Chad Mendes, UFC legend turned entrepreneur, reveals his shift from MMA—where he faced brutal weight cuts and $50K pay controversies—to bare-knuckle boxing, debuting at 155 lbs on October 22nd. His carnivore diet cleared psoriasis in weeks but sparks debate on carb needs for explosive athletes like himself. Meanwhile, hunting adventures expose wildlife management conflicts: Texas’s feeder-heavy deer seasons vs. California’s urban bias against predators, and Alaska’s deadly grizzlies. His companies, Peak Refuel (freeze-dried game meat) and Finsandfeathers.com, blend survival skills with premium products like almond-fed beef, proving combat sports and wilderness share relentless demands—both physical and mental. [Automatically generated summary]
It's one of the most difficult things for a fighter is the stopping fighting, but you don't know what to do with all this intense energy that you've been focusing your whole life in one way, and now all of a sudden...
For a lot of fighters, it's like their whole identity, right?
And then fights, like, wow, for more than 10 years.
So this is 97. When did he retire from the UFC? I thought he was, like, 43 or 40. Man, I mean, he fought Liotta Machida, he was like, he was deep in his 40s.
I mean, I hope that I feel that good to be able to compete when I'm 50, but I'll tell you what, I do a lot of hunting and fishing stuff with Hendo, and that guy's like...
Yeah, we sat and watched a bunch of those highlights from a lot of those fights.
We were over at my buddy Chad Belding's house, and we were doing some filming and stuff, and we just sat down and everybody just kind of quit what they were doing and just watched that dude just KO dude after dude.
And it's...
Everybody's like, man, Dan.
Because a lot of the girls that work there and stuff that help us, I don't think they really understand who Dan Henderson is.
I don't remember the fight enough to comment on the decision.
But I think some people were pissed at it.
But, you know, that's one thing that's never changed, shitty decisions.
I mean, they still exist.
You know, Francis Ngannou had a very good point the other day that there should be some protection for fighters because, you know, losing half of your purse because someone made a bad call.
That's funny you say that because I years ago was talking with a buddy of mine and we were thinking of like an insurance plan for fighters just for that reason right there.
For injuries like say you're you're because this is the shitty thing that I don't I mean a lot of people probably know this but you go through a 10-week training camp and this has happened to me multiple times in my fight In some fights where the week before the fight, your opponent gets injured, they back out, they can't find anybody to fill in, and now your fight doesn't happen.
Well, guess what?
You just went through all that training, paying your trainers, you know, you still got to pay managers and everything for everything they do work-wise.
Well, you know, there was a lot of uproar this weekend because of who's the gal that was in the co-main event who won and then she got the $50,000 win bonus.
Cheyenne buys Banks a bonus for UFC 33 co-main event finish.
So it was a beautiful finish.
She caught the girl with a head kick and then finished her off.
It was pretty awesome.
But afterwards, they were talking about fighter pay, you know, and she was crying and then all these people got online and they started complaining about the UFC. And I see everybody's point.
I see their point and I also see the UFC's point because A lot of people don't know who she is yet.
I mean, they know who she is more now, but the whole thing about this sport is how many people are going to watch you fight.
That's really what it is.
How exciting are you?
How entertaining are you?
How engaging are you, your personality?
And do you put asses in the seats?
I mean, it's clear now, you know, who puts asses in the seats and those are the people that get the most money.
And it's a complicated thing for people, you know, because they think, well, the best fighter should make the most money.
And you go, yeah, but the best fighter doesn't put the most asses in the seats.
TJ was supposed to come do our tuna trip, our Fins and Feathers tuna trip, and we knew it was a 50-50 chance that, you know, whether he had broken hands or something, that he wouldn't be able to come, but...
It looked like it was the heel hook, if I had to guess.
Like, a lot of people were saying he wrenched it on the way out, but there's a moment where Sanhagen catches him in a heel hook, and he's yanking on it.
And the way I'm looking at it, I'm like, man, that could rip your shit apart.
And he deserves it, and he'll tell you he deserves it, but look, that motherfucker was dying making 125, like literally dying.
I've never seen anybody look worse walking around like when they were filming him, not even the day he was making weight, but like up to the day of making weight, he looked like a fucking skeleton.
I cut tons of weight throughout college for wrestling, and my senior year, I finally just put my foot down and was like, look, I'm going up two weight classes.
I'm not cutting to 125s anymore.
I used to cut to 125s, and I was making weight two times a week.
You know, wrestling.
And I went up to 141s and was undefeated the entire year.
My only loss came in the NCAA Finals.
It was the best I had ever felt.
And I'm like, dude, why did I not do that my whole life?
I mean, I walked around, you know, when I was making weight consistently and training consistently, you know, two, sometimes even three times a day, dude, I walked around like 168, 165 to 168, and I was cutting down to 45s.
I've noticed it like I'm and I almost wish that I would do this more through training camps when I was doing it but try to do a mock cut and then try to fine-tune exactly what to eat after because even my entire career I mean I would try to have the same things that I would eat but You know, you don't always feel 100% the next day.
I don't think I ever felt 100% for any fight.
You know, you cut that much weight, you feel good, but when you get in there and it's like, I could go through 10 rounds of 10 five-minute rounds and be just relentless in training, being able to eat and be hydrated, and then you get in there, and obviously nerves play a big factor too, but, you know, three rounds, you're already like, fuck, man, I feel this, you know?
And I don't know if that's from...
Dehydrating so much, my body's just not back to full.
Yeah, when Cam was racing, when he was running the Moab 240, I forget what the exact calorie count was, but what he did was, let's say, burned 3,000 calories, ate 2,500 calories.
Well, I mean, he's sort of cultivated it over his life, you know, and he's just made it more and more focused as he's gotten older and older and gotten used to the grind, and it's become just a natural part of his life.
What's fascinating is it's self-imposed.
You know, it's very few people have that kind of discipline.
