The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1482 - Jordan Jonas

00:00:00.000 Alright, we're rolling.

00:00:01.000 Hey man, thanks for doing this.

00:00:02.000 Appreciate it.

00:00:03.000 Yeah, it's an honor to be here.

00:00:04.000 Hey, my pleasure.

00:00:05.000 Honored to talk to you.

00:00:06.000 First of all, I really enjoyed you on CoferroCast, so shout out to my friend Aaron Snyder and Frank the Tank.

00:00:13.000 Say hey right back to him. 0.80

00:00:14.000 I listened to you on the show and I was like, God damn, what an interesting guy. 1.00

00:00:18.000 What a fucking crazy life you've had. 0.99

00:00:21.000 So you were on that show alone, right? 1.00

00:00:24.000 Right, right. 0.98

00:00:24.000 And explain that show for people who don't know what the fuck it is. 0.98

00:00:28.000 Yeah, so it's a show where they get ten people. 0.97

00:00:32.000 Each of those people get to pick out ten basic items.

00:00:35.000 You know, like an axe and a bow and a saw.

00:00:38.000 You know, ten items.

00:00:39.000 Just ten items.

00:00:40.000 Right.

00:00:40.000 Does that include arrows?

00:00:41.000 Like you can only have one?

00:00:42.000 No, your bow comes with nine arrows.

00:00:45.000 So you get a bow and arrows.

00:00:46.000 I guess it's an item.

00:00:47.000 So that's a loosely ten items.

00:00:49.000 And then you...

00:00:50.000 They basically take ten people, fly them out into the middle of nowhere, and drop them each off by themselves.

00:00:57.000 You got all the video camera equipment, and it's just self-filming, and it's basically the last one to give up wins.

00:01:05.000 Wow, and how do you know if anyone's given up before you?

00:01:08.000 You don't.

00:01:09.000 They're out there.

00:01:11.000 Previously, the show's been up to a year.

00:01:14.000 A year?

00:01:15.000 Hypothetically, it could go a year. 1.00

00:01:17.000 Holy shit. 0.99

00:01:17.000 So you just go out there and do your best. 0.99

00:01:21.000 What if you are still out there, but everybody else has quit and you don't know?

00:01:24.000 That's when they come and tell you that you won.

00:01:27.000 So when you won, they did that to you?

00:01:28.000 Right, right.

00:01:29.000 And how long did it take you?

00:01:30.000 77 days?

00:01:31.000 77 days.

00:01:32.000 Wow.

00:01:33.000 Completely surprised though.

00:01:34.000 I thought it would go maybe twice that long.

00:01:36.000 You were ready.

00:01:37.000 Yeah.

00:01:37.000 Yeah, but Let's give people your background like it's kind of unfair in a way and Aaron brought this up on the podcast that you were on this show with a bunch of people like me like regular folks that have never really lived like that before but you've done some crazy adventure shit in Siberia and yeah,

00:01:56.000 so man, I guess How far do you want to go back?

00:02:00.000 Let's go back.

00:02:01.000 We have plenty of time.

00:02:03.000 When did you get started?

00:02:05.000 Have you always been an outdoors guy?

00:02:07.000 Yeah, we grew up on a farm in Idaho and that kind of just puts you in the outdoors.

00:02:11.000 I'd say I kind of had...

00:02:13.000 But then I was doing the normal thing, working a concrete job, working at a salad dressing factory, blah, blah.

00:02:18.000 And then my brother took me out riding freight trains, and we rode across the country.

00:02:24.000 Like a hobo?

00:02:25.000 Like a hobo, yeah.

00:02:26.000 Did you have a stick with a bundle at the end of it?

00:02:29.000 Well, we were advanced progressive hobos with backpacks.

00:02:31.000 Progressive hobos.

00:02:33.000 So you just hopped the freight trains?

00:02:35.000 Jumped on a freight train, went across the country, up and back.

00:02:38.000 And then it was also the first time I had been...

00:02:42.000 You know, alone for a while.

00:02:43.000 At one point, I split up with them and rode for a week by myself.

00:02:47.000 What year was this?

00:02:48.000 This was when I was 19. I'm 37 now, so something like that.

00:02:53.000 I'm bad at math.

00:02:54.000 So, cell phone or no cell phone back then?

00:02:55.000 No cell phone, yeah.

00:02:56.000 No cell phone. 1.00

00:02:57.000 Oh my god, you're a crazy person. 0.99

00:02:59.000 No, it was awesome. 0.97

00:03:00.000 It was a real taste of freedom, and I think that was kind of like a coming-of-age experience for me, because I just realized Oh man, I don't really want to, you know, I wasn't going to be in this typical life after having experienced that.

00:03:13.000 Like every night, you know, it's like total freedom.

00:03:15.000 You're up there.

00:03:16.000 You never know where you're going to sleep.

00:03:17.000 You never know who you're going to meet.

00:03:18.000 You're always out there in the elements.

00:03:20.000 It's pretty fascinating.

00:03:21.000 Now when you did something like that, did you plan on doing it for a long period of time?

00:03:26.000 I mean, I guess we just plan to go across the country and check it out.

00:03:30.000 Ben, my brother, had been doing it for like seven years.

00:03:33.000 Oh, really?

00:03:34.000 Yeah, so he was like the pro hobo. 0.68

00:03:36.000 A pro hobo. 0.81

00:03:37.000 So talk me through the process.

00:03:40.000 So he brings it up?

00:03:41.000 Were you guys discussing?

00:03:42.000 Yeah, he was just like, you know, he'd been doing it for a while.

00:03:44.000 How much older is your brother?

00:03:45.000 Five years older.

00:03:46.000 So he invited me to come with him, and I quit my job.

00:03:51.000 And just one day up in Spokane there, sneak into the train yard and hop on it.

00:03:56.000 Hop on the car and take off.

00:03:59.000 Now, did you bring money?

00:04:00.000 Did you bring food?

00:04:01.000 Yeah, you get cans of food in your backpack.

00:04:03.000 And usually we would stop and work.

00:04:05.000 You know, a lot of times he had had some connections throughout the country where we could, oh, we could go stop there and work for a guy, make a few bucks, and then continue on.

00:04:13.000 But you don't really need much in those situations.

00:04:16.000 You know, you'd do some dumpster diving.

00:04:19.000 Yeah, did you?

00:04:20.000 Well, some of you'd be surprised at how good the food is in some of those places they throw out.

00:04:24.000 But, yeah, no, it was...

00:04:26.000 I mean, the first night was kind of a christening.

00:04:29.000 I remember it was like April.

00:04:30.000 April's still up in Montana Plains.

00:04:33.000 It's a little chilly.

00:04:34.000 Yeah, and it poured out, poured rain, and I was in the open car, and I don't know how it happened, but I just slept through a downpour.

00:04:43.000 My brother came climbing up.

00:04:46.000 I was sitting there probably in three inches of water, almost drowned myself.

00:04:50.000 In the middle of the night, he woke me up, and I was like, oh man, what happened?

00:04:54.000 I remember that was about the longest morning of my life, just waiting for that sun to go up.

00:05:00.000 It's like going 55 miles an hour in the wind, soaking wet.

00:05:03.000 Oh my god.

00:05:04.000 But every night was some kind of an adventure like that, and it was pretty cool.

00:05:08.000 And were all the cars open, or did you just sneak into a shitty one?

00:05:12.000 No, there's particular ones that, oh yeah, they're on those like...

00:05:15.000 Trains that go across the whole, you know, intermodals they're called.

00:05:18.000 They're always open, kind of.

00:05:20.000 You're just exposed to the weather.

00:05:22.000 Did you have rain gear or anything?

00:05:24.000 You know, I had his poncho, but I ruined it and it got sucked into the train.

00:05:29.000 Oh, no.

00:05:29.000 So, anyway.

00:05:31.000 Wow.

00:05:31.000 Anyway, it was...

00:05:34.000 We ended up stopping in Virginia and doing some temporary work down there, and that's kind of how I ended up in Virginia.

00:05:45.000 You just got wanderlust, huh?

00:05:48.000 Yeah, I guess so.

00:05:51.000 Yeah, I guess so.

00:05:52.000 It was just a cool experience.

00:05:53.000 And once you get that taste of kind of freedom, it's like a little bit hard to go back to a nine-to-five, I guess.

00:05:59.000 I can only imagine.

00:06:01.000 I can only imagine that feeling when you're 19 years old.

00:06:05.000 Yeah.

00:06:05.000 You know, and to go back to a cubicle.

00:06:08.000 Right, right.

00:06:09.000 Something like that.

00:06:10.000 No chance.

00:06:10.000 Yeah.

00:06:11.000 It'd be torture.

00:06:12.000 So we did some construction jobs in Virginia, and then...

00:06:18.000 And then, you know, I was a young guy trying to figure out how to live a meaningful life or whatever, you know, what am I going to do with my life?

00:06:26.000 Did you have thoughts?

