The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1340 - John Nores

00:00:00.000 Thanks, bud.

00:00:00.000 Ready?

00:00:02.000 Boom.

00:00:03.000 Alright, we're live.

00:00:04.000 Hello, John.

00:00:04.000 What's up, man?

00:00:05.000 Hey, Joe.

00:00:06.000 How you doing?

00:00:06.000 Thanks for doing this.

00:00:07.000 I really appreciate it.

00:00:07.000 Thanks a lot for having me, man.

00:00:08.000 It's great.

00:00:09.000 Well, I heard you on Meteor Podcast, and it blew my mind.

00:00:14.000 I mean, I could not believe.

00:00:15.000 Let's just let everybody know what this is about.

00:00:18.000 Right.

00:00:24.000 Right.

00:00:37.000 Along the way, you guys started discovering these illegal grow-ups where cartels were growing marijuana.

00:00:45.000 And you turned from being a regular game warden to essentially, well, why don't you let us know how it worked out?

00:00:53.000 Yeah, Joe, it was a crazy journey because you don't think of game wardens doing the type of work we were doing when it come to the trespass gross and the cartel issue.

00:01:02.000 What do everybody think?

00:01:03.000 They think game wardens check fishing licenses, check your deer tag or elk tag, look for too many animals, poaching, spotlighting.

00:01:10.000 And honestly, when I started the job, I got hired back in 1992, That's what I dreamed of doing.

00:01:15.000 You know, I grew up hunting and fishing and I got my hunter safety certificate with dad's help at nine years old.

00:01:22.000 So I was all in the woods.

00:01:23.000 You know, the woods are my church.

00:01:25.000 I just loved it because three generations of family, my grandfather's career Navy, my dad, you know, as an army guy.

00:01:31.000 And, you know, we just had conservation in our family, you know, for generations.

00:01:36.000 So I got the job, did it, and I did all the traditional stuff to start.

00:01:38.000 Came down here to Southern California to start my career in Riverside County.

00:01:42.000 So I was just over the hill, you know, from LA here, and working all the traditional stuff.

00:01:47.000 Fishing regulations, night hunting, you know, working deer openers.

00:01:51.000 It was really cool to be a deer hunter for all those years and then actually go, you know, talk to guys on the other side and see all the good guys out there and some problems.

00:01:59.000 And then in 1995, I got to go back home toward the Silicon Valley.

00:02:04.000 That's where I'm originally from, born and raised.

00:02:06.000 So I live in the suburbs, kind of the foothill areas of the Silicon Valley, south of San Jose there.

00:02:11.000 And in 2004, I stumbled into my first cartel, what we call a trespass marijuana grow site.

00:02:20.000 And, you know, to specify this stuff now, now that we're regulating, you know, the last couple of years here in California, these are not sanctioned marijuana sites.

00:02:27.000 This isn't the legitimate industry that's doing it by the numbers and trying to.

00:02:31.000 This is always illegal.

00:02:33.000 These are always here, you know, on public lands, destroying our environmental waterways and our wildlife and on private land as well.

00:02:41.000 And on that situation, I had a good friend of mine that I grew up with that was doing his master's thesis at San Jose State University, both of our alma mater, on steelhead trout, endangered species, red-legged, yellow-legged frog, and all the aquatics in these two creeks.

00:02:55.000 And this was right below Henry Coast State Park, where I really met my first game warden that was an inspiration to get the job.

00:03:01.000 So these waterways are really sensitive.

00:03:04.000 Headwaters coming down through this stretch for like three miles.

00:03:06.000 All these endangered species in it.

00:03:08.000 Black-tailed deer.

00:03:09.000 You know, all these other great animals we like as conservationists.

00:03:12.000 They're thriving on this creek.

00:03:14.000 And he called me one day in April and said, Hey John, this is weird.

00:03:18.000 One of my two creeks is bone dry.

00:03:21.000 And all the fish, the steelhead fry are dead.

00:03:24.000 You know, everything living on this creek is dead.

00:03:26.000 There's a bunch of like debris and plastic lining and looks like camping stuff that's down at the bottom of where this creek feeds out.

00:03:34.000 So I get them in the truck and I figured, I'm thinking, okay, someone's diverting water up there.

00:03:39.000 It's probably a rancher needing it for cattle operation, whatever.

00:03:42.000 We go to the top of the hill, Joe.

00:03:44.000 Then we start the hike down.

00:03:46.000 And I'm by myself.

00:03:47.000 You know, I got my rifle, got my gear, don't have any radio coverage, don't have any cell phone coverage.

00:03:52.000 And I have an unarmed civilian, my partner, biologist, with me.

00:03:55.000 And we're expecting to find something very predictable that I'd seen up to that point.

00:03:59.000 And that would have been a normal water diversion.

00:04:02.000 And when we found the water source in a beautiful canyon, I mean, crystal clear water, Trout Creek, the whole nine.

00:04:08.000 We start hiking down it, following this, we see the dam, we see the waterline.

00:04:13.000 We go about 100 yards down this beautiful little Grand Canyon-like creek, and there's a bunch of marijuana plants.

00:04:18.000 And they're short because it's early in the season, they're only about two feet tall.

00:04:22.000 And we see two growers.

00:04:24.000 And they're not the growers that I would have suspected.

00:04:27.000 These guys are, you know, they got rifles, they got handguns, they got knives, and they're kind of cruising, working their plants, coming toward us.

00:04:34.000 And that was that, oh shit, moment.

00:04:36.000 You know, if something crazy goes down right now and I got no backup, I got a civilian with me, these guys are armed, they're not your typical poacher that I've ever encountered.

00:04:45.000 And we didn't get seen.

00:04:48.000 We kind of hid out, you know, he's a hunter, I'm a hunter.

00:04:50.000 We stayed, you know, using our stocking and stand to the creek bank and just watched as these guys worked their plantation and went on up the hill.

00:04:59.000 And I looked at this and went, what did we just walk into?

00:05:01.000 This is crazy.

00:05:02.000 We got out safely.

00:05:04.000 And that's when I started to bring in other agencies, narcotic groups, task forces, the sheriff's office.

00:05:11.000 You know, started to learn other agencies in my area.

00:05:14.000 This is really on in the game.

00:05:15.000 What did you guys do about that one grow up?

00:05:17.000 Like when you found it?

00:05:19.000 Like how did they resolve that?

00:05:20.000 Well, we got a team together as fast as we could safely, and usually it takes a couple of weeks, and I want to say within a month we were back there.

00:05:28.000 Now, the interesting part was game wardens aren't known for doing this type of work, just like you said at the start, right?

00:05:34.000 So they're like, well, you guys know the area, you went in there.

00:05:38.000 Help us find it, get us into the area, but we're going to lead the raid.

00:05:41.000 And we'll say, of course, this is your jurisdiction.

00:05:43.000 We don't normally do this type of stuff, so go for it.

00:05:47.000 So we were the bird dogs.

00:05:48.000 We kind of guided them into the area.

00:05:49.000 We had like 20, 30 officers.

00:05:52.000 We kind of led them down to the canyon, got them in there safely.

00:05:56.000 We found the two growers.

00:05:57.000 We spooked them.

00:05:58.000 They didn't get caught that day.

00:05:59.000 They ran down the canyon.

00:06:01.000 Nobody pursued.

00:06:02.000 Some of us wanted to, obviously because of the environmental damages.

00:06:05.000 But The biggest thing that changed the game for me that day was seeing the environmental damage.

00:06:11.000 So that was a 7,000 plant garden.

00:06:13.000 And at the time, we didn't know about these banned toxic substances, these insecticides, carbofuran, that they're bringing up from Tijuana and transporting, actually smuggling from across the border to put on these plants to keep everything living off of it, not to impact their cash crop.

00:06:29.000 And that was out there in some extent, but it was so early, we weren't really aware of the level of toxicity to this stuff and how damaging it is.

00:06:37.000 So it was all new.

00:06:38.000 But we eradicated that garden.

00:06:41.000 And then when we were done eradicating it, we had all this mess in the creek, right?

00:06:46.000 We had camp trash, we had fertilizers, pollutants, propane tanks, all over in this beautiful channel that's now dry because it's been diverted.

00:06:56.000 Unbeknownst to us, all that water was totally poisoned, that they were diverting to water the plants.

00:07:00.000 That's why that creek was so dry.

00:07:02.000 And we eradicated everything, and then it was like, okay, we're out of here.

00:07:07.000 And I looked around and went, wait a minute, man.

00:07:11.000 I know we got the illegal marijuana out, but what are we going to do about all this environmental damage?

00:07:16.000 And nobody was reclamating the damage or cleaning up any of this mess.

00:07:21.000 So the first thing I thought was, we have a resource issue that's crazy.

00:07:25.000 I mean, I've spent my whole career up to this point protecting wildlife, preserving waterways for all of us to enjoy.

00:07:32.000 You know, conservationist, enthusiast, whatever side of the fence you're on.

00:07:37.000 And nothing was getting done on that.

00:07:39.000 So kind of the light bulb went off a little bit that we need to do more to this if we're going to get involved and we need to get involved in these type of grow operations because it was the biggest environmental train wreck I'd ever seen.

00:07:50.000 And I'd worked a lot of traditional game warden stuff to protect those resources.

00:07:55.000 So once they had gotten everyone out and chopped all the plants up or did what they did, did they try to reclaim the creek?

00:08:03.000 Did they try to remove the dam and get the water to run back again?

00:08:07.000 At that time, no.

00:08:08.000 No one was doing it right.

00:08:09.000 And that's exactly what really, really kind of upset me.

00:08:13.000 And again, we were new at the game.

00:08:15.000 We were the game wardens.

00:08:16.000 Nobody really thought of us as mainline law enforcement or narcotics task force guys or anything like that at the time.

00:08:22.000 So I wasn't going to make waves.

00:08:24.000 We just wanted to integrate and work together.

00:08:26.000 We wanted to unify these teams.

00:08:27.000 And what I really wanted to do at this point is...

00:08:30.000 Get back with my command staff and my bosses and go, hey, we got a big, big problem out there, man.

00:08:36.000 There's more of this going on.

00:08:38.000 And we need to be involved, even though it's not traditional, because we're sworn to protect our resources.

00:08:43.000 Well, besides everything game wardens do that you think of from the wildlife standpoint, we're mainline law enforcement just like every police officer, right?

00:08:51.000 We go through the same training.

00:08:53.000 And then what people don't realize is we go through two more months of additional training in a really long academy that's all wildlife specific, wildlife forensics, wildlife ID, weapons identification, all the things you really need to do the game war inside of it with wildlife in the backcountry,

00:09:08.000 so to speak.

00:09:10.000 But we needed to integrate with other agencies and kind of bring them into our world if we were going to participate.

00:09:15.000 So that one case started the change in me to try to build those relationships and get into tactics and tactical circles with some of these, you know, SWAT and special operations units that would go in and do this job.

00:09:28.000 Under normal circumstances, if that was just being diverted by a rancher, so if a rancher had done that and the creek was dry, how would you fix that?

00:09:38.000 We would have got with him, and it's what's called a streambed alteration violation.

00:09:42.000 And it's 1602 in our Fish and Game Code is the section, and it's a very common section because water's diverted for a lot of reasons.

00:09:48.000 And you can divert water with a permit in certain circumstances, but you can't completely denude a creek that has wildlife thriving that's a waterway of the state for everybody to enjoy, which this one was.

00:09:58.000 And if normally the case would be that they would have to just have the flow come back to exactly how it was before, to remove the dam, and that would be up to the rancher?

00:10:10.000 That would be up to the rancher, be part of a penalty.

00:10:13.000 You know, it could be a civil, it could be a criminal, it could be a probationary, fix it and you're okay.

00:10:17.000 So there was no real, there's no law involved, or nothing in place rather, when you found these grow-ups, like there was no previous precedent?

00:10:27.000 Right, exactly.

00:10:28.000 It was completely brand new.

00:10:30.000 And this was, you know, one of the first grows, I think, that any of us had found throughout the state of California as Game Horns.

00:10:36.000 I mean, there were other guys finding some things and working, but being from the Silicon Valley and being inspired by those wildlands to everything I became later and what I stand for.

00:10:45.000 It was home, you know, and it hit home.

00:10:47.000 But seeing that and getting to meet certain guys from the sheriff's department in my first book goes into this whole learning experience of, you know, ad hoc jumping in with other agencies and doing it.

00:10:57.000 Is this the Hidden War?

00:10:59.000 This was the first book, War in the Woods.

00:11:00.000 War in the Woods.

00:11:01.000 So you wrote War in the Woods and then Hidden War is the new one?

00:11:04.000 Yeah, Hidden Wars, the brand new one that just came out, and they're basically 10 years apart.

00:11:08.000 And the cool part about that, Joe, is when you look at the differences, we do some major comparisons, and what War in the Woods covers is that chapter one's that first mission I'm telling you about right now, because that was like, bing, here it is.

00:11:19.000 You know, we're not in Kansas anymore, so it's crazy.

00:11:22.000 So the people, the higher-ups that were in charge of...

00:11:26.000 Trying to eradicate the grow-up and take the cartel guys down.

00:11:31.000 So that was their job, was just handling that.

00:11:35.000 It was just handling the marijuana aspect of it, right?

00:11:37.000 Right.

00:11:38.000 And the armed cartel guys.

00:11:40.000 So there was no one in place that was supposed to take care of the waterway?

00:11:44.000 There wasn't.

00:11:45.000 That seems so crazy to me.

00:11:47.000 It does.

00:11:48.000 It was one of those things that it was based on the fact that a conservation group from an agency like Fish and Wildlife, like us, we just weren't involved where we would be looking at those environmental damages, right?

00:12:00.000 But from a narcotics officer's standpoint, you may see the damages, but it may not register.

00:12:05.000 There might not be a mandate or even objective to clean that stuff up.

00:12:08.000 And back at the time, DEA was funding all of our states and all of our county teams based on the number of marijuana plants we eradicated.

00:12:17.000 So there wasn't any recognition of the environmental damages and any type of funding based on how much reclamation and cleanup you did.

00:12:26.000 Now, that would change, fortunately.

00:12:27.000 And we were a big part of making that change, fortunately.

00:12:31.000 And there wasn't a lot of funding or point kickback or value to catching bad guys, to catching some of these guys that were doing the damages.

00:12:39.000 So a lot of teams then were dropping in on helicopter lines, cutting plants, getting a big plant count, getting funded for it, taking the weed out.

00:12:49.000 And that was it.

00:12:50.000 That's so crazy.

00:12:51.000 I would imagine, I mean, obviously I don't work in law enforcement, but I would imagine there would be one person who would like...

00:13:09.000 It would.

00:13:11.000 You would think it should be.

00:13:12.000 This is all basically new territory.

00:13:15.000 Completely new.

00:13:16.000 And so we're only talking about 15 years ago as well, which is really crazy.

00:13:20.000 Yeah, it was the start of a big shift in my career because I saw this as a big problem.

00:13:26.000 I also, up until in 2005, we were on one of our first, second, third operations since this one we just mentioned in 2004. And on August 5th of 2005, the game completely changed because that's when we were involved in our first gunfight.

00:13:42.000 And that's when my partner, Warden, who I trained in the academy, we were partners in the squad.

00:13:48.000 I had promoted to be the lieutenant for two and a half counties, the Silicon Valley, Santa Clara County, Monterey, part of San Benito, 20 days before this incident happened.

00:13:58.000 And I had young Wardens that wanted to participate and do some of the stuff I was doing with the other agencies on the marijuana operational front.

00:14:05.000 And this was, you know, right above the tech capital of the world, right there in Silicon Valley in Los Gatos.

00:14:10.000 We were in really steep, arid country, you know, August, right before the A-Zone deer opener.

00:14:14.000 We were all gearing up for that.

00:14:16.000 And it was three game wardens, three sheriff's officers, good sheriff's officers that we met on that first operation in 2004. I just gave you the story on.

00:14:25.000 And they were in harvest time.

00:14:27.000 They were fortified.

00:14:29.000 They had heavy weapons like SKSs, the AK-47 derivative, sawed-off shotguns.

00:14:34.000 And they had the grow setup where they were basically defending it.

00:14:37.000 And when we came in, there was an ambush shot from one of the growers, and that was the one shot the bad guys got off.

00:14:44.000 And unfortunately, that's the shot that hit my partner through both legs.

00:14:48.000 And that bullet went through the right thigh and tumbled through his right leg, then kept going through his left.

00:14:53.000 So he's down, and we're trying to keep him from bleeding out of four holes for the better part of three hours waiting for an air rescue.

00:15:01.000 And we didn't, you know, nobody in the country from the standpoint of a law enforcement team had ever been counterattacked by these growers.

00:15:08.000 We'd, you know, we'd chase them around, they'd run away, sometimes we'd find weapons, oftentimes we wouldn't.

00:15:14.000 But so this was just a real eye-opener, like, what the fuck did we just walk into?

00:15:18.000 And plus, my partner was real close to not making it.

00:15:21.000 And fortunately, he did survive, or I don't know that we'd be sitting here telling this story and talking about it.

00:15:26.000 But that day, when I saw how well they were equipped, the type of weaponry they had, and the fact that I almost didn't come home that day, I went, okay, this is super dangerous.

00:15:38.000 We can't do this as standard patrol game wardens.

00:15:40.000 We can't do this doing just the traditional stuff.

00:15:43.000 We should stay involved in it because aside from being so violent, the environmental damages, Joe, were the worst I'd still ever seen, and they just kept getting worse and worse the more operations I'd work in my home county, right?

00:15:54.000 So we learned a lot from that.

00:15:55.000 There were a lot of tactical lessons, there were a lot of team lessons, a lot of things we could have done different.

00:16:00.000 And that kind of changed the game where we eventually got to what we're going to talk about a little bit later.

00:16:05.000 Now, since 2004, have there been plans implemented to clean up and also restore waterways and all the different...

00:16:13.000 Absolutely.

00:16:14.000 Absolutely.

00:16:14.000 So now there's like a whole, they realize this is an issue, and so there's precedent, there's...

00:16:19.000 Very much so.

