In this episode, we talk about a 6.9 earthquake that hit the Big Island, and how we managed to hunt a bunch of deer in the middle of the night on a volcano. We also talk a little bit about hunting in general, and talk about the history of hunting deer in general. We hope you enjoy this episode and that it makes you want to go deer hunting! If you like hunting, you'll definitely want to check out this episode of the podcast, because it's pretty cool! Logo by Courtney DeKorte. Theme by Mavus White. Music by PSOVOD and tyops. All rights reserved. Used by permission. This episode was produced and edited by Riley Bray. The opinions stated here are our own, not those of our companies, unless otherwise stated. We do not own the rights to any music used in this episode. It was produced, produced, and licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. All credit given to original artists, music copyright of their respective owners. and their respective record labels. No other compensation is being paid for this episode except as stated, except where otherwise indicated. Thank you for your support and support is being given. I am not responsible for the production of this podcast, other than that of any other third party services provided by my clients. Please do not claim any other person(s) or third-party services provided. other than those of their own their own distribution, except that which is not their own liability, except as expressed in the rights of third parties. except that of their fair use in this podcast or service provider. or such other third parties, other such compensation is not claimed by third party compensation. You are not required to provide their fair and fair compensation, etc., unless otherwise indicated, etc. , etc. Thank you to whom you choose to pay for this podcasting services. - Thank you, we are not compensated for the use of this material or compensation, unless stated, etc.. - we do not receive any such compensation, except in any other compensation, other compensation or compensation is required. of course, we have no such thing. etc., etc., except where else is indicated or other such thing is indicated in accordance with this podcast is stated or otherwise is stated, other promotion or promotion or such such thing being provided by the listener discretion.
00:01:41.000Well, this is one of the best examples of, if you want to make an argument for hunting, like this, in certain situations, this is probably the best example.
00:01:52.000You must control the population of these animals.
00:03:27.000But these deer are very similar, just quick.
00:03:30.000When we were leaving that night, when you and me and Adam were in the truck, and we were leaving, and we turned the lights on in the truck, and you could see hundreds of deer in front of us.
00:03:47.000Because it was just, they're coming out of the trees, crossing the road into the open field where we've been hunting, and it's just hundreds.
00:05:05.000Yeah, it was, I'm, anytime I go on a hunt, I mean, I'm thankful for the experience and for seeing the animals, but also meeting the people, you know, Alec, Bob the Butcher.
00:05:18.000There's just, like, these people that are ingrained in In your memory, that's such a special part of the trip also.
00:05:26.000Yeah, the experience is very unusual because there's really not a place like that that I know of anywhere on the planet that's just a small island with a small population of people and a massive population of the most delicious animals in the world.
00:05:43.000And even though there's so many of them, good fucking luck getting one.
00:05:47.000We had our friend Ben O'Brien, he went home empty-handed.
00:05:51.000So one of us in a group of very experienced hunters...
00:05:56.000I mean, other than me, everybody in that group is super, super experienced.
00:06:52.000Like, when their velvet drops off, and they rub their velvet off, and then the females start coming into season, that's when they get fucking sketchy and nervous, because they know that guns are going to be going off.
00:08:36.000Well, it's, I mean, as far as our trip goes, and that was another thing I wanted to mention, too, is that you said the group of people, Ben was one of them, but we had just an awesome group of hunters.
00:10:03.000So when I see these guys go out and they're successful with basically a sharp stick, you know, it's, especially on an animal like that, so a lot of these people, it's new country, like Adam hadn't been there, I hadn't, I had never been there.
00:10:18.000When you see guys go out there and do that on a new hunt, a new country for new animals, it's impressive.
00:10:25.000Well that, we really did, like look at that, that's the goddamn A-team taking me and Kimmy out of the mix, and Will, let's be honest.
00:14:59.000I gotta be able to trust you with everything.
00:15:02.000If I can't trust you, that you don't want to tell everybody that you banged a porn star, wouldn't it be great if you just had a press conference and, ladies and gentlemen, who cares?
00:17:28.000When I was thinking about you, it seems like, and I don't know, I'm not you, but Courtney DeWalter, the people you're interested in are more important to you than, say, the President of the United States.
00:18:29.000I mean, that's obviously a pretty blanket statement, but I like people that are doing things that are unique, people that are, like, masters at a craft, people that are working hard, people that inspire me.
00:18:44.000I like to be inspired, you know, I like...
00:18:46.000I like talking to people who are curious and who've studied things, you know, whether it's Sean Carroll or Neil deGrasse Tyson or people that understand things that I don't understand so I can pick their brain and ask them questions about stuff.
00:19:23.000If I didn't have business to do with him, where I was worried about getting screwed over in some sort of a deal or something like that, I would like him.
00:19:30.000Because I would think he's a wild man.
00:19:44.000Could you imagine that he is so divisive, people are so conflicted one side or the other against him, that if you wear that hat, they will kick you out of places.