00:06:27.000 Did you have, like, an aspiration?

00:06:28.000 Yeah, I mean, I guess to provide some context, I follow a Christian path, so I was...

00:06:36.000 I always feel like I gotta put some caveats to that.

00:06:40.000 I understand for a lot of people that means shame.

00:06:43.000 I know you had some mean nuns that beat you as a child. 1.00

00:06:47.000 Yeah, you heard that?

00:06:49.000 One mean nun in particular straightened me right out. 1.00

00:06:51.000 I was like, alright.

00:06:53.000 Now, I know it means a lot of things to a lot of people, but for me, it was always like, it was interesting because it was summed up in the Bible, like, you know, love the Lord God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself, and God is defined as love.

00:07:09.000 And so that was kind of always the core focus for my...

00:07:12.000 You know how I tried to decide what I was gonna do in life and at the time I heard of a guy it was over in Russia building orphanages and Needed help and so Felt really strongly that I was the right thing to do.

00:07:26.000 How did you hear of this?

00:07:28.000 So I have a brother that's adopted and when he grew up he wanted to find his biological mom and just tell her thanks for the chance at life or whatever.

00:07:37.000 And when he did, turns out she had another son who was gonna go over there and I met him and he told me about this guy.

00:07:47.000 So I basically felt it was the right thing to do and bought a ticket for a year, you know, just a full year, just go over to Russia, and I headed over there, and that was kind of how the next chapter, I guess, started in life.

00:08:02.000 And how old were you then?

00:08:03.000 Probably 21 or something.

00:08:04.000 Yeah, 21. So 21, don't know anybody over there, don't know how to speak Russian.

00:08:09.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:08:10.000 That was...

00:08:11.000 That was interesting.

00:08:13.000 Did you try to learn Russian?

00:08:15.000 Oh, absolutely.

00:08:16.000 So this guy that was building the orphanage is an American guy, but I went over there and I didn't want to live with an American because I wanted to learn Russian.

00:08:22.000 So he sent me to a neighboring village with these two families.

00:08:28.000 Both of them were like ex-cons and, you know, had spent a lot of time in Siberian prisons, but they had changed.

00:08:34.000 You know, they were like super cool dudes.

00:08:36.000 One guy was just covered in prison tattoos, one of the funniest guys I know, but he...

00:08:41.000 Did they drink a lot?

00:08:42.000 You know, they didn't.

00:08:43.000 Those guys didn't because they had changed their ways, you know, found God in prison.

00:08:47.000 So they took me in like one of their own.

00:08:51.000 Oh, wow.

00:08:52.000 And I spent the better part of that year with those guys, learning the language.

00:08:56.000 How much did you know before you got there?

00:08:57.000 How much Russian?

00:08:58.000 Nothing, just the alphabet.

00:08:59.000 Yeah, so it was...

00:09:00.000 Can you read it?

00:09:01.000 It was brutal.

00:09:02.000 Yeah, I mean, I could make the sounds because I knew the alphabet, but I didn't know what anything meant.

00:09:06.000 So it was...

00:09:08.000 Yeah, that was an interesting experience, like just...

00:09:12.000 Very isolating, to be honest, but also it was, I mean, it was pretty cool, you know, in hindsight.

00:09:18.000 Did you learn to write it?

00:09:19.000 Yeah.

00:09:20.000 So you could write things to people in that, what is that called, Cyrillic?

00:09:23.000 Is that what it's called?

00:09:24.000 Yeah, right, right, right.

00:09:25.000 So you could write things in Cyrillic and you could read it as well?

00:09:29.000 Yeah, as I learned, of course, I could pronounce out the words because I could read it.

00:09:32.000 I didn't know what anything meant.

00:09:33.000 Over time, I started to learn.

00:09:36.000 Of course, the guy who lived with us just taught me all the prison slang and stuff. 0.99

00:09:41.000 Prison bitch. 1.00

00:09:44.000 Great Russian. 1.00

00:09:45.000 Thank you.

00:09:47.000 Wow.

00:09:49.000 That's a crazy thing to do, to just go move there with no Russian at all.

00:09:54.000 Did you buy a book on English to Russian?

00:09:56.000 Yeah, but I found the best way, if you ever go to a different country and don't know anything, just have a notepad with you, and you'll start to get familiar with words as you live in there.

00:10:06.000 And then at the end of the day, I'd write those words down as I recognized them.

00:10:10.000 At the end of the day, I would look up the definition, and just five to ten words a day, just slowly learn.

00:10:16.000 And by the end of the year, I was pretty...

00:10:19.000 You know, starting to get to where I could be comfortable.

00:10:22.000 It took a long time.

00:10:22.000 So you could have a real conversation with people after a year?

00:10:24.000 Yeah, it was brutal, kind of.

00:10:26.000 It was a long time to wait.

00:10:28.000 Well, Russian seems like it would be harder than Spanish or French because you have to learn the crazy alphabet.

00:10:33.000 It's so different.

00:10:34.000 Well, it's the alphabet and the grammar so different.

00:10:36.000 I... I don't know anything about it.

00:10:40.000 How is the grammar different?

00:10:40.000 So you don't speak like, if you want to say like, I love you.

00:10:44.000 You know, there's no, there's no form in the sentence.

00:10:47.000 Like you could say you love I or love I you, you know, you could throw the words in any direct, in any order, but the word actually changes based on its role in the sentence.

00:10:57.000 So when you're learning the language, you just get all these words dumped on you and you have to like try to sort through, uh, You know, how it's formed.

00:11:07.000 How would you say I love you in Russian?

00:11:08.000 No, you could say...

00:11:10.000 Is there a reason why you'd say it in different ways?

00:11:17.000 I think you could emphasize, you know, make different...

00:11:19.000 It is a flexible language in that, yeah, you could switch it up to emphasize certain aspects.

00:11:24.000 Is it more ambiguous?

00:11:26.000 Like, would people be like, are you sure?

00:11:31.000 No, no, I think it works pretty good.

00:11:33.000 How much do you love?

00:11:35.000 You know, that's not a phrase I got a lot of practice with when I was over there.

00:11:41.000 Should have chose a different one.

00:11:43.000 But it's fascinating that, I mean, it's fascinating that people speak in a completely different way.

00:11:50.000 It's just a whole different way.

00:11:51.000 It made me kind of understand, oh, maybe that's why you get those, like, Russian authors that were so great because they were supposed to, you know, they were able to form ideas in a slightly more flexible way, maybe.

00:12:03.000 Yeah, right.

00:12:04.000 It was interesting.

00:12:04.000 It was interesting to learn a language and I was like, huh, that's actually probably a better language in English in a lot of ways.

00:12:09.000 Yeah, it was like, it's a lot of things you can, it's more fun to speak in Russian because you can like switch up words and make weird things.

00:12:16.000 It's always been fascinating to me how people sound so different in different places.

00:12:21.000 Like they have a different way, like Brazil.

00:12:24.000 I love Brazil.

00:12:25.000 One of the things I love Brazil, but the way they speak Portuguese, they have a way.

00:12:29.000 It's like a song.

00:12:31.000 Yeah.

00:12:31.000 There's like a rhythmic quality to the way they talk that we don't have.

00:12:36.000 Yeah, no, that's fascinating.

00:12:37.000 Yeah.

00:12:38.000 Yeah, it's really interesting that, you know, there's different, and then you go to Thailand, they've got their own way.

00:12:45.000 Everything, ah!

00:12:46.000 Everything stretches, ah!

00:12:49.000 It's really...

00:12:50.000 People are so strange in how they...

00:12:53.000 You know, I always wondered, like, how does an accent...

00:12:58.000 Like, especially when you think about our country.

00:13:00.000 Right.

00:13:00.000 Like, how does a New Jersey accent get formed versus a Virginia accent?

00:13:04.000 Like, living in Virginia, sometimes I'm so fascinated by how...

00:13:07.000 With all, like, TV and being surrounded by the standard way English is spoken, I'm just amazed at how some of the people...

00:13:15.000 And you're just like, what?!

00:13:18.000 How do you still have that?

00:13:20.000 But it's awesome, man.

00:13:21.000 What is a Virginia accent?

00:13:23.000 Oh, I liked, my buddy described it best.

00:13:26.000 You know, like, if you replace the R's with the L's, they're like, I gotta put air on these tires. 0.96

00:13:31.000 You know, put an L instead of an R at the end of the word.

00:13:34.000 That's air on tires?

00:13:35.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:13:36.000 Wow.

00:13:36.000 Stuff like that.

00:13:37.000 And you gotta go, what?

00:13:38.000 You're like, huh?

00:13:39.000 Yeah.

00:13:40.000 But then, no, it's pretty good.

00:13:42.000 I don't know.

00:13:43.000 Oh, and then there's people like Cajun country.

00:13:45.000 Yeah.

00:13:45.000 And Cajun country.

00:13:46.000 Yeah, I haven't been down there.

