March 15, 2023 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:38:32
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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The Joe Rogan Experience. | |
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. | ||
| Hello, Cliff. | ||
| What's up? | ||
| What's up, man? | ||
| Nice to meet you in person. | ||
| You too. | ||
| We've been chatting back and forth online for quite a while now. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| You know, it's funny. | ||
| I was looking at it. | ||
| I think it's been like five or six years since our first interaction. | ||
| How did you get involved being a hunting guide? | ||
| What's your path to that? | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| So, I guess it's a long story. | ||
| You know, I grew up in a rural area. | ||
| My dad was a cattle rancher, and then he did a little outfitting when I was a kid. | ||
| Well, it's kind of a long story, man, because I thought this was normal when I was a kid, but... | ||
| When my dad was an adult, he was a cattle rancher, and then he went back to vet school. | ||
| And so he actually left outfitting and cattle ranching and pursued that. | ||
| And that was when he was like in his 40s, you know? | ||
| And so that was my first exposure to, you know, being an outfitter or guiding was through my father. | ||
| And then honestly, man, like growing up, I hunted all the time. | ||
| I've been obsessed with, you know, hunting since I was 10, 12 years old. | ||
| And then I went and kind of did a more traditional, I guess, lifestyle. | ||
| I went to school, went to undergrad, went to business school, and then I worked in finance for a few years. | ||
| And we can get deep into why that didn't last. | ||
| Maybe you can help us explain why the banks are failing right now. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't know, man. | |
| It's been so long since I've been in that world. | ||
| What a different contrast, though. | ||
| The contrast between that world and the world that you live in now. | ||
| Dude, it's crazy to think about because I still know people that are finance guys. | ||
| My brother's a finance guy. | ||
| As you live in hell? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well... | |
| He can't be happy. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's doing all right because he doesn't... | ||
| All the investment strategies that he's doing for the most part are like hedge type of strategies. | ||
| But he's doing okay. | ||
| But yeah, it's a different world, man. | ||
| It's definitely a different world. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I always look back on my path and I think like, well, did I choose the right thing? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I don't know, but I'm happy, so I guess... | ||
| If you're happy, you chose the right thing, but there's no right thing. | ||
| There's just life and decisions. | ||
| This idea that you're gonna, like, oh, I wish I could do it differently. | ||
| Well, you definitely can't, so don't wish that. | ||
| There's no way you can do it differently. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Unless you have a fucking time machine. | ||
| And even if you have a time machine, you will already have the knowledge of what happens if you do it wrong. | ||
| So if you go back and try to do it right, who knows how you're going to fuck that up. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, sure. | ||
| It's not life. | ||
| Imagine living your life knowing what's going to happen if you do it certain ways. | ||
| That would be a terrible way to live. | ||
| Like, you would never be in the moment. | ||
| You would be constantly filled with this anxiety of making sure that you don't do the thing that you have already done. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So that you could live your life in a different way. | ||
| I mean, I can imagine if, like, you know, you run a red light and crash into a car and you go, oh my god. | ||
| How could I stop that from happening again? | ||
| I have to make sure I don't do that again. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Things like that. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| That makes sense. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But like, a whole life path? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Like, change your whole life? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I wish I did it a different way. | ||
| Well, you definitely didn't, so keep going. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Man, life's so path-dependent. | ||
| You choose certain things and there's probably a million different ways it could go. | ||
| For me, there was a point in my life when I was doing finance. | ||
| I was a trader when I was a young guy. | ||
| There's just kind of a moment where I'm like, man, dude, I just want to do something else. | ||
| And then you start down that path and it leads you in wild places, man. | ||
| Well, literally, for you. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| For sure, dude. | ||
| Look at me right here, where I'm at right now. | ||
|
unidentified
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I would have never imagined this in my wildest dreams, dude. | |
| That's funny, but I'm at wild places like the wild. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| That, too. | ||
| Both things. | ||
| Both things are kind of wild. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| So how did you make this choice to get off the path? | ||
| Because for a lot of people, I think one of the problems with the path is you get married, you get a house, you have kids, you have responsibilities, and then you're stuck. | ||
| Because you really can't change careers because you have so many dependents. | ||
| There's so many people depending upon you. | ||
| You have so many responsibilities. | ||
| You have to kind of just suck it up and keep doing this thing that you don't enjoy for your family. | ||
| Yeah, so to answer that question, man, I think I have to be a little humble about it, Joe, because I came from a family, including my wife. | ||
| When I met my wife, man, I was a guy that was well-educated and looked like a guy that was going to be on a traditional path to... | ||
| You know to great success as a finance guy and that's when I met my wife and then I like I tricked her man because I switched it up on her you know but she stayed with me the whole time and so I gotta I gotta give her that but also my family too man like you can imagine like you know my my parents you know wanted me to get a great education I mean they my family man like basically lived the American dream like none of them they didn't grow up wealthy you know nor did I but they kept me comfortable And | ||
| then, you know, they got great success and they wanted, you know, they got success through hard work and they wanted to see me, you know, have a path of like, you know, go to Wall Street, go be an attorney, go do something like that because that seemed like the easy path, I think, in their mind and seemed to make sense and they were giving me that opportunity. | ||
| But when I decided not to do that, man... | ||
| Not one time have my parents or my brothers for that part said like, dude, you're doing, you're being an idiot. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like when I told them like, hey, I'm going to buy. | ||
| So essentially I bought an outfitting business that had been, you know, pretty much run into the dirt, you know, and it was just, it was just federal permitting where I could expand into a bigger, you know, guiding business in Colorado. | ||
| When I told them, I was going to do that. | ||
| I was quitting my job at the time. | ||
| I had transitioned working for a wealthy family who treated me awesome. | ||
| But when I said, hey man, I'm going to go be an outfitter, my parents were like... | ||
| I mean, my dad was like, sounds awesome. | ||
| You know, my brother was like, sounds awesome. | ||
| I can't... | ||
| And I don't think that everybody grows up in a family that's that supportive of it. | ||
| So I don't want to say that like... | ||
| I, you know, did it all, like, I'm just a guy that just said, hey, I'm gonna do something cool and independent. | ||
| It was what I wanted to do, and I had support, man. | ||
| So I can't, I can't... | ||
| Well, that's very fortunate. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. | |
| That's very fortunate. | ||
| So what, how did you, so if you're in the middle of this world, this financial world, how did you make that transition? | ||
| Like, what were the steps involved in making the transition? | ||
| Did you just immediately up and quit and just figure out how to get a job as an outfitter, or were you already doing some outfitting? | ||
| Yeah, so I've been in, I mean, all through my childhood, you know, and then even when I was an undergrad in school, I hunted all the time. | ||
| And I had done a bunch of guiding, and I was exposed to it. | ||
| And the other thing, for my type of outfitting and guiding, I had been exposed to livestock and horses and mules my whole life. | ||
| And that's a big part of, like, wilderness outfitting. | ||
| You've got to be familiar with how to pack mules, how to pack horses, how to ride horses up in the mountains because that's a huge proportion of what I did just to get into remote areas. | ||
| Not to dive into the depth of my childhood, but I was exposed to that. | ||
| It, you know, the first 20 years of my life where, you know, I had that skill set. | ||
| So that's, that's the first part of it. | ||
| And then, you know, how I actually mechanically did it. | ||
| I mean, so the, just to give you some context, me and my brother start when I was young, at a business school, me and my brother started a financial company, and it changed, changed in a bunch of different ways, and he still operates it. | ||
| But when I was, I think I want to say like 22, 23, I started working for our biggest client. | ||
| And he was a phenomenal guy and I was doing more like family wealth management for him. | ||
| And literally, Joe, I was just kind of struggling day to day with being, I always wanted to be in the outdoors and I wanted to go do something else. | ||
| And I literally just walked into his office and And I was like, Bob, I love you, man, but I gotta go. | ||
| I gotta go do something else. | ||
| And I kind of had a plan to go back to Colorado. | ||
| I was born in the area where I did most of my outfitting and guiding. | ||
| And it was funny because he looked at me and he kind of laughed because I think he knew it was coming. | ||
| He knew I just... | ||
| I mean, he came from a different world. | ||
| He'd grown up doing business deals and all that, and I grew up from somewhere else. | ||
| I think that's why he kind of enjoyed having me around, because we would talk about our different backgrounds and stuff. | ||
| But he was just like, well, the first thing he said is, Cliff, I'm just going to ask you one time, man. | ||
| Can I give you more money? | ||
| I'm like, Bob, we shouldn't even talk about it, man. | ||
| He's like, all right, dude, go for it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, that's great. | |
| So literally like a week later, me and my wife, we moved to Colorado, and I had a... | ||
| Oh, what a supportive wife. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| That's awesome. | ||
| Yeah, she's been epic the whole way. | ||
| So how did you go about starting and getting clients? | ||
| So if you're starting an outfitting business, you're a young guy, you're leaving the financial sector, and you're going and starting and getting clients. | ||
| How do you go about making that happen? | ||
| Yeah, so part of the... | ||
| How that process worked for me is when I got to Colorado, I started doing some packing and guiding. | ||
| This is after I worked in finance. | ||
| So I took like, you know, kind of a, most people would say a step back in my career. | ||
| You know, so one day I was like looking at financial models and trading and that sort of thing. | ||
| And then three weeks later, I was like helping guys pack, you know, elk out of the wilderness on mules, you know, that sort of thing. | ||
| So I started getting exposed to it that way again. | ||
| And then what I did was I started just looking for a business to buy. | ||
| And so, when you're operating in the wilderness areas, you've got to have federal permitting. | ||
| So I got all that figured out. | ||
| I bought a business. | ||
| And then it's just like hand-to-hand combat, man. | ||
| I mean, the first year that I was guiding and outfitting, I think I had, you know, maybe like a dozen clients or something like that. | ||
| The last year that I outfitted, I had like north of 200 clients. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| So it's just hand-to-hand combat. | ||
| And then, you know, as you learn an area... | ||
| And we can get into the nitty-gritty details of it, but these wilderness areas, there's no roads in them, man. | ||
| So, you know, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of acres, and you're talking about elk that are pretty heavily pressured. | ||
| I mean, it takes years just the grind of, like, learning the area. | ||
| And so over time, just, like, just, you know, step by step, man. | ||
| And then I started to get good guides working for me over the years, and we, you know, we all just got where we learned the area. | ||
| You know, along the way. | ||
| And then, I mean, the reality is, the last three or four years, there was never a problem booking people. | ||
| We were always booked, you know. | ||
| That's how that world is in a lot of ways. | ||
| Like, once you get established and you keep people happy, And it's like sort of word of mouth. | ||
| Yeah, you stay booked. | ||
| Hey, I went with Cliff. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| He knows how to get there. | ||
| What you do is fascinating to me because it's one of the more interesting kinds of hunting. | ||
| Where you go really deep in with animals. | ||
| You bring in mules or horses, and you go very, very deep in to find these animals. | ||
| And I think most people on the outside... | ||
| That think about hunting, they don't really understand how grueling it is, how unbelievably difficult it is to get, you know, 15, 20 miles in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then if you do shoot an animal, to get that animal out is an unbelievable struggle. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if you're talking about public land, it's really one of the best ways to find elk or to find really good elk. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, I mean, you have to, in a lot of these areas, I mean, people think about Colorado, Joe, and they think, so I hunted what technically would have been the, they say the White River elk herd is the largest elk herd in the world, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| So you have that perception that, oh, okay, well, you go there, you go into the flat tops, or you go into the surrounding forest, you know, Forest Service property, and you just put your backpack on, get off the road, and there's going to be elk everywhere. | ||
| Well, I mean, it's a ton of habitat. | ||
| And the thing about a lot of that country is all the habitat's good. | ||
| You know, you can go other places, and they've got elk, but you, you know, the... | ||
| Only 10% of the actual habitat is going to hold elk, right? | ||
| Well, the flat tops or, you know, these big chunks of space in Colorado, I mean, it's all good elk habitat. | ||
| You know, until you get massive amount of snow that limits the feed for elk, I mean, elk could be everywhere. | ||
| So what I'm getting to is they get crazy dispersed. | ||
| And the only way to get into a lot of these areas is either backpacking, you know, on your foot, hiking. | ||
| On your feet, hiking. | ||
| Or, you know, you've got to pack in with horses and mules. | ||
| Do you guys go in and set up a wall tent? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then are you there for weeks or months at a time? | ||
| Like, how do you do it? | ||
| Yeah, so if we're talking, so all the, if we're talking elk, the elk is a species, almost all of that was out of wall tent camps. | ||
| And we pack those in. | ||
| Now, I did a fair amount of sheep and goat guiding too. | ||
| Most of that we did out of backpacks. | ||
| Just because a lot of the habitat that mountain goats and sheep live in, it's not really conducive to packing with horses just because you end up getting above timberline and there's just some logistical reasons. | ||
| A lot of times it's just better to backpack on them. | ||
| But on elk, it's almost always, so you're packing your camp with horses and mules, and then you're coming back in. | ||
| Sometimes you'll hunt off foot. | ||
| You know, if the camp's in a situation where you can cover ground on foot and hunt, then you'll do it that way. | ||
| But a lot of times you'll actually bring horses back in and hunt a horse back, too. | ||
| And that's like a whole, people don't, I mean, you know, taking care of horses, you know, if you got 15 horses and mules in camp, like, you know, 12 miles back in the wilderness, like, it's, you know, it feels like going back in time, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, I mean, that's why, that's why, I mean, honestly, Joe, by the time I sold, so I sold my main business like 18 months ago. | ||
| By the time I sold it, the majority of my crew was Amish. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Amish? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How did you find these guys? | ||
| Do they just, so... | ||
| Because they don't use electricity, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's not like you can get them online. | |
| Can you get them online? | ||
| Do they cheat? | ||
|
unidentified
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So, yeah, yeah. | |
| So, dude, I got some Amish buddies that I love, man, and I don't, so I don't want to like, like, Mark, if you're listening, man, and you probably shouldn't be listening because you're Amish, but... | ||
| But no, so the answer to your question, man, is it just depends on, you know, what church they're from and the rules, you know, the rules that they have established, you know, and what they're doing. | ||
| So if it's for a business, a lot of them can use email. | ||
| They can use a cell phone. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, what a hack. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's ridiculous. | ||
| Then you're not Amish. | ||
| That's the whole thing. | ||
| You can't use fucking email. | ||
| Well, here's the deal. | ||
| I'm not an expert at them, but I became very good friends with some of them. | ||
| I had some of them work for me for four or five years. | ||
| And man, there's some things about them that are absolutely amazing. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Hard-working people. | ||
| Hard-working is an understatement, man. | ||
| And the other thing that's wild about them is I had a lot of very young Amish guys come work for me. | ||
| And we can get into the details of that. | ||
| Technically, they hadn't committed to the Amish church, so they weren't technically Amish yet. | ||
| Oh, was it the Rumspringer thing? | ||
| Yeah, they would be kind of in that process. | ||
| For people who don't know, they have like a time period of an indefinite time period where they're allowed to just run around and party and do drugs and sleep around. | ||
| And then they have to come back to the church if they want to. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And when they came out to my place, they didn't do any of that stuff other than work. | ||
| You know, but... | ||
| But anyways, they would come out and what I noticed, man, is if you take an 18-year-old Amish guy and you're just doing stuff around like ranch, because we were outfitting and guiding a lot of time, but we also had to manage the livestock and we had kind of a ranch that we had to take care of. | ||
| Those guys at 18, they know a ton because they've already been working for seven years. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| They know how to frame a door. | ||
| You know, they... | ||
| They could show up to my place, Joe, and they're wearing sandals and shorts, and you're thinking, this guy's never been around livestock, and you'd be like, hey man, go grab that mule and saddle it. | ||
| Every single one of them knew how to do it, because they grow up catching horses and putting them on a buggy every day. | ||
| It's just wild that they learn all these skill sets really early on. | ||
| So in some ways, from an education standpoint, None of them had a hard time communicating with me or, you know, we always could get through all that. | ||
| You know, maybe they didn't have as good as spelling or they didn't have as good, like, algebra skills or something because they missed out on some of that education, maybe. | ||
| But I can tell you from a work ethic and, like, a hands-on skill set, they're amazing, man. | ||
| Yeah, that's an education, too. | ||
| It's interesting because we all want to think about education in terms of, like, things you can use in the corporate world or You can use in the business world, but the reality of education is you're learning things, and they learn so many things, I'm sure, that the average person who works in an office is never going to understand. | ||
| Take an average guy who works over at Google and say, hey man, go put a saddle on that mule. | ||
| And they're like, what the fuck are you talking about, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| That's a learned skill. | ||
| It's a learned skill that has a diminished value in our world. | ||
| But in your world, in the world of outfitters, it's a very high value. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And the thing about their education, too, it's like the homeschooling, I'm sure it varies wildly. | ||
| Yeah, and that's why I don't mean to make a judgment on them. | ||
| I'm sure some of them are really good at homeschooling their kids and some of them... | ||
| It's just like regular homeschooling. | ||
| I've met some homeschooled kids that are phenomenal. | ||
| They're really interesting kids, but the parents did a great job of giving them a very nuanced education and then also committing them to activities so they interacted with a lot of kids on a regular basis. | ||
| They just didn't go to school during the day with kids. | ||
| And it's like if you have that kind of time and that kind of commitment and you You know, maybe you're just not very happy with the regular school system. | ||
| Right. | ||
| People used to think that it was a bad idea to homeschool your kids, but during COVID, I think a lot of people kind of opened their eyes. | ||
| First of all, A, how difficult it is, but also that there's a value to being there while your children are learning things, so you can kind of communicate with them and go through, especially if you have an expertise in something. | ||
| My youngest daughters used to do martial arts, and It was kind of like a mixed martial arts class and I would go with them to mixed martial arts class and sit on the sideline. | ||