00:19:55.000What world do we live in where you can't wear something that says, make America great again?
00:21:53.000He's a very interesting guy in the fact that his methods are so outrageous and outside the norm that I don't think these world leaders know what the fuck to do with him.
00:23:21.000I wanted to make sure you were good with that because I wasn't...
00:23:24.000I want you to want or get what you want, basically.
00:23:29.000So International Wildlife Conservation Council.
00:23:31.000So I don't know how it started because I'm like...
00:23:34.000Man, there are some powerful people on there, Safari Club International people, super successful business people and political campaign-type contributors.
00:23:48.000And then, you know, we go to this meeting.
00:25:04.000But soon after that, I got a call for this thing.
00:25:07.000And so, because I was, you know, I know just from hunting in Africa and how it works and that hunting is necessary over there if the animals are going to survive.
00:26:36.000And this outfit in Tanzania that had been in business for 40 years, they went out of business about, I think it was about two months ago now.
00:26:49.000And what happens is when they don't have the concession, they can't pay for that land, it is given back to the people.
00:26:56.000And for us here, they'll be like, oh, that's great.
00:28:47.000And then in other places, the problem is with local farmers, they have these plots of land and the elephants come in and eat everything and destroy their land and they can't do anything about it.
00:29:16.000I mean, there's a food chain going on there and humans, here where we are, we're so far above the food chain that we're like sitting in a platform looking down watching it.
00:30:16.000It's such a hard thing for people to swallow.
00:30:20.000From the point of view of someone who loves wildlife, I think this is what people want.
00:30:25.000What they want is the humans to leave the animals alone and the animals to live in this state of bliss.
00:30:31.000Where they exist perfectly and the balance of nature of predator and prey all plays out in a natural way without people going over there and shooting elephants then sticking their tusks on their wall.
00:30:44.000I mean we've all seen those pictures of these giant fat fucks holding a rifle standing over a lion and you're like this just looks wrong.
00:30:52.000It looks like American gluttony makes its way over to Africa and some guy shoots a line with a rifle.
00:30:59.000Now he's standing on its head and he's gonna put it on his wall in his fat fucking house somewhere.
00:31:27.000You have to understand that these animals 20 years ago were on the verge of extinction.
00:31:31.000So many different antelopes, so many different what we would call game animals, animals that people eat, were on the verge of extinction until they started instituting these big hunting concessions and having people come in from Europe and America and hunting in Africa.
00:31:47.000Then the community started to prosper because if someone's paying, you know, how much is it to shoot like a Neil guy or something like that?
00:31:57.000So, think of how many of those things get shot, and some of that money goes to the ranch, some of that money goes to the professional hunting guys, anti-poaching conservation efforts, and then you have unprecedented numbers.
00:32:09.000There's more of those animals today than there have been in decades.
00:32:12.000And it's all because people put value on them.
00:32:16.000Yeah, it's all about the animals have to have value.
00:32:18.000And people say, no, well, the animal has value being alive.
00:32:39.000So if they're not working for the hunting concession, if the hunting concession goes out of business like the largest one in Tanzania did after 40 years, what are they going to do?
00:32:55.000Some of those people, and I don't know for a fact, but I'm going to make an educated guess, that they would go from working as anti-poaching officers or helping keep the animals alive as part of the anti-poaching program straight to poaching.
00:33:09.000Yeah, well that's happened back and forth both ways, right?
00:33:13.000Former poachers became anti-poaching officers when the opportunity presented itself.
00:33:17.000Right, and they were great ones because they knew how it worked, and they knew where the weaknesses were, and that saved animals.
00:33:23.000But it's just like, it's sad because that last two months without that hunting concession there, without the anti-poaching program in place, I guarantee it's been a slaughter.
00:33:38.000The animals that were being protected are now just being slaughtered by poachers.
00:33:42.000And again, the difference between looking at things pragmatically and looking at things idealistically.
00:33:47.000Idealistically, we would like all those people in Africa to have plenty of food and plenty of opportunity for employment and plenty of things to do with their life, but they don't.
00:34:05.000And it's also superior for the animals themselves, including the lions.
00:34:09.000In Zimbabwe, they had to kill—look this up, Jamie, see if you could—because they had to cull, I think it was something along the lines of 200 lions recently, because they had decimated the undulate population, because they weren't kept in check.
00:34:24.000Because the undulate—the way the balance of nature works out is you have to have a balance between predator and prey.
00:34:31.000The only way to keep the balance of predator is humans.
00:34:37.000Zimbabwe Wildlife Reserve will call 200 lines to control a population explosion claiming hunters have been scared off by the outcry overseas of the line.
00:34:46.000The whole thing is so weird because what people...
00:36:27.000These weird high-fence operations where they let lions loose, and then they let them out of the cage, and then people show up that day, and the lions don't know what the fuck's going on, and they shoot this lion, and then stand up.
