In this episode, we have Doug Dren and Nathan Eyde from Hunt to Eat join us to talk about all things meat and dairy. We talk about the benefits of grass-fed vs. non-grass-fed meat and milk, the difference between the two, and some of our favorite things we like to eat. We also talk about some of the things we love to eat and some things we don't. We hope you enjoy this episode and share it with a friend or family member. Happy Thanksgiving and Happy Holidays! Cheers, Joe Rogan and the Eaters! See link below for discount code for 10% off your first order of Hunt To Eat T-shirt. If you don't have a shirt, you can get 10% all year long with discount code: EAT10% at checkout. The discount code is code: FOOD10% and the shirt will be valid for all orders of $99 or more. Also, if you like the show, please consider becoming a patron patron and leaving us a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Have a question or suggestion? Call us at (920) 461-2882-5402 and we'll get a shoutout! Thanks again for listening and supporting the show! Timestamps: 0:00 - What's your favorite thing you like about the show? 5:30 - What do you would like to see me eat? 6:15 - What are you would you like to hear me eat next? 7: 8:40 - What s your favorite kind of meat? 9:20 - What kind of beef? 11: What would you want to eat in the next episode? 12:00 13:00 | What s the best beef beef you veg? 16:30 | What is your beef of the week? 17:30 18:40 | How do you think I'm going to eat for Thanksgiving? 19:15 | What are your biggest beef of a day? 21:40 22: What s a beef that you're going to be the most important thing I'm looking forward to eating in the most recent episode of the next season? 26: What are my biggest beef you're looking for? 27:00 / 16:00 + 13:10 27 + 8:30 + 7:15 28:30 Is there a beef I ve got a beef beef that I ve had in the past?
00:01:35.000There's a new study that found clear differences between organic and non-organic meat and milk.
00:01:41.000And this is the largest study of its kind.
00:01:43.000An international team of experts led by Newcastle University in the UK has shown that both organic milk and organic meat contain around 50% more beneficial omega-3 fatty acids than conventionally produced products.
00:01:57.000Which is pretty fascinating because a lot of people have speculated that it's all BS. That you go and you buy grass-fed this or grass-fed that.
00:02:04.000It doesn't mean anything, but it means a lot.
00:02:08.000Well, you know what's interesting to me about it is so much of it for me is intuitive.
00:02:13.000I grew up with cattle and it makes sense that a ruminant, a cow, It eats grass.
00:02:24.000And you start putting all this other stuff into it, for instance, corn, soybeans, and that sort of thing, that's not what they were made to eat.
00:02:31.000And so then you take that a step further and have it be, I think they're referring in this organic that they're talking about grass-fed.
00:02:39.000And so they're eating what they're supposed to eat, not what we somehow along the way decided, well, this is what they're going to eat, corn or soybeans, because they'll put on that fat that we all like so much.
00:03:06.000Just from a common sense level, that this is going to be the best thing for the animal, and then down the way it's going to be the best thing for us.
00:03:14.000We're not forcing stuff on that animal that...
00:03:18.000That they wouldn't normally be eating.
00:03:21.000They aren't going to eat it by choice.
00:03:22.000But I will tell you, the cows, they're not the ones I had when you were out there.
00:03:28.000But if I go out with the cattle that I have now that I bought about a year ago, I bang two buckets together and they come running.
00:03:46.000So I was looking to get those cattle that I had when you were there, that we had when you were there, I sold.
00:03:52.000We had a drought year, and hay prices went through the roof, and I had a barn and shed full of hay.
00:04:00.000Which was pretty valuable and the cattle were still pretty valuable so I was able to sell those and then take the winter off and spend some time in Mexico.
00:04:29.000So a lot of the ones that we had when you were there the last time were actually a Hereford cross.
00:04:34.000So they were a Hereford originally, or their original brood cows were Herefords, and then we bred them to like a black Angus or a red Angus crossbred.
00:04:44.000To get some hybrid vigor out of them and that sort of thing.
00:05:04.000Yeah, the efficiency of how they'll put weight on.
00:05:09.000If they're dairy cattle, like Guernseys and Jerseys and that sort of thing, they won't produce as much milk, but it'll have a real high butterfat content.
00:06:04.000And then butter fat is what a farmer is paid on.
00:06:08.000So 100 pounds, which is about 8 pounds to the gallon, And in milk, you're paid by the pound.
00:06:16.000100 pounds of 3.5% butterfat, for instance, is not worth as much as 100 pounds of 4.5% butterfat.
00:06:25.000So there's this whole calibration system they use to do that.
00:06:28.000So, you know, milk's being tested all the time.
00:06:30.000Both organic, grass-fed, managed pasture raised, and, you know, more...
00:06:39.000Modern, if you will, the confined animal facilities where they're milking a thousand cows in a real small area, confining them in a very small area,
00:07:16.000And that all evolved over time and in my lifetime.
00:07:19.000And you were always sort of aiming to get the most out of each one of those animals.
00:07:26.000And depending on how you looked at the science, you know, people spent their whole life studying how to get the most out of a cow.
00:07:33.000Depending on how you looked at that science, you made decisions about that.
00:07:38.000Well, when I was a kid, there was a lot more of, and I mean a kid like in the 60s, in the early 60s, there was a lot more common sense involved.
00:07:46.000And now it's much more, like in those big milking operations, that sort of thing, it's more science.
00:07:53.000It's like, here's how we can get the most out of them.
00:07:55.000So you remember this shift between what was like normal farming, normal dairy farming, normal meat cow farming, to this thing that we're seeing now that most people have a real big problem with, this factory farming installations where you have these cows jammed into these warehouses and chickens and the same thing with pigs and...
00:08:16.000Those are the things that people have a real issue with when they see them on television, they see YouTube videos.
00:09:17.000It was a diverse ecosystem, if you will.
00:09:20.000And, I don't know, during the Nixon administration, Earl Butz, who was the Secretary of Agriculture then, came out and said, get bigger, get out.
00:09:32.000And that was really the beginning of the end of the small family farm.
00:11:16.000I mean, that's in my lifetime, and that's crazy.
00:11:19.000That's crazy that the population's doubled, and the demand for food obviously doubled as well.
00:11:24.000You know, something that's really interesting, if you look at that area where you came out and visited, the exact opposite has happened in population there.
00:11:31.000There's half as many people in our area as there were when I was a kid.