00:13:48.000 They got a whole different vibe going on. 0.99

00:13:50.000 They got some French shit going on there. 1.00

00:13:52.000 Like, woo! 1.00

00:13:53.000 But it's crazy how...

00:13:55.000 I grew up in Boston.

00:13:56.000 Right.

00:13:57.000 And I did this thing.

00:13:59.000 I was on the news when I was 19. And I heard myself on TV and I heard my fucking terrible Boston accent. 0.99

00:14:06.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:14:06.000 And I was like, oh my god, I gotta get rid of that accent. 0.99

00:14:09.000 Yeah.

00:14:09.000 And I had only been living in Boston for about six years.

00:14:12.000 But we've traveled all over the country, and I guess when I was 13 I was very impressionable when I had adopted this.

00:14:20.000 And so I was listening to me, and I was talking about working really hard.

00:14:25.000 We've been working really hard at this. 0.99

00:14:26.000 I was like, oh my god, I sound like a moron. 0.99

00:14:30.000 No offense, Boston, right? 0.99

00:14:32.000 Yeah, I mean, it's where I grew up, but I abandoned it.

00:14:37.000 There was a little bit of it still when I lived in California, when I first moved here.

00:14:41.000 No, you catch it, man.

00:14:42.000 You catch the accents.

00:14:43.000 I hang out with my wife's Filipino family, all of a sudden I'll be speaking like, watch out for the red bar!

00:14:52.000 Yeah, it's it's just crazy how I always wondered like what started it like what started the New York accent?

00:14:58.000 Why is it so different from an accent from Florida? 0.98

00:15:01.000 You know and you know, Florida's all over the fucking place. 0.99

00:15:04.000 They don't know where they are. 0.99

00:15:04.000 Yeah, I've heard. 0.99

00:15:06.000 They're not even sure they're American.

00:15:07.000 They're just like they're floating.

00:15:10.000 So I hear.

00:15:11.000 It's just it's you know, you go to Texas they're totally different way of talking than you do in California.

00:15:16.000 It's interesting.

00:15:17.000 It is interesting, a little.

00:15:18.000 That's just, I guess, how new languages develop over time, you know?

00:15:22.000 Fascinating.

00:15:22.000 Yeah, well, that's what's always been weird to me.

00:15:24.000 It's like, I don't speak Italian, but my grandparents did, and they spoke dialect.

00:15:30.000 Right.

00:15:30.000 So, like, they spoke, like, a Sicilian dialect.

00:15:33.000 So, they would talk, like, they would say shit that people who speak proper Italian didn't have no idea what they were talking about. 0.98

00:15:41.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 0.99

00:15:41.000 God, it's so weird. 0.99

00:15:43.000 That's fascinating.

00:15:44.000 There's so many different ways to communicate.

00:15:46.000 So, I mean, I know this, but I only know this in a sense that I know it's a thing.

00:15:52.000 I don't know that you actually experienced it.

00:15:55.000 Yeah, it was really interesting to learn a very different language as an adult and kind of like, oh, wow, that's just a whole new way to think.

00:16:02.000 Did you keep up with it?

00:16:02.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:16:03.000 I'm a little out of practice, but I got pretty fluent, could explain everything.

00:16:06.000 I still can, you know, say everything I need to say.

00:16:08.000 If you wanted to go to Moscow, you could order dinner.

00:16:10.000 Oh, yeah, yeah.

00:16:11.000 You know, and I could definitely have full conversations.

00:16:13.000 I just would screw up the grammar.

00:16:15.000 Could you read a book?

00:16:17.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:16:18.000 Sometimes, a lot of times I will try to read in Russian just to keep... 0.65

00:16:21.000 Like the Gulag Archipelago?

00:16:22.000 Yeah, one of my favorites.

00:16:25.000 Heavy reading.

00:16:26.000 Heavy reading.

00:16:27.000 But it's good.

00:16:27.000 So when you were over there and it took you, you said, like, how long?

00:16:32.000 Like a year before you were really fluid?

00:16:34.000 Yeah, I think a year.

00:16:35.000 And the guys I lived with, so they had, you know, both been to prison, but they had also been in prison together with some native nomadic guy that lived up in the north of Siberia.

00:16:46.000 And so my buddy would always tell me, oh, you gotta meet my buddy from the north.

00:16:50.000 You know, you gotta go live up there.

00:16:51.000 And so...

00:16:53.000 I was like, yeah, that'd be cool.

00:16:54.000 Eventually, he connected us.

00:16:57.000 You know, dude was coming through to sell furs in the city.

00:16:59.000 I was there, and he introduced me, and the Avenki guy, Yura, invited me up to the far north to kind of check out his way of life.

00:17:07.000 Is that the videos that you sent me?

00:17:09.000 I'm going to send these to you, Jamie.

00:17:11.000 It's crazy.

00:17:12.000 Dude's riding on reindeers.

00:17:16.000 What is the name of those people?

00:17:20.000 So those are the Evenki people. 1.00

00:17:22.000 They live in the taiga, the forest up there, and they are nomadic.

00:17:28.000 Man, I didn't even know people like that existed until I met them.

00:17:30.000 Oh, you have a video.

00:17:31.000 You already have it.

00:17:32.000 Look at you, wizard.

00:17:34.000 James is the best Googler of all time.

00:17:36.000 Cutting the antler off of one.

00:17:37.000 So why do they cut the antlers off? 0.87

00:17:39.000 They do it for a number of reasons.

00:17:40.000 One is because that antler skin...

00:17:44.000 Well, this one particularly was growing into the reindeer's eye, so they were going to cut it off to help the reindeer.

00:17:51.000 And then you can also eat the skin off the velvet, and it's Chinese medicine for...

00:18:00.000 Men's health and stuff.

00:18:02.000 Well, it actually was a thing that they were selling as a supplement.

00:18:07.000 Yeah.

00:18:08.000 And they were selling, oh man, they're digging in there. 1.00

00:18:11.000 It's all bloody and shit. 1.00

00:18:12.000 Isn't it crazy? 1.00

00:18:15.000 Animals with antlers, it's such a bizarre thing because they regrow them every year.

00:18:18.000 Every year, so much energy.

00:18:20.000 And they fall off.

00:18:20.000 Yeah, so much energy into that.

00:18:22.000 And caribou, which is what a reindeer is, I believe they have the largest antlers to body size of any of the deer family.

00:18:30.000 Oh, right.

00:18:30.000 Yeah, there's some massive ones.

00:18:31.000 Oh, geez.

00:18:32.000 That's getting serious.

00:18:34.000 Serious.

00:18:34.000 So how often did they do that?

00:18:37.000 Did you show that?

00:18:38.000 No, no.

00:18:38.000 Oh, yeah.

00:18:39.000 Folks, that was an assassination.

00:18:42.000 Caribou assassination.

00:18:44.000 So they would ride them and take care of them, but occasionally they would eat them.

00:18:47.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:18:48.000 They provide everything for them.

00:18:50.000 So they have a big herd, you know, a couple few hundred reindeer, and they basically live off of them.

00:18:56.000 So they're their transportation, their clothing, their food, their economic, you know, their economy, basically.

00:19:05.000 My friends John and Jen, they live in Alberta, and there was a place near them that had an elk farm, and they farmed elk for the velvet.

00:19:14.000 Oh, yeah.

00:19:14.000 That's what they farmed them for.

00:19:16.000 Fascinating.

00:19:18.000 I believe they would sell to like a bodybuilding company.

00:19:22.000 I think there was a...

00:19:25.000 Vitality, you know.

00:19:26.000 Well, I think it's got growth hormone in it.

00:19:28.000 I think that's what it is because there was a time where it was a thing that you would buy in like, I don't know if they do it anymore, but in health food stores, you buy like antler spray.

00:19:38.000 Yeah.

00:19:39.000 And it was somehow they broke it down to a spray.

00:19:41.000 Right.

00:19:41.000 I mean, I don't even know if it worked.

00:19:43.000 No, yeah, I don't either, but it, I mean, I'm pretty sure Rhinocerosorn doesn't, but I'm imagining.

00:19:48.000 No, Rhinocerosorn doesn't. 0.99

00:19:49.000 Did you see what happened where there was fucking tons of beaver penis that they found? 0.99

00:19:55.000 They caught a cargo going to China. 1.00

00:19:59.000 Black market, beaver penis. 0.99

00:20:00.000 Because there was tons. 0.99

00:20:01.000 Here, I'll send you this, Jamie. 1.00

00:20:03.000 Fucking tons of beaver penis. 1.00

00:20:06.000 Here it is. 1.00

00:20:07.000 Man, you're fast at that.

00:20:07.000 Too fast.

00:20:08.000 He's the wizard. 0.99

00:20:09.000 Chinese authority sees 12 tons of beaver penises smuggled from Canada. 0.99

00:20:15.000 Wow. 0.93

00:20:16.000 Yeah, and again, it's a vitality thing.