| And then a couple of times some stuff came up, and I said to the instructor, I said, actually, you shouldn't really do it that way. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because, like, they weren't, you know, as a black belt in jujitsu, I'm like, you're actually going to get your back taken if you teach people this path. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, this is a very vulnerable path. | ||
| Like, let me show you the difference. | ||
| And so I'd go on the mat with them and show them the difference. | ||
| The next thing I know, I'm doing it with my daughter, and I'm having her do it, and I'm working with little kids. | ||
| It was really exciting. | ||
| It's fun to be able to teach your kids something. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They love that you know something that they can learn. | ||
| It gives them pride. | ||
| These people that are learning from their families and from their community, it's a completely different way of life, but it's probably a more healthy way of life than the average person experiences just going to a regular, mundane, very regimented, traditional school system. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, I think that's for sure the case. | ||
| But the electricity thing is ridiculous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Well, you know, it's funny. | ||
| I'll tell you about a conversation I had with one guy that I consider a pretty good friend. | ||
| I'll be honest with you. | ||
| The Amish, from my observations, they don't make a real strong effort to have close relationships with people outside of the community. | ||
| At least I always felt that way. | ||
| But one individual I would say is a very good friend of mine. | ||
| And I asked him, like, well, dude, it seems like so... | ||
| It seems like, like, where do you stop the technology? | ||
| Where do you start? | ||
| And he actually had a rational explanation. | ||
| He said, look, man, like, we make these judgments... | ||
| And I think a big part of it is we're just trying to judge, like, we know the value of having a certain pace of life, and these technology judgments are based on that. | ||
| We want to be able to still, you know, succeed, feed our families, because they still got to deal with, like, the realities of, you know, they got to buy land to have their farms, all that stuff. | ||
| But he's like, look, it's all about pace of life for us. | ||
| So if we look at a technology and it's going to change that dynamic, then certain churches may choose not to do that. | ||
| So I'm with you, man. | ||
| There's odd things that they do, but I kind of get that explanation too. | ||
| I kind of get it, but it's just weird that they have that electricity loophole. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| What does it say? | ||
| Word processor. | ||
| A new word processor with more memory and more speed may specifically be for the plain people, by the plain people. | ||
| Is that what they used to call themselves? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It comes up in a few advertisements for this. | ||
| It's called the Classic Series. | ||
| But the advertising is for Amish? | ||
| Because it's calling the plain people. | ||
| I mean, it's being sold in rural Pennsylvania. | ||
| Yeah, look at that. | ||
| Look for Jake or Jonas. | ||
| Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Hold on, so what is it here? | ||
| It's a word processor, but it's non-electrical. | ||
| Oh, this one does. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Oh, that's a... | ||
| But the last one, it looked like it was just... | ||
| It was. | ||
| It looked like... | ||
| What is that? | ||
| I mean, like, what is powering that fucking thing? | ||
| It's got USB, floppy. | ||
| What? | ||
| No modem, no phone port, no internet. | ||
| Nothing fancy. | ||
| Not just a locked computer. | ||
| No modem, no phone port, no internet connection, no outside programs, no sound, no photographs, no games, and no gimmicks. | ||
| Nothing fancy. | ||
| Just a workhorse for your business. | ||
| High-end word processing, typing tutor, auto spell check, auto word fill. | ||
| What year is this from? | ||
| 2008, I think? | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| They have a lot of this kind of stuff where they kind of work around the limitations that they're... | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| Look at the fucking horse and buggy on the street there, Jamie. | ||
| Look at the... | ||
| That shit is so annoying. | ||
| If you're ever in rural Pennsylvania, and you get stuck behind one of those guys, like, oh, Christ. | ||
| I remember I found this and said that their cell phone usage, though, is kind of common. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's a fucking cheating move. | ||
| How dare you. | ||
| For business in particular, man, I think that's pretty much, like, standard now. | ||
| Well, I guess they'd have to have a phone line. | ||
| If you're going to have a phone line, why wouldn't you have an internet line? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Or a cell phone line, rather. | ||
| Yeah, my parents used to live in Harrisburg. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| I used to see those folks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When you drive to them. | ||
| You also drive through the fucking areas where they raise cattle. | ||
| It was the worst smell. | ||
| Oh, where the Amish were? | ||
| It only was Amish, no. | ||
| That didn't have anything to do with Amish. | ||
| It was just cattle raising. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| I think that was like, I don't know whether it was factory farming, what kind of farming. | ||
| It might have been like, I know they feed a lot of silage, you know, like processed, feed that's been basically fermenting, and that's what that smell is a lot of the time. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That makes sense, because it wouldn't be the cow itself. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Do you know what silage smells like? | ||
| No, I don't. | ||
| So a lot of times when you're driving, you'll see tarps. | ||
| There'll be cattle there. | ||
| You see it by dairies a lot of the time. | ||
| There'll be cattle there, and then you'll see these tarps laying out. | ||
| And what that is is they've got hay underneath it, and they ferment it. | ||
| And it's silage and then they feed it to the cattle. | ||
| Is the fermenting on purpose to give them more probiotics? | ||
| Yeah, I think so. | ||
| I'm not an expert on it, Joe. | ||
| But I think part of it is it just makes it more palatable so they can, I think, just consume enough calories. | ||
| Oh, interesting. | ||
| And then I'm sure there's some nutritional aspect to it, too. | ||
| I just don't know the details of it. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| That's why it would stink so bad. | ||
| Because I thought it was just death. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| In the time when I was driving to see my folks, I think it was the 90s. | ||
| Pretty sure it was the 90s. | ||
| So, like, I wasn't that hip to that stuff anyway. | ||
| I just thought it was just a stinky, dead area. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Where they raised cows. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, I hear ya. | ||
| But Christ, it stunk. | ||
| I couldn't imagine living there. | ||
| Because the problem with olfactory senses is you only detect changes in smells. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| So you just get accustomed to your neighborhood stinking. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Which is really weird. | ||
| It's hilarious you say that, because I got so used to the smell of horse shit when I was outfitting. | ||
| Like, you get so used to it, you don't even know it's around, man. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But, you know, if you're in a wall tent camp, and you're hunting elk for like seven or eight days, and, you know, it's like half snow, or it's half snow, and then it melts, so it's like muddy, you got all these horses tied up. | ||
| I mean, horseshit's everywhere, man. | ||
| It's in every lead rope, it's in everything, and you don't realize, you know, you're out there, you know, out there feeding the horses in the dark, and then you go into the cook tent, and And, you know, you start eating and you don't realize, you know, you got horse shit on your hands. | ||
| You just get used to the smell. | ||
| Well, horse shit's not a scary shit. | ||
| It's not really, yeah. | ||
| It's like it's processed hay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| It's just hay that's biologically, you know, it's sort of gone through the system of the horse. | ||
| It's not like dog shit. | ||
| Dude, isn't that funny? | ||
| Because all predator shit is kind of like off-putting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Because it's rotten meat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, dude. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| You see lion shit or bear shit. | ||
| Like when you see deer shit. | ||
| You pick deer shit up. | ||
| Yeah, no big deal. | ||
| It's like little balls. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| It's nothing. | ||
| Yeah, like my little boy, if he picks up an elk turd or whatever, it's like, oh, that's an elk turd. | ||
| But man, if he tried to pick up a bear shit or something, I'd be like, ah! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| We'd also worry about parasites. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Dude, I think that might be, I mean, don't you think that's maybe why we're so prone to not be a little off-putting, off-put by it more? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Perhaps, right? | ||
| The smell? | ||
| Because it's interesting how animals approach the smell. | ||
| Like, I have a golden retriever, and when he finds... | ||
| I have a fox that lives in my neighborhood, and he comes into my yard. | ||
| It's pretty cool. | ||
| I got a video of him barking in my yard. | ||
| He's such a weird animal. | ||
| They have such a weird noise. | ||
| Anyway, shit's in my yard, and my dog finds his shit and rolls in it every time. | ||
| Like, for him, it's fucking perfume. | ||
| So he gets it, like, all over his neck and stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, obviously, it's not off-putting for him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, I think for him, I don't know what it is that dogs are doing, if they're disguising their smell with this shit. | ||
| Like, I don't know what they're doing. | ||
| They do the same thing with dead stuff. | ||
| Yeah, what are they doing? | ||
| I have no idea, man. | ||
| I don't know why that is. | ||
| It's weird, because they all do it. | ||
| You know, when they do it, you notice, like, they're, like, gleeful when they do it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Loving it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| He comes in with just shit smeared all over his neck. | ||
| I'm like, dude. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So obviously it's not off-putting for them, but humans don't roll around in it. | ||
| No, yeah. | ||
| Not the average. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That's an enigma, man. | ||
| You'll have to get an expert on it in that regard. | ||
| I don't even know how they'd figure it out. | ||
| There's no exact known cause of this. | ||
| Wolves do it to. | ||
| Oh, interesting. | ||
| I think wolves do it to disguise themselves from prey, but that's the best answer I found. | ||
| Well, then it makes sense that dogs do it, because dogs are just bitch-ass wolves. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Yeah, that makes sense. | ||
| You know, they're trying to get their scent covered or something. | ||
| Yeah, so if an animal's downwind, it's just like, ugh, I smell shit. | ||
| It's not like, oh my god, I smell a wolf. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, sure. | ||
| It would overwhelm the smell. | ||
| Well, what do you think about their bringing wolves to Colorado? | ||
| Do you have an opinion on that? | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| I got lots of opinions about it. | ||
| I mean, so it's going to happen for sure, you know? | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| We could dive deep into this one, Joe. | ||
| It's an interesting thing. | ||
| Yeah, so... | ||
| I feel like as a person who has spent some time in the woods, not nearly as much as you, but I've spent enough time that I understand what... | ||
| The woods are. | ||
| I understand what the wild is. | ||
| And I don't think most people do. | ||
| I think people have a very goofy idea of what the wild is. | ||
| Like animals living in a way that they've lived for thousands of years. | ||
| And you just happen to be there. | ||
| And if you weren't there, it would take place exactly as you witness it without you being there. | ||
| It's like you have almost no influence on it. | ||
| They are wild. | ||
| They are living in the woods. | ||
| And wolves are dominant, intelligent, calculating predators that they eradicated from the West for a reason. | ||
| Yeah man, so I think you hit on a bunch of things that would like bring me back to my opinion on it and that's that A lot of this stuff, so I know they've basically described two different areas in Colorado where they're going to put the two first sets of transplants. | ||
| And one of them is like right in where, I mean, I rode that country with a horse like all over the place and the circle of where they're going to put those wolves is right there. | ||
| So I know where they're going to put those, you know, one of the spots. | ||
| I know the spot intimately. | ||
| I know the wildlife there intimately. | ||
| How many wolves are they going to put in? | ||
| So my understanding is off the bat, the first year, and I believe their goal is by December of this year, it's going to be like between 15 and 30, I believe is the first bunch. | ||
| And they're going to have them in two different spots. | ||
| But in that, you know, in that Vail, Vail corridor, you know, up to the flat tops in there, you know, so they're probably going to put 15 to 20 wolves in there. | ||
| The thing that you hit on, Joe, that I think kind of forms my opinion is, I mean, these areas, when you go in them, man, they seem so wild, right? | ||
| Like, you know, I could, the flat tops, I could get on a horse and I could ride for 15 hours and not see a road, you know, Ten hours and not see a road. | ||
| And they seem so wild, even to me, being there. | ||
| But I don't think that people realize how much humans have already affected that landscape and how it doesn't matter. | ||
| This myth that putting wolves back in that landscape is going to turn it back to some ecosystem that was here 300 years ago. | ||
| I think it's a figment of their imagination, man. | ||
| And the reason I say that is because I've also spent a fair amount of time in British Columbia that seemed so much more wild to me. | ||
| And let me kind of like give you context of why that is. | ||
| You know, have you ever been to Vail? | ||
| Colorado? | ||
| Colorado? | ||
| No. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Oh, I have, but not... | ||
| Outside. | ||
| Okay, so if you look at the dynamic of that area, there's a huge highway that goes from, Highway 70 that goes from Denver on the Front Range up, you know, past all the ski resorts into Vail, into Eagle, and then it kind of goes down through a big canyon, Glenwood Canyon, and kicks back into Aspen. | ||
| All the winter range there is split by this massive highway, and then that highway has an eight-foot game fence along the whole thing, and then along that Vail Valley where they are going to put these wolves, there's 50,000 full-time residents, and there's probably double that in the high season, ski season, plus you've got these huge ski resorts. | ||
| I guess what I'm getting at is when somebody tells me that the low-hanging fruit to kind of rewild that areas as wolves, it's just bullshit. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| How is it getting passed though? | ||
| Well, it got passed by a ballot initiative. | ||
| The ballot initiative is how wolves got to the situation they are now. | ||
| And basically what the ballot initiative did is it forced the CPW to take on this goal of transplanting the wolves. | ||
| So it wasn't the CPW's choice. | ||
| And they... | ||
| I don't know the exact laws, Joe, but the CPW, and that's the Colorado Parks and Wildlife, they're in charge of managing the wildlife in Colorado. | ||
| How can they put something like the transplanting of wolves, a very complex, It's a biological problem. | ||
| I mean, you're dealing with biology and wildlife. | ||
| How can they put that as a ballot initiative? | ||
| How can they put that in the hands of people other than wildlife conservation experts, wildlife biologists? | ||
| Well, I mean, the reality is our laws allow that. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It doesn't make rational sense. | ||
| No. | ||
| But it's a decision that for people that are just like, yeah, that'd be amazing. | ||
| Let's put the wolves out there. | ||
| People are going to lose their dogs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Your dogs are going to get eaten. | ||
| It's going to affect anyone who has livestock. | ||
| You're going to have a problem. | ||
| Whether that problem's in three years or in five years, those problems are coming. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Dogs are 100% gonna get eaten. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| If you have a cute golden retriever like mine, you leave them outside, like guess what? | ||
| That dog's dead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| They're gonna team up on that dog and tear it apart. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And if you're cool with going outside and seeing wolves eat your dog, Well, then you've made the right choice. | ||
| But if you're not, if you don't think they're gonna go after low-hanging fruit, if you don't think they're gonna go after easy prey, you don't understand wolves. | ||
| Talk to people that live in Alaska. | ||
| Anybody who lives in British Columbia, they have real fucking wolf problems up there. | ||
| And these are wolf problems that we used to have in the West, but they eradicated them. | ||
| I mean, I don't think it's good to eradicate them. | ||
| I'm not saying that what they did was right when they poisoned horses and left dead horses filled with strychnine and the wolves all died off, but they did it for a fucking reason. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And that's the thing that's so crazy about, you know, back to the process of how it happened. | ||
| Everybody who wants wolves in Colorado, and we can get into the depth they want them, because that's not really clear. | ||
| They just went through this whole setting up the plan for the CPW, and it became very clear in my mind, watching that process, that they don't really want there to be any management of wolves in Colorado either. | ||
| Ever? | ||
| No, yeah. | ||
| Well, that's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, and so that, I think, anybody rational is going to be like, look, we've got to have a top to the population. | ||
| There's no management at all? | ||
| Well, so here's the deal. | ||
| They have a draft plan to manage the wolves. | ||
| What happened is when the CPW did that draft plan, it included some discussion of wolves being lethally managed at all different stages. | ||
| You know what I mean, Joe? | ||
| Even now, if they were a real problem with livestock, could they be lethally managed? | ||
| But down the road, once they had... | ||
| Once they had hit certain population objectives, could they be hunted, right? | ||
| Like that was discussed. | ||
| Well, it turns out the ballot initiative basically says that wolves are a non-game species, and that was in the language of the ballot initiative. | ||
| So... | ||
| They can't really now say, the CPW can't really say that they're going to someday be a hunted species in Colorado. | ||
| I personally think, and everything's like 20-20 hindsight, but even when the ballot initiative originally was out there, I always thought it was going to pass by a landslide. | ||
| That's what's so crazy because it just barely passed. | ||
| But, um, I always thought, like, the problem with Colorado is it's different than these other western states, you know, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, because they're gonna keep the population in line through hunting or other, you know, other methods, but in Colorado, I don't think the politics are gonna allow that, man. | ||
| I think it's just gonna be, like, who knows what the top is on, you know, how many there is, how much they affect the ungulate population, you know, who knows, you know. | ||
| But what I was going to say is what's crazy about this ballot initiative and the bummer part about it is everybody that's going to deal with the negative consequences, they're people that voted no, but they're in the areas where the wolves are going to be transplanted. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everybody that voted for it, they don't have to deal with the downside. | |
| They're living in Boulder. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Dude, and I'm like you, man. | ||
| They're cool. | ||
| Like, I've been around them in Canada. | ||
| They're way cool. | ||
| But the... | ||
| The problem is, is every person that I've interacted with in British Columbia, you know, or even in the western states that have a fair amount of wolves, every person that's just trying to make a living on the landscape, you know, he's a guide, an outfitter, a logger, a cattle rancher, whatever, like he's out there living, he or she's out there living with them and dealing with them. | ||
| They're all just like, when you ask about wolves, they're like, it's just like, you know what I mean? | ||
| Because they got to deal with the negative consequences all the time. | ||
| They're a totally different kind of animal than any other animal because they act as a pack. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And they have some sort of intelligent communication. | ||
| They're badass, man. | ||
| They're amazing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They're cunning and crafty and they're efficient, ruthless killers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they also surplus kill. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| They find them, I think it was Wyoming recently, but they found just a fucking giant pile of elk that they... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Trapped in high snow and just tore to pieces. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And I don't know, like, the stats on how common that is, but, you know, other predators do that, too. | ||
