainted.
		We still have to deal with the meth issue and the gun running and all of that.
		And knowing that it's embedded in our country, we need to have people aware of it.
		And not only law enforcement, but bring that thin green line a little bigger with conservationists like yourself and people that are in the know, people that are in the outdoors, and just putting the word out.
		I mean, it's crazy that 10 years have passed since the first book and 10 years have passed since we did those three good years of Wild Justice TV.
		But in that interim, it's been a specialty of ours.
		We built a team that's noticed now for being pretty innovative and progressive and non-traditional, but putting up some pretty good numbers when it comes to the environmental damage and the public safety issue and how much we took out and bad guys we caught and what canines did, especially Canine Phoebe. but putting up some pretty good numbers when it comes But we're only dropping the bucket.
		It's one team out of part of the state and other teams are doing some stuff too at the federal level and state level and we're only getting maybe 50% of this stuff if we're lucky.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it really that much?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		50% is high.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That's optimistic.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now again, magic wand.
		I'll give you the magic wand.
		John, do whatever you want.
		How many more officers would you hire?
		How big would you make the task force?
		How much would you branch out your operation?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		I'd make the tactical unit, the MET team of the tacticians going just after the cartel front that we formed.
		I'd triple or quadruple it.
		Have a team, maybe four teams in the state.
		Have them all trained together, have them all uniformly committed to tactics and training, because it is quite advanced what some of our guys are doing, from a sniper team to tracking to all the stuff we get into.
		Not only for this job, but for anything else we come up with from an American public safety threat.
		After 9-11, stuff changed.
		And we hadn't gotten into this grow mess yet, Joe, to the level of the cartel front.
		But I knew back then, game wardens are going to have to be tactically trained as well as any other law enforcement officer.
		And we're going to have to have our own tactical unit because we're doing some pretty crazy stuff for wildlife crimes.
		You know, and then Homeland Security on a potential terrorist threat.
		You need to have tactical units that are there with every other agency and military teams because we're all thin in numbers.
		And if something big goes down, I need to know that the sniper team we built with MET and these tacticians can go in and integrate with San Jose PD SWAT. They can integrate with military personnel, you know, wherever.
		Same type of deal.
		And we've gone the same direction with some of that good training and found the right people to do that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It is crazy that you guys are required to do that.
		I mean, it's sort of like asking a teacher to also be a kickbox or something.
		Right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is to be a game warden and then all of a sudden you're involved in narcotics trafficking and cartel operations and getting shot at.
		And you're bringing in dogs.
		These dogs that you're training.
		Phoebe was very interesting listening to how effective.
		Are you using Belgian Malinois that we're using?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, primarily our main dog is a Belgian Mal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Those are powerful dogs, Mal.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		They are amazing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're so smart.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You look in their eyes and they're like, hey man.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You can see it, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're like, hey man, how you doing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They're not like looking at a poodle.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		No, they're not like looking at our labs.
		They look right through you.
		Looking at you with that sweet little face.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, those dogs.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Tongue out.
		Yeah.
		The thing that's cool about these dogs, and I can't talk enough about it, man, because no matter where you sit, everybody loves a good dog story.
		And, you know, some people say, well, dual purpose, you got to bite guys.
		What's with that?
		Is it, you know, really aggressive?
		And when you look at it, it's a lifesaver for everybody.
		It's a lifesaver for us.
		It's a lifesaver for the suspect, too, because it usually involves a potential gunfight that the dog basically, you know, alleviated because she or he was there.
		So we got our canine program in agency going kind of full speed around 2008-ish.
		We have three levels of canine.
		We have like the companion ride-along canine that kind of does everything with you.
		She's never going to bite anybody and that's Apollo.
		That's like my lab, right?
		And then we have the detection-level dog, and most of those are Labradors, like Marshall, like Apollo, because labs have such amazing noses.
		They really can hold on scent.
		They can train to detect many scents, and we certify them in different things.
		And then there's the Phoebes, the Belgian Mals or the Shepherds, and really it's become mostly Mals now in our agency.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why Mals or Shepherds?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		They just do better in the heat.
		Shepherds are longer-haired, and we're in 100-degree weather.
		We're on long hikes.
		We're unsupported, and those dogs might have to sit quietly after hiking eight miles and sit in a prone quietly while we're watching and observing and stalking in on suspects to make an apprehension and arrest safely and hopefully avoid a gunfight.
		And we've also found with the mouths, like I said, they just hold up better on average, and there's certainly exceptions to that.
		But when we got our dual purpose program back on track, these are dogs that will bite when they need to on command, but they have great noses, so they'll still detect wonderfully, you know, finding evidence, finding tainted weed, whatever the case may be, a firearm, a bear gallbladder.
		All of that, but they'll also, you know, like Phoebe was nicknamed the fur missile because when it was time for her to go to work and some guy was going to pull a weapon on us, she was all business.
		And the cool thing about a dog like her, and Mike Ritland and I got into this on his show especially, and he was blown away.
