In this episode of the podcast, we re joined by wildlife conservationist, ultra-marathon runner, and ultimate badass, Bo Hunter. We talk about his new shirt, the "filthy skills" he's wearing, and why he thinks it's funny. We also talk about the "eat what you kill" movement, and what it means to be a carnivore and why it's a good idea to be self sufficient and self sufficient in your own wild life. And of course, we talk about a bunch of other stuff too. Enjoy, and spread the word to your friends and family about this podcast! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE and tell a friend about this episode so they can also be featured on the next episode! Timestamps: 1:00 - What is a filthy hunting skill? 4:30 - What does it mean to be an eco-lover 6:00 What does a filthy hunter do with all that extra time that you don t have 7:30 How does it feel when you have 15 minutes to make a video 8:15 - What do you do with 15 minutes of free time 9:40 - How do you have enough time to do what you love 11:00- What are you going to do with that extra minutes 12:15 13:30- What do I do with the extra minutes I don t get 15:00 | How do I have a lot of time? 14: What am I going to spend with you? 16:20 - Why I m not going to make more time 17: What I m going to be more productive 18:30 | How I m trying to make the most of my life? 19:15 | Why do I like to hang out with other people? 21:40 22:40 | I m a nice guy? 23:00 + 22:35 - How can I have more than one nice person 26:30 + 27:00+ 27:10 28:15 + 28:00 My thoughts on what do I get out of a nice person? 29:00 How do they like me? 35:00 What are my favorite part of my day? 31:00 Is there a nice conversation? 32:00 Do you like me nice?
00:00:33.000Exposition, conservation exposition, something like that.
00:00:36.000Which I really want to just drag some of the biggest diehard vegans, one of the most angry ones, just let them loose there and go wander around.
00:01:53.000He's like, population's good, filthy's good, but you're, he does you are.
00:01:58.000People that do you are, what do you do with all that extra time that you spend between, like, Y-O-U? What do you do with, you know, you don't have to spend that time working those fingers.
00:02:31.000There's such a disconnect going on in this world right now.
00:02:33.000We were talking about this today while we're practicing.
00:02:35.000It seems like there's some sort of a culture war.
00:02:38.000There's a movement of people right now.
00:02:41.000There's this whole eat what you kill movement.
00:02:43.000And a lot of people are rejecting the idea of factory farming.
00:02:49.000And rejecting the idea of buying processed food and buying cows that are locked up in pens and treated like a commodity rather than like a living animal.
00:03:12.000I don't rely on anybody to feed my family.
00:03:16.000And a lot of people love that, but then there's this group of people that are completely disconnected from the way the wild works that are very angry about all this.
00:03:25.000And there's some bizarre conversations that I've been having with some very well-meaning, very intelligent people.
00:04:30.000So, I get that people are upset, but the core message that everybody's getting out, there's one of two messages.
00:04:38.000One message is, you should never eat animals at all, and that we should live this The idyllic existence where everyone lives off nuts and twigs and shit and vegetables and that's all you eat.
00:04:52.000But then there's the other that you support and I support that the best way to live in this modern world is to go out and get your own meat.
00:05:02.000The problem with that, of course, and this is a real problem.
00:05:26.000We're the one that's paying the money for habitat, for all these biologists to tell us exactly how many animals are out there.
00:05:33.000They got boots on the ground and they're out there with the animals doing the number surveys, figuring out harvest numbers to try to achieve, carrying capacity.
00:05:43.000The guys online who think that grizzly bears are almost extinct and like, how could you kill a bear?
00:05:49.000You know, they want to kill me because I killed a bear.
00:05:52.000In Alaska that they probably have no clue how many bear are running around Alaska, but somehow they know that I shouldn't have killed it.
00:06:48.000This balance, there's some parts of it that are set in place before you and I were born, and before a lot of these people that are arguing, everybody, before everybody that's arguing about this has been born.
00:06:58.000The cities were already in place a long time ago.
00:07:01.000The food chain has already been in place.
00:07:03.000The market chain has been in place, as far as getting food to supermarkets.
00:07:07.000Most of the supermarkets that are in existence were there long before you and I start shopping at them, and that's a part of this equation of human beings.
00:07:15.000Another part of the equation of human beings is what you're talking about with predators.
00:07:19.000And this is one of the things that I had a discussion about with the guys who I really like.
00:07:24.000And there's some misconception I didn't like these guys.
00:07:26.000The guys that made that movie Cowspiracy.
00:07:36.000Well, it's a lot about factory farming, and a lot of it is about the amount of waste, methane, that gets into the atmosphere because of factory farming, the actual waste as far as their shit, the cows' shit, and the amount of devastation that does to our environment,
00:08:30.000Anyway, he's in Wisconsin in this really cool area where it's the...
00:08:36.000You know they have, it's called the Driftless area, where the glacier's mist, so it's all hilly and gorgeous and beautiful, and that's where he lives, and he raises cows out there, and he's going to come in and give his perspective on a lot of this stuff as well.
00:08:49.000But they had this really strange idea about wolves, and that I had to correct them, and this idea about, you know, that we've hunted the wolves to near extinction, and now they're reintroducing people and hunt them again, and, you know, they really have to stop that.
00:09:28.000And I brought up the whole World War I incident where the Germans and the Russians had a fucking ceasefire because so many of them were getting killed by wolves.
00:11:17.000And by the way, this guy was suicidal and depressed, like to the extreme, ready to kill himself, and then decided to what he calls rewilding.
00:11:28.000He reintroduced himself to the wild, started experiencing the wild, and fell in love with wildlife and nature, and that's what pulled him up out of this, and now it's his mission.
00:11:37.000Hey, I'm in love with wildlife and nature, too.
00:11:40.000Well, realistically, but realistically.
00:11:44.000Well, I do want to say one thing, because we've talked about factory farming and the downside of it.
00:11:50.000We're not lumping ranchers, regular ranchers that raise cattle.
00:11:54.000I mean, my family is a cattle ranching family in eastern Oregon, so I'm not talking about cows that are out with enough pasture out there And then being killed, taking a mark and killed.