| Yeah, cats do that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| But the difference between them is that they act as a group. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| They're the only one of those predators that acts as a large group. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| No, and they're effective. | ||
| I mean, even when you talk to... | ||
| I know a guy in British Columbia that's... | ||
| I mean, his whole world is focused on trapping them. | ||
| And I've sat and talked to him just about, like, the details, you know, like, boiling his snares, you know, how he goes in and puts his snares in, you know, how he goes in and checks them, like, all that matter. | ||
| Boiling his snares to leave no scent. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because they just pick up on that stuff. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know? | ||
| They're just so smart. | ||
| And they know that they're being fucked with, too. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, which, you know, it's funny because the first thing you said is they're a dog. | ||
| And that, I mean, you have dogs. | ||
| You know how it is? | ||
| Like, they can't figure it out. | ||
| Yeah, they know things. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, for sure. | ||
| I mean, I talk to my dog. | ||
| Like, he understands certain things. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I'm like, come on, dude, let's go outside. | ||
| And he just starts going towards the door. | ||
| He knows what that means. | ||
| I don't have to say it like, want to go outside? | ||
| Do you want to go outside? | ||
| I can just say, hey, come on man, let's go outside. | ||
| He's like, oh yeah, let's go outside. | ||
| Are you hungry? | ||
| And he's like, fuck yeah, I'm hungry. | ||
| I'm like, okay, let's eat. | ||
| He knows what that means. | ||
| He knows some aspects of language. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And, you know, what he is, is like a really tame, docile version of a wolf. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A wolf is like, like, have you ever been around a Belgian Malinois? | ||
| Yeah, I don't think I'm sure. | ||
| Those are the dogs that they use in war, police dogs, and they are fucking scary little meat missiles. | ||
| I gotcha. | ||
| And they look at you like this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're always thinking. | ||
| And you can't just keep one of those motherfuckers in your yard. | ||
| They're too smart. | ||
| They're working dogs. | ||
| First of all, they climb fences like a chimpanzee. | ||
| They just go right up the fence and over it. | ||
| I mean, have you ever seen videos of Belgian Malinois working? | ||
| I don't think I have, Joe. | ||
| I'm trying to put... | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| They can do shit where they leap through the air. | ||
| Like, you can't fucking believe they really can jump that high. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, soaring through the air. | ||
| I'm talking like 12 feet in the air. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| They run, jump off a guy's back, and then leap through the air, like... | ||
| Climb over walls that are like 10 feet tall just by running up the wall. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's insane. | ||
| Pretty wild. | ||
| That's a wolf. | ||
| It's the same thing. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| This is a Belgian novel. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, yeah. | |
| I've seen it, man. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| I mean, that's insane. | ||
| It is nuts. | ||
| How's that dog doing that? | ||
| Look at him running up the fucking wall. | ||
| He's basically a monkey. | ||
| Got it figured out. | ||
| Look, he's running up a fucking tree to get to a mitt, and then he's hanging on it. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Man, you know, the diversity amongst dogs is wild. | ||
| It is wild. | ||
| But these dogs in particular are bred, and look how smart they are. | ||
| Look, you can walk across a tightrope. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| Isn't that insane? | ||
| I mean, that's fucking insane. | ||
| They're so intelligent, but that's closer to a wolf. | ||
| Way closer to a wolf. | ||
| Look at his ears. | ||
| I mean, they're basically an athlete wolf. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Have you ever seen these great Pyrenees dogs that they run with the sheep? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, they're cool in a much different way, but they basically think they're sheep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Pull up Great Pyrenees dogs. | ||
| Yeah, they're interesting. | ||
| It's so wild that they all came from wolves and that you have so many different styles of like the way they look. | ||
| Dude, these dogs, so there's big domestic sheep permits where I used to outfit. | ||
| So guys running, you know, big bands of sheep periodically in the wilderness areas and they keep these dogs with them. | ||
| These dogs are something else to run into in the night up in the mountains or whatever. | ||
| They just protect those sheep. | ||
| You see these big bands of sheep like this. | ||
| And do they keep wolves off of them? | ||
| Yeah, so I've heard mixed things, and this will be interesting because right where they're going to put some of these wolves in Colorado, there's some pretty big domestic sheep guys that run these Pyrenees dogs. | ||
| Oh, Jesus Christ. | ||
| And they actually, so sheep in the wilderness are one of the few animals that are still guarded by humans. | ||
| You know, they usually have a herder with them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And a lot of them are guys from, nowadays it seems to be that most of them are from Peru, I believe. | ||
| I used to run into the guys because they've been out there living with these sheep, man, for like weeks at a time. | ||
| So even though there's a language barrier, like when they see you up there, like they want to hang out, you know, say hi or whatever. | ||
| Just happy to see people. | ||
| Yeah, they'll have like a horse with them, you know, maybe, I don't know, probably five, six hundred sheep and they'll have a couple of those dogs. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| But back to your original question, I've heard mixed things about these dogs' ability to deal with wolves. | ||
| And it has to do with the fact that there's a group of wolves. | ||
| So if they can draw one of these dogs off, wolves can kill them. | ||
| I've heard, and I'm not an expert at it, but... | ||
| I know that some people in wolf country, what they'll do is on the Great Pyrenees, they'll put spike collars on them. | ||
| So the wolves can't get a hold of them. | ||
| Because these dogs are big. | ||
| They're a lot bigger than most wolves. | ||
| How big are these dogs? | ||
| These Great Pyrenees dogs? | ||
| What are they wearing about? | ||
| Dude, I'm thinking... | ||
| Jamie might have to look this up, but I think they're, yeah, mid-150, 160, that's what I was thinking. | ||
| I mean, that's a big dog, you know. | ||
| But I don't know how well they'll do with the wolves. | ||
| And, man, there's stories of wolves getting into these domestic sheep and killing, like, a hundred. | ||
| You know, just, you know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fuck. | ||
| Yeah, I don't know. | ||
| I don't know how that's all gonna work. | ||
| It's not gonna work well. | ||
| No. | ||
| I mean, this idea that it's always good when you reintroduce predators, like, says who? | ||
| Like... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The balance right now is pretty goddamn good. | ||
| Like, I don't know what they're thinking. | ||
| They just have this idea that wolves are amazing. | ||
| Well, guess what? | ||
| Wolves are eventually making their way into Colorado anyway. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, it's a natural thing that's happening. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And... | ||
| At least the way it's happening, it'll probably be more sustainable than just dropping off a patch of them in an area that has domestic animals. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Man, I... Joe, I don't know why there's... | ||
| I mean, I do understand why there's an obsession with them. | ||
| They're beautiful and they're cool. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| But I almost feel like... | ||
| Are you familiar with the... | ||
| I believe the name of the YouTube video is Why Wolves Change Rivers? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I've seen it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But that guy, do you know the guy who made that? | ||
| He's a fan of wilding and he wants to bring lions to the UK. He's fucking insane. | ||
| There's no limit to this logic of this trophic cascade idea. | ||
| Yeah, well, what's crazy to me, man, is like, so if you watch that video, and it's got like 50 million views on YouTube or something like that, it's narrated by a guy, I mean, it's really well done. | ||
| It's just cool to watch. | ||
| But you watch it, I mean, if you listen to the first 90 seconds, And the reason I bring this video up is because I actually think that this video was the start of what happened in Colorado. | ||
| A lot of people watch this and they're like, yeah, it makes sense. | ||
| You get this predator in here. | ||
| It fixes all the problems with the range. | ||
| Balances things out. | ||
| Yeah, it brings everything back. | ||
| But in that video, man, in the first 90 seconds, there's a bald-faced lie. | ||
| They say, I don't know what it is. | ||
| Do you want to play it? | ||
| Should we play it? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, let's play it. | ||
| How Wolves Change Rivers. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The guy behind it is very controversial. | ||
| I mean, I think it's interesting. | ||
| I think it's interesting that he has such a passion towards these animals. | ||
| But this guy legitimately thinks that wilding and rewilding is the way to go for everything. | ||
| Let's play it. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| That's how they get you. | ||
| The beautiful sound of the night. | ||
| And plus the guy's accent, you'll see, man. | ||
| It draws you in. | ||
| They're cool. | ||
| They're fucking cool. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
|
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One of the most exciting scientific findings of the past half century has been the discovery of widespread trophic cascades. | |
| A trophic cascade is an ecological process which starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the way down to the bottom. | ||
| And the classic example is what happened in the Yellowstone National Park in the United States when wolves were reintroduced in 1995. Now, we all know that wolves kill various species of animals, but perhaps we're slightly less aware that they give life to many others. | ||
| Before the wolves turned up, they'd been absent for 70 years. | ||
| That the numbers of deer, because there was nothing to hunt them, had built up and built up in the Yellowstone Park. | ||
| And despite efforts by humans to control them, they'd managed to reduce much... | ||
| So that's the lie right there. | ||
| Despite efforts to be controlled by humans in Yellowstone. | ||
| That is just factually incorrect, Joe. | ||
| Yeah, it's not true at all. | ||
| No, it's not true at all in Yellowstone. | ||
| So the history of Yellowstone actually, you know, until like the 60s, there's two things going on in the park when they had excess elk, which makes sense. | ||
| Because what people don't realize, I mean... | ||
| They were killing predators before the 60s in Yellowstone. | ||
| They were suppressing lions in addition to the fact that they had already killed the wolves. | ||
| So there was predator suppression going on, even in the park before the 60s. | ||
| Well, in the late 50s and 60s, and I might be roughly off on these dates, but the park was actually capturing elk, and they were transporting them to all the other states that needed elk. | ||
| I think that's where they got them in California, for Tohono Ranch. | ||
|
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They got them from Yellowstone. | |
| Yeah, that might be, man, because all the big transplants in Colorado, Idaho, outside of the park, they were Yellowstone genetics. | ||
| You know, and I actually even know, I know that some of the, you know, some of the elk that ended up down on the Indian reservations and stuff, they were originally... | ||
| Can I ask you about that before we move on? | ||
| Someone, I was hunting with this guy in Utah and he was telling me there's literally two different kinds of elk and the reason why these elk like in the Gila mountain range and the elk in Tohono Ranch and They're so big is because these are Yellowstone elk and that the Yellowstone elk have wider bases, more mass. | ||
| They're larger animals. | ||
| He was like, it's like, you know, you have a Roosevelt elk, you have a Thule elk, you have a Rocky Mountain elk. | ||
| He's like, you have a Yellowstone elk. | ||
| He's like, it's a different elk. | ||
| I don't know specifically related to Yellowstone elk, but I actually do know some people who had original Yellowstone genetic elk on their place. | ||
| It's a big high fence place owned by the natives in New Mexico. | ||
| And they actually started to bring in genetics out of Alberta. | ||
| And those elk out of Alberta are way bigger than the Yellowstone elk. | ||
| That's interesting. | ||
| So what you're saying I imagine is true, Joe. | ||
| I just don't know exactly. | ||
| But what I have seen is there's huge difference. | ||
| Man, like I saw a cow on this particular place I'm talking about. | ||
| And it was bigger than any bull I had ever had a client kill in the fight. | ||
| What? | ||
| When we were like, the cow popped up in the brush there probably like 500 yards from us and I hadn't picked up my binoculars yet, there's no way you could have convinced me that was a cow. | ||
| Because it was probably like a 750 pound cow. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've never even heard of such a thing. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| They're physically way bigger. | ||
| But is that normal? | ||
| I mean, you're saying this is the Alberta genes? | ||
| These are Alberta genetics. | ||
| So is that that thing? | ||
| What is that? | ||
| There's a... | ||
| A thing that happens with animals when they're in cold climates, where mammals grow larger. | ||
| Yeah, I know what you're saying. | ||
| It's like the same thing between southern BC moose and Yukon moose. | ||
| The Yukon moose is way bigger. | ||
| And it's also deer, right? | ||
| You have coos deer that are little tiny suckers, and then you get all the way to Saskatchewan, they're 350 pound whitetails. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, sure. | ||
| Bergman's Rule? | ||
| Is that it? | ||
| It says it's named after. | ||
| I think that's it. | ||
| Biology established concept called Bergman's Rule states, creatures tend to be larger. | ||
| To conserve heat. | ||
| The rules name after Carl Bergman, a 19th century biologist who first described the pattern in 1847. Yeah, it totally makes sense. | ||
| Like, Texas deer are so tiny. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It's really interesting. | ||
| Yeah, like, if you compared, like, a South Texas whitetail to, like, an Alberta whitetail. | ||
| Or an Idaho whitetail. | ||
| Yeah, oh, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, it's way different. | ||
| They're fucking giant up there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or Iowa. | ||
| Yeah, and it's not all feed-related. | ||
|
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Part of it is, obviously, this law that you're talking about. | |
| That makes sense. | ||
| So, I've never even heard of a cow elk being that big. | ||
| Oh, yeah, man. | ||
| There's for sure a regional... | ||
| I mean, part of that's probably, like, genetics, you know, or, like, you know, selective breeding of elk, too, over time, which, you know, that does exist. | ||
| There's an industry that does that, so that might be part of it, too. | ||
| It could be that these animals, too, like, much like what we're talking about with California, with Tihon Ranch, you have these animals that are used to living in Montana, say, with the California Tihon Ranch, and then all of a sudden they're living in... | ||
| You know, the Tachapi Mountains, and they have no winter to speak of, where they're deprived of food. | ||
| They have food all year round now, and so they have this body that's designed to consume as much food as possible, because winter's coming, and then winter never comes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So they just get giant. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, and that would make sense, too. | ||
| I mean, I was, you know, elk are funny. | ||
| Joe, and I'm sure you've heard this story. | ||
| It's like, you hear people talking about killing wild elk, like, oh, I killed a bull. | ||
| He had to weigh, like, 900 pounds. | ||
| It's like, dude, I've, I mean, I've put a ton, quartered up a ton of bulls in my life, and a big wild bull is, you know, 650 pounds, 700 pounds would be a big one, you know. | ||
| They don't get as big as a lot of people say, you know what I mean? | ||
| But if you go to Tahone Ranch... | ||
| Yeah, they probably are. | ||
| Yeah, you're probably right. | ||
| No, I've seen 1,100, 1,200 pound elk. | ||
| Yeah, so that's, you know, that's 60% bigger than the bulls that I was exposed to in Colorado. | ||
| Yeah, they're extraordinarily large. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But then you see a moose and you're like, oh my god. | ||
|
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Oh yeah. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, the first time I saw a moose live on the hoof walking around was in BC. Yeah. | ||
| And it was like that scene in Jurassic Park. | ||
| We pulled over the truck, we were driving down the road... | ||
| We pulled over a truck and I stuck my head out the window like, what the fuck? | ||
| It was so big! | ||
| Isn't it goofy? | ||
| Because they're like, that whole depiction of them in cartoons, like Bullwinkle, it kind of fits them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They're just like... | ||
| But fucking dangerous. | ||
|
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Oh yeah. | |
| The thing about them that scares me more than any other, they'll come for you. | ||
| They'll go after you. | ||
| Whereas like, no other deer species like goes, oh, you want to start some shit? | ||
| They'll come over and stomp you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember, you know, it's funny, like when you're riding in the mountains with, you know, you're riding a horse and maybe you've got like three or four mules with you, a lot of times you'll pick up off of them that they sent something before you see it, you know, because they smell something. | ||
| And usually they'll start like puffing their nostrils. | ||
| And a lot of times it would be moose. | ||
| I can hear them huffing. | ||
| Those mules and horses, what they're trying to do is they're trying to get more scent in so they can be like, they know exactly what it is. | ||
| And a lot of times as you're going around a switchback or something, you can hear them huffing and sure enough you come around the corner and there'll just be like a bull moose standing there in the trail. | ||
| Nothing give a shit. | ||
| What do you want to do? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| You seem like you'd be kind of like a big... | ||
| Intimidating mass of people and animals. | ||
| Yeah, and they just look at you like, you're going to have to go around. | ||
| So several moose, I literally drug a string of mules up the hill, through the aspens, and crashing through a bunch of crap just so the moose can stand there on the trail. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| I've never seen a Yukon moose on the hoof. | ||
| I would love to. | ||
| I haven't either, but you see these guys that kill them, and holy smokes, man. | ||
| I've watched some of those Jim Shockey videos. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He goes up there, and they have antlers that are the size of this table. | ||
| Yeah, you just see them when they glass them up, and their paddles on them are like... | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| They're so big. | ||
| It's hard to believe that they're that much bigger, but I guess that's that Bergman's rule. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, sure. | ||
| Yeah, because it's cold as fuck up there. | ||
| Yeah, and just genetics and everything else. | ||
| But moose, like, Colorado's starting to get some huge moose, man. | ||
| Are they Cyrus moose? | ||
| Yeah, there's shires, but, I mean, a 50-inch moose is not uncommon. | ||
|
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Really? | |
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Yeah, in the areas that I was guiding and outfitting in. | ||
| And it was cool, you know, Joe, because early on when I started, we rarely saw a moose, man. | ||
| Like, almost never. | ||
| Like, if you saw a cow moose, that was, like, major day, you know. | ||
| By the time, you know, 10 years later, we always saw moose, and big ones, you know. | ||
| Do you know Adam Greentree? | ||
| I don't know him personally. | ||
| I know of him. | ||
| Adam filmed a grizzly bear in the San Juans. | ||
| Yeah, which is possible, man. | ||
| Do you know the history of the last grizzly bear that they saw on there? | ||
| No. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| I don't want to get the dates and stuff messed up, but it was weird. | ||
| To tie on to your story, they said they were extinct. | ||
| They weren't around. | ||
| And then a bow hunter went in there, I want to say like 15 years after they said they were extinct. | ||
| And he went in there and he got mauled by one. | ||
| And he came out and he's like, look, I just killed a grizzly bear. | ||
| I mean, I'm telling you I did. | ||
| And they said, no, no way you didn't. | ||
| And they went back in there with him and sure enough, he had. | ||
| You'd have to look up the exact story because I'm sure I kind of butchered it. | ||
| Here it is. | ||
| In 1979, Ed Wiseman, a Colorado hunting guide, crossed paths the Grizzly Bear during an expedition near the headwaters of the Navajo River. | ||
| Wiseman was attacked and mauled. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| Uh, but while he was down, he managed to fa- Oh my god. | ||
| The fuck is it? | ||
| Is this like- What is up with his website? | ||
| He's loading a picture and it's changing my mind. | ||
| Oh, I see. | ||
| It's just a shitty website. | ||
| Um, but while he was down, he managed to fatally wound the bear by hand using an arrow! | ||
| Wild. | ||
| A fucking arrow! | ||
| But look, man, so they said they'd been extinct for like 20 or 30 years already. | ||
| How the fuck do they know? | ||
| Here's the thing. | ||
| That kind of talk is so wild. | ||
| Are you out there with cameras in every fucking acre of that land? | ||