		He said, I've never heard of a dog in a domestic law enforcement team that's had like, she had 116 apprehension bites in her career.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		116?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		No joke, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So there's 116 cartel guys out there telling stories about this dog.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're saying, no more perro.
		I've been bit too many times.
		But the cool thing about that was the standpoint of life she saved.
		And she also arrested another 800 to 900 that she didn't have to buy in her career.
		That's a lot.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How many of you guys arrested people?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		When I retired, we were over 1,000.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		In five and a half years.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		All grow-ups?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		All grow-ups.
		Yeah, these are all grow-ups or related to grow-ups.
		And these are all guys that are armed, all guys that have knives or guns.
		You're not getting bit unless you're a deadly force threat on some level or a significant threat.
		So, yeah, it's been a lot of guys.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So that number that you're talking about, 10,000, that really is conservative.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		I think very much so, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That is so insane because if you fly over like Humboldt or any of these areas, particularly Medicino, Northern California, the density of the forest, the public land out there, there's a lot of land.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		There's a lot of land and a lot of potential we're not seeing.
		And that's still thriving.
		So when you look at Phoebe as a canine and you go, well, let's see, she was in the field doing these type of operations for about seven or eight years.
		And yeah, that's great from a record standpoint and numbers and the life she saved, but it gives you like a snapshot of the issue.
		How many guys did we not catch that were out there armed that way, that we weren't involved in?
		We weren't involved.
		And the dogs have just saved lives, man.
		They have saved...
		Phoebe, I go into this in the new book especially, in 2012, but right before our team started, Phoebe saved my life, Brian's life, and all these other operators in Santa Clara County in Silicon Valley, right where I grew up, because she engaged a guy that was pulling a Russian automatic pistol on me and I was the support for Brian.
		I was basically his canine handler or support guy.
		And Brian had to deal with this other grower's partner that had a big Taurus Judge revolver on his hip, and he was pulling it.
		So he goes for that guy and says, John, just take my dog.
		And Phoebe's on the bite, and he's biting this guy in the calf.
		And this guy's nose down, and we don't know he's got this weapon.
		And I start to see it coming out.
		And I get on him and I do what I need to do with some physical control and some strikes and whatnot to get the gun out of his hand.
		But had she not been on that guy on a bite show, that gun's turned on me at five feet.
		I'm engaged, all the riflemen behind me.
		I'm in a gunfight again.
		We've been in too many of those already.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How many gunfights have you been in?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Our team's been in six, and I've been on the ground for four out of the six that our guys have been involved in, and they've all been around this particular problem.
		We had a lot less once the team got formalized, and we started using dogs, but we still had two during the window of the team being operational that we couldn't avoid.
		And dogs played a big part in that, as I go into the new stories.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It is so crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, when I was listening to that podcast with Steve Rinella, the Meat Eater podcast with you, and I was like, I can't believe that there's not some sort of another division of law enforcement that gets involved in this and that we're requiring game wardens to essentially become something completely different.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, we still have other law enforcement agencies involved.
		Forest Service dedicates a lot of people to it because a lot of this is on federal land, so we work it hand-in-hand.
		Some sheriff's departments still work it.
		BLM works it.
		But very few agencies have a dedicated team within their unit just for this problem.
		And it was a big step for us.
		And even though it's not a traditional thing, like we kind of talked about when we started, all of us that are doing it want to do it.
		I mean, everything we do, like I said, is important.
		We'll never negate anything a wildlife officer game warden has to do.
		But for us that see this problem as the most severe, which we all acknowledge...
		And, you know, we're those kind of team members that have the military, the law enforcement, tactical experience.
		We're just wired for this type of stuff.
		And we know, I feel like, you know, in 28 years of being a game warden, it felt like a 10-year career.
		And even though we were certainly underpaid, like I mentioned, it's a dream job.
		It was really awesome to...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because you're really doing a difference.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		I think we're making a difference, exactly.
		I think every case we make matters.
		And even though it's an uphill battle with a whole regulation debate and stuff, every grow site we interdict and stop and take that tainted cannabis out of the market or restore that waterway and clean up that grow site.
		And we clean them all up now that we go into.
		And the other agencies now support us and clean up with their own resources.
		Because game wardens have got so legitimate in working with other agencies that are non-conservation groups, sheriff's departments, right?
		DEA task force type units.
		And they're like, okay, we agree.
		We see...
		We see the value in reclamating and cleaning up these grows to the point where Obama's drug czar addressed a lot of us when my team was starting up and our group was working heavy.
		And it was a real compliment, but finally, more importantly, it got the news out where he said, I want this model rewarded, what Fish and Wildlife is doing with this cleanup.
		I mean, you guys are arresting guys.
		That's great.
		You're taking guns away.
		Obviously, somebody's going to be saved because these guys are violent and deadly.
		And you're eradicating the plants.
		It's fantastic.
		Keep it out of the market.
		They're poisoned.
		But unless you're doing that reclamation component, I know it's dirty and arduous and tiring and it takes resources.