The only ones I know of like him are like him and Goggins.
And the difference between him is he has a full-time job, which is really crazy.
There's a photo of, you know, there's these memes going around when I sat down next to Connor, when Connor had a broken leg and I was interviewing him.
It was me interviewing, like, the 9-11 Tower.
It's got me interviewing Goggins' feet.
Have you seen it, Jamie?
If you can't find it, I'll send it to you, Jamie, because Dave sent it to me, and it's just, like, it's so disgusting.
Well, like I said, it's been a whole year process, kind of going back and forth.
My wife absolutely hates it.
She's like, you're fucking nuts.
She married a fighter.
I know, and that's why she's got to remember that, right?
No, man, it's definitely something we sat down and had to figure out because it is something that's pretty brutal.
My argument to her was this.
A UFC glove, maybe a quarter of an inch of leather, half inch of leather over my knuckles, the concussion's not going to be much different, if anything.
I think we're obviously dealing with a sharper object hitting you, so cuts are probably going to be a lot more prevalent, but as far as the concussion of getting hit...
I don't think it's going to be much different.
I also don't have to worry about a baseball bat head kick going whipping through and cracking me in the dome either.
There's a lot of other things in the MMA game that I think are a lot more dangerous.
You know, for me, it had to make sense, obviously.
The numbers they were throwing out in the beginning didn't make sense for me.
I have other businesses that are doing really well right now that are something that I can do for the rest of my life and not have to ever fight.
that itch to get in there competes though and I might as well do it now while I'm still in my prime and I have that opportunity because like I said when I start hitting 38 39 you know maybe these opportunities have come and gone and nobody even really cares to see me fight anymore or you know I just don't feel good enough to get in there and do it so.
So they're doing a smart thing where they're getting popular fighters who are known for UFC fights mostly and then just introducing the bare-knuckle world to them.
I always thought that it was weird that you could elbow somebody in the face, you could head kick somebody with a bare shin, you can knee them in the nose with no pads, but your hands are covered with a pad.
But I used to say, like, why don't we just go bare knuckle?
Because first of all, to make grappling more realistic, like submissions, you could sink in chokes and stuff much easier.
But then I saw Chris Lieben versus, who was it, Dakota?
What's his name?
Anyway, Chris Lieben's face got destroyed.
It was crazy, the cuts.
And I was like, oh, maybe bare knuckles pretty fucked.
It is, and I think that's, you know, you're going to have a lot of blood, which probably makes it pretty entertaining for a lot of people, but, yeah, cuts are definitely going to be there.
I mean, like you said, elbows, though, in the UFC, like, you throw up against the cage and elbow somebody or even off their back and you're on top dropping elbows.
I mean, those cut probably more than knuckles, I would imagine, but...
I think you get hit a lot more with punches than you do with elbows in a fight, and that's probably where more cuts would come in.
That's got to be pretty cool for the UFC. Everyone's always trying to be the UFC or trying to create these MMA organizations that are trying to be on the level of the UFC. Nobody's ever going to do that, you know?
And I think the talent's been like that for a while now.
I mean, a lot of these guys have been there for a bit, but I guess my thing was it's, you know, you got so many people that are just like, the UFC is the NFL, you know?
And it's, you know, we'll see.
I don't know if it'll ever be as big as UFC, but I just...
People have a hard time with it because of the cuts and everything like that, and I agree with you that it's easy to cut somebody, but they think it's more barbaric, but come on, man.
My manager was kind of going over this with me the other day, and he's like, I remember trying to get sponsors when the UFC was kind of first taken off, and a lot of these companies were just like, oh, hell no.
We can't be associated with that.
Right.
And now it's, you know, it's the UFC, MMA is like so accepted.
Maybe this is going to be the next thing, you know.
And Josh Emmett, one of my teammates, his last fight, which was one of the best striking fights he's ever had, he did very, very light sparring movement.
Getting your bell rung multiple times or, you know, obviously that stuff adds up and it's not good.
I remember when we first got to Team Alpha Male, it was like me, Benavidez, Dillashaw, Danny Castillo, Justin Buckles.
We had all the UFC guys in there and Faber and we would just...
16-ounce gloves, headgear, tape up, and just basically be trying to KO each other for the entire sparring session, you know?
And I remember there was guys that would get knocked out, like, you know, guys that would jump in and spar with us and, you know, would get knocked out.
I remember one of the guys went out and sat in his car.
And he sat in the driver's seat for like 20 minutes and then didn't realize, like he looked at his clock and he didn't realize he was there for that long.
In the wrestling world, Sammy Henson was that guy for me.
My senior year was, I mean, Sammy took me to that next level, you know, and he was one of those guys that was obsessed, and he would, like, pull me aside.
We'd have, like, separate one-on-one type sessions, and it really does make all the difference in the world.
Yeah, if you can find someone who's that obsessed as a coach...
I mean, I talked to Gordon Ryan about it when it comes to John Donaher, and he's like, there's no mistake.
Like, the reason why I'm so good is not just because of his...
Obviously, he's physically gifted, he's intelligent, he's super disciplined, super dedicated, but also he said John Donaher is like a cheat code.
He's like, I have this crazy obsessed jujitsu coach who coaches seven days a week, 365 days a year, doesn't take any days off ever, has no family, has no girlfriend, and then when he's done coaching, watches fights.
Just even for my commentary game, I would for sure want to learn jujitsu from him, but just my commentary game will improve in leaps and bounds just talking to him.
I don't know them well enough to get in the middle of it and arbitrate, but I feel like the improvement that everybody was making under Dwayne was tangible.
It was noticeable.
It's like he came along and then all of a sudden everybody had this footwork, they're moving good, their striking combinations seem to be improving.
It worked perfect for TJ. His style of wrestling, his body style, and his ability to...
I mean, TJ's one of those guys that gets obsessed, too.