00:16:20.000 And that largely came from what we saw, you know, in those early years, the 2004 first stop down there on Dexter Canyon Creek, and then what we had on Sierra Azul when my partner was shot in 2005. About then, we started to also see the banned poisons in these grows,

00:16:36.000 like the carbofuran bottles.

00:16:38.000 And just to give a background, this stuff is so deadly.

00:16:42.000 It was made as an insecticide or adenicide just to kill anything that you put on any type of agricultural product.

00:16:47.000 And it was made originally back in, I think, like the 50s for legitimate agriculture.

00:16:52.000 And then they found out how toxic it was, and EPA banned it from use or even possession.

00:16:58.000 It's a felony to have it in the country and use it anywhere without special licenses through legitimate channels here in America.

00:17:05.000 And they banned it like 15 years ago because it was so nasty.

00:17:08.000 But because it does keep everything off the marijuana plants, I mean, nothing can even get near it without dying almost instantly.

00:17:15.000 They still get it in third world countries.

00:17:17.000 They can get it in Mexico.

00:17:18.000 And it gets smuggled across the border with the grow groups, the drug trafficking groups, because it's so effective, regardless how poisoned it is.

00:17:25.000 And we were starting to see more and more of that stuff as we were starting to ramp more of a specialty to doing this job more, you know, thoroughly and safely and get into the cleanup.

00:17:33.000 This is one of the many things.

00:17:35.000 I brought this up with Dan Crenshaw the other day, and I talked about you, because he's against making marijuana federally legal.

00:17:44.000 And I said one of the problems with it being illegal is this.

00:17:47.000 And I was explaining these grow-ops that for the rest of the country where marijuana is illegal, Illegal.

00:17:52.000 Right.

00:17:53.000 The vast majority, like what was the number that you said, the percentage that is grown in California that's illegally sold through the rest of the country?

00:18:01.000 70-80%.

00:18:02.000 So 70-80% of the entire marijuana population or marijuana product that you're buying if you live in a place like South Dakota or wherever it's, I don't even know if it's legal in South Dakota, wherever it's illegal.

00:18:15.000 They're buying it from here.

00:18:17.000 Exactly.

00:18:18.000 And it's because One of the reasons is because our state laws say that...

00:18:23.000 Well, first of all, we're close to Mexico, so the cartel members can come up really quickly.

00:18:26.000 Right.

00:18:27.000 And then the other problem is that our state laws, when we made marijuana legal recreationally here, we severely lowered the penalty for an illegal grow-op.

00:18:38.000 It became a misdemeanor, correct?

00:18:39.000 That was the thing.

00:18:41.000 When we started the department's special team, the spec ops marijuana enforcement team that Hidmore goes into...

00:18:49.000 Part of my job as being the co-founder of that and the team leader was outreach.

00:18:53.000 So I was speaking to legislative groups before we legalized under Prop 64 and then the tighter medicinal marijuana laws that came about that same time.

00:19:03.000 And I was talking to anybody, conservation groups that you and I would be part of, preservation animal rights groups, high school kids assemblies, right?

00:19:12.000 Watch out, if you're using weed, make sure you're not using this stuff because it's so nasty.

00:19:17.000 Yeah.

00:19:17.000 Things like that.

00:19:18.000 And my whole point was, if we're going to regulate guys, we see it coming.

00:19:22.000 Let's just regulate smart. 0.73

00:19:24.000 Let's not lessen any penalties for the trespass grow that the cartels are doing in our public lands and private lands and also the other gang groups.

00:19:31.000 And there's other groups, you know.

00:19:33.000 To a smaller extent.

00:19:35.000 But unfortunately, when we did regulate, and all that was passed two years ago, they did water it down.

00:19:41.000 So public land cultivation went to, like you said, a felony to a misdemeanor.

00:19:45.000 And if you're a juvenile cultivator on public-private land and one of these juvenile cartel members, and there's a lot of young ones learning, it's an infraction.

00:19:55.000 And that took a lot of emphasis away from that part of the problem and left us out there basically alone with a couple other agencies to fight it.

00:20:01.000 Well, for the average person, that would sound, before you knew about the cartel grows, that would sound like a good idea.

00:20:07.000 Well, hey, if marijuana is legal, what's the big deal?

00:20:10.000 Exactly.

00:20:11.000 Then the other problem is, these people that are buying this marijuana in the rest of the country, it's highly likely that they're going to have some of that pesticide on it.

00:20:19.000 Right.

00:20:20.000 And how bad is that stuff?

00:20:21.000 Has that stuff ever killed someone from smoking this illegal marijuana?

00:20:25.000 We don't know if it's killed anybody directly, because by the time it gets distributed throughout the country, it does dissipate a little bit, but it's still highly toxic.

00:20:33.000 To put it in perspective, about three years ago, we had two federal officers back east, not even in California, in a public land grow that had all that toxic on it.

00:20:44.000 So they have cartel grows out there?

00:20:46.000 They do.

00:20:47.000 They do.

00:20:47.000 On the East Coast.

00:20:48.000 We have them in about 25 to 27 other states to a much lesser extent.

00:20:53.000 And something we need to look at is California.

00:20:56.000 I mean, we're one of only six Mediterranean climates on the whole globe.

00:20:59.000 So we are a great weed growing state, just like our wine industry, man.

00:21:02.000 We got great weather for it.

00:21:04.000 So we can grow outdoors and indoors.

00:21:06.000 I mean, February to almost December, right?

00:21:08.000 And that's why it's grown here, and that's why the black market, both in, you know, the private land communities and the cartels are everywhere across the country with this stuff.

00:21:16.000 But they'll go wherever they can to, you know, diversify the network.

00:21:21.000 So we do have it in other states to a much lesser extent.

00:21:24.000 And then something we need to remember is, even though about half the country has these grows in them to a lesser extent than California...

00:21:31.000 These same groups are under the same enterprise that are doing human trafficking, doing gunrunning, you know, to fuel the fight down in Mexico, methamphetamine production, and now the new synthetic fentanyl that's just killing thousands, especially on the East Coast, are coming from these groups.

00:21:47.000 So it's all one enterprise.

00:21:48.000 And of course, we focus on the cannabis issue because that's what's affecting our wildlands and our waterways.

00:21:54.000 It's right at the hub.

00:21:55.000 So yeah, it is.

00:21:56.000 It's nationwide.

00:21:57.000 It's not a California problem.

00:21:58.000 And we made really, really careful, even though we're talking about a team in California, game wardens, we're trying to tell a nationwide story because the nation needs to know.

00:22:07.000 Well, it seems like you, I mean, not just seems like, it is.

00:22:10.000 You guys were not trained for this, and there was no one else there.

00:22:15.000 So it was like, hey, put it on the game wardens.

00:22:17.000 They're going to have to handle this now.

00:22:19.000 Which is really, to me, kind of insane.

00:22:21.000 It is, but then at the flip side, we're really passionate about protecting what you and I love, right?

00:22:27.000 Our wildlands and our waterways and our wildlife especially.

00:22:30.000 So we have a passionate interest in protecting those resources, and not to mention keeping our public safe in the same breath.

00:22:37.000 I think?

00:22:54.000 But you have, you know, all the other threats that come with that.

00:22:59.000 You know, it's not just an armed gunman.

00:23:00.000 They're putting punji pits, literally Vietnam-era punji pits on some of these trails.

00:23:05.000 Can you explain a punji pit for people who don't know?

00:23:06.000 Absolutely.

00:23:07.000 So, back in the Vietnam conflict, what the Viet Cong would do to deter our American soldiers is they'd dig a pit underground on a trail. 0.83

00:23:16.000 It would be about 18 to 20 inches deep and, you know, square to kind of cover a whole trail.

00:23:21.000 Then they'd cover it up with Bamboo or leaf litter, so it just looked like the trail.

00:23:25.000 And then our soldiers would kind of walk and they'd step into that, and here's these sharpened sticks out of bamboo that are super sharp.

00:23:31.000 And they're pointed upwards, so when you step into it, you're gonna shear a shin, you're gonna puncture your leg, maybe an artery.

00:23:38.000 And they would put human excrement, excuse me, on the points.

00:23:46.000 I think?

00:24:07.000 In the Hidden War era.

00:24:10.000 And our point man was about to step into this thing.

00:24:13.000 And our canine, Phoebe, that I'm sure, you know, we talked about it on Steven's show, a little bit on Meat Eater, and also Mike Ritland, who has a show called Mic Drop.

00:24:21.000 And he's a SEAL Team 3 veteran and canine trainer.

00:24:24.000 He really got into the dog stories, right?

00:24:26.000 We talked about that.

00:24:27.000 But Phoebe, amazing dog. 1.00

00:24:29.000 She had been trained to sniff these banned poisons so she could smell it, you know, a mile out with that amazing nose our canines have.

00:24:36.000 And right before our point man was about to step into it, Phoebe alerted.

00:24:40.000 And Brian pulled everybody back, her handler, my teammate.

00:24:43.000 And sure enough, he did some digging, pulled back the tarp, and then here's his punji pit. 0.53

00:24:47.000 And it had the band toxics actually on the sticks.

00:24:51.000 So what would that have done if one of us had stepped into it?

00:24:54.000 So that was a real aggressive anti-personnel technique.

00:24:57.000 That could hurt.

00:24:57.000 That could have decimated a hunter or hiker or anybody else.

00:25:02.000 Or wildlife.

00:25:04.000 Or wildlife.

00:25:04.000 Yeah, some of these pit traps for wildlife and these big wells they're digging in cisterns.

00:25:10.000 And they're doing this to keep people out or they're doing this for animals?

00:25:14.000 What are they doing?

00:25:15.000 Something like that has to be targeted against people.

00:25:18.000 But there's a lot of different things for animals, too.

00:25:20.000 There's a lot of things to keep animals away from the plants.

00:25:24.000 They'll dig big pit traps that are...

00:25:27.000 They'll put garbage in them, or they'll use them like when we were in the middle of our...

00:25:30.000 Really severe drought that we just came out of here in California a couple of years ago, all these mountain streams were just bone dry.

00:25:37.000 So they would go to the lower lands and we were doing a lot of work, you know, in the Delta region, the Sacramento Delta and the lowlands.

00:25:43.000 And they, even if they, you know, we're getting water from the Delta and the raised land would dry up, they would dig, hand dig wells, 20, 30 feet deep and they leave them open and they're getting water from them and pumping out water out of the bottom, but those stay open.

00:25:56.000 So yeah, our big, our big game animals drop into those, or we could drop into them.

00:26:00.000 So, multiple hazards.

00:26:03.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:26:04.000 Is there an estimate of how many cartel members are growing in this country right now?

00:26:10.000 If you say there's 27, 28 states, is that what you said?

00:26:13.000 Is there a rough estimate of how many cartel members are here right now doing this kind of stuff?

00:26:20.000 You know, it's a real approximation because you only know based on who you catch or who you've been able to debrief.

00:26:26.000 But like in California, we know from the amount of grows we deal with every year just on the trespass, you know, cartel front, and the number of operatives it takes to run a grow and get it started and then harvest it.

00:26:39.000 I mean, conservative estimate 10,000.

00:26:41.000 10,000 people?

00:26:43.000 Just in California?

00:26:44.000 Just in California.

00:26:45.000 And the reason we say that, and I always go very conservative because it's such a kind of a silent enterprise and it's really hard to get some of this data, but we've just validated it through the numbers of things we run across.

00:26:57.000 You know, when you look at the fact that it takes two skilled growers that are vetted because they cut their teeth down in Mexico doing it effectively under the Federalist nose.

00:27:07.000 And they grow well.

00:27:08.000 And you mentioned this when you had Mike Baker on the show, which was interesting.

00:27:12.000 And you hit it on the head when you said, man, these guys are really resourceful.

00:27:15.000 You know, you've got to respect their work ethic.

00:27:18.000 And you have to.

00:27:19.000 Because they're hiking waterline.

00:27:22.000 They're hiking infrastructure in.

00:27:23.000 They're covering their tracks.

00:27:25.000 They're out there for six months at a time.

00:27:27.000 You said they were walking around with carpet strapped to their feet so they didn't leave footprints?

00:27:32.000 Yeah, in Hidmore especially, we have a whole lot of photos in that book about things we've seen on trail cameras, and they will put felt-lined, lined soft felt on their shoes, tie them up tight, and if they're walking like an old forest road that's got a gravel base, you'll never see that track.

00:27:49.000 I mean, you've tracked big game, I've done it.

00:27:51.000 It's the same type of technique, and if you don't have any sign...

00:27:55.000 I mean, they're really good at disguising them.

00:27:57.000 We actually found a guy, and I have a picture of this in the book and also in the PowerPoint when I teach to this throughout the country.

00:28:04.000 Cow hooves actually carved out of wood because a couple years ago, we were, you know, the U.S. Forest Service, a lot of this grow problem is on our national forests.

00:28:13.000 You know, Northern California, Northeastern California, not so much Silicon Valley where I started, but the rest of the state, even down here.

00:28:20.000 And what these guys would do is there's cattle leases on those properties where, you know, ranchers can run cattle on part of the forest and, you know, or a joint on private property.

00:28:28.000 And we were getting tips on a bunch of grows, you know, or you've seen them from the air or a hunter or angler would report them or we'd have a suspicion because of a waterway or we'd see some plants from satellite or whatever.

00:28:38.000 And we'd go try to find this grow and we weren't picking up tracks.

00:28:41.000 And we're, you know, we're pretty good at finding these things now.

00:28:44.000 We've been trial and error in it for a lot of years.

00:28:47.000 But we're seeing a lot of cattle tracks because we're running around with cows.

00:28:50.000 And sure enough, they were putting on cow hooves and strapping them on top or underneath their boots, clomping around to disguise themselves as cattle.

00:28:59.000 Clever, right?

00:29:00.000 And then once they get way up into a deep canyon where they're going to put their grow, they just take them off and throw them in a backpack.

00:29:06.000 And then the light bulb went off.

00:29:07.000 We better look at our tracks a little more carefully.

00:29:10.000 So how do you guys try to go about finding these things?

00:29:13.000 Do you rely on people reporting them, or do you have aerial surveys?

00:29:20.000 It's a mix of all of that.

00:29:22.000 We get a lot of reports from people on the ground, and our best reporting parties, or what we call RPs, are hunters and anglers.

00:29:31.000 When it comes to the outdoor public, but anyone in the outdoors could run across them.

00:29:35.000 But hunters and anglers especially, because...

00:29:37.000 Where do we go when we're going to find a good waterhole for elk or we're hunting blacktail?

00:29:43.000 We're not going to stay on the beaten path, man.

00:29:45.000 We're going to go down to the headwaters.

00:29:47.000 We're going to find a pristine area.

00:29:48.000 We want to get away from people.

00:29:50.000 So they're the people that are going the deepest into the backcountry.

00:29:53.000 Absolutely.

00:29:54.000 Absolutely.

00:29:54.000 And then they're finding the water source and maybe they're following it and it's dry or it's diverted like what I found in 2004 that started this whole craziness.

00:30:03.000 And then they run into a grow.

00:30:05.000 We also do find it from the air.

00:30:08.000 You know, we do all agencies.

00:30:09.000 It's no secret, no tactical reveal.

00:30:12.000 We fly to look for this stuff from the air.

00:30:14.000 I have a friend who found one on Tejon Ranch.

00:30:17.000 Really?

00:30:17.000 Okay.

00:30:18.000 Yeah, a few years back.

00:30:19.000 And I didn't think anything of it.

00:30:21.000 I thought it was just some crazy person decided to try to grow pot.

00:30:25.000 This is back before it was recreationally legal.

00:30:27.000 Okay.

00:30:28.000 And there was no shootout or anything crazy like that.

00:30:31.000 Good to hear.

00:30:31.000 They got there after.

00:30:33.000 Yeah, either they realized that their grow-op had been compromised and they took off, but, you know, Tejon Ranch is enormous.

00:30:40.000 It's like 270,000 acres.

00:30:42.000 Yeah.

00:30:42.000 And just the gall of these guys to go deep into that ranch and set up this grow site.

00:30:48.000 Right.

00:30:48.000 And the guys who worked there, I guess they just stumbled upon it.

00:30:52.000 I think they stumbled upon it because of garbage, too, if I remember correctly.

00:30:55.000 Right.

00:30:55.000 Yeah, that follows track.

00:30:57.000 And the thing, now you're talking about a private hunting ranch that's got a cattle lease and all that.

00:31:02.000 Tahone's huge.

00:31:03.000 We've done a lot of good stuff with Tahone Ranch and supported, you know, good hunting programs there.

00:31:07.000 But an interesting statistic, when I retired last year in December in 2018, you know, I mean, we keep stats ever since.

00:31:14.000 One of the cool things about our specialized team starting in 2013 is...

00:31:18.000 We solidified all the documentation to be spot on.

00:31:20.000 You know, reporting was kind of haphazard throughout the state.

00:31:23.000 We weren't sure what other agencies were doing, but we knew what we were doing now.

00:31:27.000 And so I'm keeping that data.

00:31:28.000 And there was a real shift in just public land presence of these cartel growers.

00:31:33.000 And by the time I retired last year, it was almost a 50-50 split.

00:31:37.000 So ranches like Tahone Ranch, a private hunting club in the Silicon Valley, one up in Shasta County.

00:31:43.000 So You know, where they're doing big-time conservation projects to get blacktail and mule deer and tule elk and everything else up in numbers.

00:31:51.000 And now they've got this presence on their hunting club hitting one of their sensitive waterways, you know.

00:31:56.000 So it's not just a public land thing, and it's really good for everybody listening to know that.

00:32:00.000 You could find it anywhere, and you stumbled on it.

00:32:03.000 And it's funny you mentioned the reporting parties.

00:32:05.000 The cool thing, after I did Stephen's show on Meat Eater and talked to those guys, we started to get tips.

00:32:12.000 I actually got a tip, and it's in play.

00:32:15.000 I won't say too much more about it, but we'll be talking when it's all over and done, but it's going to get handled.

00:32:21.000 It's so cool to see the guys like you and I that hunt and love it and love the passion of what's out there are out there stumbling on this stuff and getting out safely.

00:32:29.000 We're fired up enough not to wait.

00:32:31.000 We're calling people to say, hey, it's out there.