00:37:26.000Like if you go to the Missouri Breaks and you go up into those hills and look for mule deer, those fuckers have been there for thousands of years.
00:37:44.000They're the exact same animal two million years ago.
00:37:47.000So for millions of years, longer than there have been human beings, those things have been in that form running around North America and wherever the fuck they can.
00:39:09.000So it's where the animals can go from the summer range to the winter range where there's not going to be development there.
00:39:15.000So he created that because that's how those animals, like in Montana, make it through the winter.
00:39:20.000If they're up in the summer, they make it through...
00:39:26.000Getting into fall and then all of a sudden winter hits, they have to have a way down into the low country to where they can, their winter migration to where they can survive the snow and where they can make down and there's good feed down there.
00:39:39.000If there's gas rigs or mineral extraction efforts going on that impede that, then they might get hung up up there and get stuck in the snow and die.
00:40:46.000But what the truth is is a lot of people felt like Obama when he before he left office did an overreach on the National Monument protection and so there's protecting the National Monument and then Which is a certain area.
00:41:03.000He protected, he wanted to encompass two million acres in that national monument designation, which seems excessive.
00:41:11.000What Zinke says, the Secretary of Interior, he went in there and he said, that's an excessive, that's an overreach.
00:41:17.000I want to scale it back to what it was before Obama did that.
00:41:38.000Zinke scaled it back to what it was before, which that would be...
00:41:41.000It's still national forest, still federal land.
00:41:45.000But you'd be able to, and I'm not sure if it was wilderness or how the access would be, but what Zinke would say is that, like, I would be able to go into the land all the time.
00:41:56.000That 2 million acres, because I might be considered by some to be elite.
00:42:00.000You know, because I can walk for 20 miles.
00:42:03.000Not everybody in the United States can walk 20 miles to get somewhere.
00:42:06.000So they want to put road systems in there.
00:42:57.000And so what it is, what Zinke wants to do is he wants to just make sure people of not all abilities, because it's not like we want roads on every mountain, but have access to national forests.
00:43:12.000So people that can drive in 4x4s, you know, those little off-road ranger trucks.
00:44:12.000But all it did, it went back to what it was before.
00:44:15.000And at that time, when I researched it, there had been no mining permits.
00:44:19.000From what I understand, there's minerals in there, but not enough to warrant...
00:44:25.000Going in there and setting up a full mineral extraction mine.
00:44:29.000So the only reason that they change the distinction is to allow people to have more access to that wilderness through roads that already exist.
00:45:49.000And the Trump administration, especially in the beginning when it came in, people were really worried about them in terms of environmental concerns.
00:45:56.000Because they had opened up offshore drilling.
00:45:58.000They had done a lot of things that people were really freaked out about.
00:46:01.000What was the area, Jamie, in Alaska where they were going to open up drilling that was near salmon runs that people were very, very concerned about?
00:46:12.000They were concerned about the idea of money above nature.
00:46:20.000So someone else is going to make money off of what's supposed to be our land and our public land, which you and I could maybe go, even though you don't like salmon.
00:46:30.000We could go salmon fishing in this land.
00:46:32.000Well, it could get fucked up by someone else making billions of dollars in oil or natural gas or whatever the fuck we do if they contaminate that.
00:46:49.000They want to get people activated because they think that there might be a chance that if you protest enough, you can stop something like this happening before it does.
00:46:56.000Because if you do look at, like, what happened in Alaska with that big oil spill in the 80s, or what happened with the BP oil spill in the Gulf Coast, like, that shit's devastating.
00:47:06.000When something like that does happen, someone else is profiting, making fucking billions of dollars while our planet that we all share is getting fucked up.
00:47:19.000But they're making billions of dollars, and they're fucking up the land.
00:47:23.000And by the government, by Trump or anybody else, whoever's opening it up, giving them access to drill and to do all this thing, you open up the possibility of ruining something that's amazing.
00:47:34.000Well, so there's always going to be a balance, though.
00:47:36.000You can't just say, okay, nobody can drive past this point forever.
00:48:41.000That's why I've wanted to be involved.
00:48:44.000I'm on that council, which has nothing to do with public lands in North America, but it's given me a way to get in there and try to learn more.
00:50:56.000I didn't really understand it totally until I was talking to you and you were explaining to me the distinction between how it was before Obama was in office, what Obama changed, and then bringing it back to how it was before.
00:52:18.000I came in as secretary of interior and in charge of I don't know how many different councils just like the international one I'm on and this park advisory board that what we're talking about and there's I think 200 and some that he's he really I think he over I don't even thousands of employees billions of dollars and all he asked was for these advisory boards he wanted um A report written up that said,
00:52:43.000what have you done in the last two years?
00:52:58.000So the story was, he wouldn't meet with them, and they resigned in protest.
00:53:02.000But the other half of the story was, he asked them to do something so he could get up to speed and be educated on what's going on, and he never supplied it.