And him and Dwayne just really meshed on that fact of notepad, writing, you know...
mapping everything out and TJ has that memory you know that kind of comes along with it where he can remember all these different crazy combos and then get out there and actually perform it like you know that takes a special athlete to be able to see that thing on paper train it and then actually hit it in a fight for sure.
The wild thing about his fight with Sanhagen was Sanhagen had him in a fucking triangle locked up and I was like man I wonder if He had some pointers on how to finish that better.
That would have been it.
Because it seemed locked the fuck in.
I mean, he went through a knee, right?
And then TJ takes him down.
And in the process of taking him down, he locks up.
Well, unfortunately with TJ's surgery, I mean he has like several major tears in that knee.
You really never know what a guy's like once you get your knee mangled like that because the pain Like, it might inhibit training, it might become a problem, you know, it's so hard to say.
I've torn both MCLs through wrestling, but they were partial tears and it was basically through wrestling season.
I just had to wear a brace and do a lot of swimming.
It was actually, I think it was the first year I was an All-American, I tore it like...
A couple weeks or a few weeks before Pac-10s and just swam every workout up to Pac-10s and then I just taped it up, went in there and I ended up winning Pac-10s.
Just, I mean, I'd like to say pretty much I eat clean, you know, but I mean, you know, I'd still, every once in a while, eat some, like, fast food or, you know, if I go to somebody's house and they're making stuff, I eat whatever they eat, but...
Um, you know, for the most part I thought I was pretty clean until I got on this diet and then I really figure out like how bad I was eating.
Like the amount of sugar I think is key.
Like I got on this diet and I did it, I started March.
I started March 1 and I did it for the last four months.
Or four months into that.
But basically sugar, I noticed, was probably the worst thing for it.
No, I just was, you know, my psoriasis over the years has just gotten worse and worse and worse until my buddy was basically telling me about this diet.
We started basically the American Almond Beef, my beef company, and I was like, well, I have all the beef at my fingertips here.
I have all this wild game...
That I can live off of.
The meat part of it's not going to be an issue.
It's basically me just making my mind up and being like, just do this.
And so it's always been something when I was fighting, like, ah, just because I've known about it.
People have told me about it.
Like, I think it'll really help your psoriasis.
You should try it.
But I'm like, I can't.
I can't.
Cut out carbs.
Like, I need carbs for training.
Like, I'm an explosive athlete.
So that was always my mindset, you know?
So I never did it.
And then finally, I was just like, you know what?
Fuck it.
I'm going to try it.
I'm going to do it for a month.
And if I don't see any improvements, I'll just kind of go back to normal.
If I do see improvements, I'm going to continue doing it maybe for like two or three months and see what it looks like.
And it was just like, my psoriasis was, that was right after a hunt that I had gone on, and the lack of sleep really flares it up, which I, obviously on hunts, I'm eating bad in camp, whatever we're making.
You know, I'm getting like four hours of sleep at night, and I'm usually living off of a lot of caffeine.
Those three things definitely flared up pretty bad.
And so that first picture was, like, extreme.
And then the picture next to it was on that diet for, I think it was a week.
Maybe it could have been two weeks.
I'll have to look back and see.
But, dude, it was already so much better.
I'm like, well, shit, I'm going to keep doing this and just see.
So I kept doing it.
And, you know, I don't know.
It was probably...
Three months in, I'm just like, it's almost gone.
And ideally, I think it would be completely gone if I cut out caffeine, which they talk about you probably won't need caffeine after a couple months.
Your energy levels will be better, which they were.
I just really fucking enjoy getting all cracked out and getting a bunch of shit done.
Sweet potatoes are okay, but mainly just fruits, vegetables.
I've been doing honey.
Even mixing in some whole oats here and there.
Paul was like...
Against that he's like I probably wouldn't do that, but I just wanted to see and it doesn't seem to be flaring it up too bad So what I do notice is sugars though like if I have any just processed sugars, you know, you're anything like your processed breads I haven't been doing any wheat like any breads pretty much at all And I have a little bit of white rice here and there and that seems to be fine.
I eat it, and I'm like waiting for my psoriasis to just start itching, you know, and it doesn't.
I've also heard people say that like things you eat can, it's like a delayed effect, you know, up to 30 days or something like that for your psoriasis to like really get affected by it.
I felt like when we're here doing this, I feel energetic.
I feel great.
But that's why I started implementing a little bit more carbohydrates because same thing, like I was hitting mitts and it's not that I felt bad, but I did feel like my explosive cardio almost would like kind of dwindle a bit.
And then when I started adding in a little bit of the white rice and the grains and more fruit, I came right back.
Those long endurance athletes, you know, being an explosive athlete and then someone that's basically relying on, I guess those guys do rely a lot on fat and that's kind of what the carnivore diet, your main source of energy is Should be fat now.
And you're basically making the switch from glycogen, from the carbohydrates to fat.
And the first couple weeks of that, I felt like shit.
I think they call it like the keto flu or something like that, where you're just like, my brain's foggy, I'm just tired, I don't have any motivation, no energy.
And then when your body kind of makes that transition, I felt so much better.
It was, you know, having this conversation with her and trying to imagine that there's a place right now on the other side of the world where people are living under the thumb of a brutal dictator and You know they're starving to death literally like most of the men are 4 foot 10 because they're just they have no nutrition They're starving and she's so tiny.
I mean she's like literally one of the most frail women I've ever met in my life because she was starving her whole life like when you shake her hand It's like you feel like they're her like bones crack like she's made out of glass, you know, like she's so small She's 80 pounds That's crazy.
Yeah, and she's eating whatever she wants now, but this is just because of her life, you know, starving all of her life.
They were just so starving that when they caught a rat, they would cook it and eat it, and then they'd get sick and die, and then rats wind up eating them.
You know, I was reading about these Comanches that would take...
I want to do this one day.
They would hunt buffalo, and when they would kill a buffalo, they would cut the liver out and then eat it raw and squirt bile on it from the gallbladder.