00:20:19.000 It's about erections.

00:20:20.000 The cool thing about the Hevenki up there is it's sustainable what they're doing because they got their own reindeer and they manage them and all that. 0.99

00:20:28.000 They don't have to import beaver penises. 0.92

00:20:30.000 Right. 0.98

00:20:31.000 They got plenty of reindeer ones. 0.86

00:20:34.000 Oh, God.

00:20:34.000 There's the beaver dicks.

00:20:36.000 Oh, boy.

00:20:36.000 Poor beavers.

00:20:39.000 To kill that many beavers?

00:20:41.000 What is the number of beavers?

00:20:43.000 It says 40 to 50 billion U.S. dollars?

00:20:46.000 What?

00:20:47.000 The market value of animal parts illegally imported on the Chinese market.

00:20:52.000 I mean, that's still a huge number, but a little steep for those.

00:20:57.000 Yeah, it's so crazy.

00:20:59.000 They have these... 0.99

00:20:59.000 According to my friend who's been to China many times, he said it's not even that they really believe that rhino horn is good for your dick, but what it is, it's so hard to get and it's so exotic and illegal that they like having it. 0.99

00:21:14.000 So they're like, if a businessman comes over your house, would you like some rhino horn? 0.97

00:21:19.000 Come into the secret room.

00:21:20.000 Woo the folks. 0.99

00:21:21.000 Push on the fucking wall of the library and slides, you know, spy movies. 1.00

00:21:26.000 And you go back there to a tea room with rhino dick. 1.00

00:21:29.000 Yeah. 1.00

00:21:30.000 Yeah.

00:21:30.000 Deer antler velvet IGF-1 spray supplement.

00:21:33.000 50 bucks?

00:21:34.000 Yeah.

00:21:35.000 I don't know about that, but it says.

00:21:37.000 I think it's real.

00:21:38.000 I mean, it could be the fact that they do grow so fast every year.

00:21:42.000 You know, there might be something in there.

00:21:43.000 I don't know.

00:21:44.000 But they taste good, just like off the velvet, and we'd roast it over the fire real quick.

00:21:49.000 What does it taste like?

00:21:50.000 It's kind of got the bamboo shoot texture, like kind of that firm texture, but it's real smoky.

00:21:54.000 Anything smoky is good.

00:21:56.000 What does it say?

00:21:57.000 Banned substances.

00:21:58.000 Although previously found on the World Anti-Doping Agency's list of banned substances, deer antler spray was removed in 2013 when it was deemed completely safe and legal to consume prior to athletic activity.

00:22:10.000 Okay, you know what that means?

00:22:12.000 That means it doesn't work.

00:22:13.000 Yeah, they took it off the thing.

00:22:14.000 That's what it means.

00:22:15.000 They take it off, it means it doesn't work.

00:22:17.000 Safe to eat.

00:22:18.000 Good to know. 0.99

00:22:19.000 That doesn't mean, that means that there's no fucking performance. 0.98

00:22:22.000 Oh, that's it. 0.98

00:22:23.000 Ray Lewis was rumored to have used it.

00:22:26.000 Following an injury to his tricep in 2013. You know what?

00:22:29.000 I bet they've just realized, like, hey, you know what's better than this?

00:22:32.000 Real growth hormone.

00:22:33.000 Right, right. 1.00

00:22:34.000 This is fucking stupid. 1.00

00:22:35.000 Concentrate it. 1.00

00:22:35.000 Running around sucking on deer antlers. 1.00

00:22:38.000 But this farm near my friend John and Jen's place, they bought this farm specifically, these people did, not John and Jen, but these people specifically started farming elk just for their velvet.

00:22:51.000 Yeah, weird.

00:22:52.000 And then the market crashed.

00:22:53.000 Like, it wasn't valuable anymore.

00:22:55.000 I guess this was prior to 2013 when it was illegal. 0.99

00:23:00.000 And so this poor guy had all these fucking elk. 0.99

00:23:03.000 Yeah, there's an elk farm up by my house in Idaho that has recently closed down. 0.99

00:23:07.000 I wonder if similar circumstances.

00:23:08.000 Yeah, I wonder.

00:23:10.000 I mean, how crazy is it that the most delicious meat on earth is not...

00:23:13.000 Yeah, you think that'd have a market, right?

00:23:15.000 Yeah, that's not what you want. 0.99

00:23:17.000 You want the fucking antlers? 1.00

00:23:19.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:23:20.000 Oh man, that's...

00:23:21.000 Such a crazy animal that they grow that stuff in like three months.

00:23:25.000 Yeah.

00:23:26.000 Look at the size of that rack just to...

00:23:28.000 That rack on the wall back there, it's immense.

00:23:31.000 There's got to be some growth hormone in there. 0.94

00:23:33.000 Something crazy.

00:23:34.000 That's pretty wild.

00:23:36.000 And also, with elk, they keep them a lot longer than a lot of deer species because they use them to fight off wolves.

00:23:42.000 So apparently they keep them deep into the winter.

00:23:45.000 Okay, yeah, yeah.

00:23:47.000 I know the female reindeer keep them a long time, too.

00:23:50.000 Isn't that interesting?

00:23:51.000 The female reindeer are the only deer that actually have antlers. 0.51

00:23:54.000 Probably also for protection.

00:23:56.000 Yeah, I think it is.

00:23:56.000 I think it is.

00:23:58.000 So when you're up there and these folks have these caribou and they're riding them and they're taking care of them, do they shield the other caribou from seeing one of them get slaughtered?

00:24:10.000 No, they don't seem to be too worried about it.

00:24:14.000 It's a very, like, mutually, you know, symbiotic relationship between the reindeer.

00:24:20.000 And the reindeer, they're always getting attacked by wolves and tore up and stuff.

00:24:24.000 And they always are coming to the people for protection in those times.

00:24:27.000 Not only from wolves, but even from, like, mosquitoes and gnats.

00:24:31.000 You know, they'll build big smoky fires. 0.99

00:24:33.000 So the reindeer know people are their friends and I guess...

00:24:36.000 Sort of.

00:24:37.000 ...are okay with an occasional...

00:24:39.000 Occasional eating.

00:24:40.000 An occasional sacrifice.

00:24:42.000 So if they have 200 of them, how often do they kill one?

00:24:45.000 They try not to kill them.

00:24:46.000 They actually really avoid trying to kill their own reindeer.

00:24:49.000 You're mostly living off of moose and wild reindeer and game birds and stuff.

00:24:56.000 Oh, like reindeer that aren't theirs.

00:24:57.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:24:58.000 Interesting.

00:24:59.000 So because these are domesticated, they just behave differently. 0.98

00:25:02.000 It's so weird to see them with saddles on and shit and people riding them. 0.96

00:25:06.000 They're one of the first animals to be domesticated, actually. 0.99

00:25:10.000 By humans?

00:25:11.000 Yeah, which is interesting.

00:25:12.000 Before dogs?

00:25:13.000 Not before, but one of the first, I guess, yeah.

00:25:16.000 And then they...

00:25:19.000 And they've been domesticated so long that they don't even know how to domesticate wild ones anymore.

00:25:24.000 This is crazy.

00:25:25.000 Jamie, go back to that.

00:25:27.000 Let me see how they put up these teepees.

00:25:28.000 Yeah, it's a teepee.

00:25:29.000 So is this, they have this set up ready to go, and then when they get to a place and they decide to, then they pull out the sticks, they already have them?

00:25:38.000 Yeah, in the summer you're moving every three days or so, just following the reindeer herd through the forest, you know.

00:25:44.000 Wow.

00:25:44.000 In the winter everything's a little slower, you'll be in a place for a month or so, but...

00:25:50.000 Yeah, nomads.

00:25:51.000 What do they do when the weather sucks?

00:25:53.000 They have this teepee set up.

00:25:56.000 You're just out in the weather also, basically.

00:25:59.000 When it's really cold, negative 50, they have a little wood stove in the...

00:26:05.000 In the teepee and it keeps the thing pretty warm.

00:26:08.000 What I was asking about actually is the wind.

00:26:10.000 Because the way they have these sticks set up, it's like they have these animal skins that go over.

00:26:15.000 Is that animal skins?

00:26:16.000 That's canvas.

00:26:17.000 That is?

00:26:17.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:26:18.000 So it just looks like it's buck skin.

00:26:21.000 So they have these canvas.

00:26:22.000 Do they have loops where they tie it down?

00:26:25.000 Yeah, they do.

00:26:25.000 And then they lean sticks on the outside also to kind of hold the canvas in place.

00:26:32.000 So these people live so nomadic.

00:26:35.000 Yeah, it is very nomadic.

00:26:37.000 Man, it's awesome though.

00:26:39.000 It's so fascinating to live like that and compare it to the modern world because not too many people get the opportunity anymore.

00:26:47.000 You're so wired for it.

00:26:49.000 It's weird.