00:32:33.000 Can you help us?

00:32:34.000 Or it's the warden, sheriffs, or Are you guys getting any incidents of hikers or anyone getting shot at?

00:32:39.000 Yeah, it's happened.

00:32:40.000 It's happened.

00:32:41.000 Fortunately, it doesn't happen a lot where we have a lot of fatalities.

00:32:45.000 But I want to say about five, six years ago, we had a father-daughter combination on a deer hunt up in one of the D zones in northeastern California.

00:32:54.000 And they were shot at by cartel growers going in on a deer opener to try to harvest her first deer.

00:32:59.000 You know, she was coming up through the program.

00:33:01.000 Jeez.

00:33:02.000 Yeah, it was horrible.

00:33:03.000 Unfortunately, they weren't hurt.

00:33:04.000 They got out of the area.

00:33:05.000 They reported it.

00:33:07.000 We've had people run out of gardens by some of these growers.

00:33:12.000 We have had other shots fired, and we've had people just stay out of areas because once they see it or they see a guy holding a weapon like that in...

00:33:19.000 A marijuana plantation they know isn't legit, they're out of there.

00:33:23.000 Is there an area where they, I mean, it's all public land mostly, and private land, ranch land, but is there an area of the state where there's more of them?

00:33:34.000 You know, that's what I thought when I started.

00:33:36.000 I mean, you hear about the Humboldt, you know, Trinity, the Emerald Triangle, right?

00:33:40.000 Just the hub of it.

00:33:41.000 And I thought it was more prevalent there.

00:33:43.000 And it's certainly massive up there.

00:33:45.000 But I mean, from Silicon Valley, where I'm from, you wouldn't think of those foothills in that part of the state, you know, being so overrun.

00:33:53.000 And during those, what I call, you know, the formative years of learning this and getting involved in it and specializing in it, we were really, I got to give a shout out to the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office and the guys then that took us on as equals.

00:34:04.000 And my partners that really brought us in as, you know, not only tacticians, but tracking and able to identify sign as wardens doing the hunting thing in the woods, where we could go and really specialize at this and be a lot safer and do it a lot better than when my partner got shot in 05. And we were doing 25...

00:34:22.000 Public and private land cartel grows in the Silicon Valley at least 20 to 25 a season.

00:34:28.000 Jesus!

00:34:28.000 That's a ton!

00:34:29.000 That's insane!

00:34:30.000 And that doesn't seem...

00:34:31.000 I mean...

00:34:31.000 So for folks who don't know what the season is, explain that.

00:34:35.000 Yeah, the eradication season, what we call the gross season when we operate the heaviest, is usually...

00:34:40.000 An early start would be sometime mid-May, and then we go all the way to about the end of September.

00:34:45.000 I mean, there's some wiggle room on both ends of that, depending on water and how long the winter goes.

00:34:50.000 But from May to pretty much the end of September, it's going on.

00:34:54.000 So just somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six months, and you're looking at 25 different operations?

00:34:59.000 Yeah, and that's in just Santa Clara County as an example.

00:35:02.000 And when we formed the full-time team in 2013, and we had representatives, and we have representatives on our marijuana enforcement team, our agency-specific team, We have guys covering every part of the state and responsible team members spread out covering every county.

00:35:20.000 And as of now, and we've been, well, we had six full operational years before I retired.

00:35:26.000 Now it's in good hands and the team's doing fantastic work.

00:35:29.000 We've had at least a grow, if not several, in every county in the state, and most counties multiple.

00:35:34.000 So to put it in perspective, on an average, your team would do 125 missions, if not more.

00:35:40.000 So that's 125 grow sites that we were responsible for doing the workup, the planning, going in and doing the apprehension, the stalking to catch these guys with our canines and with our tactics.

00:35:51.000 Then doing the eradication, and 90% of them are all, you know, tainted in that ferdan and the carbofuran, sometimes to the point that it's so freshly applied that we can't touch the plants for a couple of weeks.

00:36:02.000 We can't even, even with protective gear, with nitrile gloves, face protection, masks, the whole nine.

00:36:08.000 Is that dangerous?

00:36:09.000 It's that dangerous.

00:36:10.000 And no exaggeration to put it in perspective, the two officers on the federal level that were exposed just ingested some of those fumes, and you get blindness, you get nausea, you can't breathe.

00:36:22.000 They were out of circulation, fortunately not fatally, but they were out of circulation for weeks, sometimes months.

00:36:27.000 And federal OSHA came down with the Forest Service, and of course working closely from the state level, We suddenly were under a lot of protocol on decontamination, what we couldn't touch, and new basic tactics for our safety, for human safety, came down,

00:36:42.000 and it changed the game.

00:36:44.000 So these guys putting this stuff on there, we may not be able to even touch the plants or even cut them safely or put them in nets and contaminate all our gear until it has a chance to dissipate a little bit, and that's 14 days.

00:36:56.000 So what would you guys do if you stumbled upon something and you knew that it was freshly applied?

00:36:59.000 Would you just have a bunch of officers stand by and guard the area to make sure that these guys didn't come back to try to reclaim the plants?

00:37:07.000 As best we could.

00:37:08.000 Because here's the problem with that.

00:37:10.000 You get a big grow and you know you can't go in and touch these things for a couple of weeks maybe.

00:37:15.000 It could have been applied that day.

00:37:17.000 It could have been applied four days ago.

00:37:19.000 I think?

00:37:42.000 You know, these guys come and go and try to make sure they don't come back.

00:37:45.000 And you have limited resources to begin with, right?

00:37:47.000 So you guys are the initial jobs to protect wildlife, and you're supposed to be doing that.

00:37:51.000 So how much of an impact has that had on wildlife because you guys have been diverted to these illegal grow-ups?

00:37:56.000 Exactly.

00:37:57.000 Well, you know, you hear the term the thin green line, right?

00:38:00.000 Yes.

00:38:00.000 And kind of what I'm all about, being a game warden, and now in phase two in retirement, I'm really trying to speak more nationally to what the thin green line is.

00:38:08.000 Yeah.

00:38:28.000 Right.

00:38:30.000 Right.

00:38:54.000 As exacerbating.

00:38:55.000 You guys are in charge of ivory importation as well?

00:38:58.000 We deal with all that, yeah.

00:38:59.000 Wow.

00:38:59.000 Yeah, we have teams now in our agency, and most of the states do, called wildlife trafficking teams.

00:39:05.000 And it was a good program that came out of the Obama administration that all the states had to do it.

00:39:10.000 We were kind of already doing it, but we had to formalize a little bit.

00:39:13.000 And that was an added challenge that happened right after we formed the whole cannabis enforcement program, which started with the tactical unit that I co-formed.

00:39:21.000 And then all these watershed enforcement teams popped up for cannabis regulation to check the new licensed growers, people trying to do it legitimately, and water use and make sure there weren't abuses.

00:39:32.000 Then wildlife trafficking became a huge issue.

00:39:35.000 The commercialization of wildlife is a huge billion dollar industry worldwide on everything from abalone to sturgeon row to black bear gallbladders, and now ivory especially.

00:39:45.000 The black bear gallbladder one is so weird.

00:39:48.000 Isn't it crazy?

00:39:49.000 Yeah, it's like a Chinese medicine thing, right?

00:39:53.000 Yeah.

00:39:53.000 Yeah, it's an aphrodisiac.

00:39:55.000 Yeah, but it's not.

00:39:56.000 No.

00:39:57.000 It's not real.

00:39:57.000 But in Alberta, I think it's B.C.? No, in B.C., even though black bear hunting's legal for food, you can't open up the stomach contents.

00:40:07.000 They don't allow them to gut it because they don't want people to be incentivized to sell gallbladders.

00:40:13.000 To grab that gall, yeah. 0.98

00:40:14.000 So strange.

00:40:15.000 So you can eat the bear, but you can't even open up the cavity, the body cavity.

00:40:21.000 So like the heart goes to waste, other parts that people might eat.

00:40:24.000 Yeah.

00:40:25.000 Yeah.

00:40:26.000 Which we never like to see.

00:40:27.000 So strange.

00:40:28.000 It is.

00:40:29.000 But again, it gets back to greed and profit in the market, right?

00:40:33.000 When a gallbladder can be worth $40,000 or more overseas.

00:40:36.000 What?

00:40:36.000 $40,000?

00:40:37.000 Yeah.

00:40:38.000 Really?

00:40:38.000 That's how much a gallbladder can be worth in the black market.

00:40:41.000 Holy shit.

00:40:41.000 Right?

00:40:41.000 Is that freaking crazy?

00:40:42.000 And it doesn't do anything.

00:40:43.000 That's crazy!

00:40:44.000 It doesn't.

00:40:45.000 But because it believes that it does, and it's one of those exotics that I've got to have, and I can't get black bears.

00:40:50.000 Like rhino horn, that kind of thing.

00:40:51.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:40:52.000 Like rhino horn things.

00:40:54.000 I did a lot of that type of work before I went into this Metfocus.

00:40:58.000 And it just shows you how many challenges game wardens have to do.

00:41:02.000 And it's not the old traditional game warden just out checking those licenses anymore.

00:41:06.000 And overwhelmed.

00:41:07.000 We're overwhelmed.

00:41:08.000 Yeah, that's no exaggeration.

00:41:09.000 Now, because this is now a problem that people are aware of, have there been significant resources that have been allocated to try to handle this stuff?

00:41:18.000 Are there new programs to train these young officers coming up?

00:41:23.000 Is there a specific task force that handles that, and then the rest of the guys handle fish and wildlife, or is it just same people, but now you have a whole different level of responsibility?

00:41:34.000 Yeah, it's really cool in California because we are one of the most progressive game warden agencies.

00:41:41.000 And it's interesting because I just spoke back in July, I spoke at the NAWIA conference, which is basically the annual game wardens conference for all of us from all over the country.

00:41:51.000 So I get to work with all the states.

00:41:52.000 And, you know, Florida has a tactical unit for some stuff.

00:41:55.000 Texas has it.

00:41:56.000 And we're the first state to have a dedicated, you know, kind of tactical unit for this cartel growth threat because it's so big in California.

00:42:05.000 But to share that with everybody nationally in my world in the thin green line and for them to start having it happening on the refuges and even just to know this stuff's getting back to their parts of the world and poisoning their cannabis users, you know, unsuspectingly. 0.95

00:42:20.000 Horrible information, right?

00:42:22.000 But we need to know it.

00:42:22.000 And a lot of guys didn't know it.

00:42:24.000 And so that was one thing to see, hey, we need to have a baseline training.

00:42:27.000 And the way we do it here in California is we all go through a really stringent academy.

00:42:31.000 Everyone gets their basic tools, arrest control and defensive tactics, you know, and firearms training and all of that and get good at being the traditional game warden and doing all the traditional stuff.

00:42:41.000 And they get, you know, get their feet wet out doing their own thing for a couple of years and And then we start to find the people that have the motivation or want to get onto a specialized unit, like our MET team or one of the watershed teams or the wildlife trafficking team.

00:42:56.000 Very seldomly do we put a fresh person there because, you know, I think to really be a good game warden, you got to cut your teeth on all the traditional stuff that's critical of just having to check guys with guns all the time.

00:43:08.000 You know, most cops look at that and go, that's crazy.

00:43:11.000 I mean, everybody you check has a knife or a firearm.

00:43:14.000 Yeah.

00:43:15.000 Well, fortunately, 99% of them are guys like you and me that want to see a game warden, and the game warden wants to see us.

00:43:19.000 But for that one felon that's on parole, and he's in the woods hiding out, and we run across that a lot, and I ran across a ton of that down here in SoCal at the start of my career, and I've got some interesting stories about that.

00:43:31.000 So guys who skip bail, and then they go and hide?

00:43:34.000 Yeah.

00:43:35.000 Yep.

00:43:35.000 And they've got like a no bail warrant.

00:43:37.000 They're wanted on some warrant somewhere.

00:43:39.000 And so they're off fishing.

00:43:40.000 They have an illegal firearm.

00:43:41.000 Maybe they're a felon in possession of a firearm they can't even have.

00:43:44.000 And now they're out in a remote area where no cop's going to find me here.

00:43:48.000 And then I'm the new game warden in Riverside County, you know, all freaking motivated, really green.

00:43:52.000 I don't know totally what I'm doing yet.

00:43:54.000 Right.

00:43:55.000 And I'm in that truck cruising, and something I got into down here that was just crazy, but I will say this, it was a heck of a learning curve, and I'm really blessed it went out the way it did, and I was safe in it, but we would get gangbangers from LA here, and they would go over into Riverside County and get into my kind of rural foothills and on the edge of the National Forest,

00:44:14.000 and they'd have AK-47s, and they'd have automatic pistols, and they would spotlight through these canyons Gunning for everything.

00:44:23.000 They'd kill rabbits, they'd kill coyotes, they'd kill deer.

00:44:26.000 They'd get to the end of a canyon that has an outlet of a dam, throw a gill net out, and spend all night there just gill netting fish, and hunting freely and shooting, killing everything with their spotlights.

00:44:37.000 Grab their gill net, grab hundreds of fish, pack up, and then head back to the L.A. Basin.

00:44:43.000 Gangbangers?

00:44:44.000 I'm not kidding.

00:44:46.000 Fishing gangbangers?

00:44:47.000 Yeah.

00:44:48.000 Almost commercial fishing?

00:44:49.000 It sounds nuts, right?

00:44:51.000 So strange.

00:44:51.000 And what would they do with the fish?

00:44:52.000 Oh, they'd eat them, maybe they'd sell them, you know, who knows?

00:44:54.000 Usually with quantities that big, they were getting sold.

00:44:57.000 But the thing that was crazy is I would be, you know, alone.

00:45:00.000 I'd be in my truck.

00:45:01.000 I didn't have a canine yet, you know, and now I just, I just retired with, well, like you're a marshal.

00:45:06.000 I have Apollo, yellow lab, English lab.

00:45:08.000 She's amazing.

00:45:09.000 I'm never going to bite a bad guy, but she's going to lick him to death and try to turn him our way. 1.00

00:45:15.000 But I didn't even have a companion dog at the time.

00:45:17.000 And I would go and run into these guys and go, okay, this is what I learned in the academy, that head-on spotlighting stop that you never want to have, or getting behind them blacked out and tracking them down.

00:45:28.000 And next thing I know, I got AKs, and I got all these frickin' prohibited exotic weapons, and I'm going, this is crazy.

00:45:34.000 I'm pulling these guys out alone.

00:45:35.000 I don't have a lot of backup.

00:45:37.000 So it was just you?

00:45:37.000 It was just me.

00:45:38.000 How many guys did you run into?

00:45:40.000 Sometimes it would be two.

00:45:41.000 One night I pulled like eight people out of a van.

00:45:43.000 Oh shit.

00:45:44.000 And I was alone.

00:45:45.000 Oh shit.

00:45:46.000 And they were all armed, and it was one of my heaviest, most intense cases, and I had been on one year.

00:45:52.000 So this was 1994. And what we were doing in the Riverside squad is we were just saturating the area because we were getting everybody from over on the LA side here spotlighting all our games.

00:46:01.000 So we're like, okay, let's saturate this.

00:46:02.000 And back then, Joe, the game was to catch a spotlight or red-handed because they're so deliberate.

00:46:08.000 Explain spotlight to a lot of people who are listening to this.

00:46:10.000 Yeah, I should have done that.

00:46:12.000 But spotlighting is where you use an artificial light, whether it's a handheld spotlight, a flashlight, whatever.

00:46:17.000 And you go into remote areas and you look to find animals at night because they freeze, they're really relaxed, their eyes glow, and then you shoot them that way.

00:46:25.000 You kill them illegally at night after dark, which is never allowed.

00:46:28.000 You know, it's usually in or out of hunting season because anyone's going to spotlight a deer nine times out of ten.

00:46:33.000 They're not licensed or they're not going to do it during season like we do.

00:46:37.000 So they're doing that.

00:46:38.000 So in our world as game wardens, that's the ultimate wildlife criminal because they're going to kill does, you know, that have that unborn trophy buck for good genetics.

00:46:48.000 They're going to kill a trophy deer way in the rut, you know, that, you know, needs to go another year or whatever.

00:46:53.000 So that's what we focused on.

00:46:54.000 That was like, if I can cut my teeth and get, you know, become a reputable game warden and going after the hardcores, that was the game then. 0.56

00:47:01.000 So it was 94. And I'm pulling these guys out and calling them out on a loudspeaker.

00:47:04.000 I've got my weapon on them.

00:47:05.000 And I'm like, oh man, There's a lot of guys out there.

00:47:09.000 I can't get them to jail.

00:47:10.000 I'm calling back up.

00:47:11.000 I got Riverside County coming in.

00:47:12.000 I mean, we even had the sheriff's office helicopter come in several nights.

00:47:16.000 Once we got to know each other and they realized, who is this game warden?

00:47:19.000 And what are these game wardens in Riverside County going out into just crazy areas by themselves?

00:47:23.000 They'd monitor our traffic and they'd come in on the helicopter and light it up and call these bad guys out on loudspeakers just to make sure we were okay.

00:47:30.000 Feels good when the cavalry comes on those nights, man, let me tell you.

00:47:33.000 Well, so in those sort of situations, they just didn't know that you would ever run into someone that's that armed, that many guys in the van or what have you.

00:47:42.000 Eight people.

00:47:43.000 So the reason why you're patrolling by yourself is because they didn't anticipate anything like this.

00:47:47.000 Well, and we didn't have the bodies.

00:47:49.000 Right.

00:47:49.000 This was one of the things that was crazy.

00:47:50.000 We get back to the thin green line concept and realize that one game warden is responsible for...

00:47:57.000 200 to 250 square miles, give or take.

00:48:00.000 Whoa! 0.71

00:48:00.000 And you know how big Riverside County is on the Inland Empire. 0.71

00:48:03.000 200 square miles?

00:48:04.000 Maybe more, you know, depending on what part of the state you're in.

00:48:06.000 One game warden?

00:48:07.000 One game warden.

00:48:08.000 So, a squad of seven game wardens, to put it in perspective, check this out, brother.

00:48:13.000 When I was supervising traditional patrol before we started the Special Ops Met team in Santa Clara County, we always had vacancies because we were always low on bodies.