Really?
They would take the gallbladder and squirt bile on the raw liver and that's how they would eat it.
There was a mountain range out there that it's a 30,000-acre piece of property that this guy basically introduced a bull and four cows to 30 years ago and just put them in there.
Basically, he wanted his family to be able to hunt them eventually.
And over the 30 years, they've kind of just reproduced and they've separated into a bunch of different herds.
And all the surrounding ranches, the bison are starting to go in there and compete with cattle and their food and everything.
So these guys are getting pissed.
So that year was the first year that they...
Basically opened it up to hunting.
Like, we need to take a certain amount of bulls and cows off of this property because they're starting to expand off our 30,000 acres.
And so I ended up going out there and smacked them with my bow and had a bunch of buddies there with me.
We all broke it down and basically lived out that.
For folks who don't understand what that means, it's the size of the antlers, where they take a tape and they measure it, and 63 inches is fucking huge.
And the funny thing is, so he's an Alaskan resident, and he's the one that told me to put in for the tag, and he's like, you'll probably take, you know, maybe draw it in like 10 years.
You're getting fined, you're losing your hunting license.
And so we're just sitting there for a while, and he's just staring at us.
And then finally he turns, and you get that back view, and we're both just like, dude, that's gotta be over 50. And so I ended up getting him, and we walked over there, and it's 63 inches.
Like he found himself because the bear comes piling through these guys and all of a sudden he's on this bear's back riding it down the hill and they're talking about a coastal Alaskan brown bear which is huge.
It's just- If you think about what they're eating, they're not like a coyote where they're just eating stuff that's been dead for weeks and it's rotting.
They basically kill and they eat it fresh.
I could be completely wrong on this, but this is what I've been told.
My buddy's a biologist.
You know, but basically as soon as it starts like rotting, they basically don't touch it much anymore.
And so they're eating the clean, fresh stuff, but still just the thought of eating something that's eating meat has always been a little strange to me.
What's crazy is it was one of the preferred foods of the pioneers, the people that were traveling across the country.
They loved it because it's fatty and it was soft.
You know, like one of the things about, I guess if you're just cooking things straight over fire, You would think, when you think about bears, you would think, for people listening to this, that a bear would be like a really dense, really powerful animal, like a moose or elk or something like that, but they're not.
It was one that I harvested in Idaho, and these bears were all eating wild plums.
There was tons of wild plum trees all over the place.
And so...
I didn't think it tasted bad at all by any means.
I would definitely do that again.
But I think it's just that mindset of, man, I'm eating something that eats meat.
But a bear is different, a black bear especially.
A lot of the times they're eating berries and grass and the fruit tree, plums or whatever.
They're opportunists.
They'll eat whatever the hell they can come across and live off of.
I think, like we have a pig ranch that I guide pig hunts on up in Northern California, and there's tons of blackberry trees, tons of mulberry trees, green pastures because they run a bunch of cattle on it, and then tons of acorns too.
So these pigs, like people, I think a lot of the times get weirded out eating wild boar, and they're just like...
I think you go a lot of these coastal places where there's drought and food's scarce.
They'll eat dead animals.
They'll even sometimes kill each other and live off of that.
I think that's when you start seeing a lot of that really bad gaminess in the pigs and then also disease coming.
But these pigs up there are phenomenal, man.
And I think it's because they're eating that delicious stuff year round and they're not having to scrounge around and trying to find any type of dead animal that they can and live off of it.
And so that's what I try to tell people all the time.
I'm sure bears are kind of the same situation.
You got a bear that's in a place where it's tons of food and they're not struggling all the time, they're probably going to taste fine.
And if you get a bear that's been eating rotten meat...
It's like apparently the nastiest bears are the ones who are eating rotten salmon.
Like when they're, you know, like a salmon run and there's a bunch of dead salmon and they eat the shit out of them.
Like Rinello was telling me that he borrowed a guy's smoker and he used it to cook some bear and he said the smell of fish was so bad that he told the guy, hey man, you gotta clean your smoker out.
It just stinks like fish.
And the guy said, I've never cooked a fish in there in my life.
Dude, my buddy was just here in Northern California scouting up in the B zone, and there's tons of bears up there.
I don't think people realize how many bears we have here in California, but he watched a black bear come into a canyon.
He was sitting there phone scoping a buck, and there was a doe and a fawn over here, kind of lower.
And the bear comes up through the bottom of the canyon, and he looks over.
He's filming it, and the bear sticks his nose up.
And you can tell he gets wind of the deer.
The buck takes off, and so he turns over and starts filming the buck still over here.
And all of a sudden, like five minutes later, he hears that fawn screaming, and he pans over, and that bear was standing over the top of it just ripping it.
Meanwhile, it's like, I guess people are just accustomed to people shooting deer, you know, and they see deer get hit by a car, they see deer everywhere, and it's rare that you see a bear, because bears are a little cautious being around people, but there's plenty of them, and they make a big dent on wildlife, and if you don't do something to manage them, like my friends John and Jen live up in Alberta, and where they are, like, There's bears everywhere up there.
You can't imagine how many bears there are.
And this is like really, really dense woods up there.
The only way spot and stalk works is if you have to go to an area where there's a clear cut where they have new greenery coming through and the bears like to eat that right after spring.
I mean, other than talking about it on podcasts like this one or on Meat Eater or on any other podcast where people have, like, common sense discussions about wildlife management, most people really have no idea.
You know, people just, like you said, associate bears with the cute and cuddly.
They don't, they have no idea that, I mean, I know now in LA they're starting to figure that out a little bit because you're getting tons of coyotes even coming in and killing people's pets and even attacking people.
You got mountain lions, you know, attacking people, running and bike riding and killing them, you know, and I think there's even more and more bears now starting to move in.
Because the people that are making the votes are all city dwellers.