00:11:49.000Well, they can, you know, I mean, it makes sense, you know, on a business scale, you can afford to sell a product cheaper if you're doing it bigger, but the things you lose there are the quality and the sustainability and environmental impact of the process.
00:12:04.000You know, you got these big farms where basically they have, they got to make more product, but they also make more shit.
00:12:13.000Well, that was a big part of that documentary, Cowspiracy, where they were trying to talk about the methane that's produced by cows.
00:12:19.000The methane and just getting rid of the actual cow shit itself.
00:12:23.000Like, you're talking about massive, massive quantities.
00:12:27.000And when I was younger, and even now...
00:12:30.000The manure that's produced on our farm, like now in the winter, I'm feeding hay.
00:12:34.000And they're confined would be kind of a strong word.
00:12:38.000They stay around where the hay is, you know, and we've got fresh water there for them and it's spring water and I can talk about that later.
00:12:43.000But they stay in that area and so that's also where they're, you know, And so I end up piling that stuff up and I pile it up and I compost it and I put it on everything from a community garden nearby to our fields to people want to come by and say,
00:13:15.000One of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about this is because I think that most of us, when I say us, people that live in cities, have almost no idea of how all this stuff works.
00:13:28.000And when people examine it or they try to watch a documentary on it or try to figure out how cows are raised, one of the things we get confused about is...
00:14:08.000Interestingly to me, in our area, and Nate and some of the folks that he knows are an example, and I am to a lesser extent, because it's just a little bit different on our farm.
00:14:18.000It's not something where I'm trying to make a living at it, you know?
00:14:22.000That it's starting to go the other, it very much has gone the other way.
00:14:25.000Things like community supported agriculture and those sort of things are happening.
00:14:29.000That people want to know their farmer.
00:15:02.000What I try to do is, and my whole goal with my meat production, I mean we do a lot of other things we'll maybe get into later, but the meat production, I try to Take care of a certain amount of families, you know, and when they need meat, I have it.
00:15:57.000Some years ago when we were raising beef, one of the things that I did for my ex-wife and I did for my brother and sister-in-law was gave them a quarter of a beef for Christmas.
00:16:09.000And I thought it was being real clever.
00:16:11.000You know, the steers at that time kind of all had the same name.
00:16:15.000The heifer calves, the female calves, I give them different names or different numbers and everything because we keep them around.
00:16:20.000But the steers all had the same name and that was dinner.
00:16:25.000And a steer, for people who don't know.
00:17:01.000And so, yeah, that is what a steer is.
00:17:04.000So, I'm sorry, the story was that, so we gave Sarah and Art this quarter of beef, and we were making a presentation of it, and they had the neighbors over.
00:17:20.000And so everybody's sitting around the table, and there's a couple of Girls, young women, maybe 10 and 14, something like that.
00:17:29.000But I had this Polaroid picture of that steer and said, you know, and I had it in quotations, dinner, and I made a presentation of, well, we gave you this meat, and here's this wonderful steak that we're having and everything, and here's the before, and here's the after.
00:17:44.000Apparently, I turned one of those girls into a vegetarian that night.
00:18:03.000But to somebody that just is used to going to the supermarket and buying a steak, that comes neatly wrapped in saran wrap, a nice little foam tray...
00:18:12.000You're kind of freaking them out with reality.
00:18:14.000And I learned something that day about it.
00:18:17.000But some of the folks that buy meat from me, they come out and they take a look at the place.
00:18:24.000And, you know, I mean, you've been there.
00:18:25.000You've been there at maybe the nicest time of the year because it was cold and all of that.
00:18:30.000And the cattle weren't out in pasture.
00:18:38.000Man, they're just happy as they can be.
00:18:41.000And they're looking at me, and they're looking at the cattle, and so I'm going to have some of that meat.
00:18:45.000And it's just like there's that connection.
00:18:47.000If I don't get anything else across here during this conversation, I'd encourage people to know their farmer, know the guy who's raising that, whatever it is, vegetables or meat or whatever for them.
00:18:59.000Well, it's very difficult for someone who is not used to the idea of an animal being alive and then being dead and then cut up and then portioned into steaks and then cooking.
00:19:08.000People that are used to going to the supermarket and buying it already done for them, to be sort of forced to look at that whole process as an adult.
00:19:20.000It's a little disconcerting for a lot of people because we're faced with this very convenient world where we're completely detached from any of this stuff.
00:19:29.000Now, as a guy who's been around it your whole life, that's got to be kind of frustrating when you see the hypocrisy of people who eat the meat but really kind of don't want to know where it came from.
00:19:42.000Yeah, hypocrisy is the only sin, you know, in my world.
00:20:14.000There's a reverence to it that you have in these smaller...
00:20:21.000I mean, I could see where if I had 500 steers that I'm raising to 1,250 pounds, I might not have the same reverence to those animals, but they're giving me something.
00:20:31.000You know, I'm taking it from them, but that's my deal, you know?
00:20:33.000Well, that's a similar argument when you're talking about large populations of people, that there's sort of this diffusion of responsibility that comes with interacting with 20 million people versus 20 people.
00:20:44.000When you're around 20 people, you have a town of 20 people, you know everybody.
00:20:47.000You know, and the relationships are kind of important.
00:20:49.000Whereas 20 million people, you give the finger to somebody on the road, what is the idea?
00:21:40.000Maybe that's because of the fact that there's so many of them, or rather there's so few of them that you have this, you know, it's a big moment.
00:22:24.000And I'm not passing that responsibility off to somebody else from the standpoint of, well, I don't want to do it, so I have somebody else do it.
00:22:39.000But when Nate and I both are selling meat to people, there's regulations that go along with it.
00:22:47.000I mean, I can't just, like, drop a cow in the driveway of the barn, hang her up, cut her up, and start selling Joe Rogan meat.
00:22:58.000There's USDA inspection and all that, so we both send our animals to very small, family-run slaughterhouses, butcher shops, and they do it.
00:23:08.000So you don't necessarily kill them yourself?
00:23:30.000Now, I would confidently never sell you any of my beef if I butchered it myself, but I would confidently give it to you and say this is as, I mean, you've seen how we do it out there.
00:23:42.000So this is basically just government regulations that you have to follow?
00:23:45.000Yeah, but I mean, there's a standardization, and I'm down with that.
00:23:48.000There's a pretty cool movement going on.
00:23:51.000The place I go to is called Driftless Meats in Viroqua, and it's a really...