00:53:11.000Well, if they are the typical government employees, and what is the typical government employee?
00:53:33.000Yeah, and they've got this job, and all of a sudden he's asking them to provide, not just tell them what they've done, but tell them what they're going to do, and provide...
00:54:17.000Yeah, and I'm an unpaid volunteer on that council.
00:54:20.000It's like, you don't do this for money, you do it to make a difference.
00:54:22.000Yeah, but if they're going to be a volunteer, even if they're an unpaid volunteer, and if he asks you to have a plan, you should probably have a plan.
00:54:30.000Because I guarantee you there's someone out there that would have a plan.
00:54:34.000Especially when it comes to something that's important as national parks and public land, things that are really dear and important to people.
00:54:43.000This is something that, you know, you want to have whoever these volunteers are, if you're going to appoint them, you want to have the best ones for the job.
00:56:41.000At least I can try to find out and learn.
00:56:43.000Yeah, it's an interesting thing because everything that I've heard about him, that I've read in the media, unless I'm reading like a hunting website or something like that, everything I've heard is like that it's a horror show, that he's bringing on all these trophy hunters,
00:56:59.000and there was an article equating you with being a trophy hunter.
00:57:04.000And that this council that he's put together is just this disgusting sort of justification for trophy hunting and that they're only putting it together so that wealthy people can bring back their elephants that they shoot in Africa.
00:57:50.000The guys who I've hunted with there personally, awesome people, hard-working people.
00:57:55.000The one guy on my last trip there to Tanzania, his daughter was in college and he'd been a professional hunter over there for over 20 or 30 years.
00:58:06.000And she was going to college now getting her degree.
00:58:31.000I'm not saying every person, but a lot of them.
00:58:34.000And it's not getting any better because right now, so that policy, Trump said, well, we're going to review it on a case-by-case basis.
00:58:43.000So he didn't say, okay, it's legal, now everybody can hunt and go and bring their trophies back.
00:58:49.000He said, we'll review each one on a case-by-case basis.
00:58:52.000So that still doesn't make it that good for a hunter because they say, well, I'm not going to book a hunt if I don't know for a fact I can bring my trophy back.
01:00:02.000I mean, the villagers that live there, man, they need it.
01:00:07.000There was a documentary on CNN recently called Trophy, and I remember there's a scene in there where the hunter shot an elephant, and it wasn't a big one.
01:00:15.000And the people were making fun of him for shooting.
01:01:47.000And, you know, he asks fantastic questions, and he's really polite, and he, like, kind of pesters them over and over and over again until he gets to the heart of the matter.
01:01:55.000But at the end of the documentary, you realize, like, this is complex.
01:01:59.000This is not as simple as, hey, these mean people want to go over there and kill animals and treat them as objects.
01:03:08.000What you said makes a lot of sense that it's a first world perspective on a third world problem where people are literally starving to death.
01:03:17.000They're trying to figure out how to get food to survive.
01:04:38.000He goes with a hindquarter slung over his shoulders.
01:04:41.000Yeah, and he's going to feed his family with that.
01:04:42.000And so, to me, you know, hunters are vilified by a large majority of the population here, whereas we've said before, 96% of America eats meat.
01:04:54.000And hunters are the ones out there getting to themselves.
01:04:58.000And, like, I remember that last buck I killed...
01:05:01.000And Lanai, I was meticulous on taking care of that meat.
01:05:06.000And as I gutted the animal, as I took the bladder out, I can't remember what happened, but a drop of urine dropped on a tiny little piece of the back ham.
01:05:35.000There's people that eat, 96% of people eat meat, and we throw away what's been figured 40% of our food.
01:05:45.000Yeah, food waste is insane in this country, and I think Anthony Bourdain just did a documentary on it, right?
01:05:50.000I don't think it's out yet, but he did a documentary on food waste.
01:05:54.000So I'm worried about one little tiny piece of meat on an animal I killed And people who throw away 40% of what they buy into the garbage, they're judging me.
01:06:07.000Yeah, well, there's a lot of that out there, man.
01:07:53.00070 yards is a long fucking way to hit an animal perfectly, and then to have it die in seconds, and then to get that meat.
01:08:01.000There's an enjoyment that comes out of it.
01:08:03.000There's a good feeling, but it's not like shooting a three-pointer at the buzzer to win the championships and everybody's jumping up in the air.
01:12:06.000And so when people chime in on your page or on my page and these uneducated comments trying to tell me how I feel or why I do what I do, man, that does not make me happy.
01:12:22.000The ability to comment on things is a very strange thing because the ability to talk to people, it's very difficult to have an audience to sit in front of someone that, you know, Pick a person, a famous, like Morgan Freeman,
01:16:08.000And it made me feel so good to look at these delicious meals that this guy prepared who's a professional chef with meat from an animal that I killed.
01:16:16.000I give away a lot of that meat, but I eat it every day.