I mean, the amount of people that live in the cities, whether it's the Bay Area or in Los Angeles, it's like, you know, most of the population in the state...
But the crazy thing is when you make that drive from Los Angeles up to San Francisco, you pass farmers.
And it's not based, again, on sound wildlife management principles.
We're wildlife biologists.
It's people that don't understand what they're managing.
It's like having nuclear waste managed by stand-up comedians.
You know what I mean?
It's like, you don't know what the fuck you're doing?
Like, why are you doing this?
They really don't know what they're doing.
In San Francisco, where they've killed a bunch of mountain lions that have killed people's pets and stuff, one of the things they've found when they do necropsies on them and they check out their guts, they find out what they've been eating, it's mostly dogs.
I had, um, and this happens all the time, you know, I'd go and ask permission landowners and, you know, usually it's these kind of, sometimes it's older lady.
And this one in particular was an older lady.
She had two little like white fluffy dogs.
And, uh, I asked if I could, could hunt on her property and she told me no.
And so I would just hunt the property next year.
I was just trying to expand the property that I could hunt.
And so I'd be out there and this probably was like months later.
She comes up to me.
I was out there scouting some deer.
She's like, you know, I'd really like it if you saw these coyotes and shot them.
One of them, I watched them pull my dog away and basically killed it.
It was one of her little white fluffy dogs.
And it's like, man, it sucks that that's what it takes for a lot of these people, like, something traumatic in your life to be taken away for you to understand, like, the benefit of doing this, you know?
Like, if I was able to hunt deer on your property, if you wanted me to kill coyotes, I would take care of them for you, you know?
A guy named Dan Flores, who's been on the podcast before, is a brilliant guy.
I believe he's a wildlife historian and he was a professor.
He was actually one of Rinella's professors while he was in college.
And what happens is when coyotes yell at night, it's basically a roll call.
They're like...
And they try to find out where everybody is.
And when one of the coyotes turns up missing, the females have more pups.
So all the females breed more.
And that's one of the reasons why coyotes are everywhere.
And apparently it was a strategy for coyotes to survive with gray wolves.
Because gray wolves hunt down coyotes and kill them.
So because of this the coyotes had to figure out how to expand their range to get away from the gray wolves and how to breed more prolifically every time they got attacked by wolves.
It's pretty wild shit man because the coyotes were smarter than the wolves because when They figured out how to kill off the wolves and what they would do is they would they would shoot a horse and then fill it up with strychnine and Like pump its veins with strychnine and then leave it there for the wolves and the wolves would eat it and die But the coyotes like me not today bitch.
Yeah, and the coyotes kept expanding so now Coyotes are in every single state in every single city in the country and a hundred years ago They were only in the West Really?
Yeah, they were only in the West.
I mean, this is a relatively short period of time.
Pull that shit up, because you need to see this, because it's so bananas.
They're essentially a small wolf, is what they are, which is why the red wolf and coyotes have bred in some parts of the south, and I think the southeast, and they've developed these hybrids that they call coy wolves, so it's like a larger coyote.
You know, and people that just don't understand hunting or population control, they get so pissed off.
It's predators.
It's a predator thing.
Bears.
I mean, you see these people, you know, I have buddies that go out and do these coyote derbies, basically, where in the area they'll bring a bunch of people in and everybody tries to kill as many coyotes as they can.
And it's very extreme, I get that, but it's like in an area, you know, that's very highly populated with coyotes, it's something that can help control the population very quick, you know?
If you want to keep your dogs alive and, you know, you want healthy populations of deer and a lot of other wildlife, like, you can't have an overpopulation of anything.
And the only thing that balances that out, other than nature itself, and the cycle of nature itself when it balances out, Yeah, but that's how nature balances it out.
The only other solution is wildlife management.
And that's where wildlife biologists do an accurate assessment, a survey of the area, they find out what the populations are, and they figure out how many of each animal that they can pull from it.
People don't understand when you're talking about getting a tag for moose.
It's not easy.
It's not like anybody could just go to Alaska and shoot a moose.
No, it's fucking very difficult.
Some animals, like bighorn sheep, good luck getting a tag for them, right?
I have a story of, you know, I got the rack, you know, all cleaned up and everything, and I'm driving it home from my taxidermist, and this Prius rolls up, and I'm not making that up because it really was a Prius, and they roll up, and it's this big old fat chick.
She's got, like, different colors in her hair.
And I'm guessing it's her husband or boyfriend driving and I'm just minding my business in the slow lane just just wanting to get home You know, I don't want my nothing I want, you know, obviously if I could have Enclosed the whole thing I would have just because I know it pisses people off in California And I'm driving and this lady comes rolling up next to me flipping me the bird and she's cussing and yelling and they whizzed past me I'm just like jeez And so we start coming up on traffic basically to where I'm trying to slow down because I don't want to get
into it with this chick.
I know what she's trying to do.
And then all of a sudden they slow down too.
And I see her window start rolling down.
She's got a big gulp that's like fucking giant, you know?
And I'm like, here we go.
She slows down enough to get right next to me, tosses it and just hits my windshield.
Just throws her big gulp on my truck and then they speed off.
We killed one of the pigs and one of them ended up being a really small pig, maybe like a 40 or 50 pounder, which is a pig that stands about that high.
And we're like, hey, let's clean this pig and we'll put this on the smoker and we'll let it smoke all day tomorrow and we'll have it for dinner tomorrow night.
So when we cleaned it, dude, this thing already had piglets.
Like it was already breeding as a 40, 50 pound pig.
That's what happens when you have a ranch, a large ranch with no people, right, and a large deer, pig, and they have cows there too, they run cows there too, and elk, and mountain lions unchecked.
So it's the way that it's done, but obviously dehydrating, you're basically sucking all the moisture, like the liquid out of it, where freeze-drying you're not doing that.
And so when you rehydrate something that's freeze-dried, Like, dehydrated stuff typically gets really mushy when you put water back into it.