00:23:57.000Like, when they bring in a cow, like, one of the big problems with these slaughterhouses, Joe, is, you know, a lot of them, you bring your cow in the night before, and there's...
00:24:06.000Who knows how many cows jammed into a pen and they're stressed out.
00:24:09.000They're rutting around, bumping each other.
00:24:11.000These guys up there, I think the max they take in on a slaughter day is four.
00:24:21.000So the process, and that's what's so important about all of this and the sustainability and environmental impact, it's all about the process.
00:24:30.000Fortunately, there's a really strong movement in that sector of the processing is going on.
00:24:37.000Conscious Carnivore is a facility near us, and I think that's a very important way of putting it.
00:24:47.000You know, the guys from Cowspiracy, there was a lot!
00:24:54.000That's what I think is unfortunate about the exaggerations of some of their claims, because I think that if they just stuck with what's absolute and reality, it's very disturbing.
00:26:15.000It's because they feel very strongly about it.
00:26:17.000Whether you agree with it or whether you don't agree with it, that's their point of view.
00:26:19.000That's what they're trying to get through in this documentary is that if you just grow vegetables and you live off vegetables, you don't need as many acres.
00:26:26.000You could feed more people and it's a healthier way to do it.
00:26:29.000That's just their perspective and their point of view.
00:26:31.000So they sort of, they lean towards that in a very strong way while highlighting some irrefutable facts that are very disturbing.
00:26:39.000And that's the shame of it is because, you know, they're environmentalists too.
00:28:11.000But how about the fact that scientists have done very clear studies on ancient humans, and the reason why we became human in the first place is the consumption of meat.
00:28:21.000It literally changed the amount of brain tissue we have.
00:28:24.000And then hunting changed how crafty people had to be.
00:28:28.000It changed the innovation of these lower primates, these lower hominids.
00:28:44.000So I think, if I could speak for them, if I could play the devil's advocate, they're Point of view is now we have evolved to a point where we don't need to do this anymore.
00:28:57.000We're also faced with this overwhelming amount of evidence, this overwhelming amount of information that we have now because of the internet, because of our access to it, we've never had before.
00:29:08.000So you can look at some of the statistics and some of the things they brought up and you could say, well, this is their argument for promoting a vegan lifestyle.
00:29:39.000And if you look at their diet and you look at their diseases, the only fucking Inuits that are getting cancer are the ones that are smoking cigarettes.
00:29:48.000It's our nasty fucking western habit that we've passed up to these poor people.
00:29:52.000That's how they're getting cancer, and they're getting cancer in higher numbers than they ever have before because they weren't getting it before at all.
00:29:58.000These people were eating blubber and fat and seals and whatever fish they could get, and they can't grow a goddamn single vegetable, and they weren't getting cancer.
00:30:06.000The cancer thing, that's a great issue.
00:30:08.000Because recently, I don't know if you've caught the whole red meat and cancer thing, and they came out and they said, you know, definitely your smoked meats and your cured meats.
00:30:41.000The problem is, your bacon, if you sat on a shelf, Nesca, Oscar Mayer bacon, if you put them both on the same shelf and sat for a week, Oscar Mayer would look the same.
00:31:06.000So the cancer thing, and I get that, you know, I mean, that stuff probably is linked to cancer, but they've pulled back on the red meat in general.
00:32:05.000But it's a very important point I think you're making about how these animals that are unhealthy, it's kind of unhealthy to eat an unhealthy animal.
00:33:14.000And that animal is choosing to eat, an elk is choosing, well, it's obviously a product of its environment, so it's eating what's available, just like a white-tailed deer is.
00:33:22.000I remember when you and Brian were out, and I think Brian held up one of the backstrap steaks, and he goes, oh my god, this is like...
00:35:04.000Where Doug lives, opening day, like in the morning, when we were out in the blind, and as soon as the sun starts peeking up over the horizon, you hear...
00:40:11.000See, my best friend Gatlin, he's got five boys.
00:40:15.000It's one thing to have five kids, but to have them all be boys, that's like, you're talking exponential.
00:40:19.000They're just going to fucking shoot jizz off all the land and make more boys.
00:40:24.000The cool thing is, and Doug and I have been talking about this, and he mentioned earlier, like, we're sitting here talking about this really interesting stuff because we don't want to come off on this podcast as a bunch of, you know, Knuckle-dragging mouth breathers eating meat.
00:40:44.000We're talking about all this stuff in the middle of L.A. where you got a guy dressed like Spider-Man and all these women wearing, you know...
00:40:51.000Well, by the way, that's why we're way out here in the suburbs.
00:41:07.000Well, one thing, we've been talking about a lot of awesome people and really digging deeper into this, but there's guys like, you know, Doug can expand on this more because he's read more of the book, but this guy Mark Shepard and other guys, I mean, people contend that we can raise enough food sustainably, but part of that equation is...
00:41:24.000And that's what maybe we could unify with these guys, like guys from Cowspiracy is, you know, let's not talk about ending meat.
00:42:57.000Well, they could have just started it and just set it up.
00:43:00.000Or go buy some plants and put them in there for heaven's sake.
00:43:02.000One of my favorite stories is these former FBI agents who were retired and they were arrested because they were growing hydroponic plants and vegetables in their basement and, you know, the DEA passes by houses and they scan.
00:43:16.000These people bought hydroponic When you buy hydroponic equipment, they flag you, and they follow you.
00:43:22.000It's so fucking insane that growing vegetables has become a crime.
00:43:26.000Because so many people grow a pot, they assume that if you're growing a plant with some sort of a plant system, that you must be growing an illegal drug.
00:43:33.000So with no evidence whatsoever, two fucking former FBI agents, they break down their door, guns a-blazin', and they arrest these people and then find out they're fucking growing tomatoes.
00:43:43.000Yeah, that's kind of a hot-button deal going on in Reedsburg right now.
00:43:48.000My buddy Gatlin, I already mentioned him, but he's on a whim.
00:43:54.000I mean, this dude is a successful appraiser, real estate appraiser, but he's always looking for that home run.
00:44:00.000So he's making a living, but he's taking his cuts.
00:44:02.000And so now his latest venture, he took his whole tax return and just turned this building that he couldn't lease into a hydroponic wonderland.
00:48:43.000But it really does become sort of that one-trick pony, which to a certain degree, vegetable gardening will be as well, although you can rotate crops through.
