Cameron Hanes and Adam Greentree share brutal wildlife encounters—Adam shooting a 170-pound mountain lion after witnessing it torment a live cow, and Japan’s 2025 bear attack surge (13 deaths) linked to urban policies. Joe Rogan contrasts modern mental health struggles with primal survival-driven contentment, praising Jelly Roll’s transformation from obesity to endurance feats as proof of discipline’s power. They debate hunting ethics: thermal optics vs. traditional glassing, and long-range shooting’s impracticality (e.g., 4.4-mile rifles weighing 30–40 lbs), while stressing physical conditioning—Joe’s leg training for elk hunts, Adam’s hypoxic altitude prep—over gadgets. The core message? Urban detachment fuels both wildlife conflicts and human discontent; reconnecting with nature’s challenges—through hunting or health—builds resilience and purpose. [Automatically generated summary]
It was, I felt a bit funny about it to start with because like the dogs do all the hunting, right?
The dogs smell it, dogs find it.
They put it up in a tree, but the further I looked into it, I'm like, well, you need the tree because you want to sex it and you want to age it.
You know, you want to make sure it's a lion that's, you know, old and it has to be a male to shoot it in Colorado, at least at the time you had to anyway.
So it was actually the perfect way to hunt.
But then seeing how destructive that individual lion was at least, I was telling Cam about this when we got here that it must have grabbed the cow like a beef cow.
It must have grabbed it on the neck and the cow couldn't move, you know, but it was still fully alive internally and vocally.
It was still alive.
And when we got there, the mountain lion was like eating it from its rear inn and it had been there for at least an hour or two because there was quite a lot of meat that had been eaten out from the cow's ass.
Yeah, I always say like the line in Africa, like it drives a zebra across the back end and the zebra gets away and it's just got like blood pouring out of it and it's got this horrible wound that it's going to have to live with.
That lion has not lost any sleep over that ever in its life.
It's just fascinating that all these different creatures exist with us because we're so insulated for the most part.
Like most people are so insulated living in cities, traveling on buses and planes and cars and never, never seeing a thing like this in real life.
And you realize like at the same time where you're going to Starbucks and you know, you're picking out the new iPhone, there's a lion running full speed at a herd of zebras right now.
Like right now in the world, there's a lion full speed at the zebra and it's going to tackle it.
It's going to grab it by its face.
And all these animals exist to keep each other in check.
That's the real beauty of nature.
And you really see it when we saw that.
We were out yesterday, Cam and I were.
We were hunting for pigs and we saw a feral cat make a pounce on a mouse.
Like we were in the perfect, it was one of the coolest things.
Because even though, like, it's a kitty cat, like a little tiny kitty cat, little, it was fluffy too.
It was kind of cute.
We watched a predator in the rare moment when you see him executing a kill.
I mean, it was only a feral cat, but it was still.
We saw his little butt wiggle.
We saw that thing that they do with the thing and then up in the air.
Well, if you could see it all at once, like if there was a camera on every single predator-prey encounter simultaneously in the world and it was broadcast on a screen that was like 700 feet high, you'd think, oh my God, we're at war.
There's a war in the natural world.
It's a constant war.
Just cats alone.
Have you ever seen the numbers of what feral cats alone, just house cats kill?
Let's put this in perspective because if that doesn't happen, and by the way, all that money goes back to the state, goes to game wardens, it helps everybody, helps conservation.
If you don't have that, you know what you have?
You have what's going on in Japan, where Japan is having massive brown bear attacks.
So just last year, they had a kill.
I think it was 1,000, it's at least 1,000.
I think it was more than 1,000 bears last year.
And this year is projected to be even higher than last year.
So the bears at the fucking military has to go in and they're having a war on giant brown bears.
Record surge of brown bear attacks in 2025 with at least 13 fatalities and over 200 injuries.
Holy fuck!
Making it the deadliest year for bear attacks in recent history.
Majority of fatal attacks have occurred in Hokkaido, Hokkaido, where brown bears are more prevalent and the number of attacks has prompted emergency responses, including the deployment of military personnel in some regions.
Dude, I've been hearing people in Montana and people in Wyoming that have been saying, We're seeing more brown bears than ever before.
Guys are going on elk hunts and get it freaked out.
And they're like, They have to delist these fucking things.
Like, they are totally fearless.
They have never been hunted, so they have no fear of humans.
How many guys have you heard where the gun goes off and the bear shows up after the gun goes off because it knows that the elk is down or the moose is down?
Japan had a period where they would let foreigners hunt, and it had to be with a bow.
And I was chasing seeker stags over there.
And I had no idea they had a brown bear at all.
And I was going through this big reedy area, like, you know, the reeds are up above your head.
And there was just a game trail going in there, like that the deer had been using.
And as I was going through that, I could see that it was starting to open up a little bit more, like a flattened-out section, maybe like where the deer had been bedded.
And I got in there, and there was a seeker deer, just like the rib cage all chewed out.
And it was just a big, muddy clearing where this brown bear had got in there and just like rolled around with this carcass.
But the police force, because I believe there was an unarmed police force at the time, they had an issue with a bear where it had killed two hunters there.
And he had to go in and shoot this bear.
He had photos on a tractor.
And I don't do the gruesome photos, but he's just flicking through his phone.
And the next photo is a guy with his face missing from this brown bear attack.
And another photo, the bear, when he went in to shoot the bear, the bear was in a stream holding the guy down in the water, eating him in the water.
And it's like, so, yeah, pretty gruesome.
So it's pretty full on.
But up until that point, I'd never even knew there was a brown bear in Japan.
unidentified
Bro, before you go someplace with a bow, that makes sense.
Another layer to that Japan story is the reason why they have to deploy the military is because all the hunters are aging out.
So there were hunters there, but because hunting is kind of like this dying thing for this next generation, there's not enough hunters.
So they have to get the military involved.
Otherwise, it would be hunters like, you know, you going over there.
They've talked about like, I mean, I know there's Americans who would volunteer to do it, but that's another part of it is this next generation just isn't hunting.
I had read that an equal number of mountain lions had been killed with depredation tags by like experts with dogs, like to bring them in, than if they had given tags out.
So if they had given tags out and let people mountain lion hunt, you would have the exact same amount of mountain lions that they had to kill.
All right, California's not yet published a full 2025 total, but the best available data as of July 2025 shows at least 167 mountain lions reported taken under depredation permits in 2020 and 166 in 2022 with annual totals of over 100 in recent years.
So every year they have to kill at least 100 mountain lions.
That means you are, if you're a dog lover, you're allowing a monster to eat your dog because you think that's the right thing to do and to be kind with nature.
No, you have to hunt them.
You have to get them the fuck away from you and keep a healthy population of them.
And if you don't do that, it comes back to bite you in the dick.
It says Oregon kills far more cougars each year than California, but those Oregon numbers come mainly from sport hunting and agency control, not from depredation tags.
Oh, wait a minute.
Agency control is what we're looking at, not depredation.
So what is the numbers here?
160.
Reword the question.
Yeah, let's reword the question and ask how many were killed in California from agency control.
Put that in there.
How many mountain lions were killed in California through agency control?
Because we were just looking at depredation tags, which is like what a hunter or excuse me, a farmer gets.
Oh, so they're saying this figure does not include deaths from vehicles, but that's not true because they just said earlier that it was 1480 depredation incidents.