00:12:06.000We're talking about that animals that don't leave the cage, that are standing in, you know, their own feces and just never move and never have a life and then have a bolt shove through their head and they're dead.
00:12:28.000And one of the things that I noticed when I was in Montana, when I first went hunting with Rinella, we went through the Missouri breaks, and there was all these cows wandering around.
00:12:37.000And I was like, what is the deal with this?
00:12:39.000Well, those cows literally wander free on public land.
00:12:44.000And this is what this Oregon nutty shit is about, and what the Nevada nutty shit was about, with all these crazy ranchers that want to...
00:13:45.000It's a great show that they used to do on Showtime, but one of them they did was on PETA and the Animal Liberation Organization or whatever the fuck they call it.
00:15:28.000107 mountain lions were killed last year, legally, by the government.
00:15:32.000So that's 107 mountain lions that people didn't get tags for, which means that's money that didn't go into the state coffers, and it didn't go to conservation.
00:16:55.000They're not hugging each other and crying like we've seen billboards of that either.
00:16:58.000We're going to get into that in a moment.
00:17:00.000But I think this is what I'm trying to get at.
00:17:04.000This is where I think there's a dispute and a misconception.
00:17:07.000And the misconception is that hunters are all these evil people that want to hunt these animals to kill them so they can put them on their wall.
00:17:15.000Almost all of the money that goes to fish and game, fish and wildlife management organizations that protect wetlands, that protect public lands for camping and for people to use and people to enjoy and go hike,
00:17:31.000the money to support those comes from hunting.
00:18:36.000So it's a peninsula they call Antelope Island.
00:18:38.000And there's huge bucks, and I think there's sheep there also.
00:18:42.000But the bucks are what draw the money.
00:18:44.000So they auctioned one off, and it went for $410,000 for one deer tag.
00:18:51.000And most of that money, 90%, 10% goes to funding the auction and doing all the things that's required there.
00:18:59.00090% of that $410,000 goes right to habitat restoration on the island, building water sources, enhancing those, relocating animals off that peninsula there because the genetics are so good,
00:19:52.000There's a bunch of problems with all these discussions, and a big part of it is that the people that are arguing against the hunting, they don't regularly go into the wild, into these habitats, into these environments, and see how brutally hard they are for these animals to survive anyway.
00:20:10.000It's not like, if you kill a buck, and that buck lived to be five years old, You might be taking a year off its life.
00:20:59.000I mean, when you and I were in Colorado, it was one of the coolest fucking things we saw.
00:21:03.000Remember when we went down near that little creek area, there was a huge herd of 20 elk together, and those elk were duking it out and slamming it into each other?
00:22:15.000Even if we didn't have a bow, even if we weren't there to kill anything, if we just had calls, if we were just calling them in, it would have been an amazing experience.
00:22:23.000Because when you were there with essentially as wild an animal as you're ever going to get, I mean, a North American elk is a 1,000 pound, gigantic, wild animal with a tree grown out of its head, and it's living the way it's lived for thousands of years.
00:22:40.000And you, you know, you as a person who lives in Oregon, and me as a person who lives in California, we travel onto their land, we hike in to where they're at, and we experience this wild existence that they live in.
00:23:44.000Because if you remember that, we snuck down, we were sneaking, or I mean, we were on our butts, kind of scooting down, and the two bulls were jostling around right there, kind of sparring a little bit, and we had a small window through the brush, and I was like, you were right here, and I was looking at him like,
00:25:15.000And I go to their fucking page and one of them, this guy was feeding his animals meat.
00:25:21.000And I'm like, did that shit come from a meat tree?
00:25:23.000He's like, this guy was shitting all over you.
00:25:26.000And then I go to his page and he's got dogs!
00:25:28.000He's got dogs and he's feeding them meat!
00:25:30.000I'm like, oh man, there's some fucking convenient thinking going on here.
00:25:34.000It's so strange how many people have these convenient patterns of thought where they're self-righteous, they take the moral high ground.
00:25:41.000Now look, the only person that has any say, the only person that has a leg to stand on is a person who's a vegan, who doesn't eat any animal products.
00:25:50.000That's a small percentage of the population, but if they want to criticize it, and they have an argument, they have a very small leg to stand on.
00:25:58.000Now, when you have a conversation with them, that's when that argument kind of falls apart.
00:28:17.000What the hell do you know about anything?
00:28:20.000And all of a sudden, you know what's right and wrong, and he's like, he says, I'm going to have to answer for this, or karma, or some crazy thing.
00:28:35.000I mean, that is ground assholes and cow dicks.
00:28:39.000It's probably one of the worst things you can fucking eat, too.
00:28:41.000Filled with nitrites and nitrates and whatever's bad for you.
00:28:46.000I understand that they're trying to work it out for themselves.
00:28:49.000And working it out for themselves, a lot of times people want to condemn people that are living a lifestyle that's outside of theirs.
00:28:54.000They decide, hey, I'm going to live this small carbon footprint lifestyle where I'm going to be humane and I'm ethical and I'm going to be cruelty-free, hashtag cruelty-free, and I'm going to go on.
00:30:29.000Go outside and drive for 20 minutes, and I guarantee you, you're gonna pass 30, 40 places that have dead animals in them.
00:30:37.000Every fucking supermarket you pass by, every fast food place, every restaurant, every gas station that has Slim Jims at the fucking counter, all of that is animals.
00:30:46.000So for you to find a hunter, the one person that you could point to that probably kills animals in the most ethical and humane way possible, And contributes.
00:31:29.000I just think that podcasts like this and conversations like this with a guy like you, like I think what you do is the best way to do it.
00:31:37.000I mean I've said this time and time again.
00:31:39.000What you do is the best way to do it because what you're doing, first of all, it's the most difficult way to do it and you prepare your body for it in a very fucking grueling fashion.
00:31:46.000We worked out before we got here and you work out every day and one of the reasons why you work out every day is fucking going through the mountains is hard as shit.
00:32:14.000I mean, and you remember in Colorado when we were huffing it up that ridge, you know, we were at the bottom of the canyon, heard a bull bugling, is the bull you killed?