00:26:50.000 So your body just immediately falls into place for it?

00:26:53.000 Yeah, all your dopamine, you know, like you'll be out there fishing and every day you'll just be like, yeah, I caught a fish, you know, because you're relying on it so much.

00:27:02.000 And whereas like in normal everyday life here in town and stuff, when do you get that excited?

00:27:07.000 You know, like you're always, you don't have any schedule.

00:27:10.000 So every day you wake up, it's like, well, what do I need to do today?

00:27:14.000 And you can kind of, you're just free to choose, you know, you can go try hunting, you can go collect berries, you go find your reindeer and, you know, like there's just a number.

00:27:23.000 Of options all available to you, and they're all directly related to your life.

00:27:29.000 So you don't have any, you know, there's no money being thrown around out there.

00:27:34.000 It's just kind of, I'm hungry, let's go fishing, let's go to that spot because it's cool.

00:27:39.000 What do they do if they get injured?

00:27:41.000 That's a problem.

00:27:42.000 They actually have...

00:27:46.000 There's good and bad out there, and they can call in a helicopter, but it's so far out, you know, it's going to be a problem.

00:27:55.000 I've broken some ribs out there and had some, myself had some serious injuries that just wasn't an option.

00:28:02.000 You know, you just got to tough it out because there's overcast.

00:28:03.000 Like what kind of injuries other than ribs?

00:28:06.000 Bro, oh man, the...

00:28:08.000 I chopped my knee with an axe one time, cut a tendon on the inside of your knee right in half.

00:28:16.000 My other knee had recently had a knee surgery, so I was just laid up.

00:28:20.000 Literally like three days, I was just laying in a teepee.

00:28:23.000 Couldn't move.

00:28:24.000 I had to roll over, poop in a bag.

00:28:26.000 I couldn't move.

00:28:28.000 It was brutal.

00:28:30.000 But then, you know, they rubbed like pine sap on it and it actually healed.

00:28:34.000 Really?

00:28:35.000 Yeah.

00:28:35.000 I could have swore it would get infected, but they just packed it with pine sap.

00:28:39.000 Pine sap?

00:28:40.000 Yeah.

00:28:41.000 Healed right up pretty fast.

00:28:43.000 What happened to the ligament or the tendon that got cut?

00:28:45.000 It doesn't really feel as bothering me, but I didn't know it was cut at the time.

00:28:49.000 It was only later when I did a...

00:28:50.000 An MRI? Yeah, they told me it was.

00:28:53.000 And so it never healed?

00:28:55.000 Yeah.

00:28:55.000 Well, I don't know what it did.

00:28:56.000 They said it was hanging on by a thread.

00:28:58.000 I don't know if it ever healed back or what.

00:29:00.000 You don't even care?

00:29:01.000 You know, I don't notice it as being weak, so I haven't been bothered.

00:29:06.000 My surgery knee hurts more than that knee.

00:29:09.000 What kind of surgery?

00:29:10.000 A couple ACLs.

00:29:12.000 Yeah, you know how it is.

00:29:13.000 Yeah, I do.

00:29:14.000 So, one of those videos was showing a net.

00:29:17.000 Is that the way they would fish?

00:29:19.000 Both.

00:29:20.000 You know, a lot of times you'd put nets out, and a lot of times you'd Just go cast your birch, you know, homemade rod.

00:29:29.000 So this is a net, they would just move it across the middle of the river?

00:29:34.000 You'd set it and leave it.

00:29:35.000 They're just setting it right now.

00:29:37.000 How do they do that thing that they do on the ice when they do that when it's frozen?

00:29:43.000 When it's frozen?

00:29:43.000 When they cut a hole and then they somehow or another get that net to go through to the other side.

00:29:49.000 You cut two holes and then you get a long stick And you shove it in the hole and slide it then like push the stick under the ice and on the one end you have a string tied to it so you push it and keep trying that until you get it to slide under the ice to the other hole and when you do you pull the stick out of that hole and tie your net On the end of the other one and you can pull the string through.

00:30:14.000 The string on the end of the stick, do you catch it with a hook or something and try to pull it up?

00:30:18.000 Let me see if I can...

00:30:19.000 No, you just pull the actual stick up through with the string tied on the back side of it.

00:30:25.000 So you just have to find the stick?

00:30:27.000 Yeah, you just got to get the stick to...

00:30:28.000 You might have to three or four times slide it under the ice until it ends up where the other hole is.

00:30:34.000 Yeah, it works good.

00:30:35.000 I did it on that alone show.

00:30:37.000 It was fun.

00:30:37.000 Yeah, that's why I'm asking.

00:30:39.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:39.000 And so that must be really hard to do by yourself, because I've seen people do it on television on those Survival Alaska shows.

00:30:47.000 Oh, right.

00:30:47.000 It wasn't too bad.

00:30:48.000 No, that part wasn't too hard.

00:30:52.000 But, no, yeah.

00:30:55.000 I don't know.

00:30:55.000 It was all good stuff to learn out there with the natives and then...

00:30:58.000 It came in handy for sure.

00:31:00.000 Have you ever seen the Werner Herzog documentary?

00:31:02.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:31:03.000 So the native that I actually first met that I was telling you about, that Yurigai, he isn't a nomad himself.

00:31:10.000 He's a fur trapper, so he does all that.

00:31:12.000 Real similar to that Werner Herzog documentary.

00:31:16.000 Oh, really?

00:31:18.000 Where they filmed that isn't that far from where I was in Siberia.

00:31:22.000 I went fur trapping with him one year.

00:31:26.000 He showed me the rough ropes.

00:31:28.000 He showed me a topographical map.

00:31:30.000 He's like, there's a cabin, there's a cabin, there's a cabin.

00:31:34.000 Threw some noodles in each of my cabins.

00:31:37.000 We stocked them with noodles.

00:31:38.000 Then he just dropped me off and said, see you in a month and a half or whatever.

00:31:42.000 I just was out there. 1.00

00:31:44.000 I had a stupid little... 1.00

00:31:47.000 Oh, they're wrestling, huh? 1.00

00:31:48.000 There you go.

00:31:48.000 Yeah, good times.

00:31:49.000 These kids wrestle a lot?

00:31:51.000 Yeah.

00:31:52.000 It's a good way to grow up, man.

00:31:53.000 Always just outside, having a good time.

00:31:56.000 Yeah, I guess so.

00:31:58.000 The Werner Herzog documentary was really fascinating because as you watch those people, and when they talk about, like...

00:32:07.000 No depression.

00:32:08.000 They're all happy.

00:32:09.000 They're always laughing.

00:32:10.000 They love what they do.

00:32:12.000 They enjoy what they do.

00:32:13.000 But even though that's like everybody's goal, right?

00:32:16.000 Everybody's goal is happiness.

00:32:17.000 Right, right, right, right. 1.00

00:32:18.000 Everybody's like, fuck that. 1.00

00:32:19.000 I'm not doing that. 0.99

00:32:20.000 Yeah, that's a fascinating conversation in and of itself because, you know, having been up there and stuff, I'm just like, man, this is an awesome way to live.

00:32:29.000 If it was like my friends, my family, in that context, it's like I would probably choose that way of life.

00:32:36.000 But...

00:32:37.000 Then you find yourself here in America and you're stuck on your phone.

00:32:41.000 And it's just so unsatisfying that it's interesting to experience both, but it's kind of hard to...

00:32:47.000 I mean, because you're in where you are.

00:32:51.000 So my family's all here.

00:32:52.000 Everybody's all here.

00:32:53.000 We're not nomads.

00:32:55.000 But it's funny to have experienced that way of life and almost think, man, that's kind of what we're made for.

00:33:00.000 It's almost better.

00:33:01.000 I wish I could implement that in some way here.

00:33:06.000 Wow.

00:33:06.000 I'm aware of that because people say it, but I'm not aware of it in the sense that I've experienced it before.

00:33:11.000 I've never experienced, like, just completely living.

00:33:13.000 I've hunted, and I've camped out for a week at a time or so.

00:33:17.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:17.000 You start to get a feel for it.

00:33:19.000 Yeah, sort of.

00:33:20.000 It seems like when there's no other option, like, that's how you're eating.

00:33:25.000 You know, we were eating Mountain House, and when we shot a deer, then we'd eat the deer.

00:33:29.000 Right.

00:33:30.000 Yeah, no, you were, speaking of which, You've read those like Quanah Parker and stuff, books and stuff.

00:33:39.000 Me too.

00:33:40.000 And now having lived with those natives, it's like there's so much good there.

00:33:43.000 You see like They really are happy people.

00:33:48.000 So there's a giant difference between the people who live in the village and the people who live in the forest.

00:33:54.000 And the people who live in the forest you would genuinely call like happy people.

00:33:58.000 Like this is...

00:33:59.000 They're knowledgeable.

00:34:00.000 They're being productive.

00:34:01.000 They're doing all this stuff.