| Shut up. | ||
| You don't know. | ||
| You should really take the word of the people that find these things out there because those people are actually there. | ||
| How deep do the biologists go? | ||
| How often are they there? | ||
| How many boots on the ground wildlife surveyors do you have that are telling you exactly how many bears there are? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| How could you know? | ||
| Yeah, who knows? | ||
| So cocky. | ||
| And like on Adam's deal in the San Juans, I don't know. | ||
| He filmed it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I've seen the videos and, you know, personally, I don't know that I could say 100% either way, but I do know that people for sure who have seen them in northern Colorado, like across the border, seen tracks, something like that. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| I mean, the neighboring states. | ||
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They move around. | |
| They're next to Wyoming. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Wyoming has them. | ||
| Yeah, they move around. | ||
| The idea that a grizzly's not going to move from Wyoming to Colorado, he knows this is not his turf. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, dude, the thing about them is they can, people don't understand, they can roam. | ||
| There's something that gets in, you know, bears' heads where they will, well, not just bears, like, I mean, Cats. | ||
| Yeah, cats, a little bighorn ram who he's just tired of getting the shit beat out of him from this band of rams he's been hanging out. | ||
| All of a sudden he just starts moving, man. | ||
| He's just gonna go find like a new place to live and they'll travel like crazy distances. | ||
| There's a cool bear study, and man I wish I knew the gal's name that did it, where they collared a bunch of bears and it was done I believe in New Mexico. | ||
| And it's crazy to see how far these bears will move. | ||
| They'll go where they're denning, and they'll travel, I want to say like two, three hundred miles, hit up an elk calving ground, and then they'll go another hundred miles for somewhere else that they like to hang out in the fall to hit acorns or something. | ||
| So this bear's doing an insane trip. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| So yeah, it's for sure possible. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| And it's likely. | ||
| I mean, I trust Adam. | ||
| He's just so knowledgeable. | ||
| Yeah, I got you. | ||
| He would just say, oh my god, look at that black bear. | ||
| He would say it was a giant black bear, but he's like, that's a fucking grizzly bear. | ||
| He was filming it through his... | ||
| And he's got his gun out and the whole deal, right? | ||
| Oh, that's a different one. | ||
| That's a different one. | ||
| This is one that he filmed. | ||
| Okay, so look at the size of that. | ||
| Just look at what it looks like. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| So this is, I believe he's got film footage. | ||
| No, it's okay. | ||
| But just even those photos, that looks exactly like a brown bear. | ||
| I mean, that doesn't look like a black bear to me. | ||
| Yeah, they get that blonde kind of shine to them. | ||
| Yeah, that looks like a fucking brown bear, man. | ||
| I mean, look, it could be a massive color-faced bear. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| It could be. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But the odds are not that good. | ||
| Yeah, when they get that, I can't remember the term that people use for it, but they get that golden kind of like blondness at the end of the hair. | ||
| And I've seen it. | ||
| You know, we used to have a bunch of black bears in my area that have like mohawks. | ||
| You ever seen like red mohawk? | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| Okay, this is 100% a grizzly bear. | ||
| But I believe this was in Idaho? | ||
| Is that where it was? | ||
| Or Montana? | ||
| He started in Colorado. | ||
| He's now in Montana. | ||
| That was because he was hunting for 28 days straight solo. | ||
| But he actually drove to Montana. | ||
| And then he had an encounter with a female. | ||
| By the way, he lives in... | ||
| Australia, where pistols are, you know, you can't even get a fucking pistol. | ||
|
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Oh, okay. | |
| So someone gave him a pistol to borrow while he was out there. | ||
| What he didn't know is that the rounds were the wrong round for the pistol he had. | ||
| So his gun was not going to work. | ||
| So here he is pointing this gun at this grizzly bear. | ||
| And if you see the video, it's fucking crazy. | ||
| The bear runs up on him. | ||
|
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Here it is. | |
| Thinks he's got a chance. | ||
| Let's give it some volume. | ||
|
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I had no mind in life either, so... | |
| So I drew my handgun. | ||
|
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It's something that you carry, especially when you're by yourself. | |
| How about a handgun that works, bitch? | ||
| You live in a shitty country. | ||
| It'll teach you about guns over there. | ||
|
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Luckily for me, she turned off at about 20 yards, so it was just like a bluff charge. | |
| I stayed dead still just with the pistol drawn. | ||
| See, look at this gun. | ||
| See it? | ||
| It's jammed. | ||
| Look how the front is sticking out. | ||
| Like the slide. | ||
| Yeah, so look at the slide, the entrance on the right-hand side. | ||
| That gun is not doing jack shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which is really funny because he doesn't even know. | ||
| He had false hope. | ||
| He's a bow hunter. | ||
| That is kind of funny. | ||
| It's funny that he's pointing a magic wand at a grizzly bear. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Be gone! | ||
| Well, the thing is, man, it's not like... | ||
| I mean, I've been around grizzlies a fair amount. | ||
| I've never had a threatening type of interaction with them. | ||
| But I've actually had like a few little things with black bears. | ||
| And every time I guided a black bear hunt, Joe, and like I walked up to a black bear, you know, with a hunter, it's not like they're not scary. | ||
| You know, you look at their claws and you're like, well, man, dude, it's like... | ||
| Oh, they're fucking scary. | ||
| Isn't it also true that more black bears attack people to try to eat them? | ||
| Than grizzlies? | ||
| I think that's like when black bears attack you in general, it's like a predatory thing. | ||
| Whereas grizzlies get surprised. | ||
| And there's these scary black bear encounters or black bear things you hear about where the bears are habituated to like campgrounds and stuff and they attack people in their tents. | ||
| That is scary. | ||
| I was listening to somebody talk about it recently. | ||
| I can't remember who it was, but there's something about when you get attacked in a tent and they think that in general, if it's grizzly or black bear, that is more of like a predatory, I'm going to eat you type of thing. | ||
| Maybe because it's at night. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like they do some of their hunting at night. | ||
| Also, I think it's like a burrito. | ||
|
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Yeah. | |
| You're like going to tear it open? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a wrap, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| It's crazy. | ||
| It's like, how is this stupid animal stuck inside this cloth bag? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Perfect for me to just tear through and eat it. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because for them, the smell must be amazing. | ||
| It must be like bacon with an open window. | ||
| That's what a camper smells like, too? | ||
| Yeah, it smells like bacon. | ||
| It probably smelled fantastic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I do know that it seems to me that most of the attacks from black bears have been bears that are habituated. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| They're used to people. | ||
| One of the ones that was recently, there was a Montana woman who was mauled who was killed in her tent. | ||
| She was on a bike trip and she was making her way and she had actually chased this bear off earlier. | ||
| And then she decided, well, he's gone. | ||
| And she went to bed and he's like, no, I'm not. | ||
| He showed back up. | ||
| And then he came and ate her. | ||
| Yeah, it's scary. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I've had them, you know, they, uh, have you ever, have you ever been around black bears when they're, when they're, they kind of, we call it jacking their jaws, but they jack their jaws. | ||
| It's a real, it's got, you, you can, you know, even if you never heard it before, if you hear it, you know exactly what they mean. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, like, you need to get, get out of here. | ||
| What's weird is their sound. | ||
| They sound like a monkey. | ||
| They sound like an ape. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| When they do that, it's like, wow, that's weird. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Dude, one... | ||
| I gotta tell you. | ||
| You know they do that? | ||
|
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| It's very strange. | ||
| It's wild. | ||
| You know, it's funny because they also make... | ||
| I mean, a sow will talk to their cubs quite a bit, too. | ||
| Have you ever heard that? | ||
| It's kind of like, I don't know what to say. | ||
| It's almost like a little mewing sound. | ||
| I mean, I call it a mew like an elk mew, but it's kind of that same tonal structure, but it sounds a little bit different. | ||
| And I hadn't heard it before, but, you know, I'll tell you this story real quick, Joe. | ||
| Kind of a wild deal. | ||
| I was guiding a hunter, and we were watching these bears, and they were in oak brush. | ||
| They were basically stripping acorns off this oak brush. | ||
| And a lot of times, what these black bears will do, the sows will kick their cubs up in the oak. | ||
| Like, this oak brush could be as high as this room, man. | ||
| And what will happen is they'll kick their cubs up in the oak brush, and when you're glassing the oak brush, You'll be looking in the oak brush and you'll just see the little furry cub and he'll be just hanging in the tree, you know? | ||
| And then you don't see the sow because the canopy of the oak brush is covering her, you know? | ||
| So a lot of times when I was guiding bear hunters, I always would look for that, you know, because you can't, you know, you, you know, obviously just from like, nobody wants to kill the mom of two little baby cubs, but it's also illegal to do that, you know? | ||
| So you're always looking. | ||
| You don't want to make a mistake. | ||
| So I would always be glassing the oak brush for cubs. | ||
| And so we were watching this hillside, and I saw a couple cubs, and then I could see their mom kind of cruising underneath them. | ||
| You know, every once in a while she'd pop out. | ||
| And then, so we were kind of paying attention. | ||
| We were just, they're cool to watch. | ||
| We were watching them. | ||
| And then a boar black bear came up the hill right in front of us. | ||
| It was probably like 200-yard difference or something. | ||
| And we watched him and the hunter wanted to shoot him but we didn't have a clear shot so we just kind of kept watching him and the bears kind of started mingling together and it was getting maybe the last like 30-40 minutes of light and finally this bear got out and I actually remember because he was he got a hold of like something that had been dead forever like and it was in the ground like an old winter kill or something this this bored black bear and he was just trying to tear it up you know and he's digging on it but that gave the hunter the shot And so he shot the bear and I saw | ||
| the bear start rolling down this canyon. | ||
| And so I was like, all right, you're good to go. | ||
| He goes down and he lands on a tree, like, you know, off to his left a little bit, just kind of came down the topography of the mountain. | ||
| I'm like, you're good, but we should get over there while we got light just to maneuver around the canyon. | ||
| So I get over there, and we get above the bear, and it's pretty steep, and I'm looking down, and I see him against the tree, and then I hear a cub up in the tree, up in the canopy, and I'm like, what is going on? | ||
| I know for a fact that that's not... | ||
| A sow. | ||
| Yeah, no that's not a sow. | ||
| But it made my heart bump like, oh shit, did we make some sort of horrible mistake? | ||
| So I trot down there and I remember grabbing this bear's back leg and I pick his leg up and I see his balls and I'm like, fuck yeah. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, you know, because you don't want to make, like, I'd feel shitty, you know, I'd feel horrible. | ||
| So I'm like, dude, okay, that cub that's up in those trees is not, you know, this isn't the mom, so good deal. | ||
| But I'm thinking to myself, like, where's this cub? | ||
| So I look, Joe, in the same tree that this bear rolled down into, that cub was in it. | ||
| He was in the same tree that this- Just randomly. | ||
| Yeah, randomly, man. | ||
| So the sow was around there somewhere. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| So that's the problem. | ||
| Like, immediately when I realized this, I start hearing that just jaws. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| So she's nearby. | ||
| And she's really vocal. | ||
| And she's trying to call to the cub. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| So what do you do? | ||
| Do you back out? | ||
| So I'm thinking, we have to, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So we got to just back up. | ||
| So we back up the hill and we just watch. | ||
| It's like, well, this is the deal. | ||
| And it was crazy, Joe. | ||
| Literally, it's felt like forever, but it couldn't have been more than 30 or 40 minutes because it's getting dark. | ||
| But this cub would come down. | ||
| He'd come down the tree. | ||
| I'd watch him get down halfway. | ||
| And then he'd look down. | ||
| He'd see the boar. | ||
| And then he'd go back up. | ||
| You know, I was like, oh, this is going to last forever. | ||
| And finally, man, I wish I had the foresight to video it, but he just kept working down as his mom was calling to him. | ||
| And then right at the end before he came out, he was like maybe three feet above the dead bear at the base of the tree. | ||
| And he jumped out of the tree and he landed on the dead boar bear. | ||
| And he kind of just like looked around and then he ran off to his mom like, oh. | ||
| Awesome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's awesome. | |
| But those kind of situations, man, anytime I got between, you know, near cubs or like where the sow didn't have visual to the cubs, that would freak me out regardless if it was grizz or black bear, you know. | ||
| Yeah, mama bears don't fuck around. | ||
| Yeah, they don't. | ||
| You know, they call mama humans mama bears. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, dude. | |
| Well, it could be like an 80-pound black bear, Sal, and you're still like, man, dude, I don't want any of that, you know? | ||
| No, yeah. | ||
| My God, an 80-pound dog coming after you. | ||
| Can you imagine that? | ||
| And that's way scarier than a dog. | ||
| It's funny these black bears we think of as being sort of innocuous. | ||
| Like, what are you talking about? | ||
| There's a 300 pound wild predator. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, dude, and you pick up their paws and it's like, you get slapped with it. | ||
| It's going to be bad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Yeah, it's not good. | ||
| You're not doing well. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you still hunt them? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I haven't in years, but I used to go up with my friends John and Jen up in Alberta. | ||
| Oh, okay, sure. | ||
| Cam goes up there every year. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Cam Haynes. | ||
| They have a very bear-rich environment up there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| By the way, up there, you get wolf tags over the counter. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that's much of a wolf problem they have there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You go to the gas station to buy a bear tag, you pick up a wolf tag. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it's like $40. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Yeah, and you probably haven't met a whole bunch of Canadians up there that are huge, huge wolf fans. | ||
| None. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| They don't like them at all. | ||
| I know, man. | ||
| It's so interesting, right? | ||
| Go to Boulder and talk to people about wolves. | ||
| Like, wolves are amazing. | ||
| That's my spirit animal. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, there's just a difference between people who have to deal with the negative consequences. | ||
| And I'm like you, man. | ||
| I don't want them to be eradicated off the earth. | ||
| But I do realize that they have negative consequences for some folks. | ||
| I mean, you have to look at it, man, and it's like, well, everybody, you know, you've got all these people who have to deal with the problems. | ||
| They don't, you know, other people are voting in for them to basically have to deal with them day to day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| It's like someone saying defund the police in a city they don't live in. | ||
| Yeah, exactly, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's like, yeah, defund the police. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's like, I don't know why people get value out of that. | ||
| It's an enigma to me, man. | ||
| Well, you know, the beautiful thing about this country is that everyone can vote. | ||
| The horrible thing about this country is that everyone can vote. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| That's right, dude. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Exactly. | |
| Part of the same thing. | ||
| But it's a fellow like you. | ||
| You understand what, you know, you understand the ecosystem. | ||
| You understand these animals and you spent so much time with them. | ||
| It's like those are the people that really should be making that assessment. | ||
| It's like if you want to vote on certain things and you do not have an understanding of that thing that you're voting on, you really shouldn't vote on it. | ||
| It's like, you know, it's like you can't If you don't have an educated perspective on it, then this is crazy. | ||
| Just allowing people to just guess whether or not it'd be good to bring back wolves. | ||
| And of course these pro-animal rights groups that want these animals, and look, they love these fucking animals, and I get it, and it's not that they're bad people. | ||
| It's just they're also misguided because people who love these animals aren't hunting them. | ||
| They're not out there. | ||
| You're not entrenched in the day-to-day existence of what it means to be a wild animal. | ||
| What it means to be a predator and a prey, what it means to be an undulate, what it means to be a cat. | ||
| If you've never locked eyes to eyes with a mountain lion in the wild, you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. | ||
| There's all these like... | ||
| Weird things that you're picking up off of Instagram videos. | ||
| You know, like you have your virtue signaling. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| And I caught your episode you did with... | ||
| It's Derek Wolf, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That line was huge, man. | ||
| Fucking huge! | ||
| Dude, would they say it weighed? | ||
| 170 plus pounds dressed. | ||
| You know, if it weren't for the fact that I don't know the guy that he was with, I don't know him personally, but we're acquainted. | ||
| He worked in a different part of Colorado, and he has a very good reputation. | ||
| If it weren't for the fact that I knew that he was with him, I would say that that's bullshit, because I never heard of a lion being 180 pounds. | ||
| Yeah, his buddy Alex, who was his guide. | ||
| I'm sorry, what did I say? | ||
| You didn't say your name. | ||
| Oh, okay, yeah, I'm sorry. | ||
| He just said the guide. | ||
| He was here, too. | ||
| He was hanging out with him when he was in town. | ||
| Oh, okay, you met him, yeah. | ||
| He's very well-respected. | ||
| Some of my guides worked for him and stuff. | ||
| He's on the cover of Bowhunting Magazine now. | ||
| Pull up the photo. | ||
| It's Derek Wolf's Instagram. | ||
| He's such a fucking good guy. | ||
| But a 180-pound Lion Man, that's huge. | ||
| Yeah, well, he said it was 200 pounds. | ||
| He said if you take away the guts and the blood. | ||
| Oh, that's right. | ||
| So it's 170 plus. | ||
| Look at this. | ||
| Now, if you don't know how big Derek is, when you're in front of Derek, Derek's a goddamn Viking. | ||
| He's a Viking. | ||
| I mean, it's like 100% Viking genes. | ||
| He's enormous. | ||
| Big guy. | ||
| Enormous, not big. | ||
| So if you put me holding up that cat, it would be fucking crazy. | ||
| The cat's bigger than me, for sure. | ||
| It basically weighed what I weigh. | ||
| I weigh 200 pounds. | ||
| So imagine a fucking mountain lion that's 200 pounds. | ||
| I saw one. | ||
| In Utah. | ||
| A big one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Under a tree. | ||
| But it was, you know, I mean, I guessed, like, someone's like, how big? | ||
| I was like, it looked like a 170 pound cat. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Fucking huge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It was really big. | ||
| It was me and my friend Colton, we were driving, and as we were driving, he stopped, it was like at dusk. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He stops the truck, he goes, look under that tree. | ||
| It's a fucking cat. | ||
| And I look, and I catch the eyes glowing from the low light. | ||
| You know, you see the light? | ||
| And then I put my binos on him, so I'm inside. | ||
| We're 30 yards away from this cat. | ||
| I put the bino on him. | ||
| I just see this big pumpkin head, and this fucking demon cat eyes. | ||
| I'm like, oh my god, he's so big! | ||
|
unidentified
|
His forearms were just jacked! | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| They were so big! | ||
| It's funny you say the forearm thing. | ||
| I've skinned a ton of lions. | ||
| And every time I skin one, Joe, when you look at their forearm on a lion, it's not like any other... | ||
| It's like an arm wrestler. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| Like, you know how a deer or an elk, if you just go with your knife and you just get through the hide, like circle the joint, you know, maybe you nick the tendons a little bit. | ||