01:16:48.000Like what he's done with all the cuts and labeled them all, and he gives you an envelope that has all of the recipes of how you should cook each individual cut.
01:21:53.000How about you get away from the elephant?
01:21:55.000But, you know, the problem with that is, like, if you're growing crops, like we were saying, and the elephant starts eating your crops, you're like, get out of here, and the elephant's like, oh, excuse me?
01:23:21.000At the end of that bear selfie thing, it said two other people were killed in that state in India, and they were both trying to take selfies with elephants.
01:25:00.000Eastern Europe, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Japan, and Great Britain, all fit inside of Africa.
01:25:45.000It's just like, grizzlies are endangered in L.A. They're really endangered in LA. Unless you go to these certain bars in Santa Monica Boulevard, they have bears for days.
01:28:26.000Well, Jamie thinks that all this wackiness with Candace Owens and Kanye is really Kanye just getting people hyped up about the release of his new album, which will be out in a few months.
01:28:40.000Yeah, there's an internet conspiracy that's been, like, not proven, because it can't be proven yet, but there's a long Twitter thread and a few, like, reports on blogs or magazines, if you will, that sort of lead to, like, an Andy Kaufman-esque type performance art piece that he's doing.
01:28:54.000Maybe bring up a conversation about some of these topics he's actually talking about, or maybe we'll find out when his album comes out.
01:29:02.000If Kanye is doing performance art, then what's the point?
01:35:24.000That's life that bummed me out But not as much as the one where you you had was it a moose calf or an elk calf?
01:35:30.000The bear was eating alive and it's screaming out and its mother is just a few feet away Trying to figure out what to do and that grizzly just tearing it apart.
01:35:39.000But meanwhile, that's what they do If you don't control the populations of grizzlies, that happens all the time.
01:35:45.000And even today, right now, with just the populations as they exist right now, in places like Alberta, they estimate that 50% of all moose, elk, and deer calves are killed, or fawns, are killed.
01:36:19.000And so the new, I can't remember what the political parties called, but the one in control now said grizzly hunting is no longer socially acceptable.
01:36:31.000And you'll see what's going to happen with the other animals.
01:36:34.000Well, they're going to have to hunt them, but they're going to hire people to hunt them.
01:36:37.000What happens in those situations is what happens in California when it comes to mountain lions, and they still get hunted, but they get hunted in a very hush-hush way.
01:36:46.000They hire assassins to go after these lions and kill dogs and cats and, you know, scare the shit out of joggers.
01:36:52.000And that's what they're gonna have to do to bears.
01:36:57.000Vote was, the way it was explained, Grady Bowman did a podcast about it, and what they were explaining was that it was a very small percentage of people that even voted on this.
01:37:14.000That there needs to be a balance of these bears and these animals, otherwise the animals are going to get decimated and the bears are going to encroach on human populations.
01:37:24.000These bears, there's been this whole business of guiding and outfitting for these bears, and the biologists are not talking to the people that are actually in the woods, on the ground, about the population numbers.
01:37:39.000If you talk to people like my friend Mike Hawkridge, who lives up there, he'll tell you there's a lot of bears.
01:37:45.000There's a large population of grizzly bears, and it's very difficult to determine what the actual population is if they're not listening to the people that are on the ground every day.
01:38:10.000The anthropomorphization of animals is one of the more dangerous things that people have done with civilization where we've decided that animals are like us, they're our friends, they wear baseball hats and fucking ties.
01:38:48.000It's like people think that somehow or another you can't eat bears.
01:38:51.000Like people get mad at you for killing a bear, but they won't get mad at you for killing a pig because pigs are ugly.
01:39:00.000Wild pigs are one of those one animals where vegans and animal rights activists don't have an answer to.
01:39:07.000They don't like seeing people shooting them out of helicopters.
01:39:10.000They don't like seeing people hunting them.
01:39:12.000But if you looked at the actual numbers, I would love to sit down, have someone from PETA or any animal rights activist group sit down with someone who really understands the wild pig infestation problem.
01:39:24.000The invasive species that doesn't have a natural predator that breeds three to four times a year and can have as many as six to eight piglets in its litter, and they're just fucking like there's no tomorrow.
01:39:37.000And they're having tons of them, and they're just destroying billions of dollars in crops every year.
01:42:35.000The people that are getting meat from the store and from Burger King that are still shitting on hunters and saying you got a little dick, like, you're being silly.
01:42:45.000We've talked about this every single time, but the number of people reaching out is growing...
01:42:52.000Exponentially, daily, on who wants to be a hunter, who wants to provide for themselves and their family, and really sees the draw to that, and that is the natural way.
01:45:53.000I think archery can be It can be powerful.
01:45:56.000You know, I had sent you that quote, I think, yesterday about there's things you do in your life where there's before you did them and after you did them.
01:46:04.000And there's a definitive line right there.
01:46:06.000I think archery can be a line like that where everything was before and now everything after and it's that powerful.