00:34:02.000 Whereas when you go to the village, it's just like everybody's drunk.

00:34:05.000 Nobody's doing anything.

00:34:06.000 It's like just a total wreck.

00:34:09.000 Especially villages that don't have any reindeer herding connected to them because they kind of...

00:34:13.000 Don't have their cultural context to remain connected to.

00:34:20.000 So at least in the villages that have reindeer herding, the kids can go out in the summer and live with the reindeer herders and kind of experience that.

00:34:27.000 And it gives them a source of pride.

00:34:29.000 It gives them like...

00:34:31.000 The experience of living in the forest, becoming really in touch with nature and all that.

00:34:39.000 Whereas in the village, it's just kind of a dark hole.

00:34:42.000 Everybody drinks.

00:34:43.000 In those native villages, the statistic is that one out of three people die of suicide, homicide, or accident.

00:34:50.000 And you feel it.

00:34:52.000 I've got some stories of that that's just brutal, too.

00:34:55.000 But the...

00:34:58.000 When I read those, like, you know, Empire of the Summer Moon, those types of books, and I grew up with a couple good friends that were Native American, and it really made me think, like, I wonder if you could, seeing how well...

00:35:14.000 How much of a difference it makes having that culture intact to some degree.

00:35:19.000 Like, I wonder if, say, on Pine Ridge, you know, on one of these reservations, if you could almost replicate something like that.

00:35:29.000 Like, if you could maybe take the initiative to, like...

00:35:33.000 Restore some buffalo herd, use a bunch of unused land, maybe the, you know, government land or tribal land that's kind of unused.

00:35:42.000 Restore a herd and then Kind of bring back those nomadic ways.

00:35:47.000 It's not like everybody would have to live that way, but from my own experience, watching places that have that option, you know, that kind of, that are connected to that culture, flourish a lot more than the ones that didn't.

00:36:02.000 There were Venki villages with no reindeer herding and ones with, and it was like night and day as far as, and so I was like, I wonder if that would be Anyway, it's something I've thought about. 0.95

00:36:11.000 It's an interesting thing to think of, but one of the things that happened to the Native Americans in this country is all the pieces of land that they got for reservations sucked.

00:36:20.000 Yeah, I know. 0.98

00:36:21.000 That's the dirty trick that the white man pulled. 0.99

00:36:23.000 Oh, for sure. 0.99

00:36:24.000 I wonder...

00:36:24.000 Right, and I wonder...

00:36:27.000 I mean, is any of that land suitable for raising?

00:36:31.000 Well, I'm sure some of the land is good.

00:36:33.000 I'm saying every piece of land, but it's not really true.

00:36:37.000 But a lot of it...

00:36:38.000 No, for sure.

00:36:39.000 That's why they sent them to Oklahoma and the Dakotas.

00:36:41.000 They sent them to some barren land.

00:36:44.000 But that was where the Comanches were anyway, right?

00:36:46.000 Just bigger. 1.00

00:36:48.000 The white settlers got here and fucked everything up. 1.00

00:36:51.000 Oklahoma's probably pretty dope. 1.00

00:36:52.000 A lot of animals.

00:36:54.000 A lot of things happen.

00:36:56.000 Imagine seeing 13 million buffalo roaming the plains.

00:36:59.000 Well, there's an interesting story to that, too.

00:37:02.000 That seems a little bit imbalanced as well.

00:37:04.000 And there is Dan Flores, who's a...

00:37:09.000 Dan is a wildlife historian, right?

00:37:11.000 And he wrote an amazing book called Coyote America.

00:37:16.000 It just really gives you a really interesting understanding of how weird the animal coyotes are and how they've spread out across the entire country.

00:37:26.000 It's a beautiful book.

00:37:27.000 But he also wrote a book called, I think it's called Bison Ecology and Bison Diplomacy.

00:37:33.000 And maybe this was a paper, it might not have been a book, but essentially the The thought behind this was, these millions of buffalo that you see, when that did happen, that only happened because the Europeans had come and given the plague,

00:37:51.000 given the smallpox and all this to Native Americans and wiped out, like, massive numbers of the hunters. 0.64

00:38:00.000 At one point in time, there was as many as 90% of all the Native Americans died from disease.

00:38:06.000 Yeah, I know.

00:38:06.000 Can you imagine?

00:38:06.000 Which is insane.

00:38:07.000 So it could have been literally millions of people dead from disease that would have been nomadic buffalo hunters. 0.88

00:38:15.000 Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

00:38:16.000 Yeah.

00:38:17.000 So what his theory is, is that they were in these incredibly large numbers because of that.

00:38:24.000 Because he points to...

00:38:27.000 There's a time where the earliest settlers were making their way across the country, in like the 1500s and somewhere around there, and they didn't talk about buffalo.

00:38:38.000 They talked about deer, they talked about bear, they talked about all the animals that we know existed, but there was no talking about these massive herds of buffalo.

00:38:47.000 That all this seemed to have come after the Native Americans were wiped out, and it kind of makes sense.

00:38:53.000 That could make sense, yeah, yeah. 0.66

00:38:54.000 Not wiped out totally, of course, but a large number of them wiped out, whereas these animals, where they're used to being preyed upon, just bred like fucking crazy and developed these huge herds.

00:39:05.000 You're talking about, obviously, over a period of hundreds of years, right?

00:39:08.000 Right, right, right.

00:39:10.000 Yeah, no, that makes sense.

00:39:11.000 It'd be interesting.

00:39:13.000 Or maybe those travelers didn't run into the herds if they were bunched up in groups.

00:39:18.000 Yeah, that's possible, too.

00:39:18.000 But who knows?

00:39:19.000 No, I mean, it makes a lot of sense.

00:39:21.000 90% of the population, you know?

00:39:23.000 Yeah, it's a really interesting story.

00:39:27.000 Like, when he breaks it down, it really is an imbalance.

00:39:31.000 If you think about it, why would there be a million buffalo?

00:39:34.000 Or many millions?

00:39:35.000 Yeah, where's the predators?

00:39:36.000 Yeah, it's crazy.

00:39:37.000 Well, buffaloes are so interesting, too, because they don't really... 0.99

00:39:40.000 Predators don't fuck with them. 0.99

00:39:41.000 This giant furry thing. 1.00

00:39:43.000 You can't even kill it.

00:39:44.000 They're so big. 0.89

00:39:45.000 There's so many of them.

00:39:47.000 They're just gonna stomp you. 1.00

00:39:48.000 You know, my friend Remy Warren, he's very famous in the hunting world.

00:39:53.000 And he had a show called Apex Predator.

00:39:56.000 And he replicated a famous Native American painting.

00:40:01.000 In this famous Native American painting, what they would do is they'd kill a coyote and they would skin the coyote and then put the coyote skins on and walk on all fours up to the buffalo and then shoot it with a bow and arrow.

00:40:12.000 Because the coyotes were no threat to the buffalo at all. 0.99

00:40:16.000 So the buffalo would look at a coyote like, you want some of this bitch? 1.00

00:40:19.000 Like a baby coming up to a grown man trying to pick a fight. 0.99

00:40:23.000 They weren't worried about the coyotes.

00:40:25.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:40:26.000 No, I believe it.

00:40:28.000 Yeah, it's a famous painting.

00:40:31.000 I've seen those two guys sneaking up on the herd.

00:40:34.000 Apparently that's literally what they used to do sometimes.

00:40:36.000 They had a bunch of different strategies for how to get close enough to the buffalo.

00:40:40.000 Because, you know, if they're using a traditional bow like they had, if you're shooting 40 yards, if you're Aaron Snyder maybe, you know what I mean?

00:40:49.000 Totally. 0.98

00:40:49.000 But when you get into that range, like 50, 60 yards, like good fucking life. 0.98

00:40:53.000 Oh man, you're lobbing them. 0.99

00:40:54.000 And it's probably going pretty slow anyway by the time it gets there.

00:40:58.000 It's not going to get much penetration on an enormous animal with 2x4s for ribs.

00:41:03.000 Yeah, you can imagine hunting through those herds.

00:41:07.000 They say they'd send arrows into this massive running herd of buffalo while you're on your horse next to it.

00:41:14.000 Fascinating stuff.

00:41:15.000 Well, that book by Sam...

00:41:18.000 What does he call himself?

00:41:19.000 S.E. Gwyn?

00:41:20.000 Yeah.

00:41:21.000 His name's Sam.

00:41:22.000 Sam Gwyn, who I had on the podcast.

00:41:24.000 When you read that book, the life that they had was so...

00:41:29.000 It was so intense, the Comanche. 1.00

00:41:32.000 And it was so fascinating.

00:41:34.000 It kind of makes you want to live like that.

00:41:37.000 Yeah, I know.

00:41:38.000 Even...

00:41:39.000 Right, man.

00:41:39.000 That's what I was talking about earlier.

00:41:41.000 Like, even the...

00:41:43.000 Even living with the nomads in Siberia, it's like, after having done that, it's a harsh climate, you know, brutal place.