And 222 depredation permits.
Out of those permits, 52 authorized lethal take and 20 mountain lines were actually reported as lethally taken on depredation permits.
That's weird.
This is totally different numbers than it was given us before.
So now it's only saying it was 52 authorized lethal ones.
The holidays are in full swing, and so are the Grinches out there trying to steal your data and personal information.
But there's a simple and easy way to protect yourself, and that's with Express VPN.
ExpressVPN is an app that hides your IP address and reroutes 100% of your online activity through secure encrypted servers.
Their best-in-class encryption ensures that your online activity remains invisible to greedy data brokers and keeps hackers from getting hold of your sensitive financial data, even on unsecured public Wi-Fi.
And right now, the VPN that's rated number one by the experts at The Verge and CNET is offering three different plans allowing you to customize your experience.
Their basic plan starts as low as $3.49 a month.
That's less than 12 cents a day.
You can protect your online data for cheap and still have money for gifts and eggnog.
So if you want to get ExpressVPN at its lowest price ever, plus four months extra of service, just tap the banner or go to expressvpn.com slash rogan.
Again, that's expressvpn.com slash Rogan for a price as low as $3.49 a month plus four extra months of service, expressvpn.com slash Rogan.
And if you're watching on YouTube, you can get four extra months by scanning the QR code on screen or by clicking the link in the description.
I think it says, oh, say, okay, it says of the permits, 52 were authorized to kill them.
So it says lethal take.
So it's authorized to kill them, and 20 were actually reported as lethally killed.
Right, because the depredation thing, too, you got to think it's ranchers, right?
So these guys are all out in the middle of nowhere.
A lot of the depredations, though, that they might be listing is what we're talking about with San Francisco, where they found that they're eating people's cats and dogs.
So maybe they get depredations.
It's not like, but you can't give it out to the fucking homeowner.
After a restless night of this recurring dream of these green eyes hot on my tail, I was coming down the trail last night, just after dark, and I see these green eyes off to the side of the trail.
I mean, right on the side of the trail.
What I thought was a coyote, I just kind of yelled, and then when it stood up, I realized it was a fucking mountain lion.
I took off running as hard as I could, and I looked over my shoulder, and it was right behind me.
I ran for probably 100 yards and realized it wasn't giving up, and I turned around and I kicked rocks, and I jumped up and down, and I screamed at the top of my lungs, and this thing did not care.
I did that a few times to the point that at one point I almost thought, I'm just going to lay down here and die because I'm not going to outrun this fucking thing.
Another time it got really close to me, and I thought I had no choice but to try to scare it.
And I turned and I screamed and I kicked rocks.
I mean, to the point it was, I mean, it was right, right there.
And I finally decided, well, you just got to run.
Run for your fucking life.
I've done some crazy shit in my life.
I've been pretty scared, but this, this was next level.
This was next level.
It terrified me.
You know, I think maybe if I'd had a gun, I could have done something.
Pepper spray.
I don't think it was so close that I would have probably pepper sprayed myself.
So I don't know.
I was a half mile from the city in Lake Forest, California.
I mean, like, straight up.
I could hear dogs barking.
And at one point, I thought maybe that's what kind of detoured it, but personally didn't care.
So this morning I'm going to ride the bike.
Probably won't go back out there in the dark.
I did wait around for the sheriff's department and fishing game because there was other hikers on the trail that were above me that would have had to have come down.
And I just don't know how other people would have responded.
Like I said, I've done some scary shit.
I've been in the woods my whole life, but this was next level.
It was terrifying.
But I'm all good.
Back at it, right?
I guess if this only happens one time in your life, I got it out of the way.
And all these wilderness-loving people, I guarantee you, you're not out there as much as that guy is.
I guarantee you, not out there as much as you are.
You are.
That's the difference between people that really understand what we're talking about and people that are looking at this from this knee-jerk love and compassion for nature perspective.
You give them like part of the, I don't know, there's some skin.
It's not the flank stank, but it's just some skin there that sometimes you cut off that goes over the stomach and run off, eat pounds and pounds of meat.
A regular dog.
So a lion, yeah, they'll eat what they do is they just eat as much meat as they can and they just kind of lay around.
So that's the time to actually run from a lion is after a big meal.
You know what I mean?
Because their stomachs are full of meat.
Maybe that's why Taylor, maybe that lion that chased him had just killed a deer and was full of protein, but you know, they still hunt.
That's what they do.
It's their instinct.
But sometimes you can time it right and maybe that saves your life.
But I didn't even realize this, but Oregon, as we were looking at those numbers that Jamie pulled up, Oregon, the goal is 970 lions a year, but we never get to it.
Where I used to live in California, you guys have been in my house, a lot of land, a lot of woods, a lot of like, there's a lot of like wildlife out there.
The place, the Tojon Ranch, that place, they had a camera out in front of one of their ponds and they got 16 different mountain lions on Mount Cameron.
Maybe not because I'm a little fucking skeptical of people's wisdom.
And I probably would have looked into it a little bit and thought about what it'd be like to get eaten by a mountain lion and go, fuck, what the fuck are we talking about?
Kill these goddamn things.
Are you fucking crazy?
Don't kill them all.
You don't have to kill them all.
They're going to exist in the woods where they're supposed to be.
They're not supposed to be in Pasadena.
They're not supposed to be wandering around the fucking Hollywood Hills.
And, you know, hunters, we can be our own worst enemies.
But part of what discussions like this and talking about how it actually works is so important.
It's not for other hunters.
It's for people who don't hunt, who do vote.
You know, it's like, hey, let's just educate people who don't understand.
It's not your fault you don't understand.
You haven't hunted your whole life.
That's okay.
But just listen to what we're saying and just say, hey, when that vote comes up and it's like we're talking about being able to hunt lions with dogs or black bear with bait, let's think about, hey, there's repercussions if we don't allow this.
The conversation doesn't come from a want perspective from me.
I've got no desire to hunt a mountain lion again.
I don't.
But as someone that's in the know, because I have before, you know, and I wanted to educate myself prior to that hunt, I was doing as much reading as I could to find out, do I feel good about this?
Yeah, so it's not like I want them still on the list to hunt because I want to go and do it again.
I don't have a desire to do that again myself.
But I do see that it's good management.
You know, and instead of them being culled and not utilized, you know, and it actually costing money, you know, there's money going into conservation at that point from the hunter and the meat's utilized.
You know, and as you mentioned, in that case, I gave that meat to a lot of people because I wanted people to see it as a food source as well.
You know, as in, because you do, you sort of think of a mountain lion.
Yeah, I mean, even if, so just say they didn't require you to take the meat and you didn't eat it, still they need to be killed.
That's all there is to it, just to make the deer and elk population, just to make it work like it has to work because humans, people will always say, well, mother nature will take care of itself.
It's like, no, humans have encroached on this habitat.
That's why we need to control this.
This isn't like the wide open West that it once was where, yeah, maybe it would work out eventually.
I've never killed a lion in my entire life, but I know it's important.
So it's not like I'm this big lion hunter that I just have this passion for doing and I want to kill as many as possible.
Never even killed one, but I know that we have to kill them.
And in Colorado there, that's one thing, you know, you talk about sexing the animal up on up in the tree because you can see what it is, male, female.
You don't, when I hunted them, I did hunt them.