| You know, most guys, if they hit it right, they can just snap it, right? | ||
| No way with a lion, man. | ||
| No way. | ||
| Because the tendons and just the structure right here is just totally different. | ||
| Do you know that one lion that was living in California in the Hollywood Hills? | ||
| Have you ever seen that photo? | ||
| We have that photo. | ||
| See the forearm, man? | ||
| Yeah, that's exactly right. | ||
| We have that photo, that exact photo. | ||
| We have a giant version of it outside of the studio. | ||
| Look at the collar on it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's so crazy. | |
| That's an awesome photo, but it shows that forearm thing, dude. | ||
| Massive! | ||
| And they have a dewclaw. | ||
| They got a dewclaw down low, you know, like a floating dewclaw. | ||
| Just something to crab onto when they're wrestling. | ||
| Well, you know what they do with it? | ||
| Because I've seen them swatting at dogs with it. | ||
| And what they want to do... | ||
| Because I used to watch them, and I'm like, what are they doing? | ||
| And so what I realized is that they're trying to hook. | ||
| Like, they want to reach out and hook the dog with that and bring the dog to their mouth. | ||
| Because they want the dog in their mouth, you know? | ||
| That's how they get a hold of... | ||
| What I've noticed about them, just my observation, so I might be talking out of my ass a little bit, but it sure seems like if they can do it, They want to hold stuff with their mouth, and they're using their hands to bring it, you know, to bring it to their mouth. | ||
| That picture to me, can you put that picture up again? | ||
| That picture to me, I love that picture. | ||
| And one of the reasons why, first of all, it looks like it's staged, but it's just a camera trap. | ||
| That's way cool. | ||
| And the fact that it's wearing a collar, and the fact that it's with the Hollywood sign in the background, so this thing is in the middle of An incredibly dense, heavily populated area. | ||
| And it's just murdering dogs. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Murdering dogs. | ||
| I mean, you know how many dogs go missing in that area? | ||
| A fuckload. | ||
| There's no deer. | ||
| You can't find a goddamn deer up there. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| You very rarely see deer in the Hollywood Hills, and that's why. | ||
| Because you have a monster. | ||
| You have a 150 pound monster just cruising around with Jack Popeye forearms. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Lions are crazy, man. | ||
| The craziest thing about them to me is that if you're not actively hunting them, you don't realize how many are around. | ||
| In all my years of guiding men, I think I've glassed up maybe three or four, and then all my other experience with them is hunting them. | ||
| But I can only imagine like the dozens and dozens that have just been sitting up on a rock or something as I cruise by and I never knew about it. | ||
| They're stealthy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I saw one in Montecito in Santa Barbara. | ||
| I was driving. | ||
| Oh, that one on someone's lawn or someone's fucking porch. | ||
| That's in Los Feliz? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Oh my god, really? | ||
| They think it was that one. | ||
| They're not sure. | ||
| Well, that cat was sick by the end of its life. | ||
| They think it had gotten hit by a car. | ||
| And I think they euthanized it. | ||
| That looks terrible. | ||
| It looks smaller than that. | ||
| It does. | ||
| But it might be starving. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Not the same day. | ||
| I think P-22 or whatever it was. | ||
| Yeah, it's P-22 as they call him. | ||
| I think when he died, he was very ill. | ||
| I think they wound up euthanizing him. | ||
| I'm pretty sure he got hit by a car. | ||
| Something happened that really fucked him up and kept him from being able to hunt, which is probably why he's sitting on people's porches. | ||
| Just hoping they have a poodle he can eat. | ||
| Figure out something easy. | ||
| Dude, they're cool, man. | ||
| I've personally killed a couple of them. | ||
| It's funny, Joe. | ||
| I love hunting them, man. | ||
| They're really fun to hunt. | ||
| I don't have the urge to ever kill another one, but I would love to continue to go with gold people. | ||
| What do they taste like? | ||
| Derek said they tasted delicious. | ||
| Yeah, they're good. | ||
| They're like lean pork, and they look like lean pork. | ||
| That's how I would describe it. | ||
| I bet you if I fed it to you, you'd think this is like lean pork that maybe tastes like a little overcooked or something. | ||
| Rinella said it's better than pork. | ||
| He likes it. | ||
| He sent me a photo of some stuff that he cooked. | ||
| I said, how was it? | ||
| He goes, it was superb. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's what he said. | |
| I said, really? | ||
| He goes, it was amazing. | ||
| The meat, man, I'll show it to you because it looks like pork, too, man. | ||
| No, I've definitely seen it online. | ||
| I never had a chance to try it, though, in person. | ||
| I've got to take a leak, man. | ||
| Let's pause for a bit. | ||
| We'll come back. | ||
| This is new, hydrated Joe, has a real problem. | ||
| I used to be able to go three hours. | ||
| We had a half an hour longer than the other days. | ||
| Yeah, the other day it was bad. | ||
| But I've been really amping up my hydration. | ||
| I got blood work, I found, when I was dehydrated, and now I've been drinking water all day. | ||
| But it's a fucking problem. | ||
| Before I go on stage, I have to make sure I pee before I go on stage. | ||
| Because I'm on stage for an hour. | ||
| I can't have to piss while I'm doing stand-up. | ||
| Alright, let's pause for a bit. | ||
| Let's talk about it. | ||
| So while we were peeing, Jamie was Googling the new chat GPT, which just got released. | ||
| Is it 4.0? | ||
| Is that what it is? | ||
| Yeah, I guess. | ||
| Yeah, because they were on 3.5 would be the highest I think it was. | ||
| And is everybody freaking out? | ||
| Is it scary? | ||
| Well, they're showing, and I can't, I mean, let me see if this, if I can skip ahead to something. | ||
| Literally right now they're doing the demonstration of it live for everybody to see. | ||
| They've just showed some of the, like, I'll show you the test scores. | ||
| On their website, right after they announced this this afternoon, they showed some exam scores they put it up against, against like GPT 3.5. | ||
| Down here it's like passing AP Calculus, which I guess the blue would have been GPT-3. | ||
| Green is the new one. | ||
| Some of the ones that have passed, I think those were not as good, but it did pass like the bar exam, I believe. | ||
| At a very high rate. | ||
| It's translating stuff into different languages now at a very high rate. | ||
| The thing I thought was crazy is it understands memes, so it can read this picture. | ||
| It's breaking down that it's in three panels. | ||
| It tells you what's in each panel and then what the humor is about that. | ||
| Wow. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's scary. | |
| And there's different examples of that. | ||
| I don't know exactly what else. | ||
| Scroll back up. | ||
| Scroll back up. | ||
| It says, the humor from this image comes from the absurdity of plugging a large, outdated VGA connector into a small, modern smartphone charging port. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| I mean, not that it's funny on its own, but it can understand that. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| And then I'm waiting to find out some of this other stuff that is in it. | ||
| And this is one day, right? | ||
| It's just one day of ChatGP. | ||
| I even saw already there's like a robocall company that's going to make it so that if you get a call from like a scammer, you hit a button on your phone, and I'm not even sure where you hit it, it instantly creates a thousand word lawsuit to go against them. | ||
| Using what they just called you with. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| And GP23.5 could not do that very well, and they're saying 4.0 is really good at it already today. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| And I don't know where this goes, or what happened. | ||
| We're gonna be completely entangled with this world of artificial intelligence. | ||
| You know what's crazy, man, is I don't want to have anything to do with it. | ||
| You shouldn't. | ||
| Well, especially considering what you have been doing for all these years as a guide and an outfitter. | ||
| It's like the last thing. | ||
| It's like as far removed from that world as possible. | ||
| This may sound like so asinine, Joe, but I just look at it and I'm like, I... I already feel like I'm playing the coolest video game. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| The wild video game. | ||
| Yeah, like the real video game, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| There's so many different outdoor stuff, even beyond what I've done. | ||
| Over the last couple of months, I've become obsessed with tarp and fishing and go fishing with my kids every day. | ||
| I'm like, dude, there's a million different little outdoor adventures that I can take and I can learn about the gear and learn about the skill set. | ||
| I don't want to have anything to do with... | ||
| The metaverse, man. | ||
| Tarpon fishing must be fun. | ||
| Those things, but you can't eat them, right? | ||
| Yeah, you can't. | ||
| You can't eat them. | ||
| At all? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's no way to eat them? | |
| Well, I mean, I think you can't. | ||
| Can't you smoke them or something? | ||
| I think you can't. | ||
| Well, so, I don't know what they taste like or what the deal is. | ||
| I mean, obviously, you could eat them. | ||
| Well, let's Google. | ||
| Why can't you eat tarpon? | ||
| The main reason they're not eating is just because of their value as a sport fish. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| But what about marlin? | ||
| Because people eat marlin. | ||
| Yeah, but even billfish, like marlin, sailfish and stuff, a lot of the times they don't eat them because, you know, they want to recatch them. | ||
| So it says, tarpon are rarely eaten because their flesh is filled with small, hard-to-clean bones. | ||
| In the United States, the tarpon usually is caught for sport and then released as a bony, strong-smelling saltwater fish and maybe more trouble than pleasure to eat. | ||
| Yeah, and I've heard that. | ||
| They're like very bony. | ||
| Have you ever seen them, Joe? | ||
| No, not in the flesh. | ||
| They have like a prehistoric look, man. | ||
| A tarpon can be harvested only for those anglers that are seeking the state of Florida record for tarpon fishing. | ||
| Are they only in Florida? | ||
| Is it the only state that has them? | ||
| No, the Caribbean has them. | ||
| Lots of places have them. | ||
| But it'd be in the United States? | ||
| Is Florida the only state that has them in the United States? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know. | |
| I don't think so. | ||
| So it says a special stamp must be acquired along with a saltwater fishing license to harvest a tarpon of any size. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So if you want to get a trophy, you have to have a stamp in advance. | ||
| Like, imagine if you're just tarpon fishing and you get a world record. | ||
| Like, hey, I don't have a stamp. | ||
| You have to just let it go. | ||
| Yeah, you know, a lot of times now with fish, when people get them mounted, they're replicas anyways. | ||
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| You know, most build fish and stuff. | ||
| That's a weird thing, isn't it? | ||
| It is kind of funny. | ||
| I went over a guy's house and he had a real trout, and I was like, Oh, nice. | ||
| This is a real one. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because there's so many, like for people that don't know, like say if a guy catches, like one of my neighbors is a big time bass fisherman and he just sent me, I'll pull it up for you because he's pretty hardcore and he just caught this, shout out to my friend Alan, he just caught this 13 pound bass. | ||
| Wow, that's huge, man. | ||
| Yeah, that's pretty nice right there. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| So what he'll do is he gets all the measurements and the photos of that and then he brings it to a company that basically makes him a plastic fish. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like my feeling is I would rather just have that photo of him. | ||
| Yeah, just frame the picture up. | ||
| Frame that picture on your wall, man, because he's a catch and release guy so he lets the fish go. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But like, come on, man. | ||
| Why you have a plastic fake fish? | ||
| It's like if you had your kids. | ||
| Instead of a photo of your kid, you had a plastic version of your kid with fucking goofy fake eyes. | ||
| That's so stupid. | ||
| Why would you do that? | ||
| Yeah, I don't know, man. | ||
| Right? | ||
| To be honest, even on the species we're talking about hunting, I'm kind of over taxidermy on that, too. | ||
| You saw what I do. | ||
| I learned that from Ranella. | ||
| Ranella was my first mentor. | ||
| And he's like, I just do not like the eyeballs, the whole thing, the plastic. | ||
| It's like, yeah, when I look at a mount, like a shoulder mount, I'm looking at this thing that's not really the animal. | ||
| And sometimes it's not even the real cape. | ||
| It's someone else's cape. | ||
| Because when I hunt, a lot of people know that I don't I use European mounts, so they'll say, oh, would you like to donate your cape? | ||
| I'm like, sure, yeah. | ||
| Let's preserve the cape, so if someone needs a cape. | ||
| Because sometimes a hunter will fuck the cape up, or they'll fall down a mountain or something like that. | ||
| But I just don't get it. | ||
| That's a statue. | ||
| That's not the animal I shot. | ||
| I get it where you're recreating this image in your mind, like, that's what he looked like when he was coming through the trees. | ||
| But don't you have a photo in your head? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| No, I'm with you on it, man. | ||
| And it's crazy because I do... | ||
| Like, some of these taxidermists are pretty... | ||
| They're so good at it. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| They do... | ||
| It's an art form. | ||
| You know, they do a phenomenal job. | ||
| You know, I just don't want to... | ||
| I just don't want to maintain them anymore. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Like, maintain them and drag them around when I move. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And then my kids, when they inherit them, they're just going to throw them in the... | ||
| The dump or something. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| So it's kind of that. | ||
| That is a weird, like some people have trophy rooms in a house where their entire room is filled with these animals like a sheep that's on fake rocks looking around. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Dude, I'll admit, if I go somewhere and somebody has one of those, I like walking around it with them and they tell me all the stories about all the hunts. | ||
| I just don't want one. | ||
| I just don't want one. | ||
| Yeah, I'm not interested in that. | ||
| I'm not interested in that, but I think it's kind of dope. | ||
| You're not a hide guy. | ||
| No. | ||
| No bear hides? | ||
| I have some bear hides. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, they're just not here. | ||
| They're at my house. | ||
| They're actually at my house in California. | ||
| If I did ever shoot a brown bear, I'd mount that motherfucker. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Especially if it was a big one, like a Kodiak bear. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I would want that mounted. | ||
| Because that's like, come on, man. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| My brother's got one in his, like, financial office, which nowadays is, like, totally, like, you know, not politically correct. | ||
| But when you walk in there, they got a big interior BC. Well, you want to... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| Fight off the bear market. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, that's right. | ||
| Yeah, it's, uh... | ||
| It's... | ||
| It's very controversial, but it's, you know, it's controversial with people that don't understand it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's really what it is. | ||
| And it's controversial with people that don't understand ecosystems, they don't understand, I mean, a lot of them actually eat meat. | ||
| That is the craziest thing. | ||
| The people that don't eat meat that don't like hunting. | ||
| Or that, excuse me, that eat meat, rather, and don't like hunting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's strange. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, it's very strange to me. | ||
| Well, I think a lot of the topics we're talking about, Joe, it's just a reflection of this distance between the reality of being a human and the distance that we've put in between. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was having this discussion. | ||
| You know, you could go... | ||
| If you go behind any fancy steakhouse, like you go behind Gibson's in Chicago, one of these fancy steakhouses or somewhere in Manhattan, and if you went through the dumpster, you would find a bunch of half steaks. | ||
| You'd find three quarters of a steak, half a steak. | ||
| To me, it's crazy to think about that probably a lot of people that are eating in that restaurant, they're probably against hunting, but they're willing to take half a steak and throw it away. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| To me, that seems so wild to think. | ||
| It's just ignorance. | ||
| They're against hunting, but they don't know what it is. | ||
| They've never experienced it. | ||
| Or they have this version of it from movies. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Which is weird. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sure. | |
| Because the movie version of Hunters is like from the movie Wolverine. | ||
| Like the Hunters are always the assholes. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Wolverine has to kick their ass. | ||
| Dude, that's still the case in like in any, you know, show that, you know, a kid show. | ||
| If a hunter shows up, he's like the dick. | ||
| Isn't that weird that that's the case, but it's not the case with Fisherman. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When someone's fishing, it's always a happy thing. | ||
| Hi, fishing, just casting the fish. | ||
| Isn't it interesting? | ||
| I don't know why that is, man. | ||
| Especially fly fishing. | ||
| That's a gentleman. | ||
| You never think of a fly fisherman being an asshole. | ||
| It's all catch and release. | ||
| That's their argument, I guess. | ||
| But it isn't always. | ||
| I mean, it's only catch and release in certain places. | ||
| The catch and release thing is odd. | ||
| I don't really enjoy it. | ||
| I mean, I've done it, but I'm always like, what are we doing? | ||
| We're just fucking with these fish. | ||
| We're just fucking with these fish and we're trying to get this weird little charge out of catching them. | ||
| You know what's wild, man? | ||
| Since I sold my business, Joe, I literally go fishing with my kids almost every other day. | ||
| So are you retired now? | ||
| Nah, well, dude, I don't... | ||
| Taking some time off? | ||
| Yeah, I'm working on... | ||
| Well, I'm taking some time off, but I've actually been trying to crank on the YouTube deal, you know, and really get that. | ||
| You put up some really good content and very informative. | ||
| Yeah, no, I appreciate it, man. | ||
| It's really good stuff. | ||
| So that's kind of like my focus, and I got some ideas that I'm going to continue to work on on that front. | ||
| Do you want some more coffee? | ||
| No, I'm good, man. | ||
| I'm good. | ||
| As a matter of fact, I need to work on this a little bit. | ||
| It's probably cold as fuck right now. | ||
| Well, the thing is, my wife actually warned me before coming on here. | ||
| She said, don't drink a bunch of coffee because you talk too fast. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Oh, that's funny. | ||
| She's giving you advice. | ||
| That's so funny. | ||
| But it was good advice, so I'll take it from her. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| But anyways, man, I lost my... | ||
| Oh, yeah! | ||
| I was telling you... | ||
| Informative YouTube stuff. | ||
| Well, yeah, so the YouTube stuff is one of my focuses, but this kind of period of time has given me some time to, you know, go fishing. | ||
| I go fishing with my kids like every other morning. | ||
| Where are you living these days? | ||
| I'm living... | ||
| Well, so I've been in Puerto Rico the last four or five months. | ||
| I got a brother who lives there. | ||
| So I've been down there, you know, working on my stuff, but doing... | ||
| Puerto Rico, huh? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, I know some people that live down there. | ||
| It's a good place to avoid taxes. | ||
| For some folks. | ||
| But it's also, you know, my time spent there, Joe, it actually, Puerto Rico is an interesting place. | ||
| Like the whole like legal structure of the place is interesting. | ||
| But actually from like an outdoorsman perspective, it has like all this, to me at least, like all this untapped stuff. | ||
| But the problem is I'm like a... | ||
| I'm like from that one kid's cartoon where the dog sees a squirrel and is like, squirrel? | ||
| With outdoor stuff, I'm like that, man. | ||
| So I'm like, oh, tarponfish is dying! | ||
| And then spearfishing. | ||
| So I tend to get drawn every way. | ||
| But when I'm there, I'm like, dude, there's so many cool outdoor stuff to do there. | ||
| I mean, I have a home there, but we were only going to stay there a couple months. | ||
| We homeschooled our kids, and now we've been there for like six months. | ||
| Just kidding. | ||
| Anyways, back to the fishing part, man, I didn't mean to get sidetracked, is what's crazy with the catch and release thing, like my little boy, he cannot believe that we would release anything. | ||
| Right, because it's not normal. | ||
| Yeah, he's like, Like, yeah. | ||
| He looks at, like, your reaction to people's, his reaction too. | ||
| Like, I mean, a lot of times, and we keep a lot of them, you know, little snappers and stuff. | ||
| They cook them. | ||
| They like to do the whole process. | ||
| But he cannot believe, man. | ||
| Like, I'm like, alright, we gotta turn this one back. | ||
| And he's like, why? | ||
| What are you talking about, Dad? | ||
| And then he tries to negotiate with me, and he's like, right before I put it back, he'll be like, Dad, can we use it for bait? | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Well, I think it's just normal human instincts, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| It's like, well, we're doing this. | ||