		We're not making the biggest dent.
		So then funding started to reflect from the federal level through DEA funding, rewards for reclamation.
		And that was like one of these, man.
		It literally took 12, 13 years to get there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So when you guys have a situation like the first one you found in 2004 and you stumble upon this dry creek and there's all this debris and there's toxic chemicals, what kind of a cleanup is involved here and how long does something like that take before you can bring that creek back to where those steelhead can run and to where it's supposed to be?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We're looking on an average one full day and we're looking at having to have a helicopter for a whole day and having to have anywhere between, you know, ideally 12 to maybe more officers in there.
		And a lot of it will have some volunteer groups coming in.
		We have a program in California Fish and Wildlife called the NRVP program, the Natural Resource Volunteer Program.
		And when we started our pilot program in 2013, we did an operation called Pristine to test this theory if we could have this full-time team being effective.
		And if it wasn't for like 40 of these volunteers that are helicopter trained to go in with us and do the cleanup, we would have reclamated less than half of what we were able to do.
		But when we do a reclamation, it's probably more expensive than doing the tactical operation planning and the takedown for the first part of the phase.
		because you know helicopters are thousands of dollars an hour in blade time and you're bagging up trash you're getting dirty um some of these water lines like you saw in the spools and i told steven on his show and mike on his show as well with meat eater and mike drop that you know we tracked a water line almost three miles once that was a lot of freaking pipe it It went, I mean, the water source is in Merced County on the Pacheco Pass Highway in my old home district.
		And it went all the way down Pacheco Pass onto this private ranch where the grow started.
		And it was, I think it was like 2.85 miles.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Hand laid.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Hand laid.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And buried under like, you know, forest roads or fire roads you'd see on like a, like a Tone Ranch.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		18 inches underground buried across the road.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		So it would have been embedded.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ditch for three miles.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a lot of work.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It's a lot of work.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Those guys are fucking up.
		They should do a real job.
		They would make a lot of money.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Change it.
		Fix it.
		Do something different.
		But the point of it was we have to pick up all that pipe.
		So how long is it going to take two of my guys?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Three miles of pipe, 18 inches of ground.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Forever.
		That was a couple days.
		On an average one, we're going to go a quarter to half a mile at least.
		And even though that black pipe isn't poisoning the water directly, once all the poisons are taken out, That water line is an infrastructure piece that it's their black gold.
		I kind of use the term black gold when I start teaching to this, that if you leave that water diversion in place and you take out their whole grow site, you know, you take out their camp and all that, but all they got to do is reconnect a water line and put a 10 up and bring in seeds and get their little camouflage system going.
		Very small investment to put a grow back there.
		And one of the things that really got other agencies convinced that we need to reclimate, too, the way we sold it is not only on an environmental protection standpoint, because other agencies care about the environment, but it's not a mandate.
		They're not funded for it.
		But it was something like, it's also deterrence.
		Because when we debrief some of these guys we caught, these upper levels, and I dive into this in the new book especially...
		I finally got to ask the questions to these upper level cartel guys running grows, running meth, running all.
		And I said, you know, it's interesting.
		We notice that when we eradicate a grow site, traditionally, back before we change this process, and we just take out the plants and we leave, we notice there's a grow like there, back there, next year, or maybe two seasons again, and it's the same group.
		And the answer I got was, well, we know how taxed you guys are and how much resources you expend and you can't possibly get all of our grows, so we'll try it.
		And 50% of the time, even though it was rated like two years before and it's on your radar, we'll actually get away with a harvest.
		And I asked, well, if we start doing this reclamation and we take all your stuff out and restore the waterway and move the tents and just completely sanitize the site, let all the natural growth come back, preserve the creek.
		He said, we're not going to come back to that.
		Too much effort.
		We're going to bring tens of thousands of dollars in new infrastructure.
		We're going to have to run a whole other water line.
		It's already on your radar, you know, from a couple of years ago when you guys raided it.
		That's not a good business investment in a business model for us to take that chance.
		And we kind of knew that because we were seeing the trend on the ground, but to hear it from this guy's mouth and validate what we suspected and have it come back as true and all the other things I got to learn, I mean, just, it changed the game for us.
		And that happened, I'm going to say about a year to a year and a half right before we started our unit.
		So we went in building the Met team in 2013 with this mindset in place and, uh, um, Nate Arnold, who was a district captain at the time, my partner in building this, and I'm going to give a shout out right now to Mike Carrion, who was our chief of the law enforcement division, and one of my mentors and friends way back in the academy in 92. He greenlit us to test this program and take all of us out of patrol in an already depleted force.
		So you can imagine there was some resistance.
		There was some middle management and executive staffers like, Why are we doing this?
		We're not supposed to be doing marijuana work.
		It's drugs.
		You're cleaning up grow sites, chasing bad guys.
		And Mike said, no, I believe in you guys.
		Test it, document it, and see what we've got to do with this.