00:48:52.000But like on my place, we're growing livestock.
00:49:10.000So like with composting and things along those lines?
00:49:14.000Yeah, there's people that can contend that cattle and proper management In the pasture rotation, it can start to turn back the climate change.
00:49:47.000So I'm pasturing, and you saw some of the pastures, some of the places where you hunted was pasturing.
00:49:52.000There's wildlife in there, and we've got good, clean water.
00:49:55.000When we went to a point on our farm where we weren't over pasturing, and it was just something that we, you know, we sort of learned, the streams were real wide.
00:50:05.000When we were over pasturing, they were really wide.
00:50:08.000The water was shallow, and it was warm.
00:50:13.000As time has gone by and we weren't over pasturing anymore, those streams narrow up because there's running water that's going to cut that and it starts to fill in.
00:50:48.000All of those things are happening and the Plants themselves are pulling the CO2, you know, the whole photosynthetic process, pulling that out and putting it back into the ground where it belongs to counteract some of that.
00:51:02.000So, gee, I think I'm getting like three or four different positive results from having pasture, you know, hickory orchard with some bigger trees and that sort of thing.
00:51:19.000So if you think about an acre of land like this table, and if you're growing one crop on it, one vegetable crop, you've got an acre of land, 43,560 square feet of that particular vegetable, or those groups of vegetables.
00:51:36.000You have your upper layers, trees, big trees, you know, big oak trees and, you know, you might have hickory for hickory nuts and that sort of thing.
00:52:03.000The next layer is the smaller trees like fruit trees and that sort of thing.
00:52:07.000Below that are shrubs that are going to be serviceberry, chokeberry, aronia, some of the antioxidant producing And then you go down to the next layer,
00:52:24.000which is going to be things like asparagus and rhubarb.
00:54:06.000We put forth a really good narrative and had some really irrefutable facts.
00:54:10.000But one of the things we talked about, the water, talked about the acreage, but the wildlife thing, one thing that they said was, and where these livestock are living, that is area void of wildlife.
00:54:22.000I mean, I look at my pasture, from the soil microbes and the worms to the bugs and butterflies to the, you know, field mice and moles, and we've got hawks, and we've, I mean, we see a badger and a fox.
00:56:25.000The big thing here is, and the bigger conversation I think is, and that's something that, gosh, people that care should really, you know, shove veganism and, you know, meat eating aside and just, let's say, how do we make this work?
00:57:08.000And that's what these factory farms have set up.
00:57:10.000I mean, through the method of collecting nitrogen from the oxygen, I mean, from the air, the Haber method that they invented in, like, the early 1900s, that's how they figured out how to extract nitrogen, and because of that, a gigantic population boom ensued.
00:57:26.000That's the reason why there's so many people in the world today.
00:57:30.000This is widely accredited with the Haber method of collecting nitrogen.
00:57:34.000Because before that, it was really difficult to fertilize soil.
00:57:37.000Once they figured out how to extract nitrogen from the actual air itself, things got a little easier to grow food, and the population boomed.
00:57:45.000And that's part of what we're dealing with here.
00:57:47.000What we're dealing with here It's kind of, you know, when we talk about wildlife, we're talking about the 50,000 car accidents that are in Michigan every year alone because of the overabundance of deer.
00:58:00.000This is sort of what we're talking about with human beings.
00:58:03.000We have an overabundance of human beings.
00:58:05.000Now, obviously, I'm not suggesting we have massive hunts on humans.
00:58:12.000But we would, if we were some sort of an alien, and we looked at, okay, let's put it this way.
00:58:18.000If chimpanzees were overrunning Chicago, like somehow or another chimpanzees figured out how to get to Chicago, they fucking swang from tree to tree, and they moved in and started setting up shop and overrunning the place,
00:58:34.000the part where people were getting in car accidents with chimps, would we kill them?
00:59:31.000That's a pretty heavy thing you laid on me there.
00:59:33.000That's some real shit because I've been fascinated with malaria for years.
00:59:36.000I've read a lot of shit on malaria, and I've had two friends that got malaria, including Justin Wren, our friend who was in here recently, who fights this weekend on Bellator.
01:01:22.000I was living in the hills and I rented this house and I had a real rat problem to the point where I'd hear them banging around inside the rafters.
01:07:38.000And I have this, in fact, talked to Yanis Patelis about it.
01:07:42.000And his response to me talking about allowing coyote hunting on our place was, he goes, oh man, I just think they're trying to make a living too.
01:07:52.000And, you know, they eat a lot of rodents.
01:07:54.000They clean up a lot of the weak and the old of deer and that sort of thing.
01:08:01.000But My buddy, Greg, who you may hear, Greg Kiefer, who you may hear, man, I'm a big dude, Steve talks about him all the time, recently had a deer run into his yard by a pack of coyotes, and they took it down and killed it in his yard.
01:08:32.000Well, based on, he didn't see how many, but it was, you know, they work in groups of two or three or four or five.
01:08:42.000You know, I have a chicken coop in my yard and I went out in the middle of the night to shut the coop because I let the chickens out and they wander around and I closed the coop.
01:08:50.000And when I closed the coop, I was just outside enjoying the peace, looking up at the stars, and I heard these deer running.
01:09:23.000There's a house here, and this fucking asshole over here is watching The Bachelorette.
01:09:27.000And inside, this guy pulls into his driveway, his Mercedes, he's smoking his e-cigarette, and some fucking tooth and claw shit is going on right there.
01:09:38.000Right there, these coyotes are chasing down these deer.
01:09:40.000Because there's a series of oak trees down the street from my house where these deer tend to bed.
01:09:45.000I see them there all the time, and there's probably five or six of them.
01:09:49.000But you'll see coyotes, especially come spring, when the fawns are being born.
01:09:55.000You'll see these fuckers hanging around, just looking for an easy meal.
01:09:59.000You know, guys who raise cattle around me will talk about, and I don't know, Nathan, if you know anything about this, but to my knowledge, I've never had a calf taken by a...
01:12:16.000When you hear that sound though, I mean when my wife first moved down to our farm, I mean, it sounds like there are a pack of children being murdered.
01:12:32.000I have a relatively new friend out in Washington who has actually been emailing me and asking me for advice about coyotes, trapping coyotes.
01:12:44.000Do you know anything about trapping coyotes?
01:12:51.000I'm more a fan of shooting and trapping.