And so freeze-drying doesn't do that.
You know, you still have all the right textures, the right...
Basically, all the right flavors, too.
And another thing that we do that's different is...
Basically, like, you got a mountain house company that's obviously been around for a long time.
And that's, like, something I grew up using.
That's really all there was back then.
But a lot of their stuff, basically, they...
When they make it, they put all the ingredients in separate.
A lot of these other companies do that same thing.
It's not like us where we have like a giant, basically like a pot.
We cook the entire recipe and make it taste exactly like it's supposed to and then dehydrate that.
It's more time-consuming, but what's great about Peak Refuel is we have the facility, first of all, and we have all the giant machinery that a lot of these other companies, especially the smaller companies that are doing these other game meets, they can only do a handful at a time, so it's hard for them to keep in inventory and stock.
We have...
Basically, the giant stuff, we can pump out higher numbers of it, so we can keep up inventory, but also, you know, it's just, we basically have the team that can keep up on top of being able to produce enough for everybody to keep it in their backpacks.
And even after the hunt for like a week, I don't shit right.
It's just bad.
And so I'm like, dude, I don't really want to live off this stuff.
I'm going to look into just making my own stuff.
And he's like, dude, check out Peak Refuel.
He's like, this stuff, it's all real ingredients.
They do it right.
It's not like a ton of preservatives.
It's not like all this nasty shit.
So I went on the website.
And ended up buying a bunch of their stuff for that hunt.
And it's funny because Seth and Bart said that was like in the beginning of them where they would just sit there like basically waiting for orders to come through.
Chad Mendes just ordered some of our meals and freaked out.
He ended up writing a handwritten letter and sending it with my stuff.
That's kind of how we ended up knowing each other and figuring each other out.
Dude, it was cool.
We contacted each other and became super good buds right off the bat.
They're just great people, man.
They're based out of Utah.
Hard workers, they have amazing families.
It's just been something that I feel honored to be a part of.
For me to be able to basically create my own recipes and pump them out there for people to try, and their game meats, it's kind of something that's unique.
For people that don't know, when folks go hunting or camping or any of that stuff where you're trying to pack as lightly as possible, it saves you so much weight to buy freeze-dried things like that and keep them in your pack.
Genuinely keep a whole week's worth of food in your bag if you have a large backpack.
Well, I think the pandemic really opened up a lot of people's eyes to the possibility that there might come a time where you don't have any food at all.
And, like, how do you get food if you don't know how to hunt?
And a lot of people are like, you know what?
I should probably learn how to hunt.
So, obviously, gun sales went through the roof.
But a lot of people also took up archery and started...
We had a ton of people that had never hunted before.
And they're like, look, we watch Meat Eater all the time, or Nella.
We've been seeing Joe do a lot of this stuff.
I watch Cam.
I've always wanted to get into archery hunting or hunting in general.
And I think it's basically because people were starting to realize, like, fuck, if shit hits the fan, I need to know how to hunt.
I need to know how to go out and provide for myself.
And we had so many first-time hunters last year that booked with us, and it was pretty damn cool to see these people that are complete city slickers coming out there.
And we had guys show up in tennis shoes to go hunting, and I'm like, dude, I told you to bring boots, but...
I guided them a bit beforehand, told them what they needed to do.
Get out there, sight your gun in at 100, make sure you're comfortable shooting out probably 200 or 300. And then when they show up, we take them out.
I make sure that everything's dialed, make sure they're doing what they need to do.
But they've all taken their hunter safety course, so they've gone through that.
But then basically just hold their hand throughout the whole hunt and kind of Basically just guide them, leading the way.
Here's an example.
It was a pretty cool example.
We had a young kid that booked with us last year on our cow elk hunt up in Oregon, and he was a huge fan of Ranella's and loved the Meat Eater podcast and the show.
It was a cow elk hunt.
He kept all the organs And, but, you know, it was his first time going out hunting and first morning I get him on two cows, you know, 150 yards, just standing there across the canyon, broadside.
And I get him on the shooting sticks and he's, you know, never, ever been in this situation in his life.
And I look over and he's just like, Taking like a leaf.
He didn't shoot, obviously.
We sat there for like five minutes and they're staring at us and he's like, just heart beating out of his chest.
I guess at that point I kind of forgot what that feeling feels like.
I still get excited on hunts, but I haven't been that excited on anything since probably I was a kid, you know?
And I'm just like thinking back like, God, I kind of missed that.
It's his last round in the gun and shoots and misses.
We empty the gun.
He misses.
Doesn't get an elk on that one and that whole herd runs down and disappears.
And so, you know, I just had to talk to him, you know, like, hey man, this is part of hunting, especially because it's your first time.
Like, I've been there, like, don't worry about it.
And he's getting bummed, you know, because, you know, you only get so many opportunities on a hunt.
And I want him to go home with something, but we're kind of getting down towards, I think he ended up killing on the last day.
So we're getting down to the wire here.
And finally we found one that was bedded up and we like came in and just sat on it for like an hour before it finally got up and it fed out into a clearing and he was sitting and I put the tripod up and he got a very, very steady shot and made a perfect shot and dropped it.
The fact that you're taking a life of something is hard in itself and then if you've never been like an athlete or somebody that's been put in that moment of truth situation to where you have nerves and you have to figure out...
With your mind going into that red zone, calm the fuck down.
What it takes for you to get out of that red zone and get into that calm state.
If you don't know how to do that, you're just like, what do I do?
What is this?
It's complete chaos.
You know, it's cool being able to, for me, to kind of teach a lot of these people that have never done it before and just kind of, you know, get them through that situation and then gain that confidence, have them gain that confidence after the fact.
And then, not only that, now you have all kinds of amazing meat to feed your friends, your family, and live off for the rest of the year.
We have actors, pro ballplayers, Scotty snowboarders, kind of a just mix of...
Celebrities, if you will.
Basically, we subcontract guides that already have stuff up and running.