I didn't kill, but you could kill any lion, essentially, if it didn't have, you know, it couldn't be a female with cubs, but uh, or kittens.
But you look at them in the tree and you can decide, oh, that's a female.
Probably not the best kill.
Let's kill an old male because it's just, that's how it just works better that way, taking old males out.
And but you can do that.
And same thing with baiting bear.
A bear comes in.
A bear is really tough to tell whether it's a boar or a sow.
That's male or female for those that don't know.
But at a bait, when you're looking very closely, you can see, oh, that's an old male.
That's one I want to take.
So that's why there's it's not just random like I'm rifle hunting is 400 yards away running and you kill like a bear and it has it has cubs you didn't realize it had cubs because the cubs are in a tree somewhere that the sow left.
So that's where baiting is actually the best way to manage these numbers.
And it might seem like, oh, you just throw out donuts and this and that and the bear comes in.
I mean, yeah, you could turn them like that or you could say, no, we're targeting the right animal to make this work the best way it can.
Well, people need to understand that wildlife biologists and the numbers that they put up and the rules that they apply, especially the rational rules like that, they exist because it's the only effective way to hunt these things.
Like you don't use dogs to hunt elk.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like because it doesn't seem right, right?
There's one effective way to get these mountain lions and you got to treat them.
If you don't have that option and you're bow hunting, you have to stumble upon one.
And they're going to know you're coming forever before you know they're there.
Forever, hundreds of yards away.
They're going to smell you.
They'll hear something.
They'll turn and look at it.
They have amazing eyesight.
You're not finding them.
And if you want to keep the populations in check, California's got a bear problem too.
And part of their bear problem is you can't use dogs anymore.
And that was the only way they could really control populations in a lot of these places.
Yeah, so you, and I don't know what the numbers are, but you think a lion kills, especially a lion that big, has to basically kill a deer every week, right?
Australia's got a real bad problem with shark population now.
And it's like, and I'm taking it there because what's happening is for like a really good eating fish, like a Red Emer, you'll only get like five Red Emperor.
That's your quota for the day.
You can only catch five.
And what the sharks are doing now is you'll hook a Red Emperor and the sharks will just take it off the line.
So you don't have a Red Emperor in the boat anymore, but one's dead because the sharks got it.
So you keep fishing.
And then, so now the Red Emperor.
Numbers are declining because sharks that's their like their favorite fish to jump to grab off a line.
You can catch a cod, you'll get it to the boat because the sharks aren't going for it, but if it's a red fish, the sharks are taking it constantly.
And then so what's happened is because there's been a ban on shark fishing, shark numbers have gotten out of control.
So now red emperor numbers have plummeted because the sharks are just eating them constantly.
Four confirmed fatal shark attacks in 2025 so far, with some trackers listing four or five deaths, depending on how many incidents are classed or how incidents are classified.
And but think about how much less people are out there in the water than oh yeah, that's the thing.
Yeah, it's like people go.
There's only four sharkatoxa.
Yeah right, but how many people are in the water?
unidentified
Yeah, out of 500 people, it's not a lot of people in the water swimming out horrible way to go.
Oh, good lord, it's an absolute monster of the ocean.
Isn't it weird to think that uh, I mean, most society doesn't know anything about the wild these days?
You know, I mean yeah, we're domesticated yeah, so it's.
But even like I don't know, I I always say that I mean, we talked about this, i'm pretty sure, because I talk about it all the time but like, I always think that society, like this regular life here, is fake.
It's like it's not even not even real.
It's not even how humans were designed to to live and survive where the wild is actually where.
That's how, that's what we're designed to do, live in the mountains or or hunt and survive, things like that.
And so the fake life, I don't know, it's just crazy to me to think about that.
It's not real, it's like what we're doing yeah, it's just we're real life yeah we're, we're made to live in a society that's not by mine or your design right, you know, and it's sort of like and that's I always feel out of it in Society, because I just feel like it's not for me.
But it is, it's here and we've got to live in it.
I do like going the ways to worlds and getting a good injection.
Go in, go to a nice restaurant, and get back out to the country and just fucking relax.
It's better for people.
You ever see that the old days of Vice when Vice used to do really cool stuff?
They had Vice Guide to Travel.
And there's this one guy who lives in the Arctic Circle.
And this dude is, he's been there since the 1970s.
He got a job up there and got permitted where he's like grandfathered into allowed to live in a small cabin up there, like the last guy there.
He has like a permit on his door.
And this guy has been living up there ever since he saw 9-11 in a photograph, like a year after it happened.
Had no idea what was going on.
Very smart guy, like intelligent, interesting guy, and lives up there with his wife.
And all he does is hunt caribou and fish.
And he talks about it.
And he's like, this is how people are supposed to live.
Like when you, he's not like, he's a very intelligent guy.
So like when he's talking about it, he's talking it from like in an internal programming.
Like this is like this feeling that you get living like this is how people are supposed to live.
And when you live like this, you're very fulfilled and it feels normal.
Whereas most people don't feel normal.
Most people are depressed.
They have anxiety.
They're worried about their career.
They're worried about all this stuff that is like human created.
They're worried about their social status, whether they're ostracized from the neighborhood or people like them anymore because of their political beliefs or whatever the fuck it is.
There's none of that out there.
There's none of that because it's the way we were designed.
But if we want all the things that we enjoy, like fucking Starlink and cell phones, like you have to have this weird fake world that we've created, the human created world.
But it's not conducive to like a healthy mindset for most people.
It's not normal.
And so all the, I have this thought about why exercise is so important for people's mental health.
Because I think at the very least what it does is it gives you like the physical exertion that your body requires.
But I think your body requires a connection as well.
And that's what we're missing.
We're missing the natural world connection.
And you can get some of that out of the physical exercise.
You can get some of that out of like doing, but your body's literally designed to have to move and to complete tasks in order to survive.
And that task could be like that guy out there hunting caribou, building a house, surviving, like making a homestead, growing a garden.
Like this is a normal way we are.
But we're moving into this abnormal way.
And along the way, people are losing their fucking marbles.
Everyone's crazy.
No one knows what a woman is anymore.
Like everyone, literally out of their fucking mind, out of their mind with a, if the left win, the democracy refuge, the right win, we're all going to be Nazis.
And it's just chaos.
And none of it is normal.
None of it is natural.
And the reason why it's so incompatible with most people is because we're not designed for it.
Because there's a giant percentage of the people that are listening to this right now that are forced to do something they don't enjoy doing most of the time.
Most of the time, most of their day, they're doing something they don't enjoy doing because they have to do it in order to do the things that they do enjoy.
So if you want to go on vacation, you got to make enough money to afford the trip to Hawaii.
If you want to do this, you got to do that.
If you want to do this, you got to do that.
You're like, so you're just fucking in some stupid cubicle, punching keys, just planning all the fun stuff you're going to do with the money that you make doing this thing you hate doing.
That's why they struggle because they don't struggle.
It's like the thing you're avoiding is causing you to have the exact same thing.
It's just you're getting a slow dose of that poison and you never get out of it.
Whereas if you voluntarily struggle, then you get this beautiful feeling when it's over.
But you're not doing that.
So you're just getting the same amount of struggle in these weird little slow doses all day long.
So you're never getting like, oh my God, I'm in agony.
I can't breathe.
But if you did, then the rest of the day would be easy.