00:33:38.000But the point is, what you're doing to acquire, when you have an elk steak, and you sit down with this, and I had this conversation with Remy Warren about it, where he's like, it's almost like a religious experience.
00:33:48.000He's like, this is a precious piece of meat.
00:34:25.000Well, buying a steak, sure, but even a vegan or a vegetarian, but your vegetables, you're disconnected from these vegetables for the most part.
00:34:37.000With the food that you eat, even if you grow it yourself.
00:34:40.000Like, my wife gardens, and I do as well, and she does it more than I do, but we'll have salad from something that we grew in our garden, and it's awesome, man.
00:34:49.000Like, we're chopping tomatoes that we planted as seeds, and we fertilized the ground, and we watered it, and it came up, and we picked the tomato, and now we're slicing into it.
00:35:00.000And that's where the hunt, that's where the hunt, where the training and the preparation And the reverence for the animal and the harvest of the animal and the care of the meat.
00:35:09.000And you get it to your house and you put it in your freezer and then you thawed.
00:36:13.000It's fun because, you know, they can put a line in the water and when they catch something and then we're cooking it and eating it later, they're like, we caught this!
00:36:21.000And they keep saying, like, mommy, we caught this fish that you're eating.
00:36:24.000Like, there's like a primal connection to this thing.
00:36:28.000But other than that, I had never experienced this sort of primal connection to your food.
00:36:36.000All, you know, nonsense aside, like, there's a difference between a fish and a mammal.
00:36:43.000And there's a big difference between the reverence that you have for, in my opinion, the most majestic of animals that you hunt, which is elk.
00:37:32.000I have a rubber elk that sits up on my hill, and we did a little FaceTime video where we were out there doing it, but just shooting at that rubber elk is cool.
00:39:18.000The show is around because of controversy.
00:39:21.000Well, one of the fucking hilarious things in the show was the woman who was saying that the reason why there's not so many grizzlies is because we've killed off all their predators.
00:39:43.000And, I mean, well, we are, but they're not really on the same page that we think we are, they think they are, so there's a little bit of a conflict there.
00:42:37.000Eva Shockey, you should say who Eva is too, by the way.
00:42:39.000She's the daughter of Jim Shockey, who's been on the show, who's an amazing, fascinating guy, who has a show, even if you don't like hunting, there's an amazing show called Uncharted.
00:43:01.000And he travels to these remote places in the middle of Russia, and he went to Afghanistan, and he went to Africa to this remote village that has a massive problem with crocodiles.
00:43:30.000And this guy goes to this place, and you're seeing these people, like half the people in the village have been mauled.
00:43:35.000I mean, people are missing arms, they're missing legs, their faces have been cut open because they're getting killed by crocodiles left and right.
00:43:41.000And while he was there filming, a woman got taken by a crocodile.
00:43:45.000They've set up these sort of rudimentary fences that they've put in place to keep the crocodiles out of this area where these people gather water.
00:43:54.000And he's there with these other hunters where they're trying to take out...
00:43:59.000Once a crocodile apparently starts eating people, you've got to kill it.
00:46:30.000He has that talent and right now he's doing it on the Outdoor Channel So that's if nothing else go and watch his work Yeah on the on that show and the new show Uncharted Uncharted which is amazing in the new show Carter's war with Carter's war is all about this guy who's combating against poaching in Africa and And it's all about stopping poachers from killing rhinos and elephants and all these different animals that they're killing in Africa.
00:46:55.000And so it's like not really a hunting show as much as it's just a pure conservation show about a guy who's trying to stop poaching in Africa.
00:47:03.000And it's amazing and gritty and incredibly well documented and shot and just...
00:47:09.000Man, the world of Africa, if you want to watch a documentary, and I've mentioned this before to people, so I'm sorry if you've heard it before, but our friend Louis Theroux, who's been on the show before, who's an amazing documentary guy, documentarian from the UK,
00:47:25.000did a show on these hunting ranches in Africa, which is very different from what you did in Africa.
00:47:32.000What you did in Africa, you went to the actual wild of Africa, not a high fence operation.
00:47:37.000But these hunting ranches that they have set up in Africa, it's such a catch-22.
00:47:44.000There's so much contradiction going on because on one hand, these animals are trapped in this...
00:47:49.000It's usually enormous, like several thousand acre area.
00:47:57.000And a lot of people have a lot of hate for it.
00:47:59.000But on the other hand, the animals that they're hunting...
00:48:02.000Have never been healthier in higher numbers, and a lot of them were on the verge of extinction until they started implementing these high-fence operations.
00:48:09.000And it goes back to the same thing we were talking about.
00:48:11.000The money for conservation, the real money that these people are getting in Africa, is coming from hunting.
00:48:16.000That's what's paying for these animals to survive, because so many people are going over there to hunt.
00:48:21.000And people say- Because the animals have value.
00:48:24.000And that's a fucking weird concept for people.
00:48:27.000If an animal doesn't have value, it's probably going to be extinct.
00:48:32.000That's why hunters care, that's why conservationists care, because the animal is valuable.
00:48:38.000Whether it's right, wrong, or indifferent, when there's value, people care.
00:48:42.000And people have an understanding today that they didn't have this several hundred years ago.
00:48:47.000Like when people look at the gigantic mounds of buffalo skulls, that's a perfect example why you need conservation.
00:48:53.000You can't just have people run out and kill these animals that have value with no consequence or with no monitoring of the herd populations and health.
00:49:02.000That's when you get these horrific mass extinction events like what happened with the buffalo.
00:49:09.000And the buffalo were basically brought to the verge of extinction.
00:49:12.000Now, they're in healthy populations to the point where you can actually, in some places, you can hunt wild ones.
00:49:17.000And the same thing can be said of elk.
00:49:19.000The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has done an amazing job of repopulating areas with elk where they were, at one point in time, completely eradicated.
00:49:27.000Well, did you know that when you talk elk, deer, turkey...
00:49:31.000When you talk, there's more of those species now than there's ever been.
00:49:37.000Because I know it is with whitetail deer.
00:49:39.000There's more whitetail deer today than when Columbus landed.