| What is the point? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What are we out here for? | ||
| Are you just fucking with these fish? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Which is basically what fly fishermen are doing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| The barbless hooks. | ||
| They're just out there fucking with fish. | ||
| Dude, I've heard you talk about it on this podcast, man. | ||
| They're all after that feeling. | ||
| You know, there's that jiggle from a fish, man. | ||
| If you could sneak up on people and shoot them with a suction cup, people would do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, if you knew you could just like, I got you bitch, and no one gets hurt, that's what people like. | ||
| Do you feel like you get that from, do you feel like the feeling like when a bull comes in when you're archery hunting or you make a good archery shot on a bull elk, do you feel like you get a similar feeling than you do like a related feeling when you're fishing? | ||
| Yeah, it's a very minor version of the bull elk feeling when you're fishing. | ||
| When you're fishing, you get a... | ||
| Oh, I got one. | ||
| I got a good one. | ||
| It's fun. | ||
| It's very exciting. | ||
| I love fishing with my kids because I love that they can catch something and then they can cook it and we can eat something that they got. | ||
| My daughter caught a wahoo when we were in Hawaii. | ||
| It was one of the first times she ever caught a really good-sized fish. | ||
| She's caught... | ||
| At the time, this was like quite a few years back when she was, I guess she was probably like five or six. | ||
| She had caught like a couple of like little snappers and stuff like that, like deep sea fishing, just dropping a line down way low. | ||
| But this was the first like really good sized fish she caught. | ||
| She was so proud. | ||
| And so when we were eating, you know, we're like, thank you for catching this. | ||
| You caught our dinner. | ||
| She's like, all you people are eating because of me. | ||
| It was fun. | ||
| You know, it's like, it's exciting. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, of course. | ||
| You get that little charge out of catching a fish. | ||
| But a bull elk is that times ten, times a hundred, times a thousand. | ||
| It's not even... | ||
| Derek Wolf said it best. | ||
| He was talking about sacking Tom Brady. | ||
| He's like, it's not even close. | ||
| He's like, sacking Tom Brady's fun. | ||
| Don't get me wrong. | ||
| But it's not even close to shooting a bull elk. | ||
| And I'm like, I'm so glad he said that. | ||
| Because that's how I feel about when people say... | ||
| They ask me, God, you do so many exciting things. | ||
| You do stand-up, you host the UFC, all these different things you've done in your life. | ||
| You used to fight. | ||
| What's the most exciting? | ||
| I'm like, bowhunting elk is about as heart-pounding and as exciting as possible. | ||
| When you're hiding behind a tree and you're at full draw and you see the tips of those antlers moving through the brush and you know he's about to make it into the opening, and you're like, Holy shit! | ||
| And you're at full draw, just sitting there, and then he comes in there, and then the arrow releases, and I use Illuminoc, or Nocturnal. | ||
| You see that green knock just sending it right through the golden triangle. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're like, yes! | |
| It's the greatest feeling in the world! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| And knowing that you're going to eat that thing, and the smell of the fucking burning wood, and the searing meat. | ||
| I can smell it right now. | ||
| It's the best food in the world, too. | ||
| I prefer it over everything. | ||
| Elk. | ||
| Yeah, elk is my favorite. | ||
| I really like Neil Guy. | ||
| I shot a Neil Guy recently. | ||
| It's very good. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| But elk is the best. | ||
| I think it's the best. | ||
| Axis is pretty goddamn good, too. | ||
| Have you had Axis? | ||
| Yeah, you know, I had it, oh, the Maui Venison guys, they said that to me. | ||
| Was it called Maui Nui? | ||
| Maui Nui, yeah. | ||
| Is that it? | ||
| Yeah, I think Maui Nui Venison. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Something like that. | |
| I'm sorry if I'm butchering it. | ||
| Peter Attita is one of the owners of that. | ||
| We should probably say the name of it right. | ||
| Is that what it's right? | ||
| Is it Maui Nui? | ||
| It is it. | ||
| That's a great system that they have. | ||
| So you can buy actual wild game from Maui, and it actually helps. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| Maui Nui. | ||
| They've sent me a bunch of it. | ||
| They have really good bone broth, too. | ||
| But the beautiful thing about it is that they need to get rid of these. | ||
| It's an invasive species, and they have so many of them. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So it helps. | ||
| It helps everybody. | ||
| It helps the environment of Maui. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And it's fantastic food. | ||
| I interviewed, I believe his name is Jake, who runs it. | ||
| I interviewed him on Jay Scott's podcast, actually. | ||
| And, dude, it's amazing to hear the rundown of, like, the process of how they kill them. | ||
| Because they have like a... | ||
| I don't want to get into the depths of it because I'll butcher it, but if I recall, they essentially go in the field and they have a mobile USDA-approved system that they put it through. | ||
| It's pretty crazy, man. | ||
| I talk to them about... | ||
| Just, like, the marksmanship component they went into, because they have to kill them all by hitting them in the skullcap, even though they're wild deer, you know? | ||
| But part of the whole... | ||
| Arrangement? | ||
| Yeah, arrangement. | ||
| Do they have to die instantly? | ||
| Yeah, they have to die instantly, and it's pretty amazing what... | ||
| What round are they using? | ||
| Dude, I want to say, I want to say he's hit.308. | ||
| Okay, and so are they shooting them at night? | ||
| Yeah, so they shoot them at night and they use thermals, but my understanding is they can't use suppressors. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because of Hawaii gun laws, I believe. | ||
| Oh God, that's so dumb. | ||
| Which is like wild, man. | ||
| That's so dumb. | ||
| Yeah, it doesn't make any... | ||
| The suppressor thing is so dumb. | ||
| It's like people watch too many James Bond movies. | ||
| I know. | ||
| Because they're awesome. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Suppressors are great. | |
| They protect your fucking ears. | ||
| The round's still just as lethal. | ||
| And as long as you zero it in right, it's still just as accurate. | ||
| I loved them as a guide because, you know, muzzle brakes became so popular in the last, like, 15 years. | ||
| And they do. | ||
| They take out so much recoil. | ||
| Butt. | ||
| Butt, man, dude. | ||
| If you get a guy, if you forget one time to have your ears covered, oof. | ||
| Yeah, a buddy of mine lost his hearing because the hunter threw the rifle up to take an offhand shot and he was... | ||
| He was up by the muzzle, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, he was off to the side of it and he lost his hearing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| His hearing aids now. | ||
| Yeah, it takes one time. | ||
| Yeah, one time. | ||
| It's crazy, yeah. | ||
| It is interesting how it works though, isn't it? | ||
| You know, just having that compensator at the end of the rifle barrel... | ||
| Sure. | ||
| ...releases all the gases out the sides and all the sound and actually kicks less. | ||
| Oh, yeah, and it takes a ton. | ||
| I mean, a lot of these... | ||
| Big difference. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| Particularly these, like, light rifles guys are shooting on these, you know, up doing these mountain hunts and stuff. | ||
| I mean, you can't hardly... | ||
| You can't hardly shoot them accurately over time unless you suck a bunch of the recoil out of them. | ||
| Because you just get so... | ||
| People get so, you know, they just train themselves so well, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, but, you know, can you get some of that out with, like, good training? | ||
| Yeah, I think like the guy you talked to. | ||
| Joel Turner. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think guys, if they really embrace that system and go through the nitty gritty of it, they can. | ||
| When you were guiding, was like archery hunting, was that like the most sketchy? | ||
| Like, hey man, let me see you shoot. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Because there's so many people, I think, that pick up their bow like two weeks before elk season and shoot it 20 yards a few times like, oh, we're good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't want to just pick on archery in this respect. | ||
| I think it goes for all hunting. | ||
| I think if you're not exposed to, I guess, hunting slash death a lot, you don't realize how messy it can get. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And that goes for guns and archery equipment. | ||
| If I was being honest... | ||
| I would rather guide a guy with a gun. | ||
| Just because all the situations over... | ||
| I mean, I've guided a lot. | ||
| I had a lot of guides working for me, so it's a lot of numbers. | ||
| It's not like everyday occurrence. | ||
| But you get into those situations where something gets hurt, and I'm talking like, you know, you could be following stuff for days, you know, trying to get it killed, and, you know, once you're exposed to that enough, you become like, you just want everything to be right, you know what I mean? | ||
| And the reality is, as a hunter, it keeps you from taking sketchy shots. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Where people just hope it works out. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's one thing Joel Turner talks about. | ||
| It's like you should never hope a shot works out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| You should be sure. | ||
| Like when you are releasing that arrow, like he's so precise in his language. | ||
| Right. | ||
| When you're releasing that arrow, you absolutely know that arrow's going to hit its mark. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because you've trained for it. | ||
| The thing about... | ||
| All of it is that until you experience it, you really don't know. | ||
| It's one of those things where people think they can keep it together. | ||
| I kind of equate it to like a fight because a lot of people think like, oh man, if I get in a fight, don't worry about me, bro. | ||
| I know how to fight. | ||
| But the reality is like in an actual physical confrontation, if you don't have any experience in it, you're going to freak out. | ||
| Your heart rate's going to go through... | ||
| Heart rate is going to go through the roof. | ||
| You're going to gas out almost instantly. | ||
| You're going to full panic. | ||
| You're going to have tunnel vision. | ||
| It's like you need to experience that just to understand what it is and to say that you can be calm in that situation. | ||
| Yeah, and you were talking about the heart thump in these situations. | ||
| I mean, it'll feel like your heart's going to blow out your chest, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| And I've guided people who, you know, adults, you know, they seem like competent guys, and there's so much pressure around a shot opportunity, or at least they're manifesting it around them. | ||
| Like, you know, you've been in the mountains, you've been, you know... | ||
| You're on a backpack, you know, sheep hunt or something for six, seven days, and there's a bunch of money involved, a bunch of time involved, and then the guy gets a shot opportunity, and there's so much pressure, and there's like, at that moment, and then boom, the gun goes off, and the first question I always ask, because it tells me a whole lot about, you know, what probably happened, I always ask a hunter, how did it feel? | ||
| You know, that's my first question to a hunter after he shoots, because that'll tell me a lot about, you know, what's going on. | ||
| And I can, several times I've had a guy go, I wish I wouldn't have shot. | ||
| And I'm like, why? | ||
| Like, why did you shoot? | ||
| And the only thing I can... | ||
| Anxiety. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's just... | ||
| Panic. | ||
| Get it over with. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And it's crazy. | ||
| It's like, dude, why did you shoot? | ||
| Well, do you ever have a conversation with them before that about that and tell them, like, do not shoot unless you're ready. | ||
| There's going to be a thing. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| Because my deal is like, and this is a very basic way to look at it, and I'm sure Joel would have a more sophisticated way for people to have time to go through the process. | ||
| But I always tell guys with rifle hunting, the primary thing you have to do is you have to get a good rest in the mouth. | ||
| That's the beauty of rifle hunting over bow hunting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Is that with a good rest and if you're prone in particular, like, God, I'm reasonably certain I'm going to fucking hit that animal every time. | ||
| Yeah, and that's what I, like, in the discussion I have, is like, look, first thing we're gonna do is gonna get a good rest, and then if you cannot keep the crosshairs within a defined vital area that we're talking about, you tell me, and we're gonna move your rest, get you a better rest, adjust your rest, maybe go from your pack back to your bipod, something like that, or we're gonna get closer. | ||
| But please do not shoot. | ||
| And a lot of, some of that's practical, you know what I mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Like, I don't want to trek my ass around looking for those rams now that they're hauling ass over, you know, two rims. | ||
| It's also for the experience of the person that you're doing it with. | ||
| Right, but it's also, I don't want one to get hurt and it to go, you know, it to become, you know, a negative experience for everybody, you know, the animal. | ||
| Sheep hunting, to me, is a fascinating thing because it's these weird rich guys... | ||
| That spend so much money. | ||
| And for people that don't know, I was trying to explain this to someone the other day, and they were incredulous. | ||
| They were like, what? | ||
| I go, it's hundreds of thousands of dollars for this governor tax. | ||
| And they were going, shut the fuck up. | ||
| I go, yeah, hundreds of thousands of dollars people spend to go and just hunt a bighorn sheep. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, my take on it, I've guided quite a few of the hunts. | ||
| So one thing about it is it's actually a fairly small community of sheep hunters. | ||
| There's actually not that many of them. | ||
| But the thing about it is, as a wildlife resource, they're also not all that abundant. | ||
| So I think... | ||
| If I was being totally honest, I would say that part of the whole, you know, the whole, like, chic of the whole thing is just that it's scarce. | ||
| Not everybody can have a tag. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right, right. | |
| Because, you know, a sheep hunt, a Rocky Mountain bighorn hunt is not that different than a high country mule deer hunt in a lot of ways, you know. | ||
| But the animal, obviously, just there's a species difference, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Well, the Alaska ones are pretty wild, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Like the doll sheep hunts. | ||
| Yeah, the doll sheep hunts are nuts. | ||
| People are literally risking their lives. | ||
| Oh yeah, sure. | ||
| That's the species where people die the most, right? | ||
| They fall off cliffs. | ||
| So it might be by volume. | ||
| In terms of my experience, mountain goat hunting is the worst by far. | ||
| Same kind of a situation, though. | ||
| But the thing is, you know, Joe, mountain goats, where the sheep stop, mountain goats start. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Dude, I cannot tell you how many times I've sat on goats and been like, there's no way we're going to kill them there because there's no way we'll get them. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| And then, I was actually talking to one of my guides about a week ago about it, and he's like, Cliff, you know, there's like There's three times that I felt like there was a chance of me dying in my lifetime, and two of them when I was guiding mountain goats for you. | ||
| Dude, it's just, they live in the steepest shit you can imagine, man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I love them, dude. | ||
| They're cool. | ||
| They are cool. | ||
| They're way cool. | ||
| The way they can move off on insanely steep ledges. | ||
| Blow your mind. | ||
| I just, like, do they have, like, flexible hooves? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So they have a... | ||
| Yeah, their foot, it's wider. | ||
| There they go. | ||
| Look at them. | ||
| Look at this motherfucker. | ||
| These, I believe... | ||
| That's not mountain boats. | ||
| I think that's a type of Ibex. | ||
| Ibex, yeah. | ||
| But same stuff, dude. | ||
| But look at that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, what in the fuck is happening here? | ||
| Like, if I saw a man doing that, I'd be like, dude, get down. | ||
| Please don't do this. | ||
| Don't fucking do it. | ||
| Like, this thing just knows how to do it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But why is it not scared of heights? | ||
| Like, what has genetic... | ||
| Yeah, that's a mountain goat there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, that's a mountain goat. | |
| Mountain goats are beautiful. | ||
| Dude, they're stunning, man. | ||
| They're so beautiful. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| That guy's like holding it with his face. | ||
| That's so crazy that they do that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That they literally walk up the side of a fucking... | ||
| That looks like a dam. | ||
| That one might be sick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, hi. | |
| How you doing? | ||
| What's going on? | ||
| Just chilling over here. | ||
| See if you can find the white mountain goats. | ||
| Yeah, there's a bunch of pictures there. | ||
| They're so beautiful, man. | ||
| Look at that photo. | ||
| Go back to that photo you just had. | ||
| Look at that photo. | ||
| That's so beautiful. | ||
| Oh yeah, they're way cool, man. | ||
| How delicious are they? | ||
| Are they good? | ||
| They're not my favorite game meat, but they're pretty good. | ||
| That's why I'm out. | ||
| I'm only interested in hunting things that I really want to eat. | ||
| Yeah, the primary. | ||
| I shot a javelina recently, and I had it converted into chorizo. | ||
| I was going to try it this morning, but I got up late. | ||
| I never tried it, but I haven't heard great things, man. | ||
| Well, the guys at the ranch that I'm at say if you turn it into chorizo, it's actually very good. | ||
| It's pretty good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| We're going to find out tomorrow because it was supposed to be my breakfast this morning, but I got up late. | ||
| Oh, I gotcha. | ||
| But no, mountain goats are, I mean, they're not going to rank up with elk to me. | ||
| Yeah, so that's why I'm out. | ||
| Yeah, go elk hunting. | ||
| Unless they run out of elk, which may happen in Colorado. | ||
| Yeah, who knows? | ||
| Yeah, well, Colorado has more elk than I think any other state, right? | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| By quite a bit. | ||
| And in terms of hunting opportunity, you know, because they have so much over-the-counter stuff, which is starting to change a little bit, it's way more than other states. | ||
| For now. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Dude, actually, back to the... | ||
| Back to what we were talking about on that, man, because I don't think I did a great job of explaining myself with the Yellowstone deal. | ||
| In that video, what I was getting at, Joe, is that people don't realize that when Yellowstone originally had a problem with the elk, they were sending all these elk out as transplants. | ||
| So that was a way to actually control the population in Yellowstone. | ||
| Ah, I see. | ||
| And then the rangers in the 60s, they were actually shooting them too. | ||
| You know, they were shooting them to suppress the population. | ||
| And they actually, what happened in the early 60s, they had like massive controversy on the park. | ||
| And this is all documented. | ||
| I'm a nerd, so I've read the history of it. | ||
| But they wanted to have a hunt on the park. | ||
| To do exactly what this video claims the wolves did in the 90s, there was a lot of discussion in the 60s of having a draw or whatever and getting a bunch of hunters on the park to solve the range issue. | ||
| Because see, what happened was they quit transplanting the elk off of it because they didn't need to. | ||
| Nobody wanted the elk. | ||
| So the elk started to do some damage to the range there. | ||
| So one of the proposals was to have a hunt in Yellowstone, you know, maybe just a temporary one or whatever, to dissipate the elk. | ||
| And one of the main reasons it didn't happen is that the park officials, and then I know there's some push from Washington, is they didn't want the elk to not be habituated to people. | ||
| In the 60s, it's documented that one of the reasons they didn't have hunters in there is they wanted the elk to be comfortable with people. | ||
|
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Wow. | |
| So to me, and people listening may not find this interesting, but to me, it's like a total bastardization of history, right? | ||
| It's like, look, you're saying that the wolves did what they did in Yellowstone. | ||
| And yeah, they did help because there was way too many wolves or way too many elk, particularly in those valleys and stuff, and they were hurting their range. | ||
| But saying that it was attempted to do it with human intervention and it failed is a total lie, man. | ||
| Well, also, there's a lot of value in taking those elk from there and, like, moving them to Kentucky and Pennsylvania and all those places where they've repopulated elk. | ||
| Because elk used to be in basically every state, right? | ||
|
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Right. | |
| Right. | ||
| In the Plains, there's a lot of... | ||
| What do you think about that American Prairie Reserve situation? | ||
| I'm not super familiar with it, but my understanding is it's basically trying to... | ||
| Are they directly buying up a bunch of private land? | ||
| They're doing block management on it. | ||
| They're buying up all this land and they want to convert it into this... | ||
| But they're going to allow hunting on it. | ||