		And we were six weeks into a three-month test program, and he is the chief and all the deputy chiefs had talked about what we were doing out there, and we were now documenting these insane numbers of what was happening.
		And he said, we're done.
		I want it full-time by January 1st, 2014. Get your testing.
		Do your interviews.
		Get the protocol.
		You guys are leaving patrol.
		We're going to have this many spots.
		And you're going to work straight for headquarters, straight line, kind of like a military special ops team that just works for the top.
		They don't really have boundaries of where they go.
		And that's kind of the approach we needed.
		We needed to do a global, statewide approach.
		We had to break tradition.
		So, to your point, we like what we do because you said it best.
		We're making a difference.
		Every little grow we get out of circulation makes a difference.
		But it is.
		It's an uphill battle because we know we're not getting them all.
		And we know it's not going away anytime soon.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It must have been very interesting to talk to the cartel members and have them say to you that they know that you guys are taxed.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, shit.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, they know.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		They know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They know your operation.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, how do they know?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		They just, they look at the number, and, I mean, we get so little information because they're so quiet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How long do you hold these guys for?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When you're talking to them, how many days do you get with them?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We got an interview.
		Just one?
		This was one with DEA and a bunch of other officials and multiple interpreters, and I got to sit in on it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you get to bring Phoebe?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Phoebe wasn't there on that one.
		But I do have a good Phoebe story for you.
		Many of them, actually, but a good one.
		And it was from that one where she saved another gunfight from happening.
		But the thing about it was we don't get to talk to them very often.
		When we do, it's very rare that they'll talk.
		They're put together in an organization where they don't really know last names.
		They only report to one person.
		A lot of times they don't know who they're working next to.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So it's compartmentalized.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Very compartmentalized.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And they do this to make sure that people cannot go back.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Cannot talk, cannot reveal very much information.
		I know a first name of my boss who's my supplier.
		This was someone that was taken on other cartel crimes at high level, but not a violent guy.
		He was very candid and straightforward.
		He was responsible for a lot of stuff in California, and I can say that much, and other parts of the country.
		But what he revealed was just validating what we knew.
		But it gave us tools to progress and learn from that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
		When you do get that information from him, did that allow you to get more resources or to confirm, like, hey, look, this is what we know.
		We need to pull out all this infrastructure.
		We need to pull out these pipes.
		If we don't, they're going to come back.
		This is going to make a difference.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It did.
		And when we formed up the new team, we said, here's how we're going to approach this.
		We're going to help agencies.
		We're going to do our own missions.
		We're going to help other agencies that are doing the work.
		But we're going to do it under the caveat that we're going to do a three-prong approach.
		We're going to apprehend as diligently as we can and catch these guys through our dogs, through our tactics, because just chasing them around and knowing they're going to get away, there's no deterrence in that.
		And yeah, it's risky.
		And yeah, it's dangerous.
		But at least I know if I take them into custody, even for a day, five days, whatever, maybe they're deported, maybe they're not.
		That's one really skilled guy doing a lot of environmental damage that's at least out of circulation for a while.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Right?
		So that had to happen.
		We're going to eradicate every tainted plant.
		And 90% of these grows, they're all tainted with this carbofuran.
		90%?
		90%.
		It started 10 years ago.
		It was about one out of two.
		And by the time those stats were trickling in at the end of 2018 and I was compiling for the team, I'm like, oh my gosh, man.
		We had Carbofuran in like 89 or 90% of every grow site we went into on these trespass grows.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		But then the third thing we had to do, and we would only want to work with agencies that agreed, is reclimate.
		It's going to be dirty, guys.
		We might have to come back a different day, but give us your helicopter team.
		Give us some bodies.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But there's no specific reclamation group?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It seems like you should have an agency that does this.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we don't have that in place yet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In this original creek that you guys had in 2004, did you guys re-divert the water?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We did.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so it's all the steelheader flowing again?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it took two years to get the fish back on that one.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And that was literally...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What numbers of fish do you guys think you lost in that?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Oh man, I mean, the steelhead are federally listed right now and they're valued at like $20,000 to $30,000 a fish.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why do they allow catch and release of that?
		I wanted to ask you as a game warden.
		I'm not a fan of catch and release.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You don't like the catch and release?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's weird.
		I like fishing for food.
		I mean, it's like I don't want to shoot a deer with a blow dart either and just go, look, I got one, ha ha, and then let them wake up, Jesus, and get out of there.
		No, I'm in it for food.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, look, I know steelhead fishing is fun.
		I know it is.
		It looks awesome.
		I've never caught steelhead, but I've caught salmon, I've caught trout.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Oh, man, they're amazing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure.
		They're gorgeous fish.
		But catching them and shoving a hook in their head and then letting them go just seems stupid.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's counterintuitive.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't eat them at all?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People don't eat steelhead at all?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Well, if they're listed and they're so threatened, the way to keep steelhead fishing going, like in California, is, okay, guys, you can catch them, but you've got to release them.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That's so stupid.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Now, what about Oregon and Pacific Northwest?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do they keep them there?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		In some places, they do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is it a good eating fish?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a rainbow trout, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A derivative?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but it's spawning.