So there's going to be professional guides there guiding.
And then we just send our group and our pro staff guy to go out there and hunt with them.
And they hang out, shoot the shit around camp.
Basically, the idea with fins and feathers was...
Creating that camaraderie that you don't really get anywhere else except for hunt camp.
You've been there, you've seen it, you've felt it.
Sitting around a campfire at night, whether you're, you know, someone singing, playing a guitar, I've had that happen where everyone's kind of having some drinks, hanging out, telling stories.
Like, you can't really get that anywhere else, man.
You go through the highs and the lows of the hunt, you know, and you can go to an autograph signing, meet these guys, shake their hand, maybe take a picture, and then that's pretty much it.
Yeah, I've talked to guys who took a hunter out, like guides who took a hunter out one year, and then, you know, the guy was just absolutely exhausted.
Then the guy comes back next year 40 pounds lighter and realizes, like, yeah, how to make some changes.
That's one of the reasons I wanted to do fins and feathers.
Like, A, you know, it was something that I decided, like, how could I make some money doing something I absolutely love in the outdoor industry after I'm done fighting?
And so that was kind of the main thing.
But then also...
How do I share this passion with so many different people or teach this to people that have never had it in their life?
You know, I have tons of buddies that their dad's never hunted.
Like there's nobody in their life that even would introduce them to it, but they're like excited to learn.
You know, and there's a ton of clients that come in that are in that same situation.
Like, dude, I've never hunted.
I've never fished.
You know, no one in my family ever did it.
I didn't know how to do it.
How do I get into it?
So I show them how to go through their hunter safety course.
And then, you know, then they come out and hunt with us.
And I teach them like, okay, this is what stocking is.
And like, we break it down.
And, you know, after the harvest, this is how we field dress them and get the meat all prepared and take it home.
And then, what's super cool is that I get pictures all the time from these guys, like, of recipes they've created with those animals.
And, you know, it's them and their families, and everyone's just super happy, man.
It's, like, so heartwarming for me to be a part of that type of journey for someone that had thought that they could never get into it, you know?
Yeah, it's an immensely satisfying thing when you can go out and get your own food, and then when you're eating that, you're never going to forget the experience you had, like the difficult times you had, you know, hunting, stalking, just the physical fitness aspect of it.
I mean, that's the thing that people...
A lot of people just don't know how much cardio it takes to do a mountain hunt.
Like, you have to be in some serious shape.
I remember the first time I went with Rinella, we went to Montana, and we were in the Missouri breaks, you know, and we were, you know, going through these...
Hills and mountain ranges.
And I remember at the end of the day, you know, we had hiked for like fucking eight hours.
And then, you know, even on these elk hunts, I'd say elk is probably one of the harder, for sure, especially if it's a pack-in type hunt.
A, because it's a big animal, you harvest that thing, like you said, 15 miles back in there.
It's a lot of fucking work getting that meat out.
I think that's probably the pinnacle of it, but mule deer hunting, you're in those types of situations you've never been in before, hiking those big ass mountains.
Dude, it's crazy.
That doll sheep hunt we did last year?
I'd say that's probably the hardest hunt I've ever done.
We went up and over like four or five different mountain ranges.
I remember the first day we hiked to the one and we're glassing and a fucking doll sheep's bright white so you can see it on that dark open hillside like 20 miles away, you know?
And it's like, oh, there's definitely sheep over there.
We're going to have to get a closer look, though.
So you see like one, two, three, four mountain ranges.
And our guide's like, you see that fourth range?
Yeah, we're going to go up and over that by the end of this.
And me and my buddies all look at each other like, the fuck we are?
I'm not doing that shit.
I'm like, can we get a helicopter or something?
But, you know, you break it up, you're doing 8 to 15 miles a day depending, you know, and it's just, I mean, I remember there was days where the climb was so long, you're climbing and it's one of those like, step, kick your toe in, step up.
Step, kick your toe in, step up.
And you're doing that for like five hours straight.
You know, you take a break every once in a while, sip, snack, whatever you do, and then you're just kicking, toeing up, kicking toe up.
Because if you've never done a doll sheep hunt before, I basically asked around.
I have a bunch of buddies that have done a lot of that stuff and it's, you know, obviously I can do some research online but It's typical online.
You can get an answer over here that's one way, and then you can get an answer over here that's completely different.
For me, I like asking buddies that have actually been there and done it firsthand.
I had a bunch of buddies that had hunted in Alaska, and they all steered me towards, I don't know, it was maybe two or three different boots, and then I just basically chose one of them and went with it.
I got those boots probably three months, maybe two months before my hunt and was just loading up my Kuyu pack and basically crushing it daily with a hike.
There's a good area close to my house that basically it's...
Fucking straight up and straight down for like four or five miles and you hike down to the river and then you're basically hiking straight back out of this canyon and that's what I would do for training with you know obviously leading up I would start off with a lighter amount of weight and then as I got closer I was getting heavier and heavier and heavier until I think I was at like 70 or 80 pounds of my pack and that's what I was doing at the end and then I think my pack was about 55 or 60 pounds total with everything gun and everything water.
And that's basically what I was packing around out there.
There's tons of sheep, but there was a huge winter kill-off That year of all the mature rams.
So for people that don't know, a doll sheep ram has to be of legal age.
So it has to be at least eight years old.
And how you tell, and this is the most fucked thing ever, is you have to get close enough to them and count the rings that are on their horn.
Yeah, the growth rings.
And it's like they have false annuals, false ones, basically.
So, you know, basically what the guide was telling us is sometimes So basically how they get these rings is when they go through winter and food is very scarce and their body goes into basically like shock.
They're pretty much like so run down that all their energy source goes into staying alive.
So their horns stop growing.
And then when snow melts off and things start getting green and lush and life gets easy again, they're like, fuck, okay.
And then they start growing.
And so that's what causes those rings.