01:12:53.000Wildlife ecologists I know in Wisconsin, when people would start to talk to him about, you know, I'm trying to get rid of this animal or whatever, having to make a woodchuck or something like that, he would always recommend a small piece of lead at a very high velocity.
01:14:13.000Yeah, there's a certain group of folks who are like, well, you know, they're just out there trying to make a living, too, until, you know, mittens and fifi get eaten.
01:14:20.000Then we've got a little situation we have to deal with.
01:14:23.000You've got to make up a story for the kids at that point.
01:14:25.000It's a bizarre thing to see your cat in the jaws of a coyote as it's running away.
01:14:30.000You know, there's the LA Museum of National History has this really cool exhibit on North American animals, and their exhibit, I had a picture of it on my Instagram, Jamie, of the coyote.
01:14:41.000Their exhibit of the coyote in Los Angeles is a coyote with a fucking cat in its mouth.
01:14:46.000That's in the Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles.
01:14:51.000The actual, you know, they have stuffed animals, they have buffalo, they show moose, and they have these, you know, so you can get to see, oh, that's what one of those looks like.
01:16:18.000I was milking for a farmer one time, and one of the things with dairy farming, and I grew up dairy farming, but if a cow has a stepped-on teat, we usually say tit, but I guess it doesn't matter now.
01:16:31.000But they have a stepped-on teat, or they get mastitis, which is a sort of infection.
01:17:13.000All you have to do is fall, and one stomps you, and that's it.
01:17:17.000Well, again, it goes back to the calving thing.
01:17:19.000Our neighbor, the guy who I used to, well, he still does some farming for us, cuts and rakes and bales our hay, was almost killed by a cow that just freshened, just had a calf, and he went in there to deal with the calf, and she got him into a corner and beat the snot out of him.
01:17:37.000Eventually, he was able to crawl out and get under a gate, and this is normally a very nice animal, you know.
01:17:47.000So, it's funny to tell that story when I've been sending you all this shit about how nice my cows are and I can scratch their heads and stuff.
01:17:55.000Well, we were talking about that because I said that when we were around your cows, they fucking panicked and they ran off.
01:18:00.000But you brought up an important point.
01:19:01.000As you're walking out there, they all turn and look at you as you're walking in because it's on that outtake.
01:19:07.000And then when you start shooting, they're all down in the corner being very in a defensive position.
01:19:13.000And the analogy I think I use to you is imagine you're at home having dinner and four dudes walk into your house with cameras and guns, talking loud, doing their whole thing.
01:20:07.000Man, I was in Tejon Ranch with Rinella, and we were walking down this road, and we were pig hunting, and we got close to these pigs, and they didn't know we were there because there's this really thick brush and grasses, and we heard them fighting.
01:21:32.000And I think we have a real problem in this world with our idea of what an animal is.
01:21:37.000You know, we anthropomorphize these things.
01:21:38.000We think of them the same way we think about our pets.
01:21:41.000When you have a dog and you think of your dog the same way you think of a wild bear, like, boy, they're playing on some fucking completely different fields.
01:23:10.000They're flexible, just like people are.
01:23:12.000And if you start feeding wild animals, they kind of become domesticated.
01:23:15.000There's a park right down here in North Hollywood.
01:23:17.000You can sit down in the park, and if you bring a bag of peanuts, the squirrels will literally come and take them from your hands like a little baby.
01:25:15.000And again, just like we're talking about with organic beef versus regular corn-fed, this is a wild animal with a wild, natural diet and a real healthy, big, fat beaver.
01:26:50.000You know, like a steak feed or a, you know, it's just a, you feed a bunch of people and they sit down and get drunk and eat a bunch of shit.
01:30:53.000You get your fats from avocados, from healthy fats, from beef and chicken or whatever the fuck you eat, and coconut oil, things along those lines, MCT oil.
01:31:03.000And I've been on it now for two weeks, and it's pretty fascinating.
01:32:05.000And that these healthy fats, like healthy fats for your body, like coconut oil, things along those lines, is really the best fuel for your body.
01:32:13.000And your body gets into a state of ketosis, which takes about two weeks, which I just started getting into.
01:32:18.000I just started getting into the state of ketosis.
01:32:20.000And your body, once it reaches this state of ketosis, gets its energy primarily from fat.
01:32:25.000And it's a more normal, natural way for your body to respond.
01:32:49.000I don't like it in the fact that if I go to a restaurant and someone's got spaghetti and meatballs next to me, I'm like, fuck, I can't eat the meatballs.
01:33:41.000Because of this shift, my body, taking plenty of probiotics, drinking a lot of kombucha, things along those lines, taking some probiotic supplements, you introduce healthy bacteria into your stomach and your gut, and because of that,
01:34:29.000I think part of it must be psychological that I've decided that this isn't food, that I've made a shift in my mind because I'm not eating it.
01:37:54.000So what they say to counter that is to take probiotics once you're done with your whole cycle, but also to prevent it in the future.
01:38:03.000You take healthy bacteria, like a lot of acidophilus, different forms of probiotics, and you are essentially giving your body soldiers to fight off infection.
01:38:13.000And the skin flora changes when you take high doses of healthy acidophilus and things along those lines.
01:38:20.000It's also for people that are vegan, there's some different probiotics like raw sauerkraut.
01:38:43.000Well, part of the reason I was convinced, other than I get my medical advice, is in the other work that I do, I build and manage athletic fields.
01:38:57.000And there's a huge movement to go towards organic...
01:39:29.000We started using compost from both a facility nearby from the county but also from a supplier and applying that as a part of our regime.
01:39:44.000We were able to cut back on fertilizer and the other thing that was really interesting is that A lot of the pathogens that we have issue with, and you see them on golf courses, they get different kinds of fungus that affect the grass because you're putting water on it and you're feeding the shit out of it.
01:40:00.000And by putting that compost on there and providing Essentially, the organisms that are good for the soil, we're feeding the soil, not the plant, which synthetic nitrogen does.
01:40:15.000And so what ends up happening is we're feeding that soil, and so now we've got a whole environment there that that turf grass has got an opportunity to utilize everything that's in that soil, and it's healthier.
01:40:29.000We're going the other direction in everything from farming to growing grass for kids to play soccer on.
01:40:36.000Well, I know a guy who lived near a golf course growing up, and the pesticides that they used on the golf course infected the water supply, and he got bone cancer and cancer throughout his neighborhood.