		It's coming from the ocean.
		It's going upriver.
		It's spawning going back to the ocean.
		So that's what makes it a steelhead.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's an awesome fish.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Apparently they fight like crazy and it's just incredible to catch.
unidentified		They do.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		They're really natural.
		They're tough.
		Yeah, and you just look at how sensitive they are, and in that one creek in the 2004 grow, that was the worst scenario that could have happened.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That they hit the headwaters of the start of this spawning channel that went to a creek called Coyote Creek that actually went all the way into San Jose to the South Bay of the ocean.
		So that pollution situation from those banned poisons was just decimating, you know, three to five miles of creek.
		So we had to take that waterway diversion out.
		We had to clean it all up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do you clean it up?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Net it up.
		Bag all the trash.
		Pull all the water lines.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What about the pesticides?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How do you clean that up?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		If it's banned, we've got to basically get a hazmat team to pull it out.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We've got to put it in hazardous material buckets, cap it real carefully, and then just get it out safely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What about the stuff that gets into the ground?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You've got to remove the soil.
		You've got to go through it.
		And we can't always do that.
		And something that's interesting, and we get into this especially in book two, is there's a group called IERC out of UC Davis, Dr. Murad Gabriel and his colleagues.
		And they're going in as an NGO, and they're the scientists that really validated the devastation these banned poisons do when the Pacific fissure that was almost completely wiped out as a threatened species in California was linked to DTO grow poisons.
		And that kind of came to surface about five or six years ago.
		And then kind of the light bulb went off that, hey, this is an outside scientific group of an NGO, a non-governmental organization, that's working hand-in-hand with California Department of Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Forest Service.
		But they're showing the devastation of this stuff in the soil.
		And in the water, well after the grove's eradicated, it's not just, you know, in and around the plants.
		What's going on?
		So some of these sites, if you don't do a complete, you know, soil overhaul and, you know, get all that lining out of the creeks, it's not going to be completely restored.
		And sometimes that can take, you know, we might not have the resources to get back in there for a year or half a year.
		We always try to get it before the end of the year when the rains come, but it's not always possible.
		It just can't happen.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you were saying that these pesticides dissipate off the plant somewhat.
		Somewhere.
		Is that the case with ground water in the ground as well?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		They dissipate toxicity somewhat everywhere, but they don't dissipate to the point where they're not harmful on some level.
		So as a case in point, I have a slide I show on my PowerPoint that actually came from IERC, and we've seen this multiple times.
		You have a scientist, and he's in the big rubber nitrile gloves, the long sleeve, the face protection.
		The hat, and he's got a gray fox carcass that right next to a plant in the soil that he ingested this stuff, right, on a tainted plant, and the fox died within minutes.
		And then there's a golden eagle that comes in after, and it could have been days after, we don't know, you know, and they're carry-on feeders, right?
		So the golden eagle lands, starts just picking just on the surface, on the body of this, doesn't even get into the carcass.
		And here's a dead golden eagle in the photo, right next to the...
		It's like, man, just put a radioactive time bomb in that animal.
		I mean, that's a hot carcass.
		And that was days after, you know, when the scientists are coming back in.
		So, dissipated or not, it has its effects.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We see that in California with rat poison and eagle...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not eagles, owls as well, right?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Very much so, yeah.
		That's why getting all those toxics, even the ones that are illegal...
		Out of areas where owls or any type of raptors or carry-on feeders can get to.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I know people don't like coyotes, but boy, that's the best way to keep those rodents and things under control is coyotes.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It's a balance.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it really is.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		It's all part of the cycle.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I know people love their little dogs and cats and stuff, but I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about it.
		I was like, you need those things, man.
		Those coyotes are important.
		As gross as they are.
		Little criminals.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Little criminals.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Around the neighborhood.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Little criminals in the neighborhood.
		But, man, you hit it.
		You've got to have that balance.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You know?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		And like we all say on the conservation model, everything needs a little bit of hunting control.
unidentified		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You know?
		It does.
		The coyotes need it when they're overpopulated.
		You know?
		You know, you say it many times in the message with your guests.
		People need to understand that we're helping wildlife as hunters, as conservationists.
		We're helping keep what we have.
		And there's no way we can not manage them because we've already developed so much and taken so much wild space, right?
		And we've encroached.
		And we've had, you know, a population of mountain lions that's ebbed and flowed and climbed.
		And we've had this and we've had that.
		Yeah, we have to be involved.
		But this particular problem that we're facing has so many far-reaching effects that we don't even see.
		You know, as a hunter, it's just disgusting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's so counterintuitive to people that may be animal rights activists or vegans that hunters are responsible for the reason why we have such large populations of these animals and wildlife protection and How much money comes from hunting tags and then recreational firearm sales.
		I mean, that's really the majority of the money that goes to preserve these wild lands and keep these animals alive.