| They're going to turn into this wild area with bison and pronghorn and everything. | ||
| And it's like they have this design to sort of rewild that, but in a way with undulates. | ||
| I think all that stuff to me is a good idea as long as we rewild it and it makes sense in a way that hunters or people can still utilize it. | ||
| It's so weird, Joe, because I think sometimes we forget that it's not like we're aliens. | ||
| We're part of the ecosystem too, man. | ||
| Yes, we are. | ||
| But we don't think of ourselves as because we're so far removed. | ||
| We're so smart. | ||
| We want to pretend that we're different. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| That we shouldn't kill. | ||
| We want to kill every day. | ||
| Dude, that's... | ||
| Isn't that the crazy thing? | ||
| Like the stake in the garbage. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| But, like, everybody thinks... | ||
| That, oh, because Joe Rogan, there's a picture of him with a dead elk, that somehow that's different than somebody who indirectly still just lives their life and consumes, right? | ||
| Yeah, it's just ignorance. | ||
| It's all it is. | ||
| I would tell those people, hey, come hunting with me, but I don't want them to. | ||
| Imagine if you're at full draw and they're like, get away! | ||
|
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Yeah! | |
| Yeah, that would not be. | ||
| That's a year worth of meat to me, you fucking idiot. | ||
| Not being good. | ||
| Yeah, but it's just a lack of understanding. | ||
| And it's so difficult to truly understand unless you've experienced it. | ||
| You know, I'm very grateful that Steve Rinella took me out the first time. | ||
| You know, I did it with my friend Brian Callan from Meat Eater. | ||
| We went mule deer hunting. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it was so much harder than I ever thought it was going to be. | ||
| And it was so much more interesting than I thought it was going to be. | ||
| Also, there's a thing that ignites inside of you, very similar to the fishing thing, where you catch a fish, you're like, ooh! | ||
| There's a thing when you're stalking an animal that your brain goes, oh yeah, I know what this is. | ||
| We've done this before. | ||
| There's a pathway in the mind that exists for that. | ||
| This is how you acquire meat. | ||
| And there's an excitement to it because you're going to be able to feed your family. | ||
| So when I brought that meat back home and I was cooking it and I fed my family with this deer that I ate, I had decided that day. | ||
| I remember I was cooking with Ranella. | ||
| We were eating the mule deer over the fire. | ||
| And we were talking about it. | ||
| I said, I'm doing this forever. | ||
| I'm doing this now. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| This is my new thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm like, I'm doing it. | ||
| And he was laughing. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| He loved it. | ||
| He loved it that he converted me. | ||
| Because Callan never really got converted. | ||
| He'll hunt with me and he'll hunt occasionally, but I fucking block off time. | ||
| Yeah, you got focused on it. | ||
|
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I'm hunting. | |
| I'm hunting. | ||
| And it's like, that's a primary part of my diet. | ||
| I eat deer meat all the time. | ||
| When I did the UFC last weekend, when Jon Jones fought, Daniel Cormier, who's the commentator next to me, and he's a good friend of mine, I always would bring him snacks. | ||
| There's this company called... | ||
| Carnivore snacks, and they make these delicious snacks. | ||
| So I'll bring him beef jerky, and this time I brought him deer sausage. | ||
| And he's like, man, I can't eat deer, because I ate bad deer once, and I eat deer, I get sick, and I go, just try a little piece of the summer sausage, just try. | ||
| He said, oh shit, this is good. | ||
| So he started talking about it on the air. | ||
| He's like, Joe's got me eating deer sausage. | ||
| So in the middle of one of the fights, he's talking about me feeding him deer sausage. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Well, dude, I can tell you in my business, Joe, I mean, I'm sure you know this, but you're talking about your little inner circle. | ||
| You actually created like a trend within hunting. | ||
| So I would have guys call me, you know, like three, four years ago and It would always be kind of the same story. | ||
| They're 35 years old and they're into, you know, maybe they're jujitsu guys or something. | ||
| And just talking to them, having a conversation with them, but they want to come do their first elk hunt. | ||
| And I would always ask, dude, what got you into it? | ||
| It's always you, man. | ||
| Like, you started, like, this mega trend. | ||
| It was kind of like I could almost identify my clients. | ||
| I was like, oh, yeah. | ||
| Like, I know that those guys, they probably got, like, their influence or their motivation from you. | ||
| So it's pretty wild to see, you know? | ||
| Well, I feel like the more people that get into it, there's a lot of people that don't like that. | ||
| They don't like that the trailheads are full. | ||
| They don't like that there's a lot of people out there wandering around. | ||
| But you can't think like that. | ||
| You can't think like that. | ||
| Those are allies. | ||
| You need those people. | ||
| You need more people that understand what it is. | ||
| And to think differently, I think, is very selfish and very stupid and foolhardy. | ||
| I think you have to think about the small amount of people that hunt. | ||
| I don't even know. | ||
| What is the percentage of Americans who hunt regularly? | ||
| Oh, that's small. | ||
|
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Let's guess. | |
| I wouldn't say it's 3%. | ||
| I don't even think it's three. | ||
| I'm going to guess it's less than three who hunt regularly. | ||
| I mean, I don't know what regularly is. | ||
| There's probably different metrics that we could apply. | ||
| But it's very small. | ||
| And I do understand... | ||
| What does it say here? | ||
| 15 million hunting licenses were issued to the U.S. population that year, so 4.6%. | ||
| Yeah, but you're probably right, Joe. | ||
| I bet you that less than half of them really hunt regularly. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Regularly. | ||
| But that's still... | ||
| Okay, 4.6% of the U.S. population was issued a hunting license that year. | ||
| And that's 2020. I think I'm responsible for 1%. | ||
| Yeah, I bet you are, man. | ||
| Now, I can tell you this. | ||
| From individuals that started hunting that are older than 25 and didn't have a father that hunted or a family that hunted, you're responsible for way more than 1% of them, man. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| But listen, if those people can do it and be successful, they'll experience what I've experienced. | ||
|
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|
Oh, yeah. | |
| And there's also the argument like, oh, you know, you're wealthy. | ||
| You can experience things differently. | ||
| You get to go places other people can't go. | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| So I don't know what to tell you. | ||
|
unidentified
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What do you want me to do? | |
| Not be wealthy? | ||
| Like, shut the fuck up. | ||
| Just stop making excuses. | ||
| It's not really relevant. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's not relevant. | ||
| And also, there's plenty of opportunities for people that aren't wealthy. | ||
| Well, dude, that's the thing, man. | ||
| If you're in the U.S., from a hunting perspective, regardless of, like, your economic situation, you got the best opportunities on the hunting front. | ||
| There's nothing like it. | ||
| There's nothing like it in the rest of the world. | ||
| I mean, the New Zealanders got some great opportunities, too. | ||
| It's just a little bit different. | ||
| But here, it's like, I mean, it's, like you said, like, you know, it's probably the most economical hunting situation I think there is in the world if you're an American. | ||
| Texas is not the best. | ||
| Texas is, it's great if you have money because there's all these private ranches, but Texas is like 90 something percent private land. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And neighborhoods with deer. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| If you're a jackass. | ||
| It's like, I keep an eye on the deer in my neighborhood in case shit goes down. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Because there's so many of them. | ||
| They're fucking everywhere, man. | ||
| They're everywhere. | ||
| Because mountain lions out here are basically like coyotes. | ||
| You see a mountain lion, you just shoot it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Which is interesting. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| If it's coming from California, where you go to jail. | ||
| Yeah, a different way they manage them. | ||
| This is better. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you have any interest in hunting lions? | ||
| I do. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| I'd like to eat one of them. | ||
| Dude, they're... | ||
| You talk about the heart thump? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| When I got into hunting them, Joe, when you know dogs have one treed or in a cave or something like that, and you're making your way up there, it'll make your heart blow out of your... | ||
| I can imagine. | ||
| And even... | ||
| You know, I love going and just taking pictures of them. | ||
| Like, I got a bunch of pictures on my phone of just me, like selfies, just me being a jackass with a lion up here in the tree, you know, or whatever. | ||
| The thing that's interesting to me is also the pushback on the dogs, and I get that. | ||
| I really do get that, especially as someone who loves dogs, because sometimes the dogs die. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But the fairness aspect of it, which is interesting, and that's where I think education is very important and people understanding, especially from someone who's being honest and objective about it. | ||
| Like, I could absolutely understand why someone would say it is not fair to hunt mountain lions with dogs. | ||
| But I will tell you, That if you want to shoot a mountain lion, you're not going to unless you use dogs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Or unless you hunt over a dead animal that they've killed, you could find it and locate it. | ||
| If you think you're going to stalk a mountain lion, you're going to go find them and stalk them, your odds of success are so low. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like you could do it for years and never see one. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah, no, it's just an effectiveness thing, right? | ||
| In terms of managing them, you have to have dogs. | ||
| Now, I have known a few people, and I actually would love to try it one day. | ||
| Well, I have tried it a few times without effectiveness. | ||
| There are a few people that will walk tracks, walk tracks out of lions, like in the snow. | ||
| You know, they're just trying to find really fresh tracks, and then they'll walk them out. | ||
| And I know a couple guys who've killed lions that way, but, you know, you're talking, it's a very small subset of lion hunting. | ||
| It's not the best way to manage their population. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that's what's bizarre about California is they don't manage their populations with hunters. | ||
| They bring in mercenaries. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's just so crazy. | ||
| People don't understand. | ||
| They kill the same amount of lions every year. | ||
| It's so foolish. | ||
| It's a wild thing. | ||
| It seems like such a waste. | ||
| First of all, let's explain it to people. | ||
| Because of the Pittman-Robertson Act, there's a certain percentage of... | ||
| Hunting licenses, ammunition, all that stuff. | ||
| What percentage of it? | ||
| Is it 10%? | ||
| I can't remember what the tax is. | ||
| It goes to wildlife conservation. | ||
| It goes to habitat preservation. | ||
| It goes to taking care of rangers. | ||
| It's a beautiful situation. | ||
| It's one of the best situations in terms of the way it's managed. | ||
| It's really beautiful. | ||
| If you have a state like California that doesn't allow mountain lion hunting, you go, oh, well, that's good. | ||
| We need to preserve the mountain lion population. | ||
| Incorrect. | ||
| They kill the same amount of mountain lions. | ||
| They kill them, though, with mercenaries. | ||
| So they bring in some guy who's a mountain lion hunter, and he uses dogs, and he finds these mountain lions that are troubled mountain lions, and they wind up killing the same number of them. | ||
| But now the state pays. | ||
| This guy to go do it, instead of you paying the state. | ||
| So instead of the Pittman-Robertson Act applying where all this money now, where all these people apply for tags, all these people get tags, they go mountain lion hunting, and all that goes towards conservation. | ||
| Yeah, so you're talking about the direct tag revenue. | ||
| And Pittman-Robertson is the tax on like... | ||
| Guns and ammo. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, guns and stuff like that. | |
| But all that stuff. | ||
| Yeah, all that stuff goes in. | ||
| And it's crazy. | ||
| And the thing is, this has come up in this wolf thing in Colorado a ton. | ||
| Like, I've seen public comment. | ||
| Public comments, well, we don't... | ||
| We need to have... | ||
| If there is ever lethal control, it needs to be done by, like, professionals, right? | ||
| Hilarious. | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| Yeah, like, who are these professionals? | ||
| Are you gonna... | ||
| Yeah, by the way... | ||
| Are there any? | ||
| What have they been doing all these years? | ||
| These pro-wolf hunters where you can't hunt wolves. | ||
| That's the thing that's so funny. | ||
| I guarantee you that the guys dealing with lions that are trouble in California... | ||
| They're hounds guys. | ||
| They're guys that grew up lion hunting, and they're like, well, I'm just obsessed with this. | ||
| The only way I can do it is if I'm working for the state or whatever. | ||
| Yes, I know a guy does it. | ||
| Yeah, and I'm sure he's just into lion hunting. | ||
|
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He's even a hounds guy. | |
| And here's the fucked up part. | ||
| There was a recent thing in the Bay Area where they did an analysis of the contents of their stomach. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's 50% domestic pets. | ||
| Yeah, it doesn't surprise me once they figure it out. | ||
| Half of their diet is your dog. | ||
| I talked to, you know, I talked to a guy, well, I talked to a guy's son who was involved in a very long-term study of lions. | ||
| And he was a houndsman, and he followed like the same toms year after year. | ||
| Tom's just a male, the term for a male lion. | ||
| And what they found is that what he found and observed is whatever that lion's mom taught him to kill is usually what they would focus on. | ||
| Which is wild to think about. | ||
| And I think some of these, you know, when lions are pushed up against human populations, their moms start to... | ||
| It's like passed down generationally. | ||
| Like, we're going to kill pets or whatever. | ||
| But as it applies to more normal situations, he told me that... | ||
| That he would follow a tom that they treed and collared, like, year after year, and that tom would only kill bull elk. | ||
| Like, he would walk through, you know, tons of mule deer and only kill bull elk. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| Like, just kill after kill, you know, for years would just be a bull elk and he might, you know, whatever. | ||
| And then there'd be weird ones. | ||
| He said, like, they'd be following lions and they'd find a, you know, a cat that only killed coyotes. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| You know? | ||
| You know, and maybe made some exceptions sometimes, but generally knew how to kill it, and, you know, they'd figure that out. | ||
| Kind of makes sense, though. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, their mom just shows them the deal. | ||
| Because, man, their moms... | ||
| I mean, I have pictures from outfitting from cameras and stuff like that where you'd see these female lions with two kittens, and if I showed them to you, you're like, dude, that's not... | ||
| Those aren't baby lions. | ||
| It's like a pride of mountain lions because they keep them with them. | ||
| They keep their kittens with them for a couple years sometimes where they're big. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow. | |
| So I think they learn from their mom or whatever. | ||
| Dude, they're fascinating. | ||
| They're amazing animals. | ||
| Freaking cool. | ||
| I feel the same way I feel about wolves. | ||
| I'm so glad they exist. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| But I don't want to be surrounded by them. | ||
|
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|
Yeah. | |
| Well, and the thing is, I get what a lot of people are going to say about the wolves thing. | ||
| They're going to be like, well, Cliff, Joe, you guys are being dicks because really what you want is you just want more animals to hunt and you want to suppress the wolf population because of that. | ||
| And yeah, part of it is that. | ||
| At least speaking for myself, part of it is... | ||
| Yeah, every hunter would say that. | ||
| Yeah, part of it is that. | ||
| You want more opportunities. | ||
| But there's the other point too, man, that you said, Joe. | ||
| If you're being rational about the economics and you assume, like take Colorado, you just assume, hey... | ||
| This ecosystem, there's a lot of people living here. | ||
| There's a lot of, you know, other activities that affect the ecosystem. | ||
| We have to have a rational, you know, economic approach of how we're going to take care of these animals and manage them. | ||
| The wolf deal, like, I just did the rough math in my brain. | ||
| And you take a wolf, and a wolf's going to kill 10 to, I think it's like, I think the estimate's like 12 to 18 elk per wolf per year, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| And so, I was doing the math, like, your elk hunting in Colorado is basically, the success rate on most of the units is, you know, 10 to 15%. | ||
| It's fairly low. | ||
| It's tough hunting, you know, in these, in their, I call them over-the-counter units, and just so your listeners know, that just means you can go buy a tag. | ||
| You don't have to put in a truck. | ||
| Yeah, you just go to a sporting goods store. | ||
| It's not ration, just put in a tag. | ||
| So anyways, you got 15%, you got 15% success rate. | ||
| So that means if one wolf, Just what he eats per year, he's going to kill 15 elk, that takes 100 tags that they can't sell, right? | ||
| Because if you calculate in the success rate. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So 100 tags, I mean, I'm guessing roughly, you know, Joe, like the state's getting probably 300 bucks a tag, right? | ||
| Between like, you know, non-residents pay more than residents, whatever, but it's like 300 bucks a tag. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| That means that that wolf is eating $30,000 a year worth of CPW revenue. | ||
| One wolf. | ||
| One wolf. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know. | ||
| And that is wild, man. | ||
| It's wild to think about it that way, about revenue. | ||
| You know. | ||
| But it's also to think the thing that gets me more than that even is the domestic animals. | ||
|
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Right. | |
| Is cattle, sheep, these people that are running livestock, they're fucked. | ||
| You're gonna have to deal with a whole new situation. | ||
| Yeah, it's going to be a massive pain in their ass. | ||
| Now, they are going to get compensated. | ||
| They will get compensated to the extent that they can prove it, and there's a whole system that's being worked out. | ||
| So they'll get compensated for livestock that is killed by wolves. | ||
| I have a photo. | ||
| Jamie, see if you can find that photo that I put up on Instagram when I was hunting with my friend Mike Hawkridge and Ben O'Brien up in B.C. Where these wolves... | ||
| We had found this moose calf right after these wolves had torn it to shreds. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it was amazing because there was hair everywhere. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And that was the thing that I didn't anticipate. | ||
| I was like, oh, wow. | ||
| This is weird. | ||
|
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| There's fucking hair everywhere. | ||
| I thought you'd just see, like, bones and they would chew the meat off the bones. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I was like, oh, I didn't even think about the hair. | ||
| They tear, like, tufts of it off. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, hell yeah. | ||
| And it's just like hair scattered everywhere and then these bones that were just stripped down by these wolves. | ||
| And we had gotten there just very shortly after it had happened. | ||
| Maybe it happened the morning of or the night before. | ||
| Yeah, and they just get after it and just clean it. | ||
| And they do that every fucking day. | ||
| Every day. | ||
| They're constantly doing it and they love it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's exciting. | ||
| And they're fucking mean to each other, too. | ||
| That's the other thing. | ||
| All you tree huggers. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| You need to watch what they do to the beta males. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| They tear them apart. | ||
| It'd be a rough, rough existence being a guy down the totem pole a little bit in one of those packs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're starving plus getting your ass kicked every day. | ||
| Yeah, they're fucking tearing apart your hamstrings. | ||
| Yeah, it's like they're ruthless animals, man. | ||
| That's a literal dog-eat-dog world. | ||
| Survivors, man. | ||
| But imagine how good they get at it. | ||
| And, you know, they have all these tactics and stuff. | ||
| I don't know how much of it's true or proven, but I've been with guys in British Columbia. | ||
| They say they use the roads. | ||
| The wolves use the roads to kill moose, you know? | ||
| Really? | ||
| Because, you know... | ||
| You get in areas in British Columbia that used to be real remote, and then they put in logging, and then logging, you know, there's a bunch of logging infrastructure. | ||
| Yeah, and in the snow... | ||
| Can't find it? | ||
| No? | ||
| Can't find it? | ||
| I want to say it's from... | ||
| Ryan, who else were you with? | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Well, it's Mike Hawkridge's outfitting, shout out to Mike, in British Columbia. | ||