Every year they go through that winter, they get that ring.
And this, you know, this is what the guide was telling us is sometimes, you know, the snow will start to melt off and, you know, stuff starts blooming and they start thinking, okay, shit, it's time to start growing again.
Their body starts growing and then a huge winter storm will come and be like, psych!
And just, like, fuck them up.
And so basically it'll cause those false annuli, which if you don't know what you're looking at, sometimes you're like, oh, that's definitely a ring.
And guys kill sheep that are seven years old, not eight.
And you're screwed, man.
You're in so much show.
You know, they take it from you, you lose your hunting license, you get fined.
I think there's even some instances, if it's bad enough, jail time.
Like it's legit.
Really?
Yeah.
And so, you know, in Alaska you have to have a guide with you.
You can't just go out there as a non-resident and hunt.
So you have to have a guide.
Your guide obviously has to know the age.
And it's on you, too.
So if I listen to my guide and he's like, oh, it's definitely eight.
Two on video where they had to scare him off with guns, and then, of course, the one on a Fognac Island where they didn't capture it on video because they were actually eating lunch when the bear bum-rushed him.
My friend Clay Newcomb, he's been on the podcast before, he put out a video recently on bear defense, whether or not you should have bear spray or a pistol, and it's just like...
But there's this cycling path that is very popular.
And a lot of folks take this cycling path, they bike, mountain bike, and then they stop in this one spot in camp and this bear went into her tent and pulled her out and killed her.
And I don't know if you're supposed to, but, you know, it's like, I think if I go to a state and I know that there's tons of grizzlies and you're not supposed to, I'll take the fine over getting eaten alive, you know?
Me and a buddy of mine, we had just stalked in on a big bull that was screaming with his cows and I closed the distance and flung an arrow right over his back and we hiked out that morning, just tails tucked and we come up on this big sage flat and there's a group of antelope, I don't know, probably...
200 yards in front of us and we just sit there and we're watching them feed and they ended up just feeding out of view and we take one more step well there was a big ass wolf like 20 yards in front of us laying under a tree in the shade that we didn't see because we were focused on the antelope And we take one step and that thing jumps up and just takes off in front of us out through the wide open sage flats.
Dude, that's another thing that people don't realize how big.
I mean, I didn't know.
Like seeing one of those things in person, you're like, holy shit.
I think the thing is that wolves, like coyotes, we were talking about coyotes being so smart, I think wolves are so smart that a lot of times people decide there's no way an animal can be this smart.
They're amazing animals, but again, that's one of the things that you appreciate about the wild when you're out there, is that if you didn't exist, this is how it all goes down.
It's wolves and bears and mountain lions and deer and elk and all these animals trying to survive, and it's just...
It's a magical place, man.
I wish more people would experience it, and I'm really glad that someone like you has this service with fins and feathers where you'll take people out that don't have any experience whatsoever in that world, and you can introduce it to them.
I mean, for a fan, what a great thing to be able to hang with you for a week and to be able to be introduced to the wild.
Yeah, so basically what we do, here's kind of the thought, the reasoning why we started this company is we were kind of talking about it earlier.
Wanting, at least for me, I get hit up a ton from people like, dude, I see all the elk that you got or the deer.
Can I buy some?
And it's like, I can't legally sell you any wild game.
Plus, I don't know you.
I'm not going to just ship you a bunch of meat.
But I was like, how can we create something, like in the beef industry, that is as close as we can possibly get to the health benefits of wild game?
And so we basically take these cows, most of them Angus, we do some Angus Cross, and And pasture-raised, no hormones, no antibiotics, no soy, no corn.
We pasture-raised them the last 150 days.
We basically feed these steers our proprietary blend of feed, which is almonds.
I mean, my team's probably not going to want me to say this, but I think this is probably one of our most important selling points on the beef, but is the healthy diet that they're eating.
But it's almonds, the almond whole, which is like that fuzzy part on the outside.
Tons of fiber, tons of protein.
Tons of fat, obviously from an almond.
We got sunflower seeds, the shells, prune, prune pit, beet pulp, like the pulp from the skin and all that stuff.
Brown rice.
So when they polish brown rice to make it white rice, they take all that healthy stuff off of it.
We throw all that shit in there.
And then we do like alfalfa and then some type of roughage, like a barley hay or something like that.
So like I said, no soy, no corn.
And that feed, which is super high-octane, high in fat, high in protein, high in carbohydrates, is all we feed them for the last 100 to 150 days, which basically we were kind of testing all this out over the last year or so.
And just seeing the type of marbling it's giving this beef, it's obviously leaving them super tender.
It's basically like a butcher box or something like that where you can go on and Order whatever cuts you want on our website and then it shows up frozen on your doorstep.
When it's not frozen, like if you get that beef and it's fresh off, it's so dark.
It's like that really rich looking stuff, but obviously once it freezes, you know, you lose a little bit of that.
Yeah, man.
It's something that's unique.
It's different.
We wanted to do something that was healthier in the beef world.
Obviously, it's not quite wild game, and I can't sell wild game, but we wanted to create something that was healthier in that sense, where people can go online, they can feel confident knowing these are humanely raised.
They don't have a ton of...
Shit pumped in them.
And they're eating a good diet, you know?
And this is all family-owned operations.
So it's me and four other buddies that started this.
And one of our guys is one of the biggest almond growers in Northern California.
So we get a lot of our almonds from him, which is cool.
You know, it's all family owned, the Merlot family.
And then, you know, the other two guys that are part of it have been in the cattle industry their whole lives.
So they know that world like the back of their hand.
And then me and my good buddy, Chad Belding, he's the owner and the host of Fowl Life TV on the Outdoor Channel.
So me and him are kind of, you know, obviously the people that are just letting people know about this stuff.
And so...
You know, we launched at the beginning of the year.
It's been a ton of work.
I mean, fuck.
I never thought I was going to be in the beef industry, but it's like, holy fuck.