		And when you tell that to animal rights people or vegans, they panic.
		It's like, listen, the reason why these animals exist, the reason why they're protected is because people hunt them.
		It sounds so counterintuitive, but...
		You know, you were talking about Rocky Mountain Elk, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Federation has done an amazing job of repopulating areas like now they have successful populations in places like Kentucky, where they were eradicated at one point in time.
		They had been extirpated.
		And not because of us, but because of market hunting back in the turn of the century, in the 1800s.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When people, you know, needed food and they didn't have refrigerators.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you would shoot something and it was only good for a few days and they would go out and shoot some more and they would sell that food and that food was these wild animals and it was completely unregulated hunting.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it just hammered them.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's horrific.
		I mean, we know about it with the buffalo because we've all seen those horrific photographs of these mounds of skulls.
		But, I mean, that was the case with antelope and deer, and they've done such an amazing job that now there's more deer in this country than there were when Columbus was here.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It's interesting when you bring up elk because of, you know, being a worldwide hunter myself and doing it for so long.
		I've never taken an elk myself, but I've been on these amazing elk hunts where I've guided, you know, people really deserving of getting their first elk as an example.
		And you'll like this story being a fellow, you know, an elk guy.
		We had a tag in Santa Clara County that was for one bull for a tule elk.
		And one thing we have in this state especially is we have some of the best tule elk on the planet.
		They're beautiful, smaller species and just a beautiful animal.
		And I saw this tag pop up for residents or non-residents, and it was only one tag.
		But nobody would put in for it because all our tule elk are on private land and no one has access.
		So this gentleman drew this tule elk tag.
		Mike Vianna.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's only one tag?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We give one tag.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Just because limited numbers.
		We know it's going to be a private land small herd.
		We don't want to take too many bulls.
		And we also know that access is going to be hard.
		So they experimented with one tag.
		And this gentleman that drew the tag was a 70-year-old master hunter education instructor, one of our top instructors for like 40 years.
		So he's teaching hunter ed like we do in the warden front.
		He's paying it forward.
		Draws this tag.
		He had drawn it in a similar county, in Alameda County, the year before and could never get to any access to harvest his elk.
		So I get a call through the Hunter Education Program, like, hey man, I know you know all your ranchers and friends there in Santa Clara County.
		Do you have a ranch that we could set him up on?
		I said, I'll work something out.
		This guy's awesome.
		I mean, how many future conservationists has he raised up?
		So I found him a spot, you know, a rancher, me and my sister and family grew up with.
		And he had a little cattle ranch, but he had a beautiful herd.
		You know, he had a good herd of like 40 animals and some nice bulls, a couple monsters.
		So we got him set up to harvest one of those bulls, you know, before he was too old to do it with this tag.
		And we had four generations there, Joe.
		It was great.
		We had Mike, his son, his grandson, and his great-grandson.
		And I just have never seen that.
		And then I'm helping, you know, guide him with the ranch owner.
		And what we thought was the bull we'd been watching for months, you know, and all our scouting was going to be a fairly, you know, not a super difficult hunt.
		Turned out to be an all-day affair, of course.
		Typical hunt, right?
		Murphy's Law kicked in.
		He was hiding on another part of the ranch.
		End of the day, he gets this bull.
		And it was just this magnificent feeling.
		You know, he had worked hard.
		He had paid it forward in the whole hunting world through hunter education.
		And we did an article in Photos where we saw four generations with this beautiful Thule elk in our hunter education magazine.
		And I have that picture, you know, to this day.
		I just look at it and I go, man, this is what it's about.
		This is awesome.
		And then the following year, we got that same tag.
		And the 17-year-old daughter of a San Jose police detective friend of mine drew it.
		And she had been hunting with her dad, deer, antelope, doing her thing, learning to hand load like dad taught her, doing it all.
		And she had never shot an elk yet.
		And so we did the same thing.
		I took her and her dad and, you know, we had, in fact, one of my buddies from the Santa Clara Met team, Hunter.
		You'll read about him in book two.
		He's a big hunter as well and an elk guy.
		So, you know, he was in that circle.
		So we all did it as a big kind of family affair.
		Same thing as the year before.
		What should have been a fairly, you know, couple-hour hunt turned out to be an all-day affair.
		And we ended up getting her a nice 5x6 bull at the end of the evening.
		I mean, it was excellent, you know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's incredible.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's the best ever.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People don't know.
		Yeah.
		We're lucky it's not commercially available, folks.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Lean, healthy, best.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Delicious.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		But seeing people like that, you know, harvest an animal they'd never have access to, it's just amazing.
		And then unfortunately that tag got eliminated in our department and I've been pushing with our wildlife management side to bring that tag back, man.
		Give people a chance.
		Show that we can still do some cool hunting of a magnificent, you know, elk species here in California because it's here.
		They're just cool.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, hunting in California is so unusual to begin with, right?
		Because we have these big population centers like San Francisco and Los Angeles, and most people don't hunt.