00:49:42.000But I don't know if that's the case with elk because there's more places where they don't exist.
00:49:47.000I think like most of the area where, like Steve Rinella did a whole show on this recently, where most of the area where elk used to be, they're not.
00:49:55.000But in the areas where they are, they're in healthy populations.
00:50:09.000And probably Rinello would know, so maybe you know if he's been on the show, but elk are, they're plains animals originally.
00:50:16.000They're pushed into the mountains because the plains, that's where we live.
00:50:19.000We live where there's water and in the valleys, that's where humans set up their cities and that's, you know, to get, use the rivers and we need water.
00:50:26.000So they have been pushed and now they're mountain animals.
00:50:29.000But now there's elk where there hasn't been elk before, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, you know, places like that.
00:50:36.000So maybe they're Maybe there are more places than they've ever been, but I'm almost certain there's even more elk.
00:50:45.000I don't even think there are more places than they've ever been.
00:50:47.000I think it's the ones that are there are in healthier populations than they used to be.
00:50:52.000But I think elk are a lot like buffalo in that at one point in time, like hundreds of years ago, they were just shooting the shit out of them.
00:53:54.000In Alaska, which is twice the size of Texas, it's a goddamn enormous state, and they are big, and there's a lot of them.
00:54:02.000And they decimate herds of caribou, elk, and they estimate that something around where John and Jen live in Alberta, more than 50% of the moose are killed at birth.
00:55:00.000But yeah, so where I was, I was in 16 in Alaska, and a non-resident can kill two brown bear, which are basically salmon-fed grizzly bear, and three black bear.
00:55:13.000So you can go up there and kill five bear.
00:55:27.000But that gives you an example of how many bears there are.
00:55:32.000And this is by biologists who are paid and who have went to school and who have studied the carrying capacity of the land and how many animals...
00:55:45.000So that's where I have a problem with the people who think they know better than people who, this is their passion, this is what they care about, they have boots on the ground, they're doing it, they're setting the bag limits.
00:55:54.000So if you don't live there and study this and this has been your life mission, you don't know more than them.
00:57:08.000If you leave that kid on the swing and you go in to fucking answer your email real quick and you come back, your kid's not gone, you see that fucking tail hop over the fence.
00:59:48.000Well, here's another part of the problem.
00:59:50.000These bears weren't here 30 years ago.
00:59:52.000These bears are overpopulating and moving into these neighborhoods, and they're doing it because they know the people live there, and it's a steady supply of food.
01:00:01.000Yeah, when you live in Colorado, and Colorado, they had a big issue with it in this area where I was, where bears would find out that people put their garbage in a certain area.
01:00:10.000And once they eat there once, that's it.
01:00:13.000They have to capture those bears, and they either relocate them to zoos or figure something out.
01:00:19.000But when I was there, we went to this wildlife rescue place, and they had this gigantic grizzly bear that they had gotten because, look at the fucking giant chunks of further tearing off of each other.
01:03:34.000Well, and so that's where hunters are fighting for our place right now because the kids are seeing that and weak people are seeing that and people that don't get, hey, I want to be part of the food chain are seeing that and they're like humanizing these animals.
01:03:48.000The sheep don't They don't care about anything but eating.
01:04:03.000It's not realistic, but that's the programming that's getting out there and just messing with the hardwire of these young people coming up.
01:04:13.000Well, a lot of hunters attribute Bambi as being a turning point in the way Americans viewed hunting.
01:05:22.000Steve Rinell, Remy Warren, these really intelligent people that can talk about Tim Burnett, who can talk about these things in a way where they explain to you their perspective.
01:05:43.000Why would you want to shoot one of them?
01:05:46.000Until you venture into that world, you don't understand it.
01:05:51.000And we're insulated from it because of supermarkets, because of this bizarre world we live in where we've created these artificial structures that we think are normal.
01:06:01.000These cities and this method of acquiring food where you just run a piece of plastic through a machine and you walk away with all this food.
01:06:16.000With a faceless person where you didn't even get to see their face, like all you saw was like their body from the shoulder down, and that's what you had sex with, and you had a kid with that person, you didn't even know that kid, and you walk away.
01:06:30.000It's almost what's going on when you're acquiring food without ever growing it, without planting that seed.
01:06:35.000And I'm not saying you should fucking plant all your food, and I'm not saying you should only hunt if you're going to eat meat, but what I'm saying is, if you could do it, It would bring you a little closer to understanding where that food comes from, and it'll give you just a broader view of this world we live in and what you're doing by consuming food.
01:06:56.000You are consuming, whether you're consuming salad, and here's another thing, vegans.
01:07:01.000I was fucking with a bunch of people where I trolled.
01:07:04.000People were sending me all this vegan stuff, so I just started trolling them by sending them all these scientific studies about plants and plant intelligence.
01:07:13.000Which is a new form of study, or it's a new field of study, where they're finding out more and more each day that plants can do calculations, that they respond to being eaten, that they have different mechanisms to discourage predation.
01:08:02.000And they're based on convenience, and a lot of them are based on ignorance, and a lot of them, they don't hold up when you start looking at things objectively.
01:08:23.000If someone does hunt a wild dog and eat it, and it's between that wild dog eating them and them eating that wild dog, you know, that's an unfortunate situation.
01:09:38.000There's a certain pace that you can keep because you run mountains all the time that I'm just not capable of keeping right now.
01:09:45.000It made me up my cardio in a big time way.
01:09:47.000When I came back from that hunt, the first thing I started doing was really upping my cardio.
01:09:51.000Well, and, you know, so we had a real, you know, real life example of that.
01:09:57.000What I like as much as that, I mean, not as much as that, because I love being with somebody who's successful and who experiences a hunt, and I'm able to share in that.
01:10:51.000I want to make a positive impact on people, and that's why I love social media and sharing what I do, and hopefully it can inspire others to do more, and that's my motivation daily.
01:11:24.000I think 40 million other people do also.
01:11:26.000Yeah, that fucking guy is up every morning.