01:40:47.000Everyone in his neighborhood was affected.
01:40:52.000And it was just people that were drinking the water that came from this area where it had been contaminated because of a fucking golf course.
01:41:00.000And the one company that I work with has been part of a construction of a golf course that from day one was, and it's actually certified organic, but it's been a part of their process all the way along.
01:41:15.000And they control the amount of traffic on it and all of those sort of things too, but it's a beautiful golf course.
01:41:21.000And they haven't used any pesticides or synthetic fertilizers on it.
01:41:26.000One of the things that they had brought up in that same article about organic meat being healthier was the incorporation of clover in with grass and that somehow or another clover helps sustain a nitrogen balance with the grasses.
01:41:47.000In a pasture, we introduce clover into our pastures.
01:41:54.000It fixes nitrogen into the soil that's then available for the grasses and white clovers and a lot of the things that I actually plant in some of the food plot stuff that we do for wildlife.
01:42:27.000And it's kind of like what you were talking about when you were talking about these really interesting, diverse ecosystems that are created by these organic farms, like this one that you were highlighting earlier.
01:43:57.000And they're living as if they were wild.
01:44:00.000They're essentially grazing off acorns, things along those lines, and just giant areas where they roam and forage, and they eat just like a wild pig, and because of that, their flesh is very different.
01:44:11.000That's what you got in your freezer now, dude.
01:44:12.000Well, this is elk, but I have a wild pig in my freezer at home.
01:44:52.000Not very often, but there's one place, one restaurant nearby our place that I go to, and he finishes his beef with corn, but it's mostly grass-fed, but he's still sort of old school.
01:45:08.000I taste the difference between, of course, you taste the difference between venison, because really, again, I don't have this wide experience of hunting in different areas and having meat from different areas, so I am excited about your elk.
01:45:21.000So the venison to grass-fed beef to corn-fed beef.
01:45:26.000Um, and it's been a long time since I've had something that I, like I said, where I didn't know where it came from, but I can tell you when it was, when it was, uh, fat cattle, they call them.
01:45:35.000Um, I feel like after I get done eating a piece of meat like that, like I have a little prime rib or something when I go out on a Saturday night, I feel like I should take a knife and like scrape that fat off my tongue.
01:45:44.000It just has a completely different taste and I just, I'm not interested in it anymore.
01:45:49.000And so my, you know, taste has changed that way.
01:45:53.000Um, It's very tender, but it's also because that animal's dying.
01:46:02.000That animal, you're eating a sumo wrestler.
01:46:29.000I'll take it to even more of an extreme, and that is veal.
01:46:34.000Down the road from our old friend who had the issue with us when we were hunting, and he would call and leave me those crazy messages.
01:46:42.000Before he owned that place, it was owned by another guy who raised veal.
01:46:46.000And when I was younger, I helped out up there once in a while.
01:46:49.000And how you helped out was to help him load the veal.
01:46:53.000Those animals are in a cage where they essentially can't, or a box where they can barely turn around.
01:47:00.000And they're being fed, you know, a milk replacer, a powdery that you mix with water and it's kind of a liquid and that's all they're getting.
01:47:09.000And the best looking veal calves were the last animal I ever wanted to eat.
01:48:42.000In the Norwegian areas of Wisconsin, they have these dinners, you know, lutefisk dinners for fundraisers and such, but they also have other things.
01:48:52.000My whole thing was, out of respect, I'd take a bite of lutefisk, and then I wash that down with some Swedish meatballs and lefse, and just get it out of your mouth.
01:50:57.000Well, we have this little lake, Lee Lake, there in Cazenovia, and one of the things that we do with the money that we raise is stock it with walleyes and other game fish.
01:51:11.000So one of the things that we do is have this fishery which is on the ice.
01:51:15.000So it's essentially an ice fishing tournament would be the wrong word.
01:51:21.000Although there are prizes for like the biggest bluegill and the biggest bass and that kind of thing.
01:51:28.000But mostly it's a thing where people come to and you have raffles and It's the social event of the season in Cazenovia.
01:52:02.000Yeah, so those are different ways that...
01:52:04.000And some of the stuff that we've also done is donated, bought and donated, like Hoyt Archery Bows or Matthews Bows to the school's physical education program.
01:52:24.000So this is a little organization of a bunch of guys who get together once or...
01:52:29.000It depends on the time of the year, once or twice a month and...
01:52:32.000Well, there's certainly a benefit to having a small community like that where everybody really does care about the welfare of the community and cares about all these different things like wrestling team needing money for uniforms and things along those lines.
01:52:44.000We lose a lot of that when you have big cities.
01:52:47.000There's so much to gain in a big city, but there's so much to lose, too.
01:52:52.000It's like we were talking earlier about the diffusion of responsibility that you have when there's 20 million people.
01:52:57.000You see somebody with their fucking car broken down the side of the road.
01:53:45.000People are weird, but cities are especially weird because I don't think this is a normal thing.
01:53:50.000We've only had them for the last couple hundred years in this sort of magnitude that we have now, like with New York and LA and things along those lines, just to have so many people jammed into an area like this.
01:54:01.000And as we started this conversation, have a complete disconnect as to where your food comes from and that the food is coming from life.
01:54:10.000Whether it's plant life or whether it's animal life, your food comes from life.
01:54:41.000But, you know, those are not without my sympathy as well.
01:54:44.000Yeah, oh, no, everybody's got an agenda, and everybody's got a reason to fight, you know.
01:54:47.000Well, they have a very—we'll get into that in a minute.
01:54:50.000This specific pirate, his whole—you know, he's a loner, and his whole thing in the conversation throughout the book is he talks about it as a yeast.
01:54:58.000You know, life eats life, and his whole contention is— What the fuck matters?
01:56:45.000The Voluntary Coast Guard of Somalia, that's what the pirates called themselves.
01:56:49.000The reason why they started doing pirating in Somalia is because they were fishermen.
01:56:54.000They were fishermen and these assholes from Europe and Russia were dumping toxic waste off their shores.
01:57:00.000Nuclear waste, toxic chemical waste, and it was killing all the fish.
01:57:04.000So what they started doing was kidnapping the people that were in the boats that were doing the dumping.
01:57:08.000So these fishermen who were fucking starving to death, because all of a sudden their waters were polluted, they started going after these guys and kidnapping them.