		There's less than, I think it's below 1% now for the entire state population.
unidentified		It is.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We're becoming a non-consumptive state when it comes to conservation.
		To the point where our agency is having to deal with more input and impacts from non-consumptive users of the outdoors.
		And that's sad to see.
		It's one of the reasons why I love California and I'm here all the time doing business, but I'm a Montana resident now.
		The wide open spaces, the mindset, the conservation kind of mindset.
		And no ding here, it's a different vibe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's hunter-friendly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		Very much.
		Hunter encouraged.
		You're kind of the oddball if you're not.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, it's part of the tradition.
		It's people's way of life up there for so long that it's not unusual.
		And then the population numbers are low and there's so much rural area, it just becomes...
		I mean, I was there just two summers ago with my family and we spotted a hunter.
		100-strong herd of elk.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That's magnificent.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We pulled over.
		Luckily, I had binos in the car.
		I had the kids looking out the window.
		They were screaming and freaking out.
		They couldn't believe it.
		We see a deer occasionally in California.
		In our neighborhood, we'll see a deer.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		But see 100 elk.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		See 100. In that country.
		And just gorgeous green grass and these animals just hanging out there.
		It was in the summer, so none of them even had their antlers.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		are just chilling it's incredible it's pretty wild it's incredible and it's funny you mentioned your kids because i i see it with the nieces and nephews you know and all the all the youth i educate in hunter ed and just to see that go to grizzly island and see a tuli elk yeah for the first time or anything they're just like what is that yeah i don't know what that animal is giant deer a giant deer did i see that uh some animation some pixar movie is that real Well, when you see one in real life and you see one scream, that was to me, I was hooked.
unidentified		Oh, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The first time I went elk hunting, my friend Cam Haynes took me to Colorado and that thing was screaming.
		It was, and we were pretty close.
		I mean, we were like within 15, 20 yards.
		I was like, that is insane that that animal can make that noise.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I just got a bugle at contact distance, felt his breath.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That doesn't get any better than that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's just such a magnificent creature.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What kind of an impact has your book and your books has it had on policy?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I know people recognize that this is a big issue and of hopefully change.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's been positive.
		We were, you know, hopeful that we'd get a big reach, especially with book two.
		And being retired, I can speak a little more freely and, you know, go more national.
		I mean, obviously, when I was working agency, you got to be careful what you say.
		And everything's very, very stringently looked at.
		But it's been really good because it hasn't just played to the audience I normally work with, conservation and tactics and law enforcement and hunters and outdoorsmen and women.
		The cannabis community is really behind this book.
		I mean, they're promoting it.
		They're flashing on their Instagram page.
		I mean, the Northern California growers actually look at the Met team.
		They had a term that a couple of grower colleagues kind of coined about two years ago, and they said, you guys are Earth Warriors.
		This is amazing.
		I like it.
		And I went, oh, man, you know, a special ops law enforcement team called Earth Warriors in California.
		And I went...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's accurate.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That's badass.
		It's very accurate.
		And it just shows you that you're not this rigid, tactically oriented, stereotypical cop.
		We're out here for wildlife waterways.
		And something that I'm doing with Hidden War, especially in book two, is I look at it as three-pronged.
		First thing I got to do is protect everybody I can.
		And I can do a lot more by talking and being on venues with you on stuff like this.
		Then I can't push in a rifle anymore or push in the team.
		I can do more for the team, more for the agency by outreach that they can't necessarily do.
		So that's a blessing and that's awesome.
		And then the first, besides protecting, I want to inform.
		You know, I want to be able to tell this story.
		I mean, I've been doing this for 10 plus years and I never get tired of it.
		I do a presentation.
		You and I talk about it.
		I get the chills.
		I get fired up.
		I feel it.
		It doesn't matter who I'm talking to.
		I could talk to 10 people or, you know, I've been in groups of thousands.
		It's the same.
		I get fired up.
		I'm lucky to be able to tell the message, given what we've learned.
		I feel like it has an impact.
		So yeah, we are getting the reach out there much further quicker right now.
		Has it changed policy?
		Maybe.
		It's a little too early to tell.
		I think it's going to have some effect from the standpoint of when we start to see the non-consumptive users as I think we need a documentary.
		We got something like that coming up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Do you really?
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Beautiful.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That changes things for people, positive or negative, even when they're inaccurate.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You hear all sorts of rumblings about things after a good influential documentary comes out.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we're actually, it's cool you brought that up because I'm co-producing with a very good independent filmmaker named Lou Doros, a film called Altered State.
		And this one's been in the works for about a year.
		And it's actually going to be going to be networked and distributed through a new, it's called Planet Cannabis Entertainment Network.
		And they're a new channel.
		Planet Cannabis Entertainment Network.
		They got 40 million viewers.
		They're doing main content like other channels are, but they're also doing some, you know, some funded independent projects.
		And this is one of them.
		And the nice thing is the reason we're agreeing to do it with them is there's no content control, you know, issues.