01:11:28.000If he's got to work at 7, he's up at 4, and he's in the gym, and he'll show a photo of his alarm clock going off, and it'll show a photo of him in the gym making crazy faces where he's fucking full of sweat, and it makes me realize I'm a lazy bitch, and it makes me want to get up and work out.
01:11:49.000I know I do, and I know that you've created a community.
01:11:53.000Your Instagram page, in a lot of ways, and I don't want to say it's your community, but you have spawned through your Instagram page a lot of inspirational communities as well.
01:12:04.000I've looked at these other people's pages that follow you, and I'll see the hashtag, keep hammering, and they're out doing things, and I see people responding to their posts.
01:12:12.000You know, I saw this, and it made me go to the gym, and I wasn't going to, so thank you for that.
01:12:21.000And at the end of the day, look, you know, you can make all your fucking angry videos, and you can make all your angry posts and shit on this and shit on that, and get angry about people you don't even meet, but what is the message that you're putting out?
01:12:34.000This angry, shitty message that you're putting out?
01:13:03.000If you meet one of those people in real life, I guarantee you the conversation wouldn't be like it is in these one-sided debates or these one-sided broadcasts.
01:13:11.000If someone makes a blog, this angry, shitty blog, have a conversation with that person.
01:14:02.000You can choose what message you put out there.
01:14:07.000You can choose how you experience life.
01:14:11.000You can choose how you interact with people.
01:14:13.000And some people, I think, this is a new world we're living in, this world of social media, this world where anybody can start a blog or anybody can start putting things up on Twitter or Facebook or whatever.
01:14:26.000It's a new world, and we've got to learn how to navigate it better.
01:14:30.000Well, you know, people, like you said, people can choose.
01:15:26.000Well, weekends like this weekend where I saw all those people and talked to all those people and had that interaction, that really drives home I'm doing what I'm meant to do.
01:16:02.000I was interested in hunting for a long time before I met Steve Rinella.
01:16:07.000And then when I was going on different websites and looking at different YouTube videos, I saw your stuff and I'm like, well, okay.
01:16:17.000Well, here's this guy that's really into fitness.
01:16:19.000He's into fitness and preparing himself to be what you call the ultimate predator, to be your best at what you like to do, which is bowhunting.
01:16:28.000I'm like, well, this is kind of crazy.
01:16:29.000So then I started watching your videos.
01:16:47.000And I was like, This is inspirational, and this is positive, and through you, you meet me, I use my, what I've created, this vehicle of social media and podcasting to broadcast it more, and then all these new positive branches spread out from that.
01:17:23.000And I believe, I truly believe that most of these people That are making angry posts on Twitter or angry videos.
01:17:31.000If I sat down with them and had conversations with them, they'd be positive conversations.
01:17:35.000Whether we agree or disagree, I have a very well thought out point.
01:17:39.000I would imagine they have a very well thought out point too.
01:17:42.000Where they're coming from is not a bad thing.
01:17:44.000It's just something is lost in the broadcasting of this message.
01:17:50.000I think that's a real problem that we're all sort of navigating in this world, is that somehow or another, the messages that get the most reaction are a lot of times the negative ones.
01:18:21.000Everybody tells me I need to read this book.
01:18:23.000But there's something about archery itself.
01:18:26.000Like today, when we're practicing shooting at that rubber elk, there's something about...
01:18:33.000There's a moment when you're at full draw and you're about to release that arrow where everything is still.
01:18:44.000Everything is calm and you're not thinking about anything else other than releasing the perfect arrow because it requires so much concentration and so much focus and it was completely unexpected to me.
01:18:57.000When I first started practicing archery, I thought it was going to be like, like, shooting a rifle requires a lot of focus.
01:19:03.000It requires trigger discipline, you have to, like, steady the gun on a rest, you have to, like, you know, really stay still and squeeze that trigger, and there's problems with that.
01:19:11.000You know, you get the shakes, you know, you get nerves, and even at a target range, you know the gun's going to make that kick, and so you get a little flinchy.
01:19:28.000And the amount of movement that you make, because the arrow's only going at the most 300 feet a second, 350 if you've got some super bow and a light arrow.
01:19:38.000The difference between that and a rifle is so different.
01:19:42.000So, any movement translates to a giant amount of movement at the end where the arrow hits.
01:19:50.000And it's just, as a discipline, it's cleansing.
01:19:55.000Like, for me, I love, after a long day, I do a lot of shit, man.
01:19:59.000I got a lot of things going on in my mind.
01:20:02.000Between comedy and podcasting and the UFC and family and business bullshit and it's like so much bullshit going on.
01:20:10.000There's so many different things in my mind that for me what archery is is like this is like ultimate meditation this ultimate focus point where I draw back and I see that target And then I release that arrow.
01:20:25.000And then when that arrow goes right into that bullseye, like we were shooting that rubber elk today, and when you nail one, it gets right in that small circle.
01:21:24.000And I just, that's what I, you know, I like people to shoot a bow because as you said, shooting a bow is centering and it's zen-like, I guess.
01:21:33.000If I even know what zen means, I don't even know if I do, but it is relaxing.
01:21:41.000But when you can block everything out, because you say you have to block everything out to make a good shot on that target, on the foam rubber, the Reinhardt elk today.
01:21:50.000Well, on an animal, when the animal's moving, there's different factors that...
01:21:57.000You know in line he's bugling your hearts going a million miles an hour and then when you can do it there and then Where you take that up another level is hunting the mounds like if you're sheep hunting and Then you have it's such a physical and then it could be dangerous also So you have so many things and when that happens on something like a sheep in the sheep mountains that is to me life-changing I mean experiences like that have made me who I am and people say You
01:22:27.000know, bow hunting has made you who, yeah.
01:22:30.000I mean, because coming through in crunch time like that is more pressure and more accomplishment than anything I'll ever do in normal life.
01:22:58.000You learn more about your ability, you learn more about your faults, you learn about your weaknesses, you learn about your strengths, and you learn how to shore up those weaknesses and get stronger.
01:23:09.000And that's why people who have never experienced it don't understand your dedication to fitness, don't understand your dedication to making sure you're in the best possible shape you can be, also that your archery practice is at the best it can be so that when that moment of truth arises, you can steady your nerves,
01:23:25.000you can keep it all together, and you can execute.