01:57:17.000Then they realized, hey, we get way more fucking money from kidnapping people than we do from fishing.
01:58:39.000You know, I mean, my initial reaction when I said, except Somali pirates, I mean, that's how we tell history is from, you know, Captain Phillips' side.
01:58:48.000You know, and that's like the Howard Zinn thing.
01:58:49.000Howard Zinn tells it from the other side.
02:00:13.000And so then, you know, and the farmers, you know...
02:00:17.000They didn't want to be taxed or anything, so I believe there's a compromise where it wasn't a road tax, but they made them have another axle so it spread the weight out and wasn't tearing the hell out of the roads.
02:00:27.000Oh, so the actual physical weight on the road.
02:00:29.000Is that why they go to a weigh station?
02:00:31.000I always wondered why they weigh them.
02:00:33.000Well, out in our neck of the woods, again, a lot of the roads were just gravel roads, and then over time they did this thing called tar and chip.
02:00:40.000So a gravel road is not built, you know, doesn't have any particular engineering, well, I suppose it has some engineering standards, but not.
02:01:15.000You know, a big tanker truck or a big tanker behind a monster tractor, and it's breaking down the sides of the roads, and it ends up being an issue for us.
02:01:23.000And as Nate said, they're having to haul this stuff further and further, because you can only put so much shit on so much ground, and the shit that they are putting out there is...
02:01:35.000You know, it's liquid manure that's going into these tanks or into these whole facilities.
02:01:43.000I just found a new way to torture terrorists.
02:01:45.000And there's a double standard with it.
02:01:49.000So you've got this massive amount of liquid manure, you know, and they're not going to store it, they're not going to compost it or anything like that.
02:01:54.000So, like, right now, we've got a nice snowpack, 12 inches, and they're sprinted on top of the snow.
02:02:00.000And just to illustrate the double standard, I got family that is in the septic business.
02:02:05.000So if they go out, if they spread this shit on a certain slope...
02:02:27.000They used to have one axle, and it was just too much on the road.
02:02:31.000So a septic dude, he goes out there to get rid of this human shit, and if he does it on a certain grade, he'll get a giant fine from the DNR. But a farmer...
02:02:40.000Goes out and does it, and it's a, you know, so...
02:03:25.000First of all, I think something that you would probably agree with and I agree with and those people in the Cowspiracy documentary certainly agree with is that there's something evil about these ag-gag laws.
02:04:58.000It gets in the air and goes into people's houses and I think some of the neighbors are saying it gets in their house and they can't even breathe and they need to leave the area.
02:05:36.000To people that are vegans, they would say, well, any animal that you would be willing to raise and then ship off and sell, like, why are you any better than this guy who's got these things stuffed into this thing?
02:05:47.000I mean, yeah, your animals are living a normal life, but then eventually you're going to kill them anyway.
02:07:14.000Well, that's the thing that wolves do, and then they're having a real big problem with this in Yellowstone and a lot of places that have elk, is that they don't kill, like a cat will kill a wolf, or a cat will kill an elk, rather, and he will eat that elk for a long period of time.
02:07:27.000He'll bury it, and he'll eat it, and a wolf kills it, eats a little bit, and then kills another one, and then kills another one, and kills another one, and they do whatever the fuck they want.
02:07:36.000And one of these guys that I know at Hoyt was telling me about this wolf that had killed this cow.
02:07:43.000And the way it did it was it attacked the cow elk, attacked it, tore its guts apart, and then backed off and just watched and sat.
02:07:52.000And watched this thing struggle and tried to walk away and tried to walk into this river.
02:07:58.000Try to get away and then go after it again and tear it apart a little bit more and then back off again.
02:08:02.000They do it for fun and it's what they're designed for.
02:08:06.000They're killing machines and they enjoy it.
02:08:10.000They're beautiful and I'm not saying that they're evil and we should kill them.
02:08:13.000All and eradicate them from the face of the world, but there's something strange about that kind of animal.
02:08:20.000They're not environmentalists, they're not conservationists, they're fucking wolves.
02:10:17.000Well, they're very different than the mule deer that we were talking about before, the show star that Rinella killed, that was on a show recently, which is enormous, beautiful, majestic, public land mule deer that he killed.
02:10:28.000Mule deer, they've found, will travel 150 miles during a season.
02:10:43.000An older a deer gets in our area, at least my experience has been, so the older a deer gets in our area, the less it moves.
02:10:51.000So if you have a buck that you're managing four bigger bucks and you start seeing one that maybe has a distinctive antler or something, so you can tell it from other ones...
02:11:03.000You'll begin to realize, you know that great big one that I shot?
02:11:29.000You know, and they'll have these shows.
02:11:30.000And, like, this is so bizarre because it's in a lot of ways you're, like, kind of farming because they have these gigantic pastures that they call food plots.
02:11:38.000So what they'll do is they'll plow the land and they'll grow a lot of clover, a lot of different types, alfalfa, different things that they know.
02:11:58.000I mean, part of what I do in my land management service for people is to help their property become more wildlife friendly.
02:12:06.000One of the things that I try to push to people is that when we're doing things like timber stand improvement or invasive species management or providing wildlife food plots, we're planting wildlife food plots, just not deer food plots.
02:12:18.000And a lot of those guys, you know, what I really want is deer.
02:12:59.000So we shot, starting this Thursday, there'll be three episodes in a row that were shot on the farm.
02:13:05.000The first one's actually Steve taking apart a couple of the deer that he finally shot a couple of deer on our place, and technically he'll say something else, but during our hunt he killed two deer.
02:13:15.000But he took them apart, so it's a really informative episode about The different kinds of cuts.
02:13:35.000He's so goddamn important because in my mind on television, he is the most prominent intellectual voice for wild game management, wild game conservation, and for hunting.
02:14:09.000And I think one of the things he likes about hunting on my place is that he knows that after the fact...
02:14:16.000We, you know, like when you were there, and just like this past year and every other year, there's a small group of people that hunt opening weekend.
02:14:23.000After that, I start letting other folks come in.
02:16:02.000Coincidentally, I was in town the night before opening day, and I was so bummed out that I had scheduled it where I had to be in Colorado the next day, and I barely made it out of Madison.
02:18:17.000So, we had such a good time with that, and I think when Helen and Brittany, who were beginner hunters, they wanted to have that experience similar to what you and Brian had in Montana.