Instead, you're getting, oh my God, the world is closing in on me and I don't know why I'm so freaked out and I'm riddled with anxiety all day long for no fucking reason.
I'm having a panic attack and there's nothing wrong.
That's what's going on.
Like you're getting your suffering in like little doses all day long and it's driving you fucking crazy.
And that's why you get on SSRIs and that's why you do this and that's why you do that and you join a cult and everyone's just trying to figure out a way to feel better.
Everyone's just trying to figure out a way to feel better.
And one of the ways to feel better is voluntary struggling.
Yeah, it's, I think, like, I'm always, of course, biased towards hunting in the mountains, but I also think that men, men specifically, you know, where I grew up and in the environment I grew up, hunters were respected.
And if you killed a big buck, you're like, that meant something in a small town I was because it's very difficult to do.
And it's like, for men, respect is such an important thing.
It's like we always say, like, women need love, men need, if you have to choose.
Men, love doesn't mean shit really, but respect does.
And like hunting was a way to earn respect from the community.
And that's why for men, like when I, as hunters, I think that's appealing for people who don't hunt because they see that image and they're like, I'm missing that because they see that there's respect earned there.
And that's what men, whether they want to admit it or not, that's a big driving force.
Like you, even at work, or whatever job you have, you want to be respected.
That story you were telling me about shooting that bull in the Oregon backcountry, and you is a terrible place to kill a bull, and you called up that dude.
So he brought four of them, like him and three guys.
And they live, God, how far away?
I mean, at least a couple hours, I think.
And so they had to get together, drive a couple hours, get up on this old, like logging road, essentially, into the access point of the wilderness to the trailhead, pack in miles, right?
So this is like 9 or 10 at night.
They said they'd be there at 8 in the morning.
So that's what it took.
Like to get there and then miles back to this remote middle of the wilderness hellhole area by 8 a.m.
So yeah, it was hours and hours and hours just to get there.
And that when, so in that moment, so there was me, Wayne, Tanner, my son, James, my camera guy, Gideon.
And then he brought four guys.
So we had eight guys.
In that moment, there's not eight other men I would rather have or seven other men besides me that I'd rather have there because those to do that is special.
That's not everybody can do that shit.
But those guys, that was their purpose.
They could probably never be, quote, happier than in that moment, elk meat on our back, miles to get to the trailhead out.
What's wrong is most people never experienced that insane, challenging experience where your character's tested, your will is tested, your commitment is tested.
I hope every one of you behind the screens on this arena can feel this level of happiness just one time in your life.
I hope all of you can feel how happy I am just one time in your life.
But guess what?
You will never feel this level of happiness if you don't go for something in your own life when they knock you down, where they try on you, when they talk about you, and they're trying to put their foot on your neck.
If you stay down, you will never ever get that result.
Fortify your mind and feel this level of happiness as you rise one time in your life.
But I'm blessed to be able to feel this again and again and again and again and again.
unidentified
That's the greatest post-fight speech of all time.
That was a pack out, but I wouldn't want it any other way.
Wayne, he had a horse packer set up.
And then I had also talked to Cal Halliday.
And when I was in there by myself on an opening weekend, he said, hey, if you kill a bull in here by yourself, he goes, let me know, send me a text or something.
I'll have, you know, four or five guys here within five hours to help pack.
So, no, it wasn't opening weekend, but I'm like, I told Wayne that, and I said, he goes, well, who do you want to get hold of?
You want to get a hold of Cal or do you want to get hold of the horse packer?
And I'm like, I think I'd rather have Cal with some other badass, you know, mountain guys and just share this pack out with them.
You're talking about your daughter catching that fish, and it's like this primal instinct inside of her that just flares up that fighters have that same feeling.
Yeah, because you realize like this is what you're this is what you're doing.
Yeah.
This could lead to that happening to you.
And you think about your kids watching on TV and crying or even worse there while you're getting beat up.
I always freak out when guys bring their kids.
I'm like, oh man, bring your kid to a fight.
I've seen guys get knocked out in front of their kids and it's particularly devastating, particularly devastating, especially when you really like the guy.
It's rough.
It's a rough way to make a living.
But those guys, when they get that belt strapped around them, when their hands get raised and the whole audience screams and cheers, it's like, that's a special moment.
That's a special moment that very few people ever get to experience.
Part of the magic of it is that when you're in the moment and it's all happening, it's all so open-ended.
Like any result can take place.
You really do not know how this is all going to go down.
You haven't seen it all play out.
You might imagine how it's going to play out, but it's going to play out in unique situations.
Some of them will be similar.
Some of them will be completely different.
And you've got to figure it out.
Like you were telling me that crazy story that I was talking to you about the podcast where you're shooting down at this bull, like from like a cliff, like straight down.
And what I thought is I'd get up there and I'd be able to see the flat.
And there were some bulls down there.
It was a tough year in Arizona's the drought.
But from that cliff, I thought that'd be a great vantage point to see where these bulls were in plan of stock.
So get way up there.
Actually, there's sheep right above us too.
It's like crazy rugged country.
But get up there on that cliff and I'm kind of looking out over the expanse there.
And then I look straight down below me.
There's this big bull and like straight down.
And I'm like, it's like if you're hunting mule deer, you know, they always bed up against the cliffs because so their back's protected.
The wind's coming up.
They can monitor down below them with their nose.
They know nothing's coming from the back.
That's how mule deer bed to survive.
Well, this bull had done that same thing.
And it was, it had just stood up from the base of the cliff.
And I looked down, I range at 42 yards, which people who know, if it's the rangefinder is telling you to shoot for 42, that means straight down, that means it's probably close to 60 yards, you know, because the range, the rangefinder does a calculation.
If you shoot flat, that's the gravity affects one thing.
If you shoot straight down, gravity has less effect.
So it's saying, even though it's further, you would shoot for less distance is how that works.
So it told me to shoot for 42.
That means it's probably 60 straight down.
And that's a long shot with it with a bow.
And then I had to, shooting straight down, I had to, I thought that I was like going to go straight through his spine because I was straight above him.
I'm like, well, I'm going to come right behind the shoulders, straight through his spine into his vitals.
I thought that should do it.
So I shoot, I hit that bull like about, I would say, an inch off the spine.
I show it.
There's a video of it on that, the video we just watched for people who are interested.
But about an inch off that spine into his chest, and the bull went about 100 yards.
But yeah, it was, I've never done a shot like that before in my life.
You know, you think about different scenarios.
I had never even thought about one like that on a bull elk at that distance at that angle.
This is the, that's the Winnehaw bull, but it's back, Jamie, about, I was talking about getting ready for this hunt, and it shows like a few clips of the bull I killed in Colorado, then the Arizona bull, then I did another hunt in Utah, and I killed a bull there to get prepared for the Oregon hunt.
But yeah, it was just, I'd never even really thought that that shot would be a potential one.
When you hear, when you're close and there's an elk screaming through the woods and he's coming close towards you, the thrill of that is like nothing else.
Yeah, if you had done what Adam did in Japan and not research like what kind of animals are in the area and you were camping out and you heard that scream, you'd be like, oh my God, we're surrounded by demons.
No, I've had people tell me stories like there's something really weird in the woods there.
Yeah.
And then, but you find out it's like fellow deer or red deer living in there, and it's like just a bowl and they're just roaring, and just people are like, What the fuck is that?