00:48:22.000 We couldn't hire game wardens fast enough.

00:48:24.000 We weren't funded for it or whatever the case may be.

00:48:25.000 So we might have four or five game wardens for seven positions.

00:48:29.000 And we had to cover all of Santa Clara County, which is everything from the city to all those foothills.

00:48:33.000 And there's a lot of it in Silicon Valley people don't realize.

00:48:37.000 All of San Benito County, which is huge.

00:48:40.000 Hollister, Gilroy, right where I'm from in Gilroy, that whole area down to the south.

00:48:43.000 That is just massive mountain country, full of wildlife.

00:48:47.000 And then part of Monterey County.

00:48:48.000 And I had five people and myself as a lieutenant.

00:48:51.000 That is insane.

00:48:52.000 I can't believe that.

00:48:53.000 So to go out on a spotlighting patrol to that point and have a partner with you, just one other game warden, that's tough.

00:49:00.000 You're basically pulling a whole other area.

00:49:02.000 You can't work night hunters.

00:49:03.000 Is spotlighting that common?

00:49:05.000 It is.

00:49:05.000 It is still going on in the state, and it's going on a lot.

00:49:10.000 Back then here, because there had been so little presence here in Southern California, it was off the hook.

00:49:17.000 It was crazy.

00:49:23.000 I had a really good ride-along with me, a wildlife biologist, just a savvy hunter, great eyes.

00:49:27.000 He became kind of like my right-hand man, Brian.

00:49:31.000 And I said, we're going to catch a spotlighter every night this week.

00:49:34.000 He goes, you think so?

00:49:35.000 I go, it's that crazy.

00:49:36.000 Let's see if we can do it.

00:49:38.000 And so we went and worked all night long.

00:49:40.000 We started on Monday night.

00:49:42.000 How do you catch them?

00:49:42.000 Do you look for a spotlight?

00:49:44.000 Like, do you get to a vantage point in glass?

00:49:46.000 Yeah, it's just like glass in a big basin for elk, right?

00:49:49.000 You get in a really good overwatch, you get the most visibility, you know, hide the truck, and you watch.

00:49:54.000 And you find areas where it's likely to happen.

00:49:57.000 And it takes a while to learn where that's going to be, just because you've got this huge district and you could have 20 places where guys spotlight.

00:50:04.000 But until you get into the area as a new warden and really get to figure it all out, you don't know where to be and it's a trial and error.

00:50:10.000 But, you know, it took me six months, give or take, just going out there and scouting hard and seeing where this road goes and how does that canyon look?

00:50:17.000 What type of water do I have down there?

00:50:19.000 What am I seeing at low light in the evening when animals are coming to water?

00:50:22.000 Ooh, I got a whole herd of elk here.

00:50:24.000 I got a whole herd of deer.

00:50:25.000 I got some bucks.

00:50:26.000 You know, I'm seeing other animals run around.

00:50:28.000 This is going to be a hot spot because guys can get to it.

00:50:31.000 And if you just put the time in, you just kind of lie in wait, you know, kind of put your little hide together.

00:50:36.000 Just like hunting big game, eventually it starts happening.

00:50:40.000 And by 1994, and I've been in district a year down here, I pretty much had my spots figured out.

00:50:45.000 My partners and other parts of Riverside did too.

00:50:47.000 So we'd all be out alone so we could cover more area and talking back and forth.

00:50:51.000 I mean, and I'm going to date myself here, but cell phones are brand new.

00:50:54.000 So we all had those flip cell phones.

00:50:56.000 How old are you?

00:50:57.000 I'm going to be 51 in November.

00:50:59.000 I'm 52. Just don't worry about it.

00:51:00.000 No, no.

00:51:01.000 Yeah.

00:51:01.000 So we're right there, you know?

00:51:03.000 All that era.

00:51:04.000 So when I started, I mean, it was the flip phone, you know, the Star Trek communicator.

00:51:07.000 I called my partner, Jerry, like, I love those.

00:51:09.000 Where are you at?

00:51:09.000 They're great.

00:51:10.000 I'm like, where are you at?

00:51:11.000 He goes, I'm over here in Thomas Mountain.

00:51:12.000 I'm like, I'm over here.

00:51:12.000 You see anything yet?

00:51:13.000 I go, I got one light working.

00:51:15.000 I gotta go.

00:51:16.000 But that's crazy.

00:51:17.000 You're talking about enormous pieces of land that you guys are responsible for.

00:51:22.000 It's hard for people to put into perspective that don't spend any time in the woods that you would be able to even find these folks in this enormous area.

00:51:31.000 Yeah.

00:51:32.000 Yeah.

00:51:33.000 It starts off as a needle in a haystack type thing, you know?

00:51:36.000 But once you get into it, you get fairly good at it.

00:51:39.000 But it always is difficult because, again, just the percentages of catching a guy on the right night that he's going to be out there.

00:51:45.000 And then you got the guys that kind of get savvy to knowing where the game warden lives, driving by his house, looking for his patrol truck to see if he's out that night.

00:51:53.000 Where's the truck parked?

00:51:54.000 We start getting into that problem.

00:51:56.000 So we always kind of maintain as covert as we can.

00:52:00.000 We're known in the neighborhood.

00:52:01.000 And the thing is, we live at home.

00:52:03.000 We work out of our homes.

00:52:04.000 Home office.

00:52:05.000 We're closed to our community because if we kept our truck at a field office, we'd have no response time.

00:52:09.000 All spread out.

00:52:11.000 So we get very community-oriented in community functions, in conservation groups, and everybody knows us, whether it's a big city or a small little town in the mountains.

00:52:19.000 So you got guys doing the cat and mouse thing looking for us and making sure, hey, is this truck there or is he out patrolling?

00:52:26.000 Well, maybe I won't go out tonight.

00:52:27.000 But that era, Joe, in 1994 was off the hook.

00:52:31.000 I didn't get a spotlighter every night that week, but I got six out of seven.

00:52:34.000 And one night I had a double, so it was crazy.

00:52:36.000 Wow.

00:52:37.000 And seasoned a ton of guns.

00:52:39.000 Some guys were going to jail.

00:52:40.000 Some weren't.

00:52:41.000 But a lot of wildlife was saved that night because they would have done a lot of harm.

00:52:45.000 Now, most of these guys, are they doing this recreationally for fun?

00:52:48.000 Are they doing it for food?

00:52:50.000 The group I was getting into down here, it was recreational.

00:52:53.000 It might have been to sell the meat.

00:52:55.000 I couldn't prove that.

00:52:56.000 Or it was just to go kill stuff.

00:52:58.000 You do get people that need meat that do spotlight after dark because they need the meat and stuff like that.

00:53:04.000 It's still a violation.

00:53:06.000 We still deal with it as such, but if we ascertain that, we're going to be fair about it.

00:53:11.000 We said, okay, look, you're poaching.

00:53:12.000 I know you're starving.

00:53:14.000 It's out of season.

00:53:14.000 It's in season.

00:53:15.000 You have a tag, but you just really got to get that meat.

00:53:17.000 I mean, there are certain cases where you just kind of feel for that person to go.

00:53:21.000 I see where the motivation was, you know, and a very small percentage of poachers are that way, but some of them are just, you know, they're just trying to feed their family.

00:53:29.000 Right.

00:53:30.000 And it's a whole different game, and we're going to be fair about it, or we should be fair about it.

00:53:34.000 Were most of them gangbangers, or most of them criminals?

00:53:37.000 Like, was there an average?

00:53:39.000 Down here, 70-80%.

00:53:42.000 Yeah, had criminal histories, had illegal weapons, associated with gangs.

00:53:46.000 So it was almost like recreation for them.

00:53:48.000 It almost was.

00:53:49.000 That was like practice.

00:53:50.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:53:51.000 Yeah.

00:53:51.000 And I remember one case down here that was a pretty crazy one.

00:53:55.000 It was three guys, pretty inebriated, pretty liquored up.

00:53:58.000 And it was a head-on stop.

00:54:00.000 And one of them had a $50,000 no-bail warrant for cocaine trafficking out of Mexico.

00:54:06.000 And that was in that week that we had a crazy spotlight and things going on.

00:54:10.000 So it was just the demographic of down here, where up north it wouldn't be necessarily that felon, but that guy that just wanted that trophy buck and to cheat to get it.

00:54:19.000 If I could give you a magic wand, Okay.

00:54:21.000 And you could, like, I could say, John, it's up to you.

00:54:25.000 Fix all this.

00:54:26.000 How do you do it?

00:54:27.000 You have unlimited resources.

00:54:29.000 Man, that's a great question.

00:54:30.000 And I'll go into the bottle, the genie right here.

00:54:33.000 One, we put more game wardens in the field, because we do need more, and we pay them better.

00:54:38.000 And here's the rub.

00:54:40.000 Because there's this perception that game wardens just check fishing licenses or they might not be real cops, We're paid about 40% less than a county sheriff, than a highway patrolman, than a city police guy.

00:54:53.000 You think it's because of perception, really?

00:54:56.000 Perception and public lack of knowledge, perhaps.

00:54:58.000 So as far as funds get allocated, they say, well, game wardens, come on.

00:55:03.000 Right.

00:55:03.000 This is the going rate.

00:55:04.000 This is what we've always paid.

00:55:06.000 40%?

00:55:07.000 Yeah.

00:55:07.000 That's horrible.

00:55:09.000 We're in a constant, constant salary equity fight.

00:55:11.000 We've been really pushing that for...

00:55:14.000 You know, 15 years, plus or minus, something that really started to legitimize us.

00:55:20.000 And in 2010, when my first book came out, War in the Woods, that's when the Wild Justice Game War and Reality Show and National Geographic Channel aired for the first time, and that was our agency.

00:55:31.000 And that was the first of what are now a lot of Game Warden shows, and the more the merrier.

00:55:36.000 I've never seen that one.

00:55:37.000 Wild Justice?

00:55:38.000 Good?

00:55:38.000 It's good, yeah.

00:55:39.000 It was us, you know, so I'm partially a little bit.

00:55:42.000 Right, but is it mostly busting people for wildlife, or is it you get into the marijuana stuff, too?

00:55:47.000 We do actually get into the marijuana stuff.

00:55:49.000 Something the Wild Justice film crews really resonated with.

00:55:53.000 A lot of the guys that are on the team now, myself included, ended up being featured like their main people for the better part of like three seasons because we weren't just bringing them the poaching cases, the traditional stuff which needed to get shown.

00:56:04.000 And we didn't have our formalized team yet, but I was embedded with Santa Clara County.

00:56:08.000 Brian and Canine Phoebe were up in Shasta, but we were getting brought together for the show, and he was starting to work down with me in the Bay Area and bringing that Wonder Dog Phoebe into the mix that he had honed for years.

00:56:20.000 And we started to show this cartel marijuana stuff through the show.

00:56:23.000 And that's what got the ratings.

00:56:25.000 That was worldwide broadcast, the number one hit on Nat Geo for three years.

00:56:29.000 And that opened the door.

00:56:30.000 We needed that exposure.

00:56:32.000 And it's the same thing with writing these books and doing the TV I do.

00:56:36.000 It's a fine line between risking some exposure or getting the message out.

00:56:42.000 Like I said, we're so thin on the thin green line, we need all the exposure we can get.

00:56:45.000 We're a little agency, our funding's limited, but we're doing a multitude of jobs even outside of the marijuana stuff.

00:56:50.000 So that started to help, and now we're starting to get the recognition of the professionalism and the capabilities we have, especially with this tactical unit.

00:56:59.000 To hopefully help with things like salary and numbers.

00:57:02.000 The magic wand, brother, is numbers.

00:57:04.000 Numbers.

00:57:04.000 Just numbers of officers.

00:57:05.000 And that are paid well enough to live in the Silicon Valley, to live here in LA. That's hilarious.

00:57:10.000 Right?

00:57:10.000 No one's paid well enough to live in Silicon Valley.

00:57:12.000 I mean, millionaires are moving out.

00:57:13.000 Yeah.

00:57:13.000 And that's where I grew up.

00:57:14.000 And if I wasn't embedded there as a family member, I couldn't have afforded to stay.

00:57:17.000 And I had great, great wardens come in and do fantastic work that didn't want to leave Silicon Valley, but they're like, I can't buy a house here.

00:57:25.000 I've got to go to Butte County or I've got to go to Shasta County.

00:57:27.000 I've got to get in the woods a little bit.

00:57:29.000 Drive an hour to work.

00:57:31.000 Yeah.

00:57:31.000 So has there been discussion?

00:57:35.000 Has anybody brought this up?

00:57:37.000 Dan Crenshaw was not aware of this when I discussed it with him when he was talking about federally legalizing marijuana.

00:57:42.000 It's not just about...

00:57:44.000 Right.

00:57:55.000 Exactly.

00:57:57.000 Exactly.

00:57:59.000 And has there been discussion, like, to someone to bring this up, like, this is one of the primary problems with having marijuana federally illegal, with California having it state legal, that there is this massive confusion and this, you know, diminishing of penalties in California with growing illegally.

00:58:17.000 There totally is.

00:58:18.000 And, you know, you've got the opposite ends of the spectrum.

00:58:20.000 And here's what we're learning with regulation.

00:58:22.000 And I've always said this.

00:58:23.000 I said, look, if we're going to regulate, and we need to regulate to stop this black market, Let's do it smart.

00:58:31.000 You know, let's, for one, everything we really tried to push here in California was regulate legitimate cannabis the correct way, keep people safe.

00:58:41.000 Test it.

00:58:42.000 Test it.

00:58:42.000 Make sure those pesticides, the cartel pesticides aren't right.

00:58:45.000 Absolutely, man.

00:58:46.000 And as long as people aren't hurting themselves or other people, they're not destroying waterways, we're not getting in gunfights over it, great.

00:58:53.000 You know, no problem.

00:58:54.000 But for like the, you know, the outdoor trespassing with these cartels, We're good to go.

00:59:27.000 You know, because of the black market.

00:59:29.000 So you can take, you know, cannabis even out of the equation and look at the environmental impacts and look at the public safety, but we have to do something to regulate this thing uniformly across the board, and we have to break the black market.

00:59:42.000 But what I've seen, and I go into the last chapter of my new book, Hidden Work, extensively on this, is what are the challenges moving forward after seeing regulation in play for two years?

00:59:51.000 Boots on the ground, watching it, and having a great relationship with legitimate cannabis growers.

00:59:56.000 And I'll tell you a few stories that really opened my eyes and got us unified, right?

01:00:01.000 Because the whole thing is we need to be unified on this concept.

01:00:04.000 Not polarized left or right, anti-cannabis, pro-cannabis.

01:00:07.000 Let's get unified environmental safety, public safety, all of it.

01:00:13.000 But because of how we've regulated and the licensing fees and the protocol and everything else, we've had all of these black market growers in the 215 days that wanted to get legal and saw everything coming and the cost to do it and being on Big Brother's radar or law enforcement's radar.

01:00:30.000 And they backed out.

01:00:32.000 Like in Humboldt County, we had, I want to say, in the better part of 10,000 to 50,000 growers ready to regulate, and we barely got 1,000.

01:00:40.000 And they went, you know, I can't afford to go through this permitting process.

01:00:44.000 I can't afford the delays, so I'm just going to go back on the black market.

01:00:47.000 I'm not going to be on the radar.

01:00:48.000 And that has to stop if we're going to regulate, right?

01:00:51.000 Yeah.

01:00:52.000 The thing that was really interesting, and I never saw this coming, but when we were about to roll out Prop 64 and it had been voted for recreational and the medical laws were tightening up, I was the first law enforcement guy, being from a marijuana enforcement team,

01:01:07.000 to go into these California Grower Association-hosted grower meetings.

01:01:12.000 And my first one was in Santa Cruz, right over the hill from my place, right?

01:01:15.000 And I mean, I'm in the, you know, I'm in the BDUs, the camo bottoms, the polo.

01:01:19.000 I'm going into my, you know, my training attire for Met.

01:01:22.000 And the look on 500 Grover's faces when I walked into that meeting, just like, what's he doing here?

01:01:28.000 Conflict of interest.

01:01:29.000 He's working us.

01:01:30.000 He's a guy's watching our license plates.

01:01:31.000 And I'm just like, guys, everybody breathe.

01:01:33.000 I'm going to tell you a story.

01:01:35.000 I'm going to show you a PowerPoint.

01:01:36.000 It's going to be graphic.

01:01:38.000 I'm not here to work anybody.

01:01:40.000 I'm here to unify.

01:01:42.000 Just hear what I have to say.

01:01:43.000 No judgment.

01:01:45.000 Were these guys aware of how big the situation was before you showed them that?

01:01:49.000 I would have thought so.

01:01:50.000 Because they're in the industry, right?

01:01:51.000 They know weed better than just about anybody.

01:01:53.000 They're high all the time.

01:01:55.000 They're not seeing the cartel.

01:01:57.000 They're not paying attention.

01:01:58.000 They're just growing pot. 0.99

01:02:00.000 Yeah, that's all.

01:02:00.000 I didn't see that guy.

01:02:01.000 Was that kind of trail camera?

01:02:02.000 Why's he got a backpack, like 300 pounds of pipe?

01:02:05.000 Yeah.

01:02:06.000 Explain that.

01:02:07.000 These guys literally would back in hundreds and hundreds of yards of pipe and of tubing for hoses on their back.

01:02:16.000 Oh, they're tough.

01:02:17.000 Yeah, I've got photos in the new book on trail cam with felt on their feet, covering their tracks with these sea bags, 100 plus pounds, and a spool of pipe going up, man.

01:02:26.000 People don't know how hard that is to do.

01:02:27.000 I mean, if these guys just took a legit job, they'd be like the best employees you'd ever have.

01:02:32.000 Oh, they would.

01:02:33.000 They would, man.

01:02:34.000 They're tough.

01:02:35.000 And they're, I mean, to look at the environment they live in for six months, man.

01:02:38.000 They're all outdoors.

01:02:39.000 But I was at this meeting, and I gave the presentation.

01:02:42.000 I talked about it, and it was crazy to see a look of shock on these grower groups' faces.