01:23:27.000And that execution, that is an insanely difficult test that very few people have to ever do anything in life that's remotely as difficult as shoot an arrow at an elk that's 50 yards away and watch that arrow sink right into the vitals and realize that you've done it and realize that now you have enough meat for a year for your family with one animal,
01:23:51.000I mean, are we saying that all animals are worth something?
01:23:56.000If that's the case, every pasta bowl that you eat, you eat a bowl of pasta, that pasta comes from grain.
01:24:03.000That grain most likely was chopped from a field, from a combine that is 100 yards long, that it's indiscriminate, and it's running over everything, as we were talking about.
01:24:12.000Running over mice and rabbits and fawns and ground nesting birds and anything else that might be in its path.
01:24:17.000And there's a lot of death involved in that.
01:24:18.000So every bowl of pasta that you eat, even though you feel like you're completely immune or completely free of any responsibility of death, it's not true.
01:24:28.000But one elk with one arrow Feeds you for a year.
01:24:49.000Yeah, my friend Chris Ryan sent me this photograph, or Duncan actually sent me, Chris Ryan did too, but Duncan sent me this photograph of his girlfriend made meatballs, elk meatballs, and they were sitting there eating with their friends.
01:25:01.000They had a friend over for dinner with some meat from an animal that I shot with a bow and arrow!
01:27:27.000When you are out there and you're in that environment, that is an absolute environment.
01:27:31.000And absolute also in the fact that if you fucking zig when you should have zagged and you run across a sow grizzly and her cubs and she just decides today's your day, they don't give a fuck if you host the UFC. That bear doesn't give a fuck if you're the CEO of your company and you're out there.
01:28:28.000He's who got me started in bow hunting, and he is the toughest man I've ever met.
01:28:33.000I've shared more experiences with Roy in the mountains, these life-defining type experiences that we've talked about.
01:28:40.000And, you know, the bond we've created together has been over a handful of experiences, you know?
01:28:46.000And you realize when you're out of your comfort zone like that and when you're both so committed to a pursuit, those bonds form quickly, you know?
01:28:56.000Formed a strong bond over a handful of experiences over a couple years.
01:28:59.000Well, Roy and I, you know, we went to high school together.
01:29:03.000We started bow hunting as, you know, I think 18, 19 years old and had hundreds of experiences, life-changing, life-defining experiences together over the years.
01:29:15.000So our bond, naturally, was like brothers.
01:29:23.000When everybody doubted me when I was growing up and doubted my dream of ever becoming anything, he never did.
01:29:30.000He was always the guy that believed in me.
01:32:14.000So we had an amazing moose hunt together, and I killed a nice big bull.
01:32:20.000We just had just another epic adventure.
01:32:25.000Something, you know, a hunt that maybe a handful of people would want to do because we were so far back.
01:32:31.000You know miles back and had to haul a moose out over a mountain in the snow very very very difficult hunt but the ones it was just it was perfect because it was our last hunt together he died two weeks later and that hunt encapsulated everything about us it was just hard it was miserable and it was rewarding and and you know we achieved success where not very many people would have and we did it together and uh Yeah,
01:33:02.000I mean, then two weeks later, it was his sheep hunting.
01:33:06.000There's an iconic photo that I think was forever going to define you from that hunt.
01:33:11.000It's with you with a big cut in your face and blood streaming down your face.
01:33:15.000You sent it to me while you were out there.
01:35:07.000So it's a perfect time to take him out.
01:35:08.000That's not what people, you know, people associate it almost instantly with, oh, you're fucking trophy hunting, you know, like, oh, you just want a bigger rack?
01:35:16.000Like, they do that specifically because it's for the health of the population of these animals.
01:35:21.000Yeah, I mean, you know, we care about the animals, we care about, and...
01:35:27.000We do like to kill a big animal, but it's dual purpose.
01:35:31.000We want to kill a big animal because it's hard.
01:36:18.000Well, listen, I mean, you know, Tim Gillingham, we were talking about on the Gritty Bowman podcast, who is a world champion archer who was talking about routinely shooting animals over 100 yards.
01:36:27.000And then he does this because he's a world champion archer and he can do that.
01:36:31.000When you're shooting a moose, the distance that you can shoot a moose versus a guy like me who, by the way, I still shoot every day, but I just, I can't do that.
01:36:39.000I'm not, it's not an ethical distance for me, but it is for you.
01:36:43.000And to have to haul that animal out, sorry to blow up your spot about 90 yards.
01:37:19.000You know, with the bow, it's just a lot of variables.
01:37:23.000So all of your preparation, the shooting every day for years and decades, really, and then also your physical fitness to be able to pack out.
01:37:32.000I mean, a moose, how much pounds does that thing weigh?
01:40:56.000So she comes up to our side of the creek, and I have an arrow knocked, and I don't know what I'm going to do with an arrow, but I never pack a gun.
01:41:04.000So I just had my bow, and he had the gun.
01:41:31.000And he drops her, you know, one shot, made a good shot, he hit, like, missed her head, but hit, like, right here, and just folded her right there.
01:42:24.000And it was like, where else am I gonna have somebody that's on that same page with me that's calm in that situation and not see their life flash before their eyes?
01:42:32.000Just do what you have to do to stop the risk.
01:42:38.000I'm never going to have somebody like that in my life again.
01:42:41.000And I think about, we knew the risks, we're involved in everything that we did, and we embraced it, and we were fine with it, and it didn't consume us or anything.
01:42:53.000And that's what I'm going to miss, is having somebody so...
01:42:57.000On my same page that I can trust like that.
01:43:34.000But I would say he's as good as anybody that I know of.
01:43:41.000That's why when he fell and I got the news that he fell and died...
01:43:47.000I mean I could I could believe it I guess but I was mad and I'm still mad and I know everything happens for a reason and I know you know he has he has a lot of faith and I know you know We want to think everything's gonna be okay and we'll see each other again.