Well, like an African lion, because I heard those when I was hunting over there, like they're by the river, and so we're like an African lion in the middle of the night, they're like, oh my God, it just like reverberates through the whatever we were jumbles.
But you know, here's one, here's an exciting thing.
So, for people listening that maybe didn't grow up hunting, we were talking about this in the green room last night when we were getting high off all the smoke.
So, like, we go to Ways to Well today and get stem cell and get, you know, the IV treatments and get everything else to be able to operate at our absolute prime at 58 years old with 40 years of experience.
You're going to have, like, why do people like cognitively decline when they get older?
Well, a big part of it is you're declining overall.
Everything's declining.
Everything about you is declining.
Of course, your brain is declining as well.
Like, your entire existence is fading.
But the more you can have energy, the more you have vitality, the more you can do what, I don't care if you play chess, whatever the fuck it is that you like to do, paint, whatever it is you like to do, the more energy you have, the more energy you'll be able to apply to that thing you do.
Here's one mindset I've tried to take on with, especially with hunting, because that's all I really fucking care about is improving and learning on every time.
And I could even think about like, I was telling somebody, I don't know who, but on every, I try to learn something on every stock.
And when I think about when you killed the sable the other day, so we're there and you have to weigh out so many things on a stock when you're getting ready to kill an animal or potentially kill an animal.
But we're thinking about, okay, we have the wind.
The wind is, that's the biggest thing with bull hunting.
So I knew where the wind was.
But then also it's like, well, do we go stay in the shade so the sun wouldn't blind you as it was going down?
But if we stay in the shade, we're not perfectly downwind.
So I'm like, well, the sun's going to set.
The winds change because thermals change.
If we're to the side in the shade, so you don't have to deal with the sun.
Then when that wind becomes unstable, it's more likely to smell us.
So we should be all the way downwind, but that means we're going to have to shoot before the sun gets too low to where it's not blinding you.
To get to the side, then you have to figure out what's the path to get there to where we're not making noise for the animal to hear.
Well, it's straight to the, I don't know if you remember that tree.
And I said, head straight to that tree.
And from that tree, then I was thinking, you should have a lane because there was brush all around, but it looked to me like from that tree, you would have a lane to shoot at 28 yards, but you're still factoring all these, the wind, the sun, everything else.
What's the animal going to do?
It's just so fascinating to think about.
But I know some people hunt and I don't think they think about it in those details.
You know what I mean?
They're just kind of like, oh, there's an animal.
What do I do?
But like, that's not how, that's not how you master the moment.
You master the moment by, and I said this a lot of times too on many of these hunts.
I was telling Jellyroll this.
I was like, everything matters.
Everything.
The littlest thing matters.
The big things obviously matter.
But everything matters.
And that's what hunting teaches us.
And in life, you can make it through regular life on this fake world that I keep talking about by ignoring a lot of things.
Sometimes you talk about when you hit them, if they're stretched out, then when they're not stretched out, it's like it just changes the entrance wound and the exit wound, if there is one, it just changes.
There's different layers of muscle and hide over it where it just blocks up that blood.
And there's so many variations, like that reaction, and they close up the gap.
Or what broader do you use?
And if the animal's breathing out when the arrow shoots through the lungs or whether it's just taking a bunch of oxygen in, you know, those are the larger target.
Yeah.
And there's all those different, plus just more energy to run on.
Utah this year, the bull that I shot, he'd just been in the fight with another bull.
So he was all revved up from that other bull.
So I literally hit him and he just thought he got poked by an antler from another bull, you know, and he went 20 yards, was standing for 14 seconds, dropped dead, nice, beautiful, peaceful, right in front of me.
They don't all happen like that, but that's what we're after.
Taking it back to the health journey, how you were saying, like, you know, where we are now with, you know, modern treatments and wellness is incredible.
Like, I feel like my, I feel like my body's the best it's ever been.
You know, and I'm obviously the oldest I've ever been, which is crazy to think of.
Like, how can I feel better than I do?
How can I feel better now than I did in my early 20s?
You know, we've probably out any injuries and stuff like that.
So it's quite, and I've got you to thank for that by introducing me to Brigham and Ways the Well.
It's just that's what I told Jelly is that, you know, you can wander around off the path for your whole life and never really have like fucking never really figured it out.
But once you make it, like where he's on, you know, being healthy, eating better, exercising, he, you know, the mountains have given him, I always say the mountains heal or nature heals.
So he's there now.
It's like, yeah, of course there's people who are way ahead because they've been on it longer.
There's people who are not quite on it.
Maybe they're going to be faster than him and they pass him, but all on the right path, head in the right direction, that's a beautiful place to be.
And one of the things that I said to Jelly when we're on the podcast, I was like, what you're doing is inspiring millions of people to live a better life.
100%.
What you're doing is so beneficial to human beings all over the world because now millions of people have seen that podcast.
Millions of people have heard that story.
Millions of people have seen those clips that have been shared all throughout social media.
And how many people got excited by that?
And it gave them fuel and energy to want to go do something.
It gave them that inspiration that we all desperately crave to want to go out and take those first fucking steps.
And then once you do that, then you're operating on momentum and it's so much easier.
This is another thing that people have to understand.
The first steps are the hardest.
It's so hard to move.
It's so hard to get going.
But once you get going, then you operate on momentum.
Once you have a good day, then you go, I did it.
I had a good day.
Let's do it again tomorrow.
And then you get excited about it and you look forward to waking up.
And then you get through it that day, like, we fucking did it again.
And now I'm looking forward to, now I'm eating healthier.
Now I cut off the sugar.
Now I'm drinking water with electrolytes.
And now I'm feeling better.
I have more energy.
And just keep going.
Just keep going.
And momentum is so much easier than that first step.
The first step of changing your life is so hard because we're just so afraid of pain.
We're so afraid of suffering.
We're so afraid of like just the discomfort.
We've been programmed to think that discomfort is a bad thing.
Because it's like, it's not like, you know, even Israel or your favorite NFL guy or NBA, they're elite, right?
So when they succeed, you're like, oh, fuck, of course.
You know, he's 6'8, 260.
Of course he's going to be great.
But when you see somebody like Joey Roll who came from 540 pounds, that's like he's already at the furthest end of like, you know, like what you'd have to overcome.
That's got to be a massive mental achievement for him, too, because I'm sure that he had a lot of mind weight to lose as well because he was in jail, right?
Substance abuse, no doubt.
Probably a lot of like that's a lot of negative stuff in someone's head.
So to lose that as well, and you told me that he's such a positive person.
So to like, you know, he lost a bunch of weight, which is incredible, but what he's done to his mind, which we may never know, is really incredible too.
Like, like that's why I was saying to you this morning, this might be one of the best modern day stories of a person changing their life when you look at Jelly.
People also have this weird habit of looking at the mind in terms of only being valuable in human-created endeavors.
Like the mind only being valuable in mathematics, the mind only being valuable in your ability to recite literature and your knowledge that you've gained through schooling.
Like, no, no, the mind, the mind manages stressful situations too.
That's an important aspect of intelligence is your intelligence in being able to navigate difficult things.
That is all your mind.
You're using your mind.
Like, bow hunting has so much, so many elements of intelligence that are woven into it.
And the difference between a successful person who bow hunts and an unsuccessful person is experience and practice, but also the mind being able to learn from each individual situation and experience and get better and accumulate all this knowledge over time.