02:18:30.000You know, we don't take it easy on us because we're, you know, whatever, women or whatever it happens to be, and I would not take it easy on either one of those two for any reason because they're just...
02:21:16.000Now, do you use one of those, um, iPhone calculator apps where, like, you have to, like, figure out, like, how far it is, the velocity of your gun, you know, what are you shooting at, 30-odd sex?
02:21:27.000Uh, actually, I had a, um, a Savage, uh, 300 Winmeg.
02:21:52.000Yeah, and by the way, I should say these guys I know about this stuff because of Steve Rinella's podcast It's called the meat-eater podcast which I talked him into doing and now he's now he's addicted to it, too.
02:22:07.000He's so good at it And yeah, you had the guys from vortex on there talking about different things and I learned a lot that day so anyway, I clean mist and I I know I've talked about this before on maybe the podcast.
02:22:23.000I said I've never regretted a shot that I didn't take.
02:22:56.000We watched it, my cameraman and I kept watching it on the thing, and so I went right down to the spot where I marked exactly where the spot was.
02:23:02.000We had snow and everything, and I just clean missed, and it was a shot that in retrospect I kind of wish I wouldn't have taken, especially with what was happening right then.
02:23:11.000Deer were starting to come to the field and all that, but anyway, and the point was it was from that blind that you sent me after that hunt, and so that's where it lives is up there on top of the hill.
02:25:48.000And just like you and Brian, man, they gutted them, they cleaned them, they did the whole thing, you know, to the point where I think Helen was maybe a little regretful that she had, well, they had three deer.
02:26:01.000They broke down completely by themselves.
02:27:41.000No, but I'd be happy to have one or two.
02:27:45.000I don't even like rifle hunting that much anymore.
02:27:48.000Well, the thing about archery hunting for deer in our area is, you know, it's a very...
02:27:54.000Well, but you've learned all this, too, hunting with Cam, is that it's...
02:27:58.000They've got to be closer, and I don't care how many of them there are.
02:28:02.000They've got to be close, and they've got to come, and you're going to spend some time out there, and not much has been going on.
02:28:06.000But our archery season coincides with that first part of November, end of October, first part of November, where the pre-rut and rut is going on, so there's a lot of deer activity.
02:32:03.000Listen, it is definitely more accurate and better than a bow, but my point is use a fucking gun.
02:32:11.000If you're shooting one of those things and it's accurate to several hundred yards, I know people that have shot a deer at 250 yards with a musket.
02:32:36.000But with a musket or a muzzleloader, you can put the crosshair on that thing.
02:32:39.000You can accurately judge, just like you can with a rifle.
02:32:42.000The problem is it takes you like 15 to 20 seconds to reload, as opposed to just going, if you want to make a follow-up shot with a rifle, you know, or there's a lot of people now that are hunting with semi-automatics, you know, where they're going, bang, bang, Bang!
02:32:56.000You can shoot a deer three times in two seconds.
02:32:59.000The thing about the Black Potter is you've got to have your bayonet for the finish.
02:35:42.000The power that these things have now and the speed in which they shoot arrows and the accuracy.
02:35:47.000There's so much technology and engineering going into bows.
02:35:49.000It's really kind of amazing because it's one of the few pieces of hunting equipment that literally changes and improves every year.
02:35:56.000And so I think about that when I hear the bowhunting purist friends who are just cackling right now about you giving me shit about bowhunting, which is great.
02:36:30.000Get some leather from the last animal you shot and wrap it around your fingers.
02:36:34.000I actually think that Steve was talking about on this upcoming Butchering one about how they used to take the silver skin off of meat, and they'd get the long strips of it, and that's what they made their bow strings out of it.
02:38:52.000I mean, you're looking at these 20, 30-pound fish, and there's dozens of them just stacked together, and you see them on the surface of the water.
02:38:59.000You know, but it's a junk fish to us, but a delicacy to people in the UK and in Asia.
02:39:08.000Yeah, when one person decides it's a good fish, and then, you know, the problem was they're an invasive species in a lot of the North American rivers and lakes, and people don't like them for whatever silly reason.
02:39:20.000But they're a very good fish to eat, apparently, if you prepare it properly.
02:39:57.000Have this meat that you've got from this animal, and you have so much reverence for the death of this animal, and then you just prepare it like an asshole.
02:40:04.000You have to put almost as much thought into the cooking.
02:40:07.000It's one of the things I really love about Ronella's show.
02:40:10.000The episode that I watched last night about that Idaho mule deer that he shot, this enormous deer, was really focused on, at the end of it, how he prepared it.
02:40:19.000You know, he showed you how to prepare it and how to cook it properly and how you can tell when it's done and all this different stuff.
02:40:24.000And he'll go through the butchering process, he'll go through the cooking process.
02:40:28.000And that's something a lot of these shows, they don't even touch, man.
02:40:31.000They get the deer, look at him, he's a real Iowa giant!
02:40:34.000And they take a picture of this animal and they show the antlers, look at his fourths and his fifths and look at his brow tying and sticking up like this.
02:41:28.000I heard an interesting discussion about that recently and one of the things they talked about is that there were these protein blocks being put out and that may have been...
02:41:39.000There have been a few different ideas of where it came from, and one is from the deer farms, and another is these protein blocks that maybe got put out, and it's got animal byproduct in it, and maybe that's how it jumps species.
02:42:03.000And I've even heard it said that there are places where they were trying to improve the genetics of the deer herd, so they were bringing in bigger bucks and releasing them.
02:42:14.000I don't have any proof of any of it, so those are just the things you hear.
02:43:03.000You call them trophies, but essentially they're manipulating the genetics of these animals so that they have all these antlers so that these rich assholes can go and shoot these things in this 100-acre fenced-in area where they're letting these animals out of their pens.
02:43:33.000So they're growing these insane antlers by feeding them supplements and feeding them the shit that makes their antler steroids, that makes their antlers grow.
02:46:01.000Baiting bears is a big one because there's a lot of places where the only way, especially in the spring, you're ever going to kill a bear is if you bait.
02:46:08.000So they have to control the population of these bears because the bears are killing moose.
02:46:50.000I have friends who live in Michigan, and they were telling me, listen, man, you could go a fucking decade without seeing a bear in the woods.
02:48:23.000I appreciate you guys flying out here and doing this, and I'm glad we could have this conversation and get your perspective on things, because I think a lot of people have, you know...
02:48:32.000Listeners, continue the discussion, man.