01:44:04.000I know all that but it still makes me mad Because you know We missed out on a lot of experiences we'd still love to have,
01:44:19.000and we talked about, and we were just like, we had these big goals and big dreams, and I'm mad that that's gone.
01:44:35.000It's something that very few people could probably relate to the kind of intimate friendship that you would have with someone who's experienced those kind of hunts.
01:44:43.000It's been in the wilderness that's done...
01:44:46.000Like that moose hunt that you were talking about when you guys were deep, deep in the wilderness like that.
01:44:55.000It's something that very few people will ever...
01:45:00.000Very few people have ever experienced that kind of danger, that kind of intimate moment in the wilderness.
01:45:06.000Just that connection to the wild that you guys had together.
01:45:41.000It's you're experiencing nature at its most brutal or its most rewarding or the entire gamut.
01:45:50.000And when that makes you who you are, It's powerful.
01:45:55.000And that's, you know, that's what hunting was to us.
01:45:59.000Yeah, there's a lot of people that are listening to this, I'm sure, they're like, well, you know, why is that?
01:46:05.000Why should you feel any worse for your friend than we should for the animals that you killed?
01:46:11.000You know, there's a lot of people that they sort of connect animals almost with people in a way, or maybe even better than people in a way.
01:47:14.000It's just, you know, tough to replace.
01:47:16.000Well, it's very easy to get by in this world today.
01:47:19.000It's very easy to get by without being that kind of a person.
01:47:22.000It's very difficult to become that kind of a person, to always make the right decisions, to always push ahead, to always show character, to always be someone that you can count on.
01:48:35.000It's it's hard for people to gravitate towards challenge, but through challenge you get the greatest reward because through staying in bed like this there's that the call of the bed is strong the warm bed and just oh Let me just hit fucking snooze in this alarm clock and get nine more minutes or let me just shut it off and call in sick to work Let me just not do what I'm supposed to do.
01:48:57.000Let me just sleep And there was an article that I posted recently where they were talking about the power that dopamine has and dopamine in memories.
01:49:07.000And it's one of the reasons why people have such a hard time kicking bad habits is because we gravitate towards these like...
01:49:15.000Reward experiences that we have in our head the reward of eating shitty food or of drinking too much or it's your your mind sort of carves these paths towards these Rewarding like almost self-destructive behaviors because those they give you dopamine whether it's eating shitty food or whatever but Yeah.
01:50:01.000This weakness inside of you that wants you to quit.
01:50:22.000It's one reason why, I mean, it seems minor, but, you know, when I get up at 4 or 5 in the morning, I have to be at work at 7. But when I get up early to do my fasted cardio runs, and I'm out, and so I have no fuel, I'm out there, there's nobody out at 4 or 5 in the morning.
01:50:39.000And I'm running into the neighborhoods by my house.
01:52:02.000So some people criticize, and maybe I will be on a wheelchair, but I'll know that I lived as hard as I could live and pushed as hard as I could when I could do it.
01:52:17.000Yeah, the people that try to knock someone down for working hard and overcoming extreme obstacles, what they're doing is they're responding to their own insecurity.
01:52:30.000There's people that's, you know, there's people that look at certain types of extreme sports where, you know, there's that BMX guy, what's his name, Dave Mira, who just committed suicide.
01:52:40.000Horrible, horrible tragedy, you know husband father the whole deal I gotta think it's connected to head trauma and I think you're talking about a completely different thing when you're talking about head trauma because You know these poor guys that do these extreme sports and they wind up getting really banged up Yeah,
01:52:58.000and that causes some pretty severe depression so I think In circumstances like that, I think you're talking about a kind of a different animal, but people will criticize people who take chances in life.
01:53:10.000People will criticize people who work hard.
01:53:12.000You know, like, why do you have to lift weights?
01:53:36.000What he's doing by writing that is looking at someone who works harder than him, accomplishes more than him, and he's trying to chop you down.
01:53:46.000If you don't know what I'm talking about, folks, if you see crabs in a bucket, they never get out of that fucking bucket.
01:53:51.000Because if they work together, one crab could stand on another crab, and the other crab could grab them on top, and then they could figure out a way to push that bucket over, and they could all get out.
01:55:18.000It was this cloud of mosquitoes we just swarmed on.
01:55:21.000Well, you know, I mean, it is a funny story, but...
01:55:26.000I do in some way feel responsibility to the people that follow me or look up to me to not give up.
01:55:35.000I know people look to me for inspiration and it helps.
01:55:40.000It's like when I don't feel like doing something, I think about all the people who expect me to.
01:55:45.000I mean, I have a huge drive to do it myself, but it's just like sometimes those little things and thinking about this story with you or people who have lost 100 pounds thinking about, you know, the work I put in.
01:55:59.000It's like all those things have made me who I am.
01:56:02.000So it's not like I might think about specific stories, but I think about all the people who have been such a positive person.
01:56:10.000They've made such a positive impact on me, because I guess I have it on them, you know, so in return.
01:56:16.000And it makes me, you know, like the Bigfoot 200 that I'm doing, if I'm just on my own and nobody knows who I am, I'm much less...
01:57:19.000I mean, I think about it when I work out.
01:57:21.000I think that's where inspiration is a two-way street.
01:57:25.000And then it's also like we were talking about like you've created a community through your social media and through the positive posts that you make and through...
01:57:34.000Through all your actions and all the different things you've done, you've created this sort of sense of community where all these other people, they feed off of that, and you feed off of them, and we all feed off of each other.
01:58:00.000You know, people want to be that kind of person, you know?
01:58:04.000People don't want to be a lazy fuck who criticizes people for no reason.
01:58:07.000They don't want to be that guy that's weak and that talks shit about someone when they're not there because they feel bad that that person is out there working out.
01:58:14.000Like, you don't have to do what Cam Haynes is doing.
01:58:19.000You know what you're doing when you're doing that.
01:58:20.000While you're doing it, you know what you're doing.
01:58:21.000While you're making those, you know, there's a little sneaky voice in the back of your head, unless you're completely obtuse, unless you're completely oblivious to the way you interact and interface with the world, you know what you're doing when you're saying those things.
01:58:32.000You're trying to chop someone down because they make you feel weak.