You know, it's got a deep, deep learning curve.
It's very deep.
And the people that don't experience it and then have this classification in their head of what intelligence is.
Intelligence means you got a PhD.
I know a lot of people with PhD that are fools.
They're fools.
They're emotional children.
They're filled with ego and resentment and they're shitty and nasty to people.
They're fools.
So they're not smart.
They're just, they have a functional mind that they've applied to human endeavors only.
And they've never done the big thing, never done the whole package, never put it all together.
It's a giant learning experience, that's for damn sure.
And it also teaches you way more compassion.
It just teaches you to be way more loving and kind.
And you also just, you understand from watching a baby become an amazing adult human being, you get to understand all the elements that are involved in this child's development and all the trials and tribulations.
How you got to let them fall sometimes and then help them pick themselves back up and talk to them through it.
And when they're down, explain, like, I've been down too.
I'm always down.
I've fucked up everything.
Whenever my kids would do anything wrong, one of the things I'd always say to them, if I was upset at them, I said, listen, I did everything that you did.
I've done all this stuff.
It's okay.
But you can't do it and this is why.
Like, I've screwed up everything.
I've done things I shouldn't have done.
I'm doing exactly what you're doing right now.
I've done it even worse.
You're a better kid than I was.
I always say that.
So they don't think that I'm without fault.
I always say, I've done it all, but I got through it on the other side.
Now I'm your dad.
And the reason why I'm telling you this is because I love you.
And I'm not trying to be upset at you because I'm mean.
I'm trying to help you live a better life.
And that's how I try to communicate with them about it.
Yeah, it's one thing that I think the, well, drinking and whatever, but I think the biggest negative thing a parent can offer their kids is blaming other people.
It's always somebody else's fault.
So it's like this discussion at the house, you know, because kids hear everything, right?
So when the dad's coming home and he's bitching about his boss or the guy at work or he's getting fucked over for this or I could do that too, but that guy kissed ass.
That's why he got that or the must-be-nice, whatever.
Like these excuse makers, oh, you're just fucking sabotaging your kids.
It's just that you never get anywhere by blaming other people for where you're at.
And so many people do that because they won't accept personal responsibility for their actions or for their place in life.
And I don't even think necessarily it's their fault.
I think a lot of them have never seen an example of an extraordinary person who doesn't do that.
It's rare to find a person, unfortunately, in this world, especially in society.
It's rare to find a person of great character, a person who's just got impeccable character and is always truthful and works really hard and is loved by a lot of people.
And sometimes that's one of the real places where a guy like Jelly Roll can change people's lives.
It's because he does talk about all of the negative shit that he's experienced and all the negative influences and all the bad people that he was around and how he was living that life.
Jellyroll had, he learned that lesson in the blind because we were sitting for hours.
And like, if you haven't ever been in a position where, you know, you can't just get out and go pee or whatever, then you're like, ooh, I didn't know what this is.
Holding, you know, he said he was going to piss his pants.
He's like, had to make a hole in the blind and pee into and cover it up with, because I was like, okay, just make a little hole covered up with dirt, whatever.
They'll hunt a single buck for like 38 days or however long the season is.
And they're in that damn blind every day or they're in that tree stand every day, just squeezing their dick off, just huddling up with mittens and shit.
And then when the, and sometimes when if you have like a powerful bow, like you pull back, like when it's zero degrees outside and you go to pull that thing back, you're like, tough.
Nowadays, so back in the day, back when I used to, you know, I still tree stand hunt, you know, for blacktail sometimes, but phones have changed like how long you can stay because you can just fuck around on your phone now.
There's a bunch of high-level gear that's out there, but it's like whatever they've done with Sitka, they've made it so that everything works perfectly.
They've dialed it in perfectly.
The pants, they have the built-in knee pads, which is fucking huge.
I love those pants.
So when you're crawling on, like, they're the perfect knee pads.
They're super lightweight, but you could sneak around on stuff on your knees and not be in fucking agony.
Well, it's just, I mean, that's one of the reasons to give them props so that they stay open, stay alive, because it's like that kind of gear is so fucking important.
You know, to have gear that doesn't restrict your movement, totally keeps you comfortable and warm, makes you like, so you can move around very quietly.
Whatever fabrics they're using, they got it dialed in, man.
When you're walking, if your fabric rubs together, you don't hear a fucking thing.
This is like one of the things that really Is, I think, important.
Like the market for these things that are so impactful and important to us is not a.
Did I just touch the microphone?
Did I fuck something up?
Sounded weird on my end.
It's not a big market.
There's not a lot of us out there, you know?
So it's like, God, I'm so thankful that someone put so much research and development into these products, whether it's Hoit Bows or whatever you're using, that you like, you got to think like how many people had to work tirelessly to figure out how to make this thing that is so critical to your success.
You know, fill in the blank, binos, like whatever it is, whatever you're using.
Who fucking figured out how to make binoculars?
How about the SIG ones that have image stabilizing now?
Who figured that out?
Who's what wizard, what wizard scientist?
I got a pair of those 16-power SIGs, the Zulus.
You hit that switch and turn on the image stabilization.
And normally, if you're holding, for people who don't know, if you're holding 16-power binos in your hand, your image that you're getting on the other end is all wiggly.
It's 16 times larger than what you actually see.
So every micro movement is a giant jiggle in your eyesight, in your eye picture.
But with those things, it's like you're watching a movie.
Yeah, I was looking for friends and I'm like, and I was like, look, the glass isn't as good in them.
And I'm saying that to him, you know, and then, because I'm looking through my crystal clear.
And maybe the glass isn't as good in them, but because the image is dead still, so I'm doing this, I'm putting mine up, and I'm like, it's really clear.
And then I put that up and I'm like, they're not as clear.
And the reason why that's so critical to a hunter is we look for movement just like an animal looks for us moving too quickly, but we look for movement like an ear flick or a tail wag or something like, or they'll sometimes they're high just if they got a fly lands on them.
So you're looking for like a small little bit of movement.
You can't do that if you're but not if you've got movement in your optics.
But with that stabilization, it's dead solid.
So you can see when that ear flicks where it'd be flicking before, you just didn't notice it.
So that's where it's like so critical.
But if you think about all this stuff, this top of the line stuff that we talked about with the bows, the camo, the binos, bow hunting fucking still is so hard.
Still hard.
That's what's so beautiful about it: it's so challenging.
And it must be for guys who had kind of always done it that way and didn't want to not do it that way anymore because that was like a part of their thing.
But not even, that was like just an elementary example, just so people could get what I'm saying.
But when we'd get in the woods, then there'd be a branch.
Like I said, I shot with Levi Morgan.
He came out and did lift, run, shoot.
I'm like, okay, I'm going to beat this fucker.
He's 16, 17 time world champion.
So I had all these shots where it's like, okay, this branch, is he going to know this one shot was like, I think it was 90-some yards at a deer up on the hill, but there's this big branch halfway in between it.
And I knew it was kind of hard to tell, is your arrow going to go over it or under it, right?
It was because you didn't know that, I think it was about 25 yards away.
I knew what my arrow was going to do because I practiced over and over and over.
And I'm going to be like, oh, Levi's going to fuck this one up for sure.
I'll beat him on this target.
Sure as shit.
He knew exactly what his arrow was going to do.
But that's, he practices that all the time and done it his whole life and this and that.