00:41:50.000 The alcoholism's rough, so it's a problem.

00:41:53.000 But, all that into account, it's like, man...

00:41:56.000 You would almost choose this.

00:41:57.000 You know, especially now we have the advantage of having modern medicine and stuff also.

00:42:02.000 Yes.

00:42:02.000 And supplies, you know, that you can get.

00:42:05.000 So you're not going to starve if your hunt's bad and you're not going to, you know, a broken leg won't end you.

00:42:10.000 It's fascinating.

00:42:12.000 Yeah, that's part of the reason why it's like, I wonder if now you could kind of...

00:42:16.000 Help revitalize some of that culture in a way, you know, like just...

00:42:19.000 You'd have to have an enormous piece of land.

00:42:21.000 See, the beautiful thing about the way the Native Americans lived before the white settlers came along was that there's no boundaries.

00:42:28.000 The worst they had to worry about is other tribes. 0.99

00:42:30.000 I mean, and what they did to each other was fucking horrific. 0.96

00:42:34.000 That's the other thing that gets documented in S.E. Gwen's book in Empire of the Summer Moon, because we have this narrative that the white man came along and did terrible things to the Native Americans, and the Native Americans did terrible things to the white man, but no, they were doing terrible things to each other. 0.98

00:42:50.000 They're humans.

00:42:51.000 Humans do terrible things to each other, especially fighting over resources, fighting over You know, land and women and buffalo and all the other stuff they fought over.

00:43:01.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:43:02.000 No, it's true.

00:43:02.000 Yeah, you would need a huge piece of land.

00:43:04.000 Huge.

00:43:05.000 There's a...

00:43:06.000 But, it's like, also, how many buffalo would you need to have a sustainable, like...

00:43:12.000 Right.

00:43:12.000 You know, a sustainable thing going?

00:43:14.000 I don't think it would be that many.

00:43:15.000 You know, if you can do it with 200 reindeer, buffalo are a lot bigger.

00:43:19.000 You know, it's like, I don't know.

00:43:20.000 But they're herding these.

00:43:22.000 You can't really...

00:43:23.000 Yeah, but they're like...

00:43:26.000 Yeah, I mean, I guess it would be something to figure out.

00:43:30.000 There's an interesting project.

00:43:32.000 Have you ever heard of that Pleistocene Park, if people told you about that?

00:43:35.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:43:35.000 Yeah, it kind of reminds me of maybe something like that, where you would have to have a big area that you kind of...

00:43:40.000 That's the American Serengeti Project?

00:43:42.000 Is that what you're talking about?

00:43:43.000 It's similar.

00:43:43.000 It's in Russia, though.

00:43:44.000 It's where they kind of had the hypothesis that if, you know, back in the day the climate wasn't that much warmer up north, it was just there was so much density of animals that they, you know, pooped, built better soil, and grass grew, and it made for a...

00:44:00.000 It's a more lush ecosystem than the tundra now.

00:44:02.000 And so they've basically fenced in an area, packed it full of musk ox and moose and all that. 1.00

00:44:08.000 And sure enough, you can see pictures and the grass is growing taller.

00:44:13.000 It's a much more life-giving ecosystem than the surrounding area.

00:44:18.000 Just tundra.

00:44:19.000 Yeah, I mean, it makes sense.

00:44:22.000 There was talk about they were going to do something to try to revive the mammoth.

00:44:30.000 What is this?

00:44:31.000 This is Pleistocene Park?

00:44:32.000 Oh, so this is the place. 1.00

00:44:34.000 Those are fucking freaky animals, man. 0.99

00:44:38.000 Yeah, anyway, those are cool... 0.99

00:44:41.000 Those are cool projects, any of those ones where they're restoring land and animals.

00:44:47.000 It's always interesting to see, you know, like when they have these theories about, you know, I had a guy on last week, his name's Joel Salatin.

00:44:56.000 Right, right, yeah, yeah.

00:44:57.000 And he was explaining how when you farm and let the animals just live like animals live, you use their manure, they shit on the ground, they eat the grass, and it's actually, not only does it not add carbon To the atmosphere, it actually takes it out.

00:45:13.000 Right, it builds an ecosystem.

00:45:14.000 Yeah, it actually builds healthy soil.

00:45:16.000 If you don't need fertilizer, it's natural.

00:45:19.000 There's a whole system that nature's put in place, but when we have these monocrop agricultural setups and these weird factory farm setups, we're just hijacking nature and forcing it to do slave labor.

00:45:33.000 Yeah, it's a shame, man.

00:45:35.000 It'd be cool to tap into what, you know, like permaculture, I guess they call it.

00:45:40.000 Just tap into some of that on a larger scale because it doesn't seem very sustainable with those.

00:45:46.000 No, it doesn't.

00:45:47.000 And the large scale stuff, I mean, he was kind of saying that it was possible to feed like all of Los Angeles that way, but I'm like, oh, I'm not going to.

00:45:54.000 It's like, that's a lot of people, man.

00:45:57.000 I'm not sure.

00:45:58.000 It's never been done.

00:45:59.000 When something's never been done, you got to go, huh.

00:46:02.000 I don't know if you can do it.

00:46:04.000 I guess you just start small and see where it goes.

00:46:07.000 We might have already fucked this up by just having too many people.

00:46:11.000 This has never been a thing before.

00:46:14.000 Before the last few hundred years, it's never been a thing when you pack 20 million people into one spot.

00:46:19.000 You're like, what?

00:46:20.000 Yeah, it's crazy flying into L.A. You know, it was my first time here, but you're just like...

00:46:24.000 Oh, it was your first time here?

00:46:25.000 Oh, wow.

00:46:26.000 Pretty packed.

00:46:27.000 From northern Idaho to this.

00:46:31.000 I've been to New York and stuff.

00:46:33.000 Good amount of smog.

00:46:34.000 That's funny because it's the clearest it's ever been in the history of Los Angeles because of the pandemic.

00:46:40.000 Have you ever been to Beijing?

00:46:42.000 No.

00:46:42.000 Oh, man.

00:46:43.000 Talk about...

00:46:44.000 Brutal as far as the air goes.

00:46:45.000 Is it?

00:46:46.000 You step off the airplane into the airport, and it's probably ventilated, and you step off, and you're just like, whoa, it smells like aluminum and just nasty.

00:46:54.000 You can't even see the city.

00:46:55.000 It's so dense, the smoke.

00:46:57.000 And then you kind of get used to it as you're walking around the airport, and then you step out of the ventilated airport, and it hits you all over again.

00:47:04.000 Oh, God.

00:47:06.000 That place is rough, but I hear they're doing better now, too, with the whole shutdown.

00:47:11.000 It's hard to trust them.

00:47:11.000 I mean, as far as the smog and pollution and all that, but who knows.

00:47:16.000 I've been to Mexico City, though.

00:47:17.000 Mexico City's rough.

00:47:19.000 It's rough.

00:47:19.000 I don't think it's as bad as Beijing, but I got a headache the moment I got out of the plane.

00:47:23.000 I was like, whoa, this is rough. 0.99

00:47:25.000 You can't see shit. 0.99

00:47:27.000 When you're flying in, you would swear there's a fire, and there's no fire. 0.99

00:47:30.000 It's just how it is there.

00:47:31.000 Yeah, that's rough. 0.91

00:47:32.000 Now you were saying that these people that live in the villages outside of the people that are nomadic, those people live in a real shitty way. 0.99

00:47:42.000 Yeah, it's rough.

00:47:44.000 It's like unconnected to any other villages.

00:47:47.000 You have to only get there by helicopter.

00:47:49.000 You fly in and it's...

00:47:51.000 What is their job?

00:47:53.000 What do they do?

00:47:54.000 Some of them work in relation to the reindeer herds.

00:47:57.000 And I don't know, I think a lot of people live off of grandma's pension, which in Russia is probably a hundred bucks or something.

00:48:06.000 Some people work at the school and the administration.

00:48:09.000 There's just not a lot going on, but a lot of people are sustenance hunters, fishers, and trappers that live in the village.

00:48:17.000 Yeah, it's so weird, because the first time I went there, it was just like, man, this place is crazy.

00:48:22.000 Everybody's drunk.

00:48:23.000 It's just like being in, like, a zombie land.

00:48:25.000 Like, even when the reindeer herds will come from the woods, they'll, like, run into their house, lock the doors, shut everything up, and then you'll just see everybody, like, marching over.

00:48:33.000 Really?

00:48:33.000 And then they'll start banging on the doors and the windows, and the guys inside the house, like, get out of here, you know?

00:48:40.000 Just drunks?

00:48:40.000 Just drunks.

00:48:42.000 It's just insanity, like...

00:48:44.000 And it's weird because then you take the same people, go into the woods, they sober up, and it's just night and day.

00:48:51.000 It's so weird.

00:48:54.000 Yeah, but you see the effects of it.