01:02:48.000 I mean, some women were in tears. 1.00

01:02:51.000 Some of the guys were just, like, pissed off and pumping their fists, and they're like, that's bullshit.

01:02:55.000 We are not about that.

01:02:57.000 We're not about doing anything bad with our water.

01:02:59.000 We like our wildlife.

01:03:00.000 We just want to grow cannabis.

01:03:02.000 We want to be regulated, you know?

01:03:04.000 And...

01:03:05.000 It was such a turnaround, you know, from the traditional relationship between law enforcement and the cannabis world.

01:03:12.000 And to be the one guy there with all of the growing community there and then go from complete horror that I was there as an adversary or judgment or anything of that or, you know, to...

01:03:23.000 To do anything negative from an enforcement standpoint, to suddenly having real talks of what was going out.

01:03:29.000 And I could kind of see the authenticity, the genuineness on some of their faces, the way they reacted to my slides, to the videos.

01:03:37.000 And so when I left that first meeting, I remember I just got flooded in my patrol truck.

01:03:42.000 And I had Apollo with me, my little lab, and she's an icebreaker. 0.81

01:03:45.000 I thought, well, it could be an interesting meeting.

01:03:46.000 I should have the dog for pets, you know?

01:03:48.000 And she jumped in, and all these growers were coming to my truck, and I'm packing up my stuff, and I'm like, wow, this is weird.

01:03:54.000 And it was all these farmer supervisors from all over the state, Mendocino County, up in the Emerald Triangle, Santa Cruz, and they're just giving me their cards.

01:04:01.000 I go, hey, Lieutenant, I have workers.

01:04:04.000 I have resources.

01:04:06.000 We will hike in and clean up a grow with you.

01:04:08.000 Let us help the Met team.

01:04:10.000 Let us help the cannabis program.

01:04:11.000 Whatever we can do, and no charge.

01:04:14.000 And that was genuine, man.

01:04:15.000 I was really, really taken back by that in a positive way.

01:04:18.000 And I realized if we get the legitimate farmers on our side, and they're aware of this, they will help market that message.

01:04:25.000 Also, they have money.

01:04:26.000 And they have money.

01:04:27.000 Yeah, the legitimate farmers are making a lot of money.

01:04:29.000 That would be a great way for, you know, I mean, tax-wise.

01:04:33.000 I mean, there's extremely high taxes on cannabis as it is.

01:04:36.000 But if we could allocate that taxes to you guys, that would be incredible.

01:04:42.000 Where's the money going?

01:04:43.000 Let's have a certain percentage of it designated for wardens.

01:04:48.000 That's starting to happen, too, because now that we've had a couple of years and we're seeing some of the regulatory funding and the taxes trickle back, I'm in contact with my team all the time.

01:04:58.000 I still get to see them periodically and train and do things like that and really give them a shout-out for all the amazing risks they're taking and the work they're doing and promote their message of what they're out there doing.

01:05:09.000 But the money's starting to come back to us now.

01:05:11.000 So we're starting to get equipment.

01:05:12.000 We're starting to get more bodies.

01:05:14.000 We're starting to get overtime funding so the ridiculous long hours our small team works, they're compensated for.

01:05:19.000 That just happened literally within a month or two of being on the show with you.

01:05:24.000 So we're seeing some positives from that.

01:05:26.000 Got it with those rates raised.

01:05:27.000 We're trying.

01:05:28.000 We're trying.

01:05:29.000 Alert the press.

01:05:30.000 40% is disgusting.

01:05:32.000 Hey, this coffee's awesome, by the way.

01:05:33.000 Shout out to Laird Hamilton.

01:05:35.000 Laird Hamilton, man.

01:05:35.000 I'm not even a coffee drinker, and I'm loving this stuff.

01:05:38.000 It's great stuff.

01:05:38.000 I'm a convert now.

01:05:39.000 It makes your mouth smack, though.

01:05:40.000 It gives you a little...

01:05:41.000 It does.

01:05:42.000 A little...

01:05:42.000 Yeah.

01:05:43.000 You gotta clear your throat a lot.

01:05:45.000 It's coconut oil and turmeric and all that jazz.

01:05:48.000 Healthy.

01:05:49.000 Colorado was the first state to legalize it, and Washington State.

01:05:53.000 Do they have similar problems?

01:05:55.000 They still have a black market.

01:05:58.000 And the thing right now, because we're not regulating federally, and so every state, anything that's grown stays in that state.

01:06:05.000 Per law, right?

01:06:06.000 But all the demand is back east in these non-regulated states where they don't grow it.

01:06:10.000 So Colorado has an interstate black market that's done by the quasi-legitimate growers as well as the cartel elements.

01:06:18.000 So there's still that black market thriving within the black market cannabis industry that isn't cartel public lands.

01:06:25.000 We've got different mixes.

01:06:27.000 Okay, so it's a different kind of a problem in Colorado.

01:06:30.000 So they don't have as many cartel grows?

01:06:32.000 Not as many.

01:06:33.000 They have some.

01:06:34.000 I've...

01:06:35.000 Yeah.

01:06:51.000 This is a giant issue that is largely undiscussed, and it's one of the reasons why I was so fascinated by that podcast.

01:06:58.000 And this is one more piece of the puzzle when you're talking about border control.

01:07:04.000 Right.

01:07:08.000 This state in our country, this place in our country where some people want to control the border and some people don't want any borders.

01:07:15.000 And you have to understand that this is the number one problem with the border.

01:07:20.000 The number one problem with the border is cartel violence.

01:07:23.000 Cartel violence, cartel crime, that's the number one problem.

01:07:26.000 And the giant percentage of these people that are coming over and doing illegal activity are doing it because it's profitable.

01:07:33.000 And the reason why it's profitable is because it's illegal.

01:07:36.000 And so they can do these things and sell marijuana all over this country illegally because it's illegal.

01:07:44.000 And if it was legal, we could regulate it.

01:07:47.000 We could tax it.

01:07:48.000 The money could go into schools and pay for guys like you and go to fixing this problem.

01:07:53.000 And instead, we're playing this little stupid game where some states are legal and some states aren't.

01:07:59.000 Right.

01:08:00.000 Yeah.

01:08:01.000 And it's federally, it's still a Schedule I crime when there's millions of legitimate law-abiding, tax-paying citizens that enjoy it.

01:08:10.000 And it's crazy.

01:08:11.000 It is.

01:08:12.000 And to that point, you look at the discrepancy and just the inconsistency on cannabis regulation.

01:08:18.000 Some states, some not.

01:08:20.000 Federally not.

01:08:21.000 But when you get to the border issue, you brought up that good point of it's not just that cartel element for this poison cannabis stuff or this toxically tainted cannabis is a better way to phrase it.

01:08:32.000 It's the smuggling, the human trafficking.

01:08:34.000 It's all those other crimes that methamphetamine production.

01:08:37.000 So I get asked a lot.

01:08:40.000 You had a great conversation with...

01:08:43.000 With Mike Baker on this was, you know, are open borders going to work?

01:08:47.000 And no, we've got to have some regulation.

01:08:49.000 It's just not going to work.

01:08:50.000 Well, the world's not even.

01:08:52.000 So that's why open borders aren't going to work.

01:08:54.000 If the world was even and there was, you know, there's like...

01:08:58.000 It's extreme crime right below us.

01:09:01.000 And, you know, I had Ed Calderon on, who works for Mexico.

01:09:05.000 We just started dialoguing last week.

01:09:06.000 I like that guy a lot.

01:09:07.000 Good guy, yeah.

01:09:08.000 Boy, does he scare the shit out of you, though, when he tells you the stories about Mexico, about how bad it is down there.

01:09:14.000 Yeah.

01:09:17.000 There's just an insane amount of violence that's going on down there, an insane amount of crime, and so much of it is connected to the illegal drug trade.

01:09:26.000 And look, you're not going to kill at all if you make marijuana legal, but you would kill a percentage.

01:09:32.000 At least it would make it a little bit better, and it would stop that.

01:09:35.000 Yeah, and one of the things we get from getting that regulation, if we can stop that black market for cartel weed, we're going to save a lot of wildlife.

01:09:45.000 Yes.

01:09:45.000 We're going to preserve a lot of waterways, right?

01:09:47.000 Because all those other crimes are very heinous and very destructive, and I hate to see the human trafficking and all the meth problems and anything that relates to violence or a deterioration of a soul, but...

01:09:57.000 I love the wild, man.

01:09:59.000 The woods are my church.

01:10:00.000 Yours, too.

01:10:00.000 I mean, what you do for conservation, the elk hunting that you're doing, and all those different things.

01:10:04.000 I mean, it's just magical out there, and it's just...

01:10:06.000 Most people just don't even know, I don't think.

01:10:08.000 No, but I mean...

01:10:09.000 Just don't get a chance to experience what it's like to actually be in the real woods.

01:10:13.000 Be in the real woods, which are getting shrinker, smaller, and smaller, and smaller, even here in Cali that has so much beauty.

01:10:19.000 Yeah.

01:10:19.000 But I look at it this way.

01:10:20.000 I said, look, if we lose all of our open space to a problem like this, and it compounds the problem, and we lose our wildlife and good water, you may not be in the outdoors right now.

01:10:30.000 You might be a preservationist.

01:10:32.000 You might be on your freaking digital device all the time and looking at wildlife through a screen.

01:10:38.000 But if you ever do go out and you get that peace and tranquility and you get centered like we do, run a trail, hike a LA County mountain trail or open space, don't even get that far in the woods, it's just soothing.

01:10:49.000 It brings us back to our center.

01:10:51.000 And if the new generations that aren't getting that from the cities can get that or they can get their kids doing it or their grandkids or hear about it, But it's not there to go to.

01:11:01.000 That to me, man, we're just not paying it forward enough.

01:11:04.000 So this is something I got to stay on and I really appreciate you and what you stand for because of the message.

01:11:11.000 I think just so many people don't know.

01:11:13.000 Yeah, I just think that's a big part of it.

01:11:15.000 It's just they don't know.

01:11:16.000 What's interesting to me, too, is that the allocation of resources, it's so, when you have something that's illegal, you're not getting any of that money.

01:11:25.000 No.

01:11:25.000 And if it was legal, there's an enormous amount of money that could go to schools and fix the roads, and we can allocate it to a bunch of different- Big time.

01:11:36.000 Ways to spend it.

01:11:37.000 And we're not doing that.

01:11:39.000 And the reason why is because it's illegal.

01:11:42.000 And this crime problem is very similar to what they faced during prohibition with alcohol.

01:11:48.000 The rise of organized crime.

01:11:50.000 That's where they were getting their money from, because there was such a demand.

01:11:54.000 It's really a disgusting, dumb way to approach a problem that is, in many people's ideas, a social problem.

01:12:02.000 That money could go to so many different positive things.

01:12:06.000 Yeah, and when we're perpetuating it through that reason and many others, we're basically embedding the problem in our country.

01:12:13.000 And Ed said this, Calderon, we were dialoguing earlier this week, and he said, you know, he's kind of looked at things from the border and south and the issues coming in from the border, from the cartel front.

01:12:23.000 He said, you know, now I'm getting wind of your book and I'm starting to analyze what you guys are fighting on the ground inside the borders in California and the rest of the country.

01:12:30.000 He goes...

01:12:30.000 It's embedded now.

01:12:32.000 I mean, it's not like it's just coming across.

01:12:33.000 I mean, the enterprise is embedded here in the nation because they have the pipeline, they have the distribution, they have a market, and they don't have to deal with the border issue.

01:12:42.000 And they're comfortable because of exactly where we're at and what people aren't aware of.

01:12:46.000 And in California, that it's just a misdemeanor, which is even more insane.

01:12:50.000 Yeah, that's got to change.

01:12:51.000 That's got to change.

01:12:51.000 I mean, it should be something horrendous.

01:12:54.000 If you actually have a background in crime...

01:12:57.000 Right.

01:12:57.000 Especially particularly violent crime when you get caught doing something like that.

01:13:01.000 I mean, it should be severe, severe penalty.

01:13:03.000 It should absolutely be severe.

01:13:04.000 Now, the saving grace of that is when we get the environmental crimes that we bring from the fish and wildlife standpoint to those charges for these guys, we get it back to felony status.

01:13:16.000 Because we had an interesting thing happen.

01:13:18.000 As soon as all that regulation started two years ago, and those trespass grow crimes were watered down to what we're talking about, district attorneys all throughout the state said, oh man, we're not going to be able to prosecute these crimes.

01:13:31.000 I mean, we're not going to have a jury that's sympathetic to these issues.

01:13:36.000 Right.

01:13:38.000 Right.

01:13:59.000 Teams stop working and accept us and like the feds, you know, and not only that DA's couldn't prosecute.

01:14:05.000 So I remember speaking for the California District Attorney Association on this and saying guys there's a solution.

01:14:12.000 Everybody, no matter where they sit on the cannabis spectrum, everybody hates to see Bambi dead, water poisoned.

01:14:20.000 Everyone has a little bit of environmental passion in them on both sides of the fence.

01:14:24.000 And that's where I say here we can unify and not worry about where we sit on the for or against.

01:14:30.000 And if you take these water code enhancements, if you take the felony and the penal code from the banned toxics like carbofuran, if you take a streambed alteration diversion or dead wildlife or littering close to a state waterway, you stack all those up, you get all these penalties.

01:14:44.000 And you can convict on that, you know, even in a sympathetic jury on, say, a cannabis issue.

01:14:49.000 So we started to prosecute these cases and they started to come back.

01:14:53.000 And it's an arduous end around.

01:14:54.000 It's more work than we should have to do, but we're doing it.

01:14:57.000 Now, when they find these cartel members and they bust them and they do prosecute them for these felonies, what happens?

01:15:04.000 They don't get deported, right?

01:15:06.000 They stay in this country and they go to jail? 0.65

01:15:08.000 It depends.

01:15:09.000 They'll go to jail here if it's a sanctuary-type state scenario and they're going to stay in our justice system and they will do jail time here.

01:15:18.000 If we're working with ICE and our feds and Homeland Security, especially ICE agents, and they are classified as a deportable felon, they will get deported.

01:15:26.000 They'll get on a watch list.

01:15:27.000 Did they get deported to jail or did they just get freed?

01:15:31.000 Well, they're supposed to go back and be in custody over on that side.

01:15:34.000 Does that always happen?

01:15:35.000 Air quotes.

01:15:36.000 Supposed to.

01:15:37.000 Operative word.

01:15:38.000 Supposed to.

01:15:39.000 Especially if there's someone who's high up in the cartel or is making a good amount of money for the cartel, it's highly likely that with a lot of corruption they might go free.

01:15:47.000 Very, very true.

01:15:48.000 And the cases happen where we've, you know, got some of these cartel growers deported.

01:15:54.000 And a week later, they're in a different group in Northern California.

01:15:57.000 We've had some situations where we've seen the same guy.

01:16:01.000 Really?

01:16:01.000 For 20 times.

01:16:03.000 What?

01:16:04.000 No joke.

01:16:04.000 So you've busted them how many times?

01:16:07.000 We did, or another team did, or Forest Service did.

01:16:11.000 So they've been busted 20 times?

01:16:12.000 Yeah.

01:16:13.000 And they're still here?

01:16:14.000 And they're still here.

01:16:14.000 Holy shit.

01:16:15.000 What a broken system.

01:16:17.000 Yeah, it's the jacked, right?

01:16:19.000 And what you just said, it's like, because of the money involved.

01:16:22.000 And we know, and I go into this and hit more a little bit, what I can talk about under, you know, just what we learned without putting names out there is, it's $4,000 to $7,000 for these grow organizations in these cartel cells to bring their best growers back across.

01:16:35.000 And it's a drop in the bucket.

01:16:37.000 And they don't even consider the border a border.

01:16:39.000 They consider it like a speed bump on the 405 freeway.

01:16:41.000 So how do they get guys in?

01:16:43.000 Do they use boats?

01:16:44.000 Do they use tunnels?

01:16:45.000 All of it.

01:16:46.000 All of it.

01:16:46.000 Boats, I was always thinking, like, how the fuck are you going to protect the border when you just get a boat and just kind of like go past and pull in somewhere in California and hop out?

01:16:55.000 Yeah, well, something we learned recently, and it's been about the last five years...

01:16:59.000 And it was really starting to hit the California coastline and the Oregon coastline heavy when we started our unit in 2013 was these panga boats.

01:17:07.000 What's that word, panga?

01:17:09.000 It's called panga, P-A-N-G-A, called a panga boat. 0.86

01:17:11.000 And they're inside the Mazelan Peninsula and they're loaded up with 6,000 pounds of tainted weed but grown in Mexico. 0.98

01:17:20.000 Same stuff they're doing here with the same toxics or meth.

01:17:22.000 Or people.

01:17:24.000 Or both.

01:17:24.000 And a couple of growers or transporters and they'll run this boat.

01:17:28.000 It's a one-way boat.

01:17:29.000 And there's a lot of money in it.

01:17:31.000 There's big four-stroke motors.

01:17:33.000 It's painted kind of the color of the ocean so it's hard to pick up from the air.

01:17:36.000 It goes kind of fast.

01:17:37.000 It's made to carry big loads.

01:17:40.000 And they'll take that thing around the peninsula.

01:17:42.000 They'll fuel up offshore somewhere off the San Diego coastline, maybe 100 miles out.

01:17:46.000 Jamie's got one up there.

01:17:47.000 There it is.

01:17:47.000 Nice, Jamie.

01:17:49.000 Wow, that's a lot of weed.

01:17:50.000 That's a lot.

01:17:50.000 Yeah, I got some pretty cool pictures in the book.

01:17:52.000 So these guys just pull the boat in, and then, this is obviously one that got busted, and then they just have someone waiting for them, and they unload that stuff into trucks.

01:18:01.000 And they got a distribution network ready to go, and then that boat's just disposed of.

01:18:05.000 And again, ladies and gentlemen, this is all because of an illegal demand.

01:18:09.000 Because it's illegal.

01:18:10.000 This stuff wouldn't be profitable if we were growing it here in the United States and if the only way you would sell it at a store was if it was regulated and licensed and you knew that it was tested and it was all grown here.

01:18:22.000 You had a certificate of where the farmer was.