01:46:12.000Well, I think difficult things are important for people to do.
01:46:15.000You know, I mean, I think challenges are extremely important.
01:46:18.000If you don't have a challenge in your life, the human mind, you know, we were talking about Idle time being the devil's playground.
01:46:43.000And it's something that requires concentration on all these different levels.
01:46:47.000Like mental concentration, you have to focus on your posture and your form and make sure that everything's right, your timing, the release of the shot is right.
01:46:55.000All that stuff requires so much of your focus and so much thought that it cleans your mind.
01:47:02.000It cleans your mind of all these other things.
01:47:04.000All the bullshit and the life stress goes away.
01:47:06.000When that arrow flies through the air and hits that bullseye, like it feels amazing.
01:47:13.000I had a lot of respect for Ryan Zinke when I went back there to D.C. because I took him with Bo back there and there's a huge group of people standing around.
01:47:21.000He's shooting An arrow at a small target in a gymnasium.
01:47:26.000And, you know, I mean, you're putting yourself out there because there's no guarantee you're going to be very good with the bow.
01:47:31.000Well, he doesn't have experience with it, right?
01:47:35.000I think he shot one at the Western Hunting Expo, but I saw him shooting in the air like the arrow was lined up like you're shooting, you know, down his eye instead of with a sight.
01:52:55.000There's something about the difficulty of it, especially when I was doing it by myself.
01:53:01.000There was a time for a while where I was stalking on this buck by myself, without Alec, without anybody, and I'm like, this is like, it's such a singular focus.
01:53:10.000You're thinking about one thing, you're just checking the wind, checking your range, trying to close it on him, putting bushes in between you and him so he can't see you, creeping, trying to, and it's...
01:53:22.000There's something about that that's so primal.
01:53:26.000It just resonates with your DNA. There's something about it where if you get one of those animals and then as you're eating it, you're going to remember that moment forever.
01:53:47.000Yeah, and I videoed a little bit on that deer I killed that day, and I put it on my Instagram story, just little clips about where I was, where the buck was, kind of the strategy, taking off my boots and all that.
01:53:59.000And so many people sent messages saying that that was fascinating.
01:55:36.000There's a great expression, I think, from Dennis McKenna, that once the bonfire of understanding grows, the surface area of ignorance is revealed.
01:57:09.000Or you have to tape that thing up and crawl out of there.
01:57:11.000It's a little better now, because people have way more access than when I started when I was there was this, you would have to get to the top of the mountain even get barely cell phone service if that was even possible.
01:57:22.000But now, you know, there's a lot of light phone.
01:57:57.000I know there's one down here in San Diego, performance archery.
01:58:00.000I met Scott Eastwood at one in Riverside, and I think it's called Riverside Archery.
01:58:06.000Back home, it's a bow rack, but there's these pro shops that that's what they do every day.
01:58:10.000So the key with any hunting, any archery hunting you're going to do is shooting that bow and shooting it consistently, getting those reps in.
01:58:18.000And that's where, you know, you can't control the experience you get, you know, that kind of comes slowly, but like what you've taken control of is the repetition and the discipline with shooting an arrow and doing it accurately.
01:58:32.000So once you control that part of it, The hunting experience is going to come, the stock experience, the learning the animals, that's going to come.
01:58:39.000But at least when you get that opportunity, you'll be able to make the shot.
01:58:42.000So for new people who are interested, get to an archery pro shop, get set up with the good bow, learn how to shoot correctly, and do it a lot.
01:58:50.000And then you branch out and set up the hunts.
01:58:53.000It's just so difficult to execute a shot on an animal.
01:59:18.000And especially, say, if you're on a backcountry hunt, you go 20 miles in, there's a 190-inch mule deer just standing there, and he's feeding, and you get this one shot.
01:59:32.000And you finally see a deer, and you draw back, and your arms are shaking, and you're just trying to go through your shot process without flinching and fucking panicking and just slamming that trigger like it's a People want a shortcut, and I was the same way.
02:00:01.000God, I want to say we didn't see an elk for something like six days...
02:00:07.000I killed a buck on day seven, I think, and a bull on day eight.
02:00:12.000But there was a long time in there where it was like, what are we doing?
02:00:17.000So it's really easy when you finally do get that opportunity to want to shortcut from seeing it to holding the antlers in your hands and being successful.
02:00:32.000Because the sooner an arrow can be going towards that animal, they feel like the closer they are to holding that animal, to making a good shot.
02:00:38.000But, man, you still have to go if you can't skip a step.
02:00:46.000It's like that adrenaline and the feeling of discomfort is like this uncertainty feeling.
02:00:54.000It's just very hard for people to handle.
02:00:56.000But that's with the case of anything where you have to perform, anything where it's difficult to do, where you're just like, oh my god, is it happening?
02:01:38.000I'm always trying to get into the heads of other hunters and just want to know what the thought process is.