But just fun games like that.
And it was only just to make us, because when you're hunting, that shit happens all the time.
But where I would kind of screw myself up is I loved the challenge of shots so much.
Like, and I shot between trees so often because that was like my thing.
I could just like, even if it was just like four inches, I'd be like, oh, I can't do that.
So when I was hunting, if I'd see a challenging shot on an animal, I'd be like, where I could have maybe taken a step to the right and got wide open, I'd be like, I can make this shot.
And like, fucking like making my hunting shot more challenging because I was just young and an idiot.
Now I'd be like, be stupid.
I can just go right here and shoot.
But I would do that, but we'd practice that all the time because it was fun.
And then you'd like have, you'd want your, I mean, I had so much confidence in shooting.
I would shoot hours and hours and hours every day.
I remember one time we were at this Henson's, these guys who used to bow hunt with us, me and Roy were there.
And there's a bale out there at 70-some yards, and then a piece of foam that was like a broadhead target used to be just a square piece of foam, like two inches, maybe, maybe three inches wide, but like by two foot by two foot.
And that was your broadhead target.
And that would stop an arrow with a broadhead on it, just that two or three inches of foam.
Well, the foam target, the broadhead target, was laying flat on the bale at 70 yards.
So it was only like two inches.
And we would like have these competitions all the time.
I'm like, I said, see that broadhead target on the cedar bale?
Yeah.
I'm going to hit that broadhead target.
And I would hit it.
So we were the best shots ever with no range finders.
So then Bushnell finally came up with a range finder and it was like a kind of like a cassette.
Like a kind of longer, like an eight-track tape almost, like sort of size.
And then it had a dial on it and the images it'd be off.
And then if you lined up the image like this, that would be you'd look at the, then you'd look at it wherever that image lined up, that'd be the yardage.
So then you'd be like, okay, that's close to 50 yards.
But unfortunately, my first garment site worked perfectly.
My second one didn't work so good.
Like there would be times where it worked perfectly and then times where I couldn't get a range.
I'd press it, it wouldn't go.
I'm at full draw.
Press it, won't go.
Press it, won't go.
Press it, finally.
But when it does work, you get this like a red dot.
You get a clear screen, and on that screen is a red dot.
No pins, no wires, no nothing.
And oh, I loved it.
When it worked perfect, because then, say if you hit an elk at 50 yards, and then he stands out at 80, and he's still standing broadside, you don't have to re-range.
You just press a button on your grip, and it instantly gives you a new range.
Whereas I think with those sights, it's a little bit more difficult to definitely be ranging that animal and not a branch five yards behind it or five.
You know, you should figure out how to manage your mind and calm yourself down and make that shot.
You wouldn't freak out on a second shot if you had that.
Right.
That's what I'm saying.
And if you had that and you 100% could count on it the same way you count on your range finder, that would be the best thing for everybody.
Best thing for the animal, best thing for you, best thing for everybody.
And it's a way better sight picture.
The sight picture is amazing.
It's a red dot.
It's just like a red dot on a pistol.
You know, like a red dot on a pistol?
It's what it looks like.
That dot is just sitting there and you're not, you just can put it right on the vitals.
It's a beautiful feeling when you watch through that range, through that range finding site and you put that pin on and then the arrow releases and then you watch that arrow soar and boink right in there.
Look, I'm a fan of a company that does something like that.
I'm a fan of Garmin.
I mean, I've got a Garmin watch on right now.
I'm a fan of Garmin, period.
They make awesome shit.
They make awesome range finding.
I mean, awesome GPS equipment.
They make awesome watches.
They make great shit.
They make great chest straps, the workout things.
They make awesome stuff.
So I'm just happy that someone put the research and development and the money that must have taken to put together a fucking range finding binocular or range finding site rather that actually works.
And I used it to kill a bull once because, and when I had that Garmin site, in fact, because I had the Garmin site and I ranged this elk and it was at 50 yards, but there was a hole only like this where I could shoot through.
And I was like, oh, I don't know.
So then I pull out the loophole and I hit the button and I see the exact arc of the arrow where it's going to be at its height.
And its height was six inches below those branches.
What it's going to keep is that arrow whacking that branch and then sticking in his ass and wounding him.
You know, whereas you might have made a perfect release, but because of that high point of the arrow indication, now you know and you can make a more educated decision.
It's all about making the ethical shot.
And so for me, anything that allows you, it's still going to be really fucking hard to do.
You put them up and it tells you where the animal is.
I've never even used one, but I've talked to guys who have used them, and I know that it's not great because what would take hours to glass, and you probably would miss a bedded mule deer buck, five minutes.
In America, what states allow thermal binoculars for hunting?
Put that in there.
Not scopes.
That's the problem.
It's the word scope is for a rifle scope.
Binoculars.
Let's see.
How crazy is this AI where it just does this and immediately gives you the answer?
Thermal imaging devices, including binoculars and monoculars, are legal to own in the United States.
And many states allow them in some hunting contexts, especially predators or nuisance species like hogs or coyotes.
However, several states either completely ban thermal for any hunting or ban profession possession, rather, use of thermal devices while taking or locating wildlife.
So examples of state rules.
Some states explicitly allow thermal optics for night hunting.
For example, Texas, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Missouri, authorize thermal devices for specific predator or invasive species hunts in their 2025 regulations.
Other states, such as Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, prohibit thermal optics for hunting wildlife altogether or for most game species.
So a lot of states.
So it seems like a few states are on the ball with this.
It's a, and I would, I know in Utah, I was going down this creek this year, and I saw like there's some, there's some cedar trees, like a kind of a patch of them there.
But basically, there's a tunnel in there and then a deer bed.
And like you couldn't see it from anywhere.
And I was thinking, man, if a buck was bedded there, you'd have no idea.
Yeah.
Right.
And, but you would now if you had the thermal optics.
And that's like, that was a perfect example of a buck that found that bed.
That's already safe, and that's how he survived now that that taking that away.
Normally, like you see stuff, here's what be the technology that would really hurt because you see something a mile away and you know that animal's there.
If I could just get to that tree line, if you could just be there.
This guy was Robert Brantley at the Clark's Knob ELR match in Kansas described as a new world record in long-range shooting achieved under match conditions.
Like a sporting good store, or it's not a Sporting Goods, but anyway, like they got their $250 rifle from Buy Mart, 3006, and they're like, they see that and they're like, oh, shit, then I could shoot at 600 yards.
We were trying to figure out the other day when the actual bow and arrow was invented.
And it's kind of difficult to track down.
But the weird thing is, it seems to have been invented, or at least seems to exist simultaneously at many spots all over the world at the same time, which is really interesting.
It makes you think, I wonder, we really don't know how much people were traveling back then.
We really don't.
There's a lot of guessing.
And they keep pushing back maritime travel.
They keep pushing back like the age of when the first maybe even primitive humans were using some sort of a raft to get across lakes and rivers and maybe even oceans.
But you know, sharing that information, like, who is the wizard that looked at a stick and goes, if I could just put one of these fucking things on the end of that stick and pull it.
And it's a little bit, you know, like if I'm going to the Arctic and there's no sunlight and I want to see where the arrow hits, okay, a lighted knock's going to override the little bit of inconsistency.
Like in Australia, we didn't have the sort of figures and probably knowledge that you guys did because it's like it's part of your pastime, right?
I was talking to Evan about this.