01:18:24.000 Take that element out of it.

01:18:25.000 Yes, you take that element completely out of it.

01:18:28.000 And they would...

01:18:29.000 But, you know, obviously they're still selling fentanyl and all sorts of other shit that we don't want legal.

01:18:33.000 Yeah.

01:18:34.000 But it's so dark.

01:18:36.000 It's such a confusing...

01:18:38.000 It was a...

01:18:40.000 Bang a boat found with $18 million worth of weed.

01:18:43.000 That is a lot of weed, because weed is not expensive.

01:18:46.000 How has a boat got $18 million worth of weed on it?

01:18:48.000 That's a heavy load.

01:18:49.000 That's a typical load, too, Joe.

01:18:50.000 And that was probably one of the Monterey boats we helped on, because we interdicted a lot there.

01:18:56.000 Yeah, it's a daunting task when you look at...

01:18:59.000 That dude on the right, I say just shoot him.

01:19:02.000 Look at his face.

01:19:03.000 That guy looks super dangerous.

01:19:04.000 Very angry.

01:19:05.000 Yeah, very angry.

01:19:07.000 Very mad.

01:19:07.000 Very angry.

01:19:08.000 Not tried and happy.

01:19:09.000 I mean, obviously, I'm kidding about shoot him, but their situation is just as grave.

01:19:14.000 I mean, you're living in Mexico, and you're fucked, and there's no way for you to get by legally. 1.00

01:19:20.000 And you're a young man, you get recruited into one of these cartels, and next thing you know, you've been in for 10 years, and you've committed a few murders, and you're involved in drug trafficking.

01:19:28.000 And you're down that slope.

01:19:29.000 Yeah, you're down that slope.

01:19:30.000 It's done.

01:19:30.000 How do you get out of that?

01:19:31.000 You really don't.

01:19:32.000 There's no avenues for them.

01:19:35.000 There's no established...

01:19:38.000 Community outreach centers like, hey, cartel members, why don't you just grow cherry tomatoes instead?

01:19:42.000 Right.

01:19:43.000 Or, you know, there's no positive reinforcement for people that give a shit, you know?

01:19:46.000 It's horrible.

01:19:47.000 Yeah.

01:19:47.000 I mean, and a lot of that, again, is backed by illegal drug sales.

01:19:52.000 If you don't have illegal drug sales, you don't have nearly as much profit or incentive, and you have less of that.

01:19:58.000 And it sounds counterintuitive for people to make things illegal that are legal, or make things legal that are illegal, and you would stop the crime.

01:20:06.000 But that is really how it works.

01:20:08.000 It is, and I always look at it this way.

01:20:10.000 I said, look, regardless of where you sit on the emotional spectrum on this, against cannabis, for cannabis, let's all look at the issue of environmental purity, safety in America, and really be real as to what's going to help the problem.

01:20:25.000 And you hit it on the head when you said, well, yeah, there's all that mess stuff going on and this, that.

01:20:29.000 And there is, but I'm a realist and we've got to do something right now.

01:20:32.000 And I think if we're going to federally regulate to any type of consistency, we're still many years off from that.

01:20:38.000 So what are we going to do in the meantime if that's going to happen?

01:20:41.000 We've still got to deal with this grow mess going on in predominantly California and all this stuff getting out to our public and being tainted.

01:20:49.000 We still have to deal with the meth issue and the gun running and all of that.

01:20:52.000 And knowing that it's embedded in our country, we need to have people aware of it.

01:20:56.000 And not only law enforcement, but bring that thin green line a little bigger with conservationists like yourself and people that are in the know, people that are in the outdoors, and just putting the word out.

01:21:06.000 I mean, it's crazy that 10 years have passed since the first book and 10 years have passed since we did those three good years of Wild Justice TV. But in that interim...

01:21:15.000 We're good to go.

01:21:36.000 But we're only dropping the bucket.

01:21:38.000 It's one team out of part of the state and other teams are doing some stuff too at the federal level and state level and we're only getting maybe 50% of this stuff if we're lucky.

01:21:46.000 Is it really that much?

01:21:47.000 50% is high.

01:21:48.000 That's optimistic.

01:21:50.000 Now again, magic wand.

01:21:52.000 I'll give you the magic wand.

01:21:54.000 John, do whatever you want.

01:21:56.000 How many more officers would you hire? 0.86

01:21:59.000 How big would you make the task force?

01:22:00.000 How much would you branch out your operation?

01:22:02.000 I'd make the tactical unit, the MET team of the tacticians going just after the cartel front that we formed.

01:22:08.000 I'd triple or quadruple it.

01:22:11.000 Have a team, maybe four teams in the state.

01:22:14.000 Have them all trained together, have them all uniformly committed to tactics and training, because it is quite advanced what some of our guys are doing, from a sniper team to tracking to all the stuff we get into.

01:22:28.000 Not only for this job, but for anything else we come up with from an American public safety threat.

01:22:34.000 After 9-11, stuff changed.

01:22:36.000 And we hadn't gotten into this grow mess yet, Joe, to the level of the cartel front.

01:22:41.000 But I knew back then, game wardens are going to have to be tactically trained as well as any other law enforcement officer.

01:22:47.000 And we're going to have to have our own tactical unit because we're doing some pretty crazy stuff for wildlife crimes.

01:22:51.000 You know, and then Homeland Security on a potential terrorist threat.

01:22:55.000 You need to have tactical units that are there with every other agency and military teams because we're all thin in numbers.

01:23:01.000 And if something big goes down, I need to know that the sniper team we built with MET and these tacticians can go in and integrate with San Jose PD SWAT. They can integrate with military personnel, you know, wherever.

01:23:13.000 Same type of deal.

01:23:14.000 And we've gone the same direction with some of that good training and found the right people to do that.

01:23:22.000 It is crazy that you guys are required to do that.

01:23:25.000 I mean, it's sort of like asking a teacher to also be a kickbox or something.

01:23:30.000 Right.

01:23:34.000 Which is to be a game warden and then all of a sudden you're involved in narcotics trafficking and cartel operations and getting shot at.

01:23:42.000 And you're bringing in dogs.

01:23:45.000 These dogs that you're training.

01:23:47.000 Phoebe was very interesting listening to how effective.

01:23:51.000 Are you using Belgian Malinois that we're using?

01:23:53.000 Yeah, primarily our main dog is a Belgian Mal.

01:23:55.000 Those are powerful dogs, Mal.

01:23:57.000 They are amazing.

01:23:58.000 They're so smart.

01:23:59.000 You look in their eyes and they're like, hey man.

01:24:01.000 You can see it, right?

01:24:01.000 Yeah, they're like, hey man, how you doing?

01:24:03.000 They're not like looking at a poodle.

01:24:05.000 No, they're not like looking at our labs.

01:24:07.000 They look right through you.

01:24:08.000 Looking at you with that sweet little face.

01:24:10.000 No, those dogs.

01:24:10.000 Tongue out.

01:24:11.000 Yeah.

01:24:12.000 The thing that's cool about these dogs, and I can't talk enough about it, man, because no matter where you sit, everybody loves a good dog story.

01:24:20.000 And, you know, some people say, well, dual purpose, you got to bite guys.

01:24:23.000 What's with that?

01:24:23.000 Is it, you know, really aggressive?

01:24:25.000 And when you look at it, it's a lifesaver for everybody.

01:24:27.000 It's a lifesaver for us.

01:24:29.000 It's a lifesaver for the suspect, too, because it usually involves a potential gunfight that the dog basically, you know, alleviated because she or he was there.

01:24:38.000 So we got our canine program in agency going kind of full speed around 2008-ish.

01:24:45.000 We have three levels of canine.

01:24:46.000 We have like the companion ride-along canine that kind of does everything with you.

01:24:50.000 She's never going to bite anybody and that's Apollo.

01:24:52.000 That's like my lab, right?

01:24:53.000 And then we have the detection-level dog, and most of those are Labradors, like Marshall, like Apollo, because labs have such amazing noses.

01:25:01.000 They really can hold on scent.

01:25:03.000 They can train to detect many scents, and we certify them in different things.

01:25:07.000 And then there's the Phoebes, the Belgian Mals or the Shepherds, and really it's become mostly Mals now in our agency. 0.97

01:25:15.000 Why Mals or Shepherds?

01:25:16.000 They just do better in the heat.

01:25:19.000 Shepherds are longer-haired, and we're in 100-degree weather.

01:25:21.000 We're on long hikes.

01:25:23.000 We're unsupported, and those dogs might have to sit quietly after hiking eight miles and sit in a prone quietly while we're watching and observing and stalking in on suspects to make an apprehension and arrest safely and hopefully avoid a gunfight.

01:25:37.000 And we've also found with the mouths, like I said, they just hold up better on average, and there's certainly exceptions to that.

01:25:46.000 But when we got our dual purpose program back on track, these are dogs that will bite when they need to on command, but they have great noses, so they'll still detect wonderfully, you know, finding evidence, finding tainted weed, whatever the case may be, a firearm, a bear gallbladder.

01:26:01.000 All of that, but they'll also, you know, like Phoebe was nicknamed the fur missile because when it was time for her to go to work and some guy was going to pull a weapon on us, she was all business.

01:26:11.000 And the cool thing about a dog like her, and Mike Ritland and I got into this on his show especially, and he was blown away.

01:26:16.000 He said, I've never heard of a dog in a domestic law enforcement team that's had like, she had 116 apprehension bites in her career.

01:26:26.000 116?

01:26:27.000 No joke, Joe.

01:26:28.000 So there's 116 cartel guys out there telling stories about this dog.

01:26:31.000 Yeah, they're saying, no more perro.

01:26:34.000 I've been bit too many times.

01:26:35.000 But the cool thing about that was the standpoint of life she saved.

01:26:39.000 And she also arrested another 800 to 900 that she didn't have to buy in her career. 0.99

01:26:44.000 That's a lot.

01:26:45.000 How many of you guys arrested people?

01:26:48.000 When I retired, we were over 1,000.

01:26:50.000 Wow.

01:26:51.000 In five and a half years.

01:26:54.000 All grow-ups?

01:26:56.000 All grow-ups.

01:26:57.000 Yeah, these are all grow-ups or related to grow-ups.

01:26:59.000 And these are all guys that are armed, all guys that have knives or guns.

01:27:03.000 You're not getting bit unless you're a deadly force threat on some level or a significant threat.

01:27:09.000 So, yeah, it's been a lot of guys.

01:27:11.000 So that number that you're talking about, 10,000, that really is conservative.

01:27:14.000 I think very much so, yeah.

01:27:16.000 That is so insane because if you fly over like Humboldt or any of these areas, particularly Medicino, Northern California, the density of the forest, the public land out there, there's a lot of land.

01:27:30.000 There's a lot of land and a lot of potential we're not seeing.

01:27:34.000 And that's still thriving.

01:27:36.000 So when you look at Phoebe as a canine and you go, well, let's see, she was in the field doing these type of operations for about seven or eight years.

01:27:45.000 And yeah, that's great from a record standpoint and numbers and the life she saved, but it gives you like a snapshot of the issue.

01:27:52.000 How many guys did we not catch that were out there armed that way, that we weren't involved in?

01:27:57.000 We weren't involved.

01:27:59.000 And the dogs have just saved lives, man.

01:28:01.000 They have saved...

01:28:01.000 Phoebe, I go into this in the new book especially, in 2012, but right before our team started, Phoebe saved my life, Brian's life, and all these other operators in Santa Clara County in Silicon Valley, right where I grew up, because she engaged a guy that was pulling a Russian automatic pistol on me and I was the support for Brian.

01:28:20.000 I was basically his canine handler or support guy.

01:28:23.000 And Brian had to deal with this other grower's partner that had a big Taurus Judge revolver on his hip, and he was pulling it.

01:28:29.000 So he goes for that guy and says, John, just take my dog.

01:28:32.000 And Phoebe's on the bite, and he's biting this guy in the calf.

01:28:35.000 And this guy's nose down, and we don't know he's got this weapon.

01:28:38.000 And I start to see it coming out.

01:28:40.000 And I get on him and I do what I need to do with some physical control and some strikes and whatnot to get the gun out of his hand.

01:28:45.000 But had she not been on that guy on a bite show, that gun's turned on me at five feet. 1.00

01:28:50.000 I'm engaged, all the riflemen behind me.

01:28:52.000 I'm in a gunfight again.

01:28:54.000 We've been in too many of those already.

01:28:56.000 How many gunfights have you been in?

01:28:57.000 Our team's been in six, and I've been on the ground for four out of the six that our guys have been involved in, and they've all been around this particular problem.

01:29:05.000 We had a lot less once the team got formalized, and we started using dogs, but we still had two during the window of the team being operational that we couldn't avoid.

01:29:14.000 And dogs played a big part in that, as I go into the new stories.

01:29:17.000 It is so crazy.

01:29:18.000 I mean, when I was listening to that podcast with Steve Rinella, the Meat Eater podcast with you, and I was like, I can't believe that there's not some sort of another division of law enforcement that gets involved in this and that we're requiring game wardens to essentially become something completely different.

01:29:36.000 Yeah.

01:29:36.000 Well, we still have other law enforcement agencies involved.

01:29:39.000 Forest Service dedicates a lot of people to it because a lot of this is on federal land, so we work it hand-in-hand.

01:29:44.000 Some sheriff's departments still work it.

01:29:47.000 BLM works it. 0.99

01:29:49.000 But very few agencies have a dedicated team within their unit just for this problem.

01:29:54.000 And it was a big step for us.

01:29:56.000 And even though it's not a traditional thing, like we kind of talked about when we started, all of us that are doing it want to do it.

01:30:02.000 I mean, everything we do, like I said, is important.

01:30:05.000 We'll never negate anything a wildlife officer game warden has to do.

01:30:09.000 But for us that see this problem as the most severe, which we all acknowledge...

01:30:13.000 And, you know, we're those kind of team members that have the military, the law enforcement, tactical experience.

01:30:18.000 We're just wired for this type of stuff.

01:30:20.000 And we know, I feel like, you know, in 28 years of being a game warden, it felt like a 10-year career.

01:30:25.000 And even though we were certainly underpaid, like I mentioned, it's a dream job.

01:30:30.000 It was really awesome to...

01:30:31.000 Because you're really doing a difference.

01:30:33.000 I think we're making a difference, exactly.

01:30:35.000 I think every case we make matters.

01:30:38.000 And even though it's an uphill battle with a whole regulation debate and stuff, every grow site we interdict and stop and take that tainted cannabis out of the market or restore that waterway and clean up that grow site.

01:30:49.000 And we clean them all up now that we go into.

01:30:51.000 And the other agencies now support us and clean up with their own resources.

01:30:55.000 Because game wardens have got so legitimate in working with other agencies that are non-conservation groups, sheriff's departments, right?

01:31:02.000 DEA task force type units.

01:31:04.000 And they're like, okay, we agree.

01:31:05.000 We see...

01:31:07.000 We see the value in reclamating and cleaning up these grows to the point where Obama's drug czar addressed a lot of us when my team was starting up and our group was working heavy.

01:31:19.000 And it was a real compliment, but finally, more importantly, it got the news out where he said, I want this model rewarded, what Fish and Wildlife is doing with this cleanup.

01:31:28.000 I mean, you guys are arresting guys.

01:31:29.000 That's great.

01:31:30.000 You're taking guns away.

01:31:32.000 Obviously, somebody's going to be saved because these guys are violent and deadly.

01:31:35.000 And you're eradicating the plants.

01:31:36.000 It's fantastic.

01:31:37.000 Keep it out of the market.

01:31:38.000 They're poisoned.

01:31:39.000 But unless you're doing that reclamation component, I know it's dirty and arduous and tiring and it takes resources.

01:31:47.000 We're not making the biggest dent.

01:31:49.000 So then funding started to reflect from the federal level through DEA funding, rewards for reclamation.

01:31:55.000 And that was like one of these, man.

01:31:57.000 It literally took 12, 13 years to get there.

01:32:00.000 So when you guys have a situation like the first one you found in 2004 and you stumble upon this dry creek and there's all this debris and there's toxic chemicals, what kind of a cleanup is involved here and how long does something like that take before you can bring that creek back to where those steelhead can run and to where it's supposed to be?

01:32:20.000 We're looking on an average one full day and we're looking at having to have a helicopter for a whole day and having to have anywhere between, you know, ideally 12 to maybe more officers in there.

01:32:31.000 And a lot of it will have some volunteer groups coming in.

01:32:33.000 We have a program in California Fish and Wildlife called the NRVP program, the Natural Resource Volunteer Program.

01:32:39.000 And when we started our pilot program in 2013, we did an operation called Pristine to test this theory if we could have this full-time team being effective.

01:32:47.000 And if it wasn't for like 40 of these volunteers that are helicopter trained to go in with us and do the cleanup, we would have reclamated less than half of what we were able to do.

01:32:57.000 But when we do a reclamation, it's probably more expensive than doing the tactical operation planning and the takedown for the first part of the phase.

01:33:03.000 Yeah.

01:33:23.000 That was a lot of freaking pipe. 0.98

01:33:25.000 It went, I mean, the water source is in Merced County on the Pacheco Pass Highway in my old home district.

01:33:29.000 And it went all the way down Pacheco Pass onto this private ranch where the grow started.

01:33:34.000 And it was, I think it was like 2.85 miles.

01:33:37.000 Hand laid.

01:33:38.000 And buried under like, you know, forest roads or fire roads you'd see on like a, like a Tone Ranch.

01:33:43.000 Yeah.

01:33:43.000 18 inches underground buried across the road.

01:33:46.000 So it would have been embedded.

01:33:47.000 Ditch for three miles.

01:33:48.000 That's a lot of work.

01:33:49.000 It's a lot of work.

01:33:50.000 Those guys are fucking up.

01:33:51.000 They should do a real job.

01:33:52.000 They would make a lot of money.

01:33:53.000 Change it.

01:33:54.000 Fix it.

01:33:55.000 Do something different.

01:33:57.000 But the point of it was we have to pick up all that pipe.

01:34:01.000 So how long is it going to take two of my guys?

01:34:05.000 Three miles of pipe, 18 inches of ground.

01:34:07.000 Forever.