02:01:45.000But I think you told me that when you're in bow range of that buck right out of the gate early in the hunt, didn't you take a few deep breaths and relax?
02:01:59.000They're tense because there's so much going on.
02:02:01.000They never relax, and that shot is just not going to be accurate.
02:02:05.000But when you can relax, and then just like in your backyard, you come, you focus, you're just as calm as you've done a thousand times, and you can pick that spot, level that bubble, and slowly squeeze that trigger, that's when it works.
02:02:24.000Before we knew it, we kicked our shoes off, and we were walking with socks on, just creeping through the grass, and we got to 45 yards, and he's like, do you want to get closer?
02:03:18.000There's so much physical action involved in pulling a bow back and being in perfect position and making sure you're not torquing the bow and leveling the bubble on the sight and pulling with the back muscles and making sure everything's in line and there's no flinching or extra movement and you're concentrating on the exact spot you want that arrow to hit as the thing's releasing,
02:03:41.000all under extreme anxiety and pressure and this thing, is it moving?
02:03:48.000There's so much involved, but the feeling when it's over, the relief, and then knowing that I'm going to have this organic meat that is the most delicious meat in the world, and I'm going to be cooking, and I can't wait to cook it.
02:03:58.000I haven't cooked any of it, but I can't wait.
02:05:39.000And I just want to know that I'm going to be merciful when it comes time to kill the animal.
02:05:44.000Well, you're also going to be in shape enough to get to position to get to the animal and have your heart rate drop down and out so that you can stay calm.
02:06:04.000And then, you know, like in the buck that I killed just a couple days ago, that second buck, I was able to, you know, there's something about putting a dead animal on your shoulders and packing it out that, you know, it's just part of the process.
02:11:00.000And I can, if I'm just doing the close reps, like during the work week, It's generally just at my house, just, you know, 20 yards shooting my bow.
02:11:09.000And that's, and it's just, and then when I'll lift on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I lift right after work.
02:11:17.000And I'll go outlaw strength and, you know, sometimes Nick, the trainer, dude, hammer it out, I'll stick it home at the same time.
02:11:24.000So on those days, I'm not going to get a marathon done a day on those three days.
02:11:29.000Do you feel like shit on those days because you didn't get your marathon in?
02:11:51.000What are you thinking, like when you run an ultra, and just say if you run 100 miles or more, what kind of demons are going through your head when you're out there running?
02:14:07.000I don't feel like that's my potential.
02:14:10.000This is the thing that I think is very important for people like you and I think a lot of people.
02:14:17.000It's that in achieving goals and in pushing hard, there's a release of anxiety that I think overwhelms a lot of people for most of their life.
02:14:31.000I know a lot of people that are overwhelmed by anxiety and most of those people that I know that are overwhelmed by anxiety don't push themselves.
02:14:40.000I think that physically pushing yourself to your limit all the time, whether it's lifting weights or jujitsu or running or whatever you do that's strenuous, I think it's a requirement for the human body that we think of as an option.
02:15:02.000I think really hard exercise is one, and I don't care what you do, whether you're swimming or whatever you like, whatever you enjoy, mountain biking, but I think really hard exercise is one of the most important requirements for a happy, healthy life.
02:16:41.000And it's just like, that's really been bothering, because my son quit a good job as a deputy, my oldest, and he joined the army because he says he has more to offer this world.
02:17:34.000So, you know, I told him, you know, I'm sorry if I ever made you feel that being a regular average person, there was something wrong with that.
02:17:46.000And he said, you know, the example that I've set growing up was that to work hard and achieve, you know, big goals, and that's what he wants to do.
02:18:00.000And so he he said, you know, he said that was for him.
02:18:04.000And then my my younger son, who's in his third year of college now, he I had the same talk with him.
02:18:11.000And I just said, I'm you know, I'm sorry if if I've done something to make it feel like, you know, being being average was a failure.
02:18:20.000And he said that he wants to graduate.
02:18:23.000He wants to join the service and maybe try to go to Special Forces, too, for the same reason.
02:19:39.000And what I told them growing up always was, I don't care if you're the best at whatever you're doing, because not everybody can be the best, but I said, just give your best.
02:20:01.000The thing is about people that coast about stuff, if they have...
02:20:04.000Like a thought of doing better and they just don't put in the effort.
02:20:08.000They feel like shit Yeah, you know you they feel like shit for you telling them that but they feel like shit for sh for not doing well Yeah, yeah, especially if they have ambition if you unrealized potential is a very fucking horrible feeling you know unrealized potential and Unrealized expectations are just it's like this feeling that you haven't done enough will keep you up at night Yeah,
02:20:29.000it will fuck with your head I just know how I felt, not giving all I got.
02:20:35.000I didn't want my kids to feel like that.
02:20:39.000So I was just like, make sure you're giving your best.