| That was the first time, and actually the only time I ever hunted moose. | ||
| That's a... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's a cool picture with your... | |
| Eat what you kill. | ||
| Yeah, I found that picture. | ||
| I found the moose. | ||
| Yeah, that's the moose. | ||
| But there's an image that was on my Instagram of the moose calf that we found just covered in hair. | ||
| It's pretty fucking cool. | ||
| I could probably find it on my phone if we can't find it. | ||
| I know what you're talking about, though, where the tufts of hair are all over the place. | ||
| Everywhere. | ||
| Until you see it, you're like, oh, this is happening constantly. | ||
| They're just a cleanup crew, just burning through the forest, trying to find these animals, scanning, scanning, scanning. | ||
| There's one. | ||
| Let's move. | ||
| Circle around them. | ||
| You guys get in front. | ||
| We'll get to the sides. | ||
| Cut them off. | ||
| Well, that's what I was talking about. | ||
| And I don't know for sure if this is proven or true or whatever, but the guys say that the tracks are like this. | ||
| These wolves will get on the logging road, and the main pack will work the logging road because it's easier in the snow. | ||
| There's no downfall and stuff. | ||
| So they'll work the road and then they'll basically cycle a couple wolves off the road, you know, off into, you know, they'll go out into the trees and try to pick up, you know, moose or whatever out there. | ||
| And then, and then that wolf will get tired and he'll come back to the logging road and then another one will go out. | ||
| Pretty wild, huh? | ||
| I wonder how they coordinate that. | ||
| And I wonder how they pick who does what. | ||
| Yeah, probably instinct or, you know, I don't know. | ||
| Because they're dogs. | ||
| They're not capable of communicating with each other, I suppose. | ||
| I wonder if they're communicating with pheromones or something. | ||
| Maybe there's some way that we don't understand or they just... | ||
| It could be just instincts bred off of doing that so many times. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's just an unspoken language. | ||
| What's crazy is, man, fish do it too. | ||
| Like you were talking about tarpon. | ||
| You know, they do the same thing. | ||
| Like you'll see them, they'll get around mullet and they herd them up, you know, into a bait ball. | ||
| And I even noticed in like marinas and stuff, they'll herd bait like back in a corner, you know. | ||
| You see them in marinas, which is crazy. | ||
| You ever seen the videos of people dunking their hand in the water with a hot dog and a tarpon comes and grabs their arm? | ||
| They get habituated to feeding. | ||
| So they'll come to like fillet tables where they're fed or places where they get fed. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| Huge tarpon. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Biting people's arms. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Pretty wild. | ||
| It's nuts, man. | ||
| But they do the same thing, like those tactics. | ||
| And you know what I've learned to do? | ||
| I mean, I'm going to sound like a total dork here, but I've gotten really into throwing a cast net to catch bait. | ||
| Okay, yeah. | ||
| You know, like this is like, I get infatuated with these things. | ||
| So me and my little boy, like every morning at sunrise, like we're going to go catch bait to go fishing, you know? | ||
| So, what you realize is I get up at, I call them like my little glassing points, but they're literally like, I mean, my house is in a country club there, dude, so I'm like cruising down on my golf cart with my cast net. | ||
|
unidentified
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Like, I'm the only guy in the country club that does this kind of shit, you know? | |
| But anyways, we go to my little glass spots where we can look, you know, down the marina, we can look on the ocean for birds or whatever working bait, but a lot of times how we find the bait is you can see the tarpon, like, kind of pushing them around. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, and then they'll get that bait over on the side somewhere where I can throw a net on it. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Because if it's out there and it's dispersed, it's hard for me to net it. | ||
| I went fishing in Mexico once, and I think they were Jack Cravalho. | ||
| They had this swarm of them that were attacking baitfish, and I'm telling you, it was like half a football field. | ||
| And you just cast into there, and immediately you catch something. | ||
| But they had the bait balled up. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| It was wild. | ||
| They think they balled the bait up, and they just whack, whack, whack, whack. | ||
| Yeah, they just whack them. | ||
| And you just cast into that chaos. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| And you're pulling fish out. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| No, it is. | ||
| It's cool how... | ||
| I guess I didn't mean to get off track, Joe, but how are they communicating, man? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| How do they coordinate that? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| But maybe it has to... | ||
| You see the bait fish do that, too. | ||
| Like, they're somehow known to turn and everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, that's like birds. | ||
| How are they doing that? | ||
| We don't really understand how they don't slam into each other. | ||
| People bump into each other in the street. | ||
| How do birds flying in the sky? | ||
| Without any verbal communication. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| It's so fascinating. | ||
| What we don't know about nature could fill volumes. | ||
| Yeah, dude. | ||
| That's why I have no interest in the metaverse. | ||
| Well, you're not alone, apparently. | ||
| Didn't really sell. | ||
| I thought that was an interesting moment in, you know, technological history. | ||
| Because, you know, when you got a guy who's as influential as Mark Zuckerberg and with a giant company like Facebook, they literally changed their name to Meta. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Pump these Oculus headsets out and this is the next level thing. | ||
| Mark came here and he gave us a demonstration of this stuff. | ||
| We did some things like we did a fencing game. | ||
| Oh, they're amazing. | ||
| Amazing. | ||
| You know what's the most incredible, dude? | ||
| It's the boxing game. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Boxing games are so fun. | ||
| It's a great workout. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Because you put the headphones on and, you know, the headset rather, and the headset is wireless, right? | ||
| So it's just a thing that sets up to your head. | ||
| And then you have these things in your hand. | ||
| This is the Oculus. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you start the game. | ||
| And you're in there with a guy, and you hit him, and you see his face snaps back, and he hits you, and you see a white flash. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And it's a really good workout. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It's a really good workout, and you can actually work on your skills. | ||
| Oh, it applies? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes! | |
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| I mean, you're not hitting anything, so it's not like hitting a bag or hitting a mitt, but you're bobbing and weaving. | ||
| You're seeing punches coming your way. | ||
| You're shifting and then countering. | ||
| There's all this stuff that you do that is fantastic for cardio. | ||
| And it's fun. | ||
| It's like you're playing a game, but we had it at the old studio, and I did a couple of rounds. | ||
| I'm like, dude, I am exhausted. | ||
| And more importantly, my feet hurt. | ||
| It was like my feet were exhausted. | ||
| Oh, you're like flexing your toes in a weird way. | ||
| Because we were doing it on concrete, you know? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I was like, this is wild. | ||
| This is a great workout. | ||
| Dude, I've played the climbing game. | ||
| Have you played it? | ||
| No. | ||
| Dude, the climbing game, when you fall... | ||
| So you're doing all these crazy Yosemite climbs or whatever with the thing. | ||
| My brother has that game. | ||
| But when you fall... | ||
| When you fall, it's like... | ||
| Oh my God. | ||
| Fuck that. | ||
| You should do it, man. | ||
| It'll take your breath away like... | ||
| Well, they had one that we did where you're walking across a balance beam. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| Between two buildings. | ||
| Probably similar. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, but yeah, the regular wild is way more interesting. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| There's just as much adventure out there. | ||
| But you have to be willing to actually go there, whereas you can just put that headset on and all of a sudden you're on a mountain. | ||
| I always contemplate this, man. | ||
| What do you think stops people from doing it? | ||
| Time, lack of understanding, no mentors, just don't have the opportunity. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| I think hunting in particular is like that too, man. | ||
| The learning curve is... | ||
| I don't think steep is the right term. | ||
| It's just intimidating. | ||
| With all the regulations and all that stuff, it's hard for us. | ||
| I think it's steep. | ||
| I think it's steep. | ||
| And then there's also understanding the wind. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| There's so many things that aren't intuitive. | ||
| Where do you start in terms of buying glass? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| I mean, how many fucking podcasts are there? | ||
| Like, Aaron Snyder has like five of them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Where you're just breaking down the difference in glass quality and binos, edge-to-edge detection, and like, fuck. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Man, dude, in the technology and hunting, in like, just the whole gear component of hunting has grown so much. | ||
| In a positive way, in a sense... | ||
| That, you know, gear to go out and do a backpack hunt or something like that in, you know, pretty rough conditions where it's cold at night and all that, it's so much easier now. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| There's lightweight tents. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| There's great layers. | ||
| Like, this stuff's phenomenal. | ||
| Phenomenal. | ||
| I guess for some reason this kind of theme has come out in my YouTube channel. | ||
| I think the whole gear infatuation about it, it intimidates people and it shouldn't. | ||
| I hate that to be a barrier. | ||
| You don't need to spend thousands of dollars or more than that to go on your first elk hunt. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| You can go do it. | ||
| It might not be quite as comfortable or whatever, but you don't have to have all this stuff. | ||
| I think what's one of the most intimidating thing is getting into archery. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You can't just buy a bow and practice. | ||
| You have to go get it sized. | ||
| You have to put the peep in the right place. | ||
| You have to get arrows that match the bow. | ||
| You have to get a scale that matches the sight. | ||
| Like, all of that is crazy. | ||
| Like, how do you do that on your own? | ||
| Oh, just run Archer's Advantage software. | ||
| Like, what? | ||
| Yeah, what are you talking about? | ||
| Like, how many grains are your arrows? | ||
| I don't fucking know. | ||
| Like, imagine the average person just with zero help trying to start a bow. | ||
| Yeah, and not everywhere has it. | ||
| Like, here in Texas, you guys are spoiled because you got good archery shots. | ||
| Oh, we have a great one in Austin. | ||
| Shout out to Archery Country. | ||
| It's fucking phenomenal. | ||
| Like folks in there that know what they're doing? | ||
| I used to send my shit up to the Bow Rack. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| You know, in Oregon. | ||
| Springfield, Oregon. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because it's like such a good place and that's where Cam's from. | ||
| I was like, well, they'll just send my bow there and they'll send it to me. | ||
| It was easy. | ||
| Yeah, and they get you set up. | ||
| Yeah, or Dudley. | ||
| I would send it to Dudley and Dudley would take care of stuff. | ||
| It's like, for the average person, that's not an option, so what do you do? | ||
| It's like you have to go somewhere. | ||
| They have to measure your draw length. | ||
| They have to find out what the peep height is. | ||
| And then you have to practice. | ||
| And so you need a place to practice. | ||
| And a lot of people live in apartments. | ||
| So how the fuck am I going to practice? | ||
| Where do you go? | ||
| There's a lot! | ||
| A lot! | ||
| I guess that answers the question, Joe. | ||
| In a lot of ways, if you get really into it, you almost have to shift your lifestyle. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Well, I most certainly changed my lifestyle. | ||
| When I got into it, I just decided, like, that was going to be something I'm doing every year. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, okay, now I have this new thing that is... | ||
| But for me, it's an amazing reset. | ||
| Like, there's... | ||
| My life is filled with so much... | ||
| Pressure and stress of a different variety. | ||
| That's odd. | ||
| That's the most pressure, the most stress, but it's also the most relaxing. | ||
| Just being in the woods, no cell phone service, no nothing. | ||
| Just stalking and just hiking the mountains. | ||
| And also knowing that I have to be in amazing cardio shape. | ||
| When I'm working out in fucking February, I'm literally thinking while I'm working out in February, the more I push, the less tired I'm going to be in September. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| Which is crazy. | ||
| Yeah, that's cool, man. | ||
| I mean, it's cool when, like, you know, a hobby basically can change somebody's life, you know what I mean? | ||
| You can obsess with it, and there's other things that do that. | ||
| I think it enriches your life. | ||
| I really do, because I think complex... | ||
| Difficult things that are very rewarding and I don't think I don't think there's very many things that are as rewarding as hunting because you're actually getting food from it and actually feed family and friends and you feed yourself and it's so nutritious and so much better for you than any other kind of food that I think that it's it's one of the most rewarding difficult things and I think the more difficult things that a person does on purpose that are rewarding you know I'm not talking about like life struggle I'm talking like Choosing | ||
| to do things, whether it's workouts or tasks or problems you're trying to solve on purpose, those are very valuable to your overall resiliency as a person. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I think that that is something that I've really gotten from hunting. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Like, every time you do another one, it becomes easier to take... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| And there's lessons that I learn from each individual hunt. | ||
| You know, there's things like... | ||
| I went hunting with Ranella a couple months ago, and it was the first time that I'd ever rattled in bucks, which was wild. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah. | |
| We were in South Texas. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| And literally, we would set up, and he would start, clackety-clack! | ||
| Clackety-clack! | ||
| And all of a sudden you hear some sound, and you've got to get the full draw, like right away. | ||
| Because these fuckers are just running in. | ||
| Yeah, because you're rattling in thick cover. | ||
| Yeah, South Texas. | ||
| Yeah, I got you. | ||
| Yeah, so it was very exciting. | ||
| Dude, I've never done it, but I know some folks that have really got into rattling. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| But more in open country, like, you know, where they can see you a little bit. | ||
| And you see, like, whitetail coming from, you know, way far away. | ||
| It's crazy how well it works at the right time. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, when they're down to fuck, it's like it's going down. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, you're just catching them when they think that there's a brawl going down over some ladies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| It's like, oh, must be some hot ladies in that area. | ||
| So they just start running. | ||
| Isn't it funny? | ||
| I don't know why this is, but I don't think I'm the anomaly here. | ||
| Isn't it funny how there's kind of enjoyment in manipulating them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Like with elk, it's the same way. | ||
| Oh, it's the best. | ||
| I mean, I used to do a fair-minded... | ||
| That's it. | ||
| You found it! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| He found it. | ||
| 2014. Oh, okay. | ||
| Yeah, that makes sense. | ||
| Took a while to get there. | ||
| So that was back when I was still rifle hunting. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at all the hair. | |
| All that stuff on the ground is hair. | ||
| Which for people at home, this is November 11th, 2014. And it was just hair everywhere. | ||
| And that was a moose calf that they'd got. | ||
| And they just tear it up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Tear it apart. | |
| Look at that. | ||
| Everything's gone. | ||
| The tongue's gone. | ||
| The esophagus is gone. | ||
| All the organs are gone. | ||
| The ribcage still stands, but all the organs have been eaten out of it. | ||
| I mean, all the skin off of all the, you know, the hindquarters is gone except for the lower parts. | ||
| It's funny, man, because they're kind of a... | ||
| Shout out to Mike Hawkridge. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| My man. | ||
| Dogs are, you know, coyotes are kind of like that, too. | ||
| They're kind of dirty eaters. | ||
| But lions, man, they're like tidy, you know, because they don't, you know, they'll store their kills, you know? | ||
| It's kind of wild. | ||
| Have you ever seen a lion kill where one's got it piled up or whatever? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| I'm sure I got some pictures on my phone, but it's pretty neat how they'll cover it up and it'll be tidy and they'll come back and they'll peel it back. | ||
| I don't think hunting's for everybody, but I think it's for a lot of people. | ||
| I just think they don't know it. | ||
| Yeah, dude, I agree. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Believe me. | ||
| One of the things about Texas, there's a lot of opportunities for invasive pigs. | ||
| And my friend Jesse Griffiths, who is the head chef and owner of Dai Due Restaurant in Texas, he has an organization that trains people, teaches people how to hunt, takes them out hunting, shows them how to hunt, how to butcher the pig. | ||
| What is it called? | ||
| New school of traditional cookery. | ||
| Yeah, this is... | ||
| Jesse's the best. | ||
| And Jesse is an amazing chef. | ||
| If you're ever in Austin, Dai Due restaurant is the fucking shit. | ||
| I love going there. | ||
| I go there all the time. | ||
| Oh, and he has like a little school. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And he's doing it with wild pigs. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Click on that full bore just so you can see some of it. | ||
| We don't have to play the music, the volume rather. | ||
| But this is his restaurant and so in the restaurant he's actually prepping some of these wild boars and showing people how to cook it. | ||
| And he was with us in South Texas, by the way. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So he cooked for us while we were there. | ||
| He was hunting ducks and he cooked some ducks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah, yeah. | |
| I saw something on Instagram. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, my Instagram. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| I put it up on Instagram. | ||
| So he teaches people how to hunt, how to shoot these animals, where to hit them, the whole deal. | ||
| He takes them through this whole process. | ||
| And, you know, he does a very small group of people at a time, shows them how to make sausage. | ||
| Yeah, he goes through the whole deal. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| And I'm telling you, man, his cooking is so good. | ||
| He took diver ducks and made the most delicious shit you've ever had in your life. | ||
| Oh, nice. | ||
| You know, most people call them diver ducks shit ducks. | ||
| Oh, they were so good, though, the way he cooked it. | ||
| But as you can see it here, he really knows what he's doing. | ||
| It was just such a treat to have that guy cook for us while we're down there. | ||
| It was amazing. | ||
| Yeah, well, man, and cook and game, it matters so much, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| There's so many species that people have told me, like, oh, dude, you can't eat those. | ||
| And then if the right guy cooks it, he's like, yeah. | ||
| That's why I'm looking for this javelina chorizo that I'm going to cook tomorrow morning. | ||
| Well, Cliff, thank you very much for being here, man. | ||
| I'm glad we did this. | ||
| I was thinking about doing this for a while, so I'm glad we got together. | ||
| Dude, I'm forever grateful for having me on, man. | ||
| Thanks so much. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
| Tell everybody what your Instagram is so they can find you or whatever social media you use. | ||
| Your YouTube page as well. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| So, yeah, my... | ||
| Cliff G-R-Y. It's Cliff Gray, but it's Cliff G-R-Y on Instagram. | ||
| Yeah, don't ask me why. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Why don't you have an A? Because the other Cliff Gray already got me. | |
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So you're Cliff G-R-Y on Instagram. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yep. | |
| And then your YouTube channel is... | ||
| Oh, you have pursuitwithcliff.com. | ||
| Yeah, so pursuitwithcliff.com. | ||
| I got a newsletter and that sort of thing. | ||
| People can go on that website and sign up. | ||
| And then my YouTube is just my name, Cliff Gray. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| And so that's easy to find too. | ||
| Beautiful. | ||
| But yeah, I look forward to, you know, follow along. | ||
| Thanks for having me on, man. | ||
| My pleasure, brother. | ||
| Very, very fun. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Bye, everybody. |
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