01:34:08.000 That was a couple days.

01:34:09.000 On an average one, we're going to go a quarter to half a mile at least.

01:34:12.000 And even though that black pipe isn't poisoning the water directly, once all the poisons are taken out, That water line is an infrastructure piece that it's their black gold.

01:34:21.000 I kind of use the term black gold when I start teaching to this, that if you leave that water diversion in place and you take out their whole grow site, you know, you take out their camp and all that, but all they got to do is reconnect a water line and put a 10 up and bring in seeds and get their little camouflage system going.

01:34:36.000 Very small investment to put a grow back there.

01:34:40.000 And one of the things that really got other agencies convinced that we need to reclimate, too, the way we sold it is not only on an environmental protection standpoint, because other agencies care about the environment, but it's not a mandate.

01:34:51.000 They're not funded for it.

01:34:52.000 But it was something like, it's also deterrence.

01:34:55.000 Because when we debrief some of these guys we caught, these upper levels, and I dive into this in the new book especially...

01:35:01.000 I finally got to ask the questions to these upper level cartel guys running grows, running meth, running all.

01:35:09.000 And I said, you know, it's interesting.

01:35:11.000 We notice that when we eradicate a grow site, traditionally, back before we change this process, and we just take out the plants and we leave, we notice there's a grow like there, back there, next year, or maybe two seasons again,

01:35:27.000 and it's the same group.

01:35:29.000 And the answer I got was, well, we know how taxed you guys are and how much resources you expend and you can't possibly get all of our grows, so we'll try it.

01:35:38.000 And 50% of the time, even though it was rated like two years before and it's on your radar, we'll actually get away with a harvest.

01:35:45.000 And I asked, well, if we start doing this reclamation and we take all your stuff out and restore the waterway and move the tents and just completely sanitize the site, let all the natural growth come back, preserve the creek.

01:35:56.000 He said, we're not going to come back to that.

01:35:58.000 Too much effort.

01:35:59.000 We're going to bring tens of thousands of dollars in new infrastructure.

01:36:01.000 We're going to have to run a whole other water line.

01:36:04.000 It's already on your radar, you know, from a couple of years ago when you guys raided it.

01:36:08.000 That's not a good business investment in a business model for us to take that chance.

01:36:13.000 And we kind of knew that because we were seeing the trend on the ground, but to hear it from this guy's mouth and validate what we suspected and have it come back as true and all the other things I got to learn, I mean, just, it changed the game for us.

01:36:25.000 And that happened, I'm going to say about a year to a year and a half right before we started our unit.

01:36:30.000 So we went in building the Met team in 2013 with this mindset in place and, uh, um, Nate Arnold, who was a district captain at the time, my partner in building this, and I'm going to give a shout out right now to Mike Carrion, who was our chief of the law enforcement division, and one of my mentors and friends way back in the academy in 92. He greenlit us to test this program and take all of us out of patrol in an already depleted force.

01:36:56.000 So you can imagine there was some resistance.

01:36:59.000 There was some middle management and executive staffers like, Why are we doing this?

01:37:03.000 We're not supposed to be doing marijuana work.

01:37:05.000 It's drugs.

01:37:06.000 You're cleaning up grow sites, chasing bad guys.

01:37:09.000 And Mike said, no, I believe in you guys.

01:37:11.000 Test it, document it, and see what we've got to do with this.

01:37:13.000 And we were six weeks into a three-month test program, and he is the chief and all the deputy chiefs had talked about what we were doing out there, and we were now documenting these insane numbers of what was happening.

01:37:25.000 And he said, we're done.

01:37:26.000 I want it full-time by January 1st, 2014. Get your testing.

01:37:29.000 Do your interviews.

01:37:30.000 Get the protocol.

01:37:31.000 You guys are leaving patrol.

01:37:33.000 We're going to have this many spots.

01:37:35.000 And you're going to work straight for headquarters, straight line, kind of like a military special ops team that just works for the top.

01:37:42.000 They don't really have boundaries of where they go.

01:37:44.000 And that's kind of the approach we needed.

01:37:45.000 We needed to do a global, statewide approach.

01:37:51.000 We had to break tradition.

01:37:57.000 So, to your point, we like what we do because you said it best.

01:38:01.000 We're making a difference.

01:38:02.000 Every little grow we get out of circulation makes a difference.

01:38:05.000 But it is.

01:38:06.000 It's an uphill battle because we know we're not getting them all.

01:38:07.000 And we know it's not going away anytime soon.

01:38:09.000 It must have been very interesting to talk to the cartel members and have them say to you that they know that you guys are taxed.

01:38:15.000 Oh, yeah.

01:38:16.000 Yeah.

01:38:16.000 Like, shit.

01:38:17.000 Yeah.

01:38:18.000 Like, they know.

01:38:19.000 They know.

01:38:19.000 They know your operation.

01:38:21.000 Like, how do they know?

01:38:22.000 They just, they look at the number, and, I mean, we get so little information because they're so quiet.

01:38:28.000 How long do you hold these guys for?

01:38:29.000 When you're talking to them, how many days do you get with them?

01:38:32.000 We got an interview.

01:38:33.000 Just one?

01:38:34.000 This was one with DEA and a bunch of other officials and multiple interpreters, and I got to sit in on it.

01:38:39.000 Did you get to bring Phoebe?

01:38:41.000 Yeah, Phoebe wasn't there on that one. 0.89

01:38:42.000 But I do have a good Phoebe story for you.

01:38:46.000 Many of them, actually, but a good one.

01:38:48.000 And it was from that one where she saved another gunfight from happening.

01:38:52.000 But the thing about it was we don't get to talk to them very often.

01:38:54.000 When we do, it's very rare that they'll talk.

01:38:59.000 They're put together in an organization where they don't really know last names.

01:39:03.000 They only report to one person.

01:39:05.000 A lot of times they don't know who they're working next to.

01:39:07.000 So it's compartmentalized.

01:39:08.000 Very compartmentalized.

01:39:09.000 And they do this to make sure that people cannot go back.

01:39:12.000 Exactly.

01:39:12.000 Cannot talk, cannot reveal very much information.

01:39:15.000 I know a first name of my boss who's my supplier.

01:39:18.000 This was someone that was taken on other cartel crimes at high level, but not a violent guy.

01:39:24.000 He was very candid and straightforward.

01:39:26.000 He was responsible for a lot of stuff in California, and I can say that much, and other parts of the country.

01:39:32.000 But what he revealed was just validating what we knew.

01:39:36.000 But it gave us tools to progress and learn from that.

01:39:39.000 Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

01:39:39.000 When you do get that information from him, did that allow you to get more resources or to confirm, like, hey, look, this is what we know.

01:39:49.000 We need to pull out all this infrastructure.

01:39:51.000 We need to pull out these pipes. 0.99

01:39:52.000 If we don't, they're going to come back.

01:39:54.000 This is going to make a difference.

01:39:56.000 It did.

01:39:56.000 And when we formed up the new team, we said, here's how we're going to approach this.

01:40:00.000 We're going to help agencies.

01:40:02.000 We're going to do our own missions.

01:40:03.000 We're going to help other agencies that are doing the work.

01:40:05.000 But we're going to do it under the caveat that we're going to do a three-prong approach.

01:40:09.000 We're going to apprehend as diligently as we can and catch these guys through our dogs, through our tactics, because just chasing them around and knowing they're going to get away, there's no deterrence in that.

01:40:19.000 And yeah, it's risky.

01:40:20.000 And yeah, it's dangerous.

01:40:21.000 But at least I know if I take them into custody, even for a day, five days, whatever, maybe they're deported, maybe they're not.

01:40:27.000 That's one really skilled guy doing a lot of environmental damage that's at least out of circulation for a while.

01:40:31.000 Yeah.

01:40:32.000 Right?

01:40:32.000 So that had to happen.

01:40:33.000 We're going to eradicate every tainted plant.

01:40:36.000 And 90% of these grows, they're all tainted with this carbofuran. 0.96

01:40:39.000 90%?

01:40:41.000 90%.

01:40:41.000 It started 10 years ago.

01:40:43.000 It was about one out of two.

01:40:44.000 And by the time those stats were trickling in at the end of 2018 and I was compiling for the team, I'm like, oh my gosh, man.

01:40:50.000 We had Carbofuran in like 89 or 90% of every grow site we went into on these trespass grows.

01:40:57.000 Wow.

01:40:58.000 But then the third thing we had to do, and we would only want to work with agencies that agreed, is reclimate.

01:41:06.000 It's going to be dirty, guys.

01:41:07.000 We might have to come back a different day, but give us your helicopter team.

01:41:11.000 Give us some bodies.

01:41:12.000 But there's no specific reclamation group?

01:41:17.000 It seems like you should have an agency that does this.

01:41:20.000 Yeah, we don't have that in place yet.

01:41:21.000 In this original creek that you guys had in 2004, did you guys re-divert the water?

01:41:27.000 We did.

01:41:27.000 And so it's all the steelheader flowing again?

01:41:30.000 Yeah, it took two years to get the fish back on that one.

01:41:33.000 And that was literally...

01:41:34.000 What numbers of fish do you guys think you lost in that?

01:41:37.000 Oh man, I mean, the steelhead are federally listed right now and they're valued at like $20,000 to $30,000 a fish.

01:41:43.000 Why do they allow catch and release of that?

01:41:45.000 I wanted to ask you as a game warden.

01:41:47.000 I'm not a fan of catch and release.

01:41:49.000 You don't like the catch and release?

01:41:50.000 Well, it's weird.

01:41:53.000 I like fishing for food.

01:41:55.000 I mean, it's like I don't want to shoot a deer with a blow dart either and just go, look, I got one, ha ha, and then let them wake up, Jesus, and get out of there.

01:42:05.000 No, I'm in it for food.

01:42:06.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:42:07.000 I mean, look, I know steelhead fishing is fun.

01:42:09.000 I know it is.

01:42:10.000 It looks awesome.

01:42:11.000 I've never caught steelhead, but I've caught salmon, I've caught trout.

01:42:13.000 Oh, man, they're amazing.

01:42:14.000 I'm sure.

01:42:15.000 They're gorgeous fish.

01:42:16.000 But catching them and shoving a hook in their head and then letting them go just seems stupid.

01:42:22.000 Yeah, it's counterintuitive.

01:42:24.000 You don't eat them at all?

01:42:25.000 People don't eat steelhead at all?

01:42:27.000 Well, if they're listed and they're so threatened, the way to keep steelhead fishing going, like in California, is, okay, guys, you can catch them, but you've got to release them.

01:42:34.000 That's so stupid.

01:42:35.000 Now, what about Oregon and Pacific Northwest?

01:42:39.000 Do they keep them there?

01:42:41.000 In some places, they do.

01:42:42.000 Is it a good eating fish?

01:42:43.000 Yeah.

01:42:44.000 It's a rainbow trout, right?

01:42:46.000 A derivative?

01:42:47.000 Yeah, but it's spawning. 0.97

01:42:48.000 It's coming from the ocean.

01:42:49.000 It's going upriver.

01:42:50.000 It's spawning going back to the ocean.

01:42:52.000 So that's what makes it a steelhead.

01:42:54.000 It's an awesome fish.

01:42:56.000 Apparently they fight like crazy and it's just incredible to catch.

01:42:59.000 They do.

01:42:59.000 They're really natural.

01:42:59.000 They're tough.

01:43:02.000 Yeah, and you just look at how sensitive they are, and in that one creek in the 2004 grow, that was the worst scenario that could have happened.

01:43:10.000 Right.

01:43:10.000 That they hit the headwaters of the start of this spawning channel that went to a creek called Coyote Creek that actually went all the way into San Jose to the South Bay of the ocean.

01:43:19.000 So that pollution situation from those banned poisons was just decimating, you know, three to five miles of creek.

01:43:25.000 So we had to take that waterway diversion out.

01:43:28.000 We had to clean it all up.

01:43:30.000 How do you clean it up?

01:43:31.000 Net it up.

01:43:32.000 Bag all the trash.

01:43:33.000 Pull all the water lines.

01:43:35.000 What about the pesticides?

01:43:36.000 How do you clean that up?

01:43:37.000 If it's banned, we've got to basically get a hazmat team to pull it out.

01:43:41.000 We've got to put it in hazardous material buckets, cap it real carefully, and then just get it out safely.

01:43:47.000 What about the stuff that gets into the ground?

01:43:48.000 You've got to remove the soil.

01:43:50.000 You've got to go through it.

01:43:51.000 And we can't always do that.

01:43:52.000 And something that's interesting, and we get into this especially in book two, is there's a group called IERC out of UC Davis, Dr. Murad Gabriel and his colleagues.

01:44:02.000 And they're going in as an NGO, and they're the scientists that really validated the devastation these banned poisons do when the Pacific fissure that was almost completely wiped out as a threatened species in California was linked to DTO grow poisons. 0.58

01:44:16.000 And that kind of came to surface about five or six years ago.

01:44:19.000 And then kind of the light bulb went off that, hey, this is an outside scientific group of an NGO, a non-governmental organization, that's working hand-in-hand with California Department of Fish and Wildlife and U.S. Forest Service.

01:44:30.000 But they're showing the devastation of this stuff in the soil.

01:44:34.000 And in the water, well after the grove's eradicated, it's not just, you know, in and around the plants.

01:44:39.000 What's going on?

01:44:40.000 So some of these sites, if you don't do a complete, you know, soil overhaul and, you know, get all that lining out of the creeks, it's not going to be completely restored.

01:44:50.000 And sometimes that can take, you know, we might not have the resources to get back in there for a year or half a year.

01:44:55.000 We always try to get it before the end of the year when the rains come, but it's not always possible.

01:45:00.000 It just can't happen.

01:45:01.000 And you were saying that these pesticides dissipate off the plant somewhat.

01:45:05.000 Somewhere.

01:45:06.000 Is that the case with ground water in the ground as well?

01:45:10.000 They dissipate toxicity somewhat everywhere, but they don't dissipate to the point where they're not harmful on some level.

01:45:17.000 So as a case in point, I have a slide I show on my PowerPoint that actually came from IERC, and we've seen this multiple times.

01:45:24.000 You have a scientist, and he's in the big rubber nitrile gloves, the long sleeve, the face protection.

01:45:30.000 The hat, and he's got a gray fox carcass that right next to a plant in the soil that he ingested this stuff, right, on a tainted plant, and the fox died within minutes.

01:45:41.000 And then there's a golden eagle that comes in after, and it could have been days after, we don't know, you know, and they're carry-on feeders, right?

01:45:48.000 So the golden eagle lands, starts just picking just on the surface, on the body of this, doesn't even get into the carcass.

01:45:55.000 And here's a dead golden eagle in the photo, right next to the...

01:45:57.000 It's like, man, just put a radioactive time bomb in that animal.

01:46:01.000 I mean, that's a hot carcass. 0.98

01:46:03.000 And that was days after, you know, when the scientists are coming back in.

01:46:06.000 So, dissipated or not, it has its effects.

01:46:09.000 We see that in California with rat poison and eagle...

01:46:15.000 Not eagles, owls as well, right?

01:46:17.000 Very much so, yeah.

01:46:18.000 That's why getting all those toxics, even the ones that are illegal...

01:46:22.000 Out of areas where owls or any type of raptors or carry-on feeders can get to.

01:46:26.000 I know people don't like coyotes, but boy, that's the best way to keep those rodents and things under control is coyotes.

01:46:32.000 It's a balance.

01:46:33.000 Yeah, it really is.

01:46:34.000 It's all part of the cycle.

01:46:35.000 I mean, I know people love their little dogs and cats and stuff, but I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about it.

01:46:42.000 I was like, you need those things, man.

01:46:44.000 Those coyotes are important.

01:46:47.000 We're good to go.

01:47:08.000 We're helping wildlife as hunters, as conservationists.

01:47:11.000 We're helping keep what we have.

01:47:12.000 And there's no way we can not manage them because we've already developed so much and taken so much wild space, right?

01:47:18.000 And we've encroached.

01:47:19.000 And we've had, you know, a population of mountain lions that's ebbed and flowed and climbed.

01:47:23.000 And we've had this and we've had that.

01:47:25.000 Yeah, we have to be involved.

01:47:27.000 But this particular problem that we're facing has so many far-reaching effects that we don't even see.

01:47:34.000 You know, as a hunter, it's just disgusting.

01:47:36.000 Well, it's so counterintuitive to people that may be animal rights activists or vegans that hunters are responsible for the reason why we have such large populations of these animals and wildlife protection and How much money comes from hunting tags and then recreational firearm sales.

01:47:54.000 I mean, that's really the majority of the money that goes to preserve these wild lands and keep these animals alive.

01:48:01.000 And when you tell that to animal rights people or vegans, they panic.

01:48:05.000 It's like, listen, the reason why these animals exist, the reason why they're protected is because people hunt them.

01:48:11.000 It sounds so counterintuitive, but...

01:48:14.000 You know, you were talking about Rocky Mountain Elk, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Federation has done an amazing job of repopulating areas like now they have successful populations in places like Kentucky, where they were eradicated at one point in time.

01:48:29.000 They had been extirpated.

01:48:30.000 And not because of us, but because of market hunting back in the turn of the century, in the 1800s.

01:48:37.000 Yeah.

01:48:37.000 When people, you know, needed food and they didn't have refrigerators.

01:48:41.000 So you would shoot something and it was only good for a few days and they would go out and shoot some more and they would sell that food and that food was these wild animals and it was completely unregulated hunting.

01:48:51.000 Yeah, it just hammered them.

01:48:53.000 Yeah, it's horrific.

01:48:54.000 I mean, we know about it with the buffalo because we've all seen those horrific photographs of these mounds of skulls.

01:49:01.000 But, I mean, that was the case with antelope and deer, and they've done such an amazing job that now there's more deer in this country than there were when Columbus was here.

01:49:10.000 Yeah.

01:49:11.000 It's interesting when you bring up elk because of, you know, being a worldwide hunter myself and doing it for so long.

01:49:19.000 I've never taken an elk myself, but I've been on these amazing elk hunts where I've guided, you know, people really deserving of getting their first elk as an example.

01:49:27.000 And you'll like this story being a fellow, you know, an elk guy.