It's like part of the American pastime, a bow hunter.
Whereas in Australia, it's not, you know, and it's not, there's not all the information out there.
And it seemed like Australia was probably about 10 years behind the U.S. on sites, release aids, the knowledge behind it.
And yeah, I think the fact that you guys have, like we were talking about Fred Bear, you know, like paving the way for bow hunting in America.
And, you know, Australia's had its idols as well and people that have paved the way, but a lot slower than here.
To have all the knowledge, for you to have someone like Cam is absolutely brilliant because you are.
You've probably made those mistakes yourself or learned them yourself.
And then so you go straight to Joe and be like, this is a good setup.
This works, this doesn't.
And then in Australia, the first things I was sold were target sites for bow hunting, you know, and it's just like, and we didn't know any better.
So as well as wasting time, you wasted a lot of money, you wasted a lot of effort, you wasted a lot of heartache, you know, on finding your way in bow hunting.
The internet has definitely helped educate people.
You know, we used to have to learn it all on our own, which is like, I think to Adam's point, where it's nice when you have a resource or a mentor.
A lot of the times we didn't have that.
We had magazines.
We didn't have internet.
So we just have to figure it out.
But when we talk about the lighted knocks specifically, you mentioned the weight.
The weight is one part, but it's also the inconsistency of having those electronics back there on the back of the arrow.
And you just can't get as good as a knock.
So that's the connection point from the arrow to the string.
It's just not going to be as good with electronics in there.
It's trying to serve a different purpose of lighting up that knock, where in my opinion, that's going to help me maybe decide on when to go after the animal, knowing where I hit it, but it's not going to make me any more lethal.
It's going to make me less lethal.
I want the most accurate arrow possible.
And where that goes, whether I see it or not, doesn't really matter.
I'm going to have to get on that blood trail and recover that animal regardless.
So just knowing where the arrow hit isn't making it any more deadly or not.
You know, it's just how that might impact how I react to that shot.
But I want the most accurate.
That's why I shoot those, you know, the X10s, $50 an arrow, because it's the straightest, most accurate arrow.
It's what they've used in the Olympics since 1996.
So you can use other arrows.
They're not as straight, not as good.
You can put lighted knocks on.
You're giving up accuracy.
You can do it if you want.
And you can say it's going to help in these other arenas.
It's not going to help with accuracy.
So all I care about is that arrow going where I want it to go.
Go to high-altitude training in the mountains, and then they come down to lower elevation where there's more oxygen, and there's more oxygen available to push themselves harder.
So, their body's used to that.
It created more red blood cells, essentially.
I think it's like a natural, I think that's what EPO they say does.
It's like one of the problems with some of these studies is they're getting information from the pharmaceutical drug companies themselves.
Like I had this lawyer on that was explaining to me how he litigated a case against pharmaceutical drug companies.
And that one of the issues that they found was that these guys would run 10 tests and they would find no efficacy.
But so they would rig a test in a very biased way that showed the smallest amount of statistical significance.
And then they would say it's statistically significant.
And they would push that.
And their only motivation was profit.
They weren't saying this is going to cure cancer.
This is going to stop blindness.
No, it's like we can make money on this.
And there's even one of the cases with Viox where there was emails exchanged with the pharmaceutical drug companies talking about all the problems that it was going to cause, but we think we will do well with this.
And we were bombarded with propaganda that it was necessary to stay alive.
Like there was one, I think it was the Atlantic that had one headline that said, if you're unvaccinated, it might be time to make your end of life will.
And then the same magazine years later, COVID vaccines may cause heart damage.
They're just worried about losing control and they're worried about losing profits and they're worried about compounding pharmacies, making this stuff.
And they want peptides.
They want all this stuff, but they want to be able to market it only under their brand.
They want to own it.
They want to have patents for all this stuff.
And that's where the real problem comes.
A lot of these really effective things they can't patent.
I always learn one thing every year: how important leg conditioning is.
So fucking important.
God, maybe the most, especially elk hunting, it is the most important thing.
Leg conditioning is fucking everything.
If you can't get up those mountains and be fit and be able to do it over and over and over again over like five days of miles and miles and miles, like no matter what I did, I need to do more.
Continue not stopping with leg conditioning ever until September.
Okay.
Like, there was a lot of times.
One thing is waste wells helped me.
I got a fucking weird left knee, but the latest round of stem cells that I had did real, they did a real improvement.
Like, I really notice it.
And I'm protecting it.
I'm not doing anything stupid in the meantime.
You know, like no jujitsu, like no getting heel hooked, nothing that's going to aggravate it and just build up my conditioning and maintain it over the year.
I think I learned a lot this season, but just like more about life than just in a bow hunting scenario.
But I think the biggest thing that I took away from it is health as in mental and physical, and that you can always like step it up and you can always be better.
And I think, like, I just, you know, like family life, whatever excuses I can come up with, you know, business and not having the time to put in the extra, but finding the extra time because of how valuable it is and what the payoff in that is, you know, being physically healthy makes it a lot easier to be mentally healthy.
I just, I bow hunted a lot, you know, and I was on the tools a lot, like being in, you know, the building game.
But it's not, that's different.
It's a different sort of health, you know, whereas in actually targeting, you know, losing weight, eating clean, you know, because it's not just about the gym.
It's like everything that else that goes with it.
So I learned to eat a lot more cleaner.
I started doing the hypoxic wellness studio.
And I think a combination of those things and seeing the payoff in two weeks, you know, I'm not talking months.
It was like in two weeks I could see a massive difference when you lined everything up, eating healthy.
That made the mountains a lot more easier and a lot more enjoyable.
I'm not saying I did more of the mountains.
I think I only covered the same sort of miles, but it was just a lot more enjoyable.
And that example that I kept saying to you, like going from the bottom of the mountain to the top without having four or five breaks in between when you're like and hurting, it was just a lot more enjoyable.
I'd stop, you know, and it's just like I wasn't even taking deep breaths.
I was already scanning the mountains for a bull, you know, and I think it just became a lot more enjoyable.
And then getting the headspace from that too, whether it's from me feeling better, whether it's from better plasticity of the mind, I just overall I just felt a lot better, a lot more connected, a lot more grateful as well, as in because you feel good.
You're going to be when you're hunting, you know, because when we're fatigued, there's this famous saying: fatigue makes cowards of us all, but it also, we make poor decisions when we're fatigued.
So you being at a higher level just physically allows you to hunt better, is what I always think because we're not taking shortcuts, we're making better decisions.
We're reading the animal better.
We're instead of like looking for a, because we're gassed, so we don't want to kick things, so we're looking at the ground more, instead, our heads up and we're reading the situation better.
So it's just, it results in just better hunting and you enjoy it more.
Yeah, definitely.
But I love that.
What I learned is that I think I enjoy the success of others.
And this has been reinforced over the years, but this year specifically, I enjoy being part of the success of others and taking others like new hunters and just sharing our lifestyle with them and just what's important to me.
And it gives me a chance to share.
When you talk to somebody on the phone, you're not like getting deep.
But when you're on a hunt, you get that opportunity.
And they're more, I don't know if they have to listen because they can't go anywhere or it's just they're more interested in listening, but it allows me to really like share why nature in the mountains and what I do is important.
And it seems like it's real, it really resonates with people.
And it's just, I, that has given me so much strength and I don't know, I just, and purpose.