		We're going to get to tell an objective story, not biased.
		We're going to tell, you know, we're going to be embedded with legitimate growers that we've worked effectively with all on the environmental issue.
		What are the environmental impacts?
		What's working?
		What's not working with regulation now?
		What do we need to do to regulation to fix it?
		We're embedded with law enforcement teams again, doing the work I've done with the team and telling their story, and we're in production currently.
		So this is going to be a cool process, and I'm going to be involved and on the ground and working with Lou to narrate it and interview folks, and I'll be back in the field all throughout the state for the next couple of months and beyond.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's awesome.
		Well, John, let me know when that comes out.
		I sure will.
		And I will definitely let people know.
unidentified		Please do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'll put it on my Instagram and Twitter and all that jazz.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		That'd be awesome.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Thanks, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And thank you.
		Thank you for everything that you've done, man.
		It's amazing.
		And thank you for sharing this story, too, because if I had not listened to that Steve Rinella show, I would have no idea.
		I'd only heard my friend talk about that one grow-up that they found, but there was no one there.
		I would never have known there's gunfights and all this crazy shit that you guys are dealing with.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Stephen was great because he thought you liked the story, too.
		And I love your show.
		And I like how Killer Mike gave a couple shout-outs on a previous show.
		So if you'll indulge me, I'll give a couple shout-outs here in a minute.
		But one of the things that I always liked was how you approached this whole issue and how you came into it.
		Not being a hunter early on in your life, all life, and you come into it fairly later in life.
		But just connected, you know, and coming from such a broad demographic of listeners that are sometimes out of my world previously.
		So thank you for what you're doing.
		And this will be really cool because the guys at Meat Eaters saw it too.
		And to be able to connect here with you is really cool.
		And hey, the more we can do the message, the better, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes, for sure.
		My pleasure.
		So please, one more time, list the books, tell people where they can get them.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yep.
		You can get both books.
		Hidmore's a new one.
		War in the Woods is the first one on Amazon.
		You can also get updates on my website, justjohnnorris.com.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it's N-O-R-E-S. It is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Not Chuck.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Not Chuck.
		Uncle Chuck, brother from another mother.
		Yeah, he's N-O-R-I-S. But yeah, you can also hit me on Instagram and follow for all that stuff.
		Besides my website, it's just J-O-H-N-N-O-R-E-S. And I do put this out that if people want to email me directly and they want a signed copy of the book or they have questions.
		And since Meat Eater and other podcasts, I get so many people wanting to be game wardens now, coming out of the military, little kids growing up.
		And I've been nonstop on that since Steve's show.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's amazing.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		So we're getting more people out there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Gotta get you guys more money.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We're working on it, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, hopefully someone's listening to this.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, thanks for the sentiment, but I've got to give a shout-out to Blake B. and Brian, and Blake's here in the green room with me now, and I've got to give them credit for tuning me into your podcast.
		They're big friends, so thank you, guys.
		And I'm also doing a cool custom knife with Mike Velikamp out of V-Knives, and we're making the Trailblazer custom folder.
		It's like the dream knife, Joe, that I never had 30 years on Ops, but it's an everyday carry, so some stuff there.
		And being an elk hunter, you'll appreciate this.
		I'm doing some pretty cool stuff with Axial Precision Rifles.
		They're a long-range rifle company out of Idaho.
		They're just amazing.
		And my partner Terry Hewn and I are running that new.300 PRC for everything from long distance, from our tactical experience, target shooting, but also a good elk gun.
		And that's going to kind of become my new elk platform.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Cool.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So this is all connected to, you know, because of this, your effort that you put out, all these pieces have fallen into place.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and these groups are, it's not only about good product, you know, but it's about them sending the same message.
		And they are endorsing the book, they're getting that message out.
		And a lot of these groups that are product sponsor or anything didn't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Most people didn't know.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		So that's one of the really, really cool things.
		And my publisher, Caribou Publishing, and this is interesting, I think you'll appreciate how this kind of comes together, but Henry Wu and my friends over at Recoil Magazine and Gun Digest and Caribou and Blade Show and Blade Magazine, they're all the same entity.
		And this book with Caribou Publishing was a step out, an expansion book of national issues related to things they hold dear coming from a gun publication, you know, and written objectively not against cannabis.
		So it was really, you know, it didn't seem like the right fit when you look at it from the outside, but it was perfect.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think everybody wants the same objective, right?
		They want safety, and for sure, anybody who cares and loves wildlife and these wild lands They don't want this to continue.
		They want this to be cleaned up, and we've got to find a solution.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		We do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And without you guys, without boots on the ground, there is no solution.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		None at all.
		None at all.
		And like I said, we keep unifying, and we hope to just get more message out there, and we'll get some changes.
unidentified		All right.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Day at a time, buddy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you, brother.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Really, really appreciate it.
unidentified		Thanks, brother.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you so much.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you too.
john nores ▲ ● ▼		Really appreciate it, Joe.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Bye, everybody.

▲