01:49:30.000 We had a tag in Santa Clara County that was for one bull for a tule elk.

01:49:35.000 And one thing we have in this state especially is we have some of the best tule elk on the planet.

01:49:39.000 They're beautiful, smaller species and just a beautiful animal.

01:49:44.000 And I saw this tag pop up for residents or non-residents, and it was only one tag.

01:49:51.000 But nobody would put in for it because all our tule elk are on private land and no one has access.

01:49:56.000 So this gentleman drew this tule elk tag.

01:50:00.000 Mike Vianna.

01:50:01.000 There's only one tag?

01:50:02.000 We give one tag.

01:50:03.000 Why?

01:50:04.000 Just because limited numbers.

01:50:06.000 We know it's going to be a private land small herd.

01:50:08.000 We don't want to take too many bulls.

01:50:10.000 And we also know that access is going to be hard.

01:50:12.000 So they experimented with one tag.

01:50:15.000 And this gentleman that drew the tag was a 70-year-old master hunter education instructor, one of our top instructors for like 40 years.

01:50:22.000 So he's teaching hunter ed like we do in the warden front.

01:50:25.000 He's paying it forward.

01:50:26.000 Draws this tag.

01:50:27.000 He had drawn it in a similar county, in Alameda County, the year before and could never get to any access to harvest his elk.

01:50:35.000 So I get a call through the Hunter Education Program, like, hey man, I know you know all your ranchers and friends there in Santa Clara County.

01:50:41.000 Do you have a ranch that we could set him up on?

01:50:43.000 I said, I'll work something out.

01:50:44.000 This guy's awesome.

01:50:45.000 I mean, how many future conservationists has he raised up?

01:50:49.000 So I found him a spot, you know, a rancher, me and my sister and family grew up with.

01:50:53.000 And he had a little cattle ranch, but he had a beautiful herd.

01:50:57.000 You know, he had a good herd of like 40 animals and some nice bulls, a couple monsters.

01:51:02.000 So we got him set up to harvest one of those bulls, you know, before he was too old to do it with this tag.

01:51:08.000 And we had four generations there, Joe.

01:51:10.000 It was great.

01:51:10.000 We had Mike, his son, his grandson, and his great-grandson.

01:51:14.000 And I just have never seen that.

01:51:16.000 And then I'm helping, you know, guide him with the ranch owner.

01:51:19.000 And what we thought was the bull we'd been watching for months, you know, and all our scouting was going to be a fairly, you know, not a super difficult hunt.

01:51:26.000 Turned out to be an all-day affair, of course.

01:51:28.000 Typical hunt, right?

01:51:29.000 Murphy's Law kicked in.

01:51:30.000 He was hiding on another part of the ranch.

01:51:32.000 End of the day, he gets this bull.

01:51:34.000 And it was just this magnificent feeling.

01:51:36.000 You know, he had worked hard.

01:51:37.000 He had paid it forward in the whole hunting world through hunter education.

01:51:40.000 And we did an article in Photos where we saw four generations with this beautiful Thule elk in our hunter education magazine.

01:51:48.000 And I have that picture, you know, to this day.

01:51:50.000 I just look at it and I go, man, this is what it's about.

01:51:52.000 This is awesome.

01:51:53.000 And then the following year, we got that same tag.

01:51:57.000 And the 17-year-old daughter of a San Jose police detective friend of mine drew it.

01:52:01.000 And she had been hunting with her dad, deer, antelope, doing her thing, learning to hand load like dad taught her, doing it all.

01:52:08.000 And she had never shot an elk yet.

01:52:09.000 And so we did the same thing.

01:52:11.000 I took her and her dad and, you know, we had, in fact, one of my buddies from the Santa Clara Met team, Hunter.

01:52:16.000 You'll read about him in book two.

01:52:18.000 He's a big hunter as well and an elk guy.

01:52:20.000 So, you know, he was in that circle.

01:52:21.000 So we all did it as a big kind of family affair.

01:52:24.000 Same thing as the year before.

01:52:25.000 What should have been a fairly, you know, couple-hour hunt turned out to be an all-day affair.

01:52:29.000 And we ended up getting her a nice 5x6 bull at the end of the evening.

01:52:33.000 I mean, it was excellent, you know.

01:52:35.000 It's incredible.

01:52:35.000 Oh, it's the best ever.

01:52:36.000 People don't know.

01:52:37.000 Yeah.

01:52:38.000 We're lucky it's not commercially available, folks.

01:52:41.000 Lean, healthy, best.

01:52:43.000 Yeah.

01:52:44.000 Delicious.

01:52:44.000 Yeah.

01:52:44.000 But seeing people like that, you know, harvest an animal they'd never have access to, it's just amazing.

01:52:50.000 And then unfortunately that tag got eliminated in our department and I've been pushing with our wildlife management side to bring that tag back, man.

01:52:58.000 Give people a chance.

01:52:59.000 Show that we can still do some cool hunting of a magnificent, you know, elk species here in California because it's here.

01:53:05.000 They're just cool.

01:53:07.000 Yeah, I mean, hunting in California is so unusual to begin with, right?

01:53:12.000 Because we have these big population centers like San Francisco and Los Angeles, and most people don't hunt.

01:53:18.000 There's less than, I think it's below 1% now for the entire state population.

01:53:22.000 It is.

01:53:22.000 We're becoming a non-consumptive state when it comes to conservation.

01:53:27.000 To the point where our agency is having to deal with more input and impacts from non-consumptive users of the outdoors.

01:53:36.000 And that's sad to see.

01:53:38.000 It's one of the reasons why I love California and I'm here all the time doing business, but I'm a Montana resident now.

01:53:43.000 The wide open spaces, the mindset, the conservation kind of mindset.

01:53:49.000 And no ding here, it's a different vibe.

01:53:52.000 Well, it's hunter-friendly.

01:53:54.000 Yeah.

01:53:54.000 Exactly.

01:53:55.000 Very much.

01:53:56.000 Hunter encouraged.

01:53:56.000 You're kind of the oddball if you're not.

01:53:58.000 Right.

01:53:59.000 Well, it's part of the tradition.

01:54:01.000 It's people's way of life up there for so long that it's not unusual.

01:54:05.000 And then the population numbers are low and there's so much rural area, it just becomes...

01:54:09.000 I mean, I was there just two summers ago with my family and we spotted a hunter.

01:54:15.000 100-strong herd of elk.

01:54:18.000 That's magnificent.

01:54:18.000 We pulled over.

01:54:19.000 Luckily, I had binos in the car.

01:54:21.000 I had the kids looking out the window.

01:54:22.000 They were screaming and freaking out.

01:54:23.000 They couldn't believe it.

01:54:24.000 We see a deer occasionally in California.

01:54:28.000 In our neighborhood, we'll see a deer.

01:54:30.000 But see 100 elk.

01:54:31.000 See 100. In that country.

01:54:33.000 And just gorgeous green grass and these animals just hanging out there.

01:54:37.000 It was in the summer, so none of them even had their antlers.

01:54:40.000 They're just chilling.

01:55:01.000 It's pretty wild.

01:55:01.000 Well, when you see one in real life and you see one scream, that was to me, I was hooked.

01:55:06.000 Oh, man.

01:55:06.000 The first time I went elk hunting, my friend Cam Haynes took me to Colorado and that thing was screaming.

01:55:11.000 It was, and we were pretty close.

01:55:14.000 I mean, we were like within 15, 20 yards.

01:55:15.000 I was like, that is insane that that animal can make that noise.

01:55:19.000 Yeah, I just got a bugle at contact distance, felt his breath.

01:55:22.000 That doesn't get any better than that.

01:55:24.000 But it's just such a magnificent creature.

01:55:26.000 Yeah.

01:55:27.000 What kind of an impact has your book and your books has it had on policy?

01:55:35.000 I know people recognize that this is a big issue and of hopefully change.

01:55:42.000 You know, it's been positive.

01:55:44.000 We were, you know, hopeful that we'd get a big reach, especially with book two.

01:55:49.000 And being retired, I can speak a little more freely and, you know, go more national.

01:55:52.000 I mean, obviously, when I was working agency, you got to be careful what you say.

01:55:55.000 And everything's very, very stringently looked at.

01:55:59.000 But it's been really good because it hasn't just played to the audience I normally work with, conservation and tactics and law enforcement and hunters and outdoorsmen and women.

01:56:11.000 The cannabis community is really behind this book.

01:56:14.000 I mean, they're promoting it.

01:56:15.000 They're flashing on their Instagram page.

01:56:18.000 I mean, the Northern California growers actually look at the Met team.

01:56:22.000 They had a term that a couple of grower colleagues kind of coined about two years ago, and they said, you guys are Earth Warriors.

01:56:30.000 This is amazing.

01:56:31.000 I like it.

01:56:32.000 And I went, oh, man, you know, a special ops law enforcement team called Earth Warriors in California.

01:56:36.000 And I went...

01:56:37.000 It's accurate.

01:56:38.000 That's badass.

01:56:39.000 It's very accurate.

01:56:40.000 And it just shows you that you're not this rigid, tactically oriented, stereotypical cop.

01:56:49.000 We're out here for wildlife waterways.

01:56:51.000 And something that I'm doing with Hidden War, especially in book two, is I look at it as three-pronged.

01:56:57.000 First thing I got to do is protect everybody I can.

01:57:00.000 And I can do a lot more by talking and being on venues with you on stuff like this.

01:57:04.000 Then I can't push in a rifle anymore or push in the team.

01:57:08.000 I can do more for the team, more for the agency by outreach that they can't necessarily do.

01:57:13.000 So that's a blessing and that's awesome.

01:57:15.000 And then the first, besides protecting, I want to inform.

01:57:18.000 You know, I want to be able to tell this story.

01:57:19.000 I mean, I've been doing this for 10 plus years and I never get tired of it.

01:57:23.000 I do a presentation.

01:57:24.000 You and I talk about it.

01:57:25.000 I get the chills.

01:57:25.000 I get fired up.

01:57:26.000 I feel it.

01:57:27.000 It doesn't matter who I'm talking to.

01:57:28.000 I could talk to 10 people or, you know, I've been in groups of thousands.

01:57:31.000 It's the same.

01:57:32.000 I get fired up.

01:57:33.000 I'm lucky to be able to tell the message, given what we've learned.

01:57:37.000 I feel like it has an impact.

01:57:40.000 So yeah, we are getting the reach out there much further quicker right now.

01:57:46.000 Has it changed policy?

01:57:48.000 Maybe.

01:57:49.000 It's a little too early to tell.

01:57:50.000 I think it's going to have some effect from the standpoint of when we start to see the non-consumptive users as I think we need a documentary.

01:58:14.000 We got something like that coming up.

01:58:16.000 Do you really?

01:58:17.000 Beautiful.

01:58:18.000 That changes things for people, positive or negative, even when they're inaccurate.

01:58:23.000 You hear all sorts of rumblings about things after a good influential documentary comes out.

01:58:30.000 Yeah, we're actually, it's cool you brought that up because I'm co-producing with a very good independent filmmaker named Lou Doros, a film called Altered State.

01:58:40.000 And this one's been in the works for about a year.

01:58:43.000 And it's actually going to be going to be networked and distributed through a new, it's called Planet Cannabis Entertainment Network.

01:58:49.000 And they're a new channel.

01:58:51.000 Planet Cannabis Entertainment Network.

01:58:53.000 They got 40 million viewers.

01:58:54.000 They're doing main content like other channels are, but they're also doing some, you know, some funded independent projects.

01:59:00.000 And this is one of them.

01:59:01.000 And the nice thing is the reason we're agreeing to do it with them is there's no content control, you know, issues.

01:59:07.000 We're going to get to tell an objective story, not biased.

01:59:10.000 We're going to tell, you know, we're going to be embedded with legitimate growers that we've worked effectively with all on the environmental issue.

01:59:16.000 What are the environmental impacts?

01:59:17.000 What's working?

01:59:18.000 What's not working with regulation now?

01:59:20.000 What do we need to do to regulation to fix it?

01:59:22.000 We're embedded with law enforcement teams again, doing the work I've done with the team and telling their story, and we're in production currently.

01:59:29.000 So this is going to be a cool process, and I'm going to be involved and on the ground and working with Lou to narrate it and interview folks, and I'll be back in the field all throughout the state for the next couple of months and beyond.

01:59:40.000 That's awesome.

01:59:41.000 Well, John, let me know when that comes out.

01:59:44.000 I sure will.

01:59:44.000 And I will definitely let people know.

01:59:45.000 Please do.

01:59:45.000 I'll put it on my Instagram and Twitter and all that jazz.

01:59:47.000 That'd be awesome.

01:59:48.000 Thanks, Joe.

01:59:48.000 And thank you.

01:59:49.000 Thank you for everything that you've done, man.

01:59:51.000 It's amazing.

01:59:52.000 And thank you for sharing this story, too, because if I had not listened to that Steve Rinella show, I would have no idea.

01:59:59.000 I'd only heard my friend talk about that one grow-up that they found, but there was no one there.

02:00:04.000 I would never have known there's gunfights and all this crazy shit that you guys are dealing with.

02:00:09.000 Yeah, Stephen was great because he thought you liked the story, too.

02:00:12.000 And I love your show.

02:00:14.000 And I like how Killer Mike gave a couple shout-outs on a previous show.

02:00:19.000 So if you'll indulge me, I'll give a couple shout-outs here in a minute.

02:00:21.000 But one of the things that I always liked was how you approached this whole issue and how you came into it.

02:00:27.000 Not being a hunter early on in your life, all life, and you come into it fairly later in life.

02:00:32.000 But just connected, you know, and coming from such a broad demographic of listeners that are sometimes out of my world previously.

02:00:40.000 So thank you for what you're doing.

02:00:42.000 And this will be really cool because the guys at Meat Eaters saw it too.

02:00:45.000 And to be able to connect here with you is really cool.

02:00:49.000 And hey, the more we can do the message, the better, right?

02:00:52.000 Yes, for sure.

02:00:52.000 My pleasure.

02:00:53.000 So please, one more time, list the books, tell people where they can get them.

02:00:57.000 Yep.

02:00:58.000 You can get both books.

02:01:00.000 Hidmore's a new one.

02:01:01.000 War in the Woods is the first one on Amazon.

02:01:03.000 You can also get updates on my website, justjohnnorris.com.

02:01:06.000 And it's N-O-R-E-S. It is. 1.00

02:01:09.000 Not Chuck.

02:01:10.000 Uncle Chuck, brother from another mother.

02:01:12.000 Yeah, he's N-O-R-I-S. But yeah, you can also hit me on Instagram and follow for all that stuff. 1.00

02:01:17.000 Besides my website, it's just J-O-H-N-N-O-R-E-S. And I do put this out that if people want to email me directly and they want a signed copy of the book or they have questions.

02:01:26.000 And since Meat Eater and other podcasts, I get so many people wanting to be game wardens now, coming out of the military, little kids growing up.

02:01:32.000 And I've been nonstop on that since Steve's show.

02:01:35.000 That's amazing.

02:01:36.000 So we're getting more people out there.

02:01:38.000 Gotta get you guys more money.

02:01:40.000 We're working on it, man.

02:01:41.000 Yeah, hopefully someone's listening to this.

02:01:43.000 Yeah, thanks for the sentiment, but I've got to give a shout-out to Blake B. and Brian, and Blake's here in the green room with me now, and I've got to give them credit for tuning me into your podcast.

02:01:53.000 They're big friends, so thank you, guys.

02:01:55.000 And I'm also doing a cool custom knife with Mike Velikamp out of V-Knives, and we're making the Trailblazer custom folder.

02:02:02.000 It's like the dream knife, Joe, that I never had 30 years on Ops, but it's an everyday carry, so some stuff there.

02:02:09.000 And being an elk hunter, you'll appreciate this.

02:02:12.000 I'm doing some pretty cool stuff with Axial Precision Rifles.

02:02:15.000 They're a long-range rifle company out of Idaho.

02:02:17.000 They're just amazing.

02:02:18.000 And my partner Terry Hewn and I are running that new.300 PRC for everything from long distance, from our tactical experience, target shooting, but also a good elk gun.

02:02:27.000 And that's going to kind of become my new elk platform.

02:02:30.000 Cool.

02:02:30.000 So this is all connected to, you know, because of this, your effort that you put out, all these pieces have fallen into place.

02:02:37.000 Yeah, and these groups are, it's not only about good product, you know, but it's about them sending the same message.

02:02:43.000 And they are endorsing the book, they're getting that message out.

02:02:46.000 And a lot of these groups that are product sponsor or anything didn't know.

02:02:49.000 Most people didn't know.

02:02:50.000 So that's one of the really, really cool things.

02:02:52.000 And my publisher, Caribou Publishing, and this is interesting, I think you'll appreciate how this kind of comes together, but Henry Wu and my friends over at Recoil Magazine and Gun Digest and Caribou and Blade Show and Blade Magazine, they're all the same entity.

02:03:05.000 And this book with Caribou Publishing was a step out, an expansion book of national issues related to things they hold dear coming from a gun publication, you know, and written objectively not against cannabis.

02:03:18.000 So it was really, you know, it didn't seem like the right fit when you look at it from the outside, but it was perfect.

02:03:25.000 Well, I think everybody wants the same objective, right?

02:03:27.000 They want safety, and for sure, anybody who cares and loves wildlife and these wild lands They don't want this to continue.

02:03:35.000 They want this to be cleaned up, and we've got to find a solution.

02:03:38.000 We do.

02:03:39.000 And without you guys, without boots on the ground, there is no solution.

02:03:44.000 None at all.

02:03:45.000 And like I said, we keep unifying, and we hope to just get more message out there, and we'll get some changes.

02:03:50.000 All right.

02:03:50.000 Day at a time, buddy.

02:03:51.000 Thank you, brother.

02:03:52.000 Really, really appreciate it.

02:03:52.000 Thanks, brother.

02:03:53.000 Thank you so much.

02:03:53.000 Yeah, you too.

02:03:54.000 Really appreciate it, Joe.

02:03:55.000 Bye, everybody.

02:03:58.000 Dude, man.

The Joe Rogan Experience - August 26, 2019

Joe Rogan Experience #1340 - John Nores

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