01:58:35.000Instead of saying, this guy is out there doing something awesome.
01:58:40.000What's negative about someone working out and being healthy?
01:58:43.000What's negative about someone who values physical fitness and accomplishing difficult goals?
01:59:24.000And so in my own little bowhunting world, I just try to live up to that.
01:59:29.000And, you know, I guess what I wanted, I want to thank you for giving me this platform, giving me access to all you've created here, because, you know, as we've talked about, that's what feels good, to reach people, inspire people,
01:59:44.000and yeah, maybe they'll be inspired, maybe even a little by the heartbreak of losing a good buddy, you know, maybe to be...
01:59:51.000A better friend or maybe to be somebody who, I don't know, that integral part of somebody else's life, maybe that'll inspire them, maybe the workout part, who knows?
02:00:00.000Maybe to be a better, I don't know, more understanding to the vegans and be able to explain it better.
02:00:06.000There's so much you can take from this podcast and without you giving me this microphone, it would never happen.
02:00:12.000So I want to thank you and I'm so grateful.
02:00:16.000I'm so happy I've met you and we've created this friendship.
02:00:21.000And again, that inspiration is a two-way street.
02:00:24.000This podcast doesn't exist if it's not for other people.
02:00:26.000I mean, all I am is like an antenna or something, just broadcasting my thoughts and other people's thoughts too.
02:00:33.000And without a guy like you to introduce me to something like bowhunting, I would have no idea.
02:00:37.000I would have gone to my grave without having any idea how rewarding it is to go and get my own meat Through archery in the woods, how difficult it is to pursue such an incredibly demanding discipline and what that's about.
02:00:53.000And for you being inspirational and for you creating those videos, you reached me.
02:00:58.000And you touched me with your positivity and with your inspiration and with your dedication and focus.
02:02:56.000And through those lessons of failure, sometimes the disappointment you have in yourself when you come up short is the fuel you need to make sure you never come up short that way again.
02:03:07.000And maybe you'll come up short another way next week.
02:03:09.000Well, that fucking thing's never going to happen again either.
02:03:52.000And that's what I'd always respected about you is when you started bow hunting and, you know, it's because I know firsthand how difficult it is.
02:03:59.000So you've been successful in so many different arenas, right?
02:06:00.000Different forms of striking competitions, and then all of a sudden I'm doing jujitsu and getting fucking crushed by people of my size or smaller, and they're just beating the piss out of me.
02:06:10.000Like I'm a ragdoll, like I'm a grappling dummy.
02:06:13.000And for me, I had to realize, first of all, I had to address the fact that I was nowhere near as competent in self-defense as I thought I was.
02:06:22.000Like, as soon as these guys got a hold of me, they were just strangling me.
02:07:00.000I mean, I don't think I've ever gone more than a few months of my whole life without tapping.
02:07:04.000Well, and that's the same with bow hunting.
02:07:06.000Don't start bowhunting unless you can deal with failure.
02:07:08.000It's a humbling, just like the discipline you're talking about.
02:07:14.000Bowhunting is a discipline just like that where it will humble you no matter how good you think you are.
02:07:18.000I think all very difficult things Are good for you.
02:07:22.000As long as it doesn't kill you, it's good for you.
02:07:25.000I mean, these goddamn ultramarathons you're running, this crazy fuck, 100 miles is not enough.
02:07:32.000You're like, well, I've already done that a couple of times, now I've got to do a 200. So here's the Bigfoot 200. Here's quick facts Jamie just pulled up.
02:08:01.000The race starts at Mount St. Helens in the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington State and finishes in Randall, Washington, traversing point-to-point the Cascade Mountains.
02:08:39.000I want to beat 64 and I just want to grind it out.
02:08:43.000I want to be better than I've ever been And so that's, you know, right now I'm training, I haven't been training this hard this early in the year.
02:08:51.000So I'm taking it, I'm doing a lot of miles but not hammering hard and trying to build up that base.
02:08:58.000So come August, I hope to line up there for the Bigfoot 200 and I hope to run it faster than it's ever been run.
02:09:16.000Yeah, right now I am, you know, and I was up 182 or 183, and so I'm trying to, I want to get down, I'd like to get 69 maybe, you know, and I think, I just really feel like I'd be efficient at that, and I just, you know, it's, it's, It's physical,
02:09:35.000So, I mean, I'll prepare my body for it, but it's just whether I can hydrate and fuel well enough, smart enough, and just do everything, keep my feet healthy, that's what's going to determine whether I can finish in 60 hours.
02:09:49.000So, I think I believe I have what it takes, but a lot of people probably have what it takes, but to implement it is going to be difficult, but I'm...
02:12:06.000But listen, dude, there's a problem, and that is that this is in August, and you need to be healthy in September, because we've got to go back.
02:13:04.000If I remember correctly, it's one way up during the day and you come back down during night and then you switch and go the opposite way the next day up and down.
02:13:14.000If you can make it to that fifth turn, it's also the same kind of way.
02:15:57.000You know, especially out west, especially in the mountains in Alaska.
02:16:02.000So yeah, I mean, I... When people think athlete, they think the general sports.
02:16:08.000Track and field, football, basketball, things like that.
02:16:12.000I didn't get that elite athleticism in those sports as my dad did.
02:16:17.000I think he had the ability to make the Olympics.
02:16:21.000But you know life happened I was born this or that so he was he was a freak in in what what you might Call normal athletic events maybe bow hunting, you know qualifies and it's a hundred percent qualifies I mean look at this fighting qualifies athletics I think it does but it's way more intense and regular athletics something way more Personal and dangerous about the goal of knocking someone unconscious while they're trying to knock you unconscious and if Fighting if that counts
02:16:51.000if that's athletics bowhunting is most certainly athletics, but I think we both agree that it's It's a little bit more intense than a sport.
02:17:00.000It's more it's almost disrespectful in a way not I mean if you consider it a sport you call it a sport that's fine, but in my view It's so much about the life and the reverence for this animal that you hunt and then take.
02:17:14.000It's not, we won the Super Bowl, we scored the goal, the ball went in the hole.