02:21:01.000I don't you know being a parent is like I feel like I'm better now than I was when I was 24 years old and You know, hopefully I'm pretty maybe more I'm different with my daughter.
02:21:18.000So it's it is just that's different But man, it's like there's no blueprint on how to be the perfect parent and now I'm like, I hope I did Okay Yeah, there's no blueprint.
02:23:19.000You know, I felt like I was given all I had on...
02:23:26.000On the hunts that required the most of me.
02:23:28.000And then at that same time, so that was 2007, 2008. Then at the same time, I was also ramping up what I did with running and pushing my body 100 milers and things like that.
02:23:41.000Because you realized that you needed more endurance?
02:23:44.000I just realized that I've been doing what I've been telling my kids not to do.
02:24:02.000And when I meet people and see people that are doing amazing things, it shows me what's possible.
02:24:10.000And so that's why I know I have more to offer.
02:24:13.000That's a fascinating thing that, you know, you take these steps towards this journey, and then you realize as you're making these steps that your capacity for work is increasing, so you have to push yourself further to test your body, and then,
02:24:28.000you know, a marathon seems out of reach, but then a marathon becomes a normal thing, and then a 50-miler, and then a 100-miler, and then a 205-miler, and then a 238-miler, and now you were talking the other day, I guess Candice was considering a 500-miler.
02:24:57.000Yeah, and so that's, I mean, that's what people that do those type of races live for, the next big challenge.
02:25:04.000And, you know, when you haven't, when you can cross a finish line, like I did Moab and Courtney did, she, you know, dominated, she had a great race in that race.
02:25:11.000But when you can finish a finish line and you're smiling, you're like, uh...
02:27:39.000You know, I'm muscle weighing what I weigh is not going to so I kind of throwing myself in the category of Richard and in Courtney as like, I can't do it at what I do.
02:30:51.000Just things are different in your body.
02:30:55.000Like I got a bone on top of my foot that rubs and if I get dried out, that stuff's not sliding well enough so that rubs and it swells up more.
02:31:05.000So it's just like all sorts of things happen.
02:31:09.000Yeah, people want everything to feel good.
02:31:48.000I think he came and ran Pisgah, did about four summits once, about 16 miles or whatever, and went out.
02:31:55.000And he's going to do a hundred miler after that and started throwing up at like mile 30, threw up like 13 times and couldn't walk, was dehydrated, throwing up, and it was the hardest thing to do,
02:34:06.000I'm not sure exactly, but all I know is like, I remember the first time I did Western States, I've only done it once, but it was a 100-miler in 2010, and I got to mile 55, I think, and I was dragging ass.
02:34:21.000You come out of the canyons, it's super hot, and there is, you know, 90s or 100s in the canyons, so you pop out onto mile 55, and I was hurting.
02:34:31.000And, uh, And Sean Meisner, who's been a very good ultra runner for a long time, he's like, have you taken salt?
02:37:21.000You know, you only have a certain amount of resources, and if you put all your resources into the business side, how are you going to have the concentration to do all the other things you're doing?
02:37:32.000Practice shooting and running, all the different things.
02:38:50.000I'm not even good at it, but I'm good at...
02:38:53.000What I'm good at is I know people that I like and what I like about them and what's interesting about them, and I like promoting people.
02:39:01.000It's one of the things that I've gotten out of this podcast that is...
02:39:06.000There's a lot of things that have gotten out of this podcast that are really unexpected and peripheral, but one of them is the ability to make my friends famous.
02:40:14.000Everything that I've ever put up on Instagram, unless it's my own stuff, unless it's my fanny packs or something that I sell, Anything that I've ever put on, people accuse me of working for Vibram's five-finger shoes.
02:40:41.000That's the one thing of having financial independence that's really rewarding is that I don't have to think like that.
02:40:48.000I've been offered to do ads on Instagram.
02:40:52.000I can't because unless it was something I super believed in, then I might consider doing it, but I could never do it with some nonsense like Coca-Cola or something like that.
02:45:12.000I believe people that are alive today.
02:45:14.000Because I think technology and medical science is increasing its viability and its potential so fast, and there's so many people working on things all the time, that if you do everything right right now, I think we're gonna see people that are alive today that are gonna hit 150. And I think the people that are born like five years from now,
02:45:34.000ten years from now, they'll probably hit 200. Before we go.
02:46:10.000The reason why Colby is fighting for the title, the reason why Colby is going to fight Rafael Dos Anjos for the interim title, is not just because he's beaten good guys, because he beat Damian Maia, but it's more importantly that he's going to put asses in the seats.
02:46:24.000Well, that's part of the fight business.
02:47:26.000This is not a resume of someone who you would normally see fighting for the title right now.
02:47:34.000I think he's fighting for the title based not just on beating Damian Maia, who's a really tough guy, but I think On the fact that he's a controversial, very popular character.
02:48:01.000That was a big victory, but that was his only big victory over a former title challenger who's like a top-level guy who's also 40 years old.