00:48:57.000 So like I was telling you earlier, it was pretty brutal.

00:49:02.000 When I first went over there, there was a nice family.

00:49:06.000 It was like Dasha and Artyom, and they're two little kids.

00:49:10.000 Well, the first time I was there, I got back...

00:49:15.000 Met the family.

00:49:16.000 You know, I lived with them in their teepee and all this and that.

00:49:18.000 And then I went back to America.

00:49:20.000 Sure enough, right after I left, a tree fell on their daughter out in the woods and killed her.

00:49:25.000 And then they, after that, started drinking a bunch, quit the nomadic way of life, started living in the village.

00:49:34.000 Yeah.

00:49:35.000 I went back over there.

00:49:37.000 The guy got stabbed in some drunken brawl or whatever and was in the hospital.

00:49:45.000 Slowly recovered.

00:49:46.000 He had this big old gash with a piece of glass someone had cut him open with.

00:49:50.000 He slowly recovered and then went back to his village.

00:49:53.000 The drinking continued.

00:49:54.000 Sure enough, they killed him.

00:49:56.000 They took his body back to the morgue, which the The freezers had broken, right?

00:50:04.000 So it's in the middle of the summer.

00:50:06.000 This body's there, but it was a murder, so they had to wait for the police to come and investigate.

00:50:11.000 But it's way out in the middle of nowhere, so it took like a week.

00:50:15.000 And it's like a week later, it was just brutal.

00:50:18.000 Go over there.

00:50:20.000 I had to pick up this guy who's your buddy, and his wife is helping me dress this body. 0.76

00:50:26.000 Because they're basically like, okay, we're done with the investigation.

00:50:28.000 You can go bury him.

00:50:30.000 Is he decomposing?

00:50:30.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:50:31.000 Oh, Jesus Christ.

00:50:31.000 It's brutal.

00:50:32.000 And the wife is helping you? 0.89

00:50:34.000 Yeah, and the wife's helping. 1.00

00:50:35.000 We took care of his body, pick him up, and the skin slips off and all that stuff.

00:50:41.000 And then...

00:50:45.000 We took care of him and buried him.

00:50:48.000 It was pretty rough.

00:50:50.000 But then a year later, I come back.

00:50:52.000 She'd gotten remarried, kind of starting her life again.

00:50:55.000 Turns out he hangs himself not long afterwards.

00:50:59.000 So again, it's this woman who's lost two husbands and her daughter.

00:51:03.000 She's her and her son.

00:51:06.000 I just found out a little while ago she got too drunk, passed out in the snow, and died.

00:51:11.000 So now it's just the one son left from this whole family.

00:51:14.000 And you hear those stories often up there.

00:51:17.000 It's really rough.

00:51:19.000 But that's balanced with what could be so beautiful.

00:51:23.000 It's such a juxtaposition.

00:51:26.000 Because you're out in this life where people are happy, ultimate freedom, and they're doing great.

00:51:33.000 But when they...

00:51:35.000 But the village in the alcohol just does this whole other thing to them.

00:51:39.000 And it's like these people who are so beautiful, so nice, so friendly, you know, so open to you.

00:51:47.000 But you just see them suffering so much from this scourge.

00:51:50.000 It's like, man, it's brutal.

00:51:52.000 It's crazy that the scourge doesn't extend to the people that live in the forest.

00:51:57.000 Yeah, once they get out in the woods, you know, they don't have the alcohol available and they don't.

00:52:01.000 But even if they did, do you think they would drink it?

00:52:04.000 Yeah, they usually drink it.

00:52:06.000 When they go to the village, they get it, and then they'll go out to the woods, and they'll drink for a few days until it's all gone, and then it's all sober.

00:52:13.000 And then they get back to normal.

00:52:14.000 Do you think it's a genetic thing?

00:52:16.000 That's been a good question.

00:52:17.000 I've thought about that.

00:52:18.000 There's that hypothesis that maybe it is because people have been introduced to alcohol more recently.

00:52:24.000 They can't process it as well.

00:52:29.000 You could also have the explanation.

00:52:32.000 It's probably a combination of both.

00:52:33.000 That when you do have people that are largely stripped of their culture and they're like...

00:52:40.000 You know, because even the Avenki, as cool as their way of life is, you know, they had... 0.98

00:52:45.000 You know 70 years of communism where they came in and they collected all the best reindeer herders and said that they were like Kulaks or what you know like the bourgeois because they have too many reindeer sent them all to prison you know like collectivized all these Reindeer herds these family herds they turned into like government herds you know so it's been like their culture is not completely intact And it's like, 0.88

00:53:09.000 well, there might be enough cause just from that kind of thing to explain some of the alcoholism, but I imagine it's a combination of both, you know?

00:53:18.000 Yeah, I've always wondered that about the Native Americans, the same sort of situation, right?

00:53:22.000 Like, how much of it is despair from them being removed from their normal nomadic way of life, and how much of it is...

00:53:30.000 Just the fact that they don't have the genes to process alcohol because they didn't evolve with alcohol.

00:53:35.000 You know, there's that story of Cynthia Ann Parker, who's on the wall out there, who's Quanah Parker's mother.

00:53:42.000 She was kidnapped by the Comanche when she was nine. 0.92

00:53:45.000 And then recaptured by the Texas Rangers, I think it was the Texas Rangers, when she was like 30 with a child.

00:53:54.000 And she was begging to go back to the Comanches. 1.00

00:53:57.000 She did not want to live like it. 0.98

00:53:59.000 And she found the way of living that the settlers had was just pathetic. 0.99

00:54:03.000 She hated it. 0.96

00:54:04.000 You know, the Comanche lived in a world where everything was magic.

00:54:08.000 And like the sky was a god, the wind was a god.

00:54:10.000 You worshipped nature, you lived off the land, you followed the buffalo herd.

00:54:15.000 And then all of a sudden you're in a village.

00:54:16.000 Cooped up in a house.

00:54:18.000 Yeah.

00:54:18.000 And everybody's like pushing Jesus on you.

00:54:21.000 You're like, Christ.

00:54:22.000 Man, it's the same thing over there.

00:54:24.000 It's like, right, it's just a juxtaposition of ultimate freedom and this beautiful way of life versus like you're in the village in this little house.

00:54:31.000 You know, these people are never going to be good like in Russian society because they live in some remote village. 1.00

00:54:37.000 Yeah.

00:54:37.000 No internet, nothing.

00:54:38.000 You know, like...

00:54:39.000 And then but they're also the ones that aren't connected to their way of life are also not gonna be great at Venki because they've just lived in this little house and drink you know a bunch so People get caught in that weird in-between place.

00:54:54.000 But it seems like even if it's not cultural, there's something that draws people to that way of life that when they live like that, it's very satisfying.

00:55:05.000 Absolutely.

00:55:05.000 And from my own experience, yeah, I'm not a native, but I lived with them and it was awesome and it spoke to me deeply.

00:55:13.000 Same thing even on things like The Alone Show.

00:55:16.000 It's like, oh, man.

00:55:17.000 This is what we're built for.

00:55:18.000 You know, like you really feel it.

00:55:22.000 You know, the interesting thing, like, I don't have, like, a great memory, or, you know, I don't usually have good, very vivid or interesting dreams, but when I'm in the forest, you know, it's like I have all these vivid dreams that seem really meaningful and powerful.

00:55:38.000 It's like my memory's way better.

00:55:40.000 I remember people that I've long forgot.

00:55:42.000 Just because you go so long without distraction, you can really delve into your thoughts and, uh...

00:55:48.000 Yeah, it's a fascinating thing to experience, and once you do, you kind of realize, you know, what's missing.

00:55:55.000 And it was interesting listening to you talk to, like, Elon Musk, and as the, you know, inevitable march of progress moves forward, it's like we kind of lose things, but we don't actually know what we're losing, you know?

00:56:06.000 And so, as far as, like, the natives, and, like, one of the reasons I want to see them preserve their culture and their old ways and take it forward is just as kind of a...

00:56:18.000 A memory receptacle so that as things move forward we can still connect, you know, with what we've lost because it is a lot, you know.

00:56:28.000 Well, it seems like we're becoming something different.

00:56:30.000 It seems like we used to be this thing, this animal that figured out how to use tools and clothes and figured out how to live off the land and figured out how to live in harmony with nature and then we invented electricity.

00:56:46.000 Yeah, it changed a lot.

00:56:48.000 Yeah, I mean, then we invented something that allowed you to project media, like whether it's radio at first, and then television, and then we are connected in this way where the world is, it's a smaller place in some ways because you're connected to everybody,

00:57:05.000 but it's still the same size, really.

00:57:07.000 And it's also far more complicated because you get so much information. 0.99

00:57:11.000 There's so much shit. 0.99

00:57:13.000 Yeah, like Twitter. 1.00

00:57:15.000 Like, I don't know if you go on Twitter, but I dip my toe into it every now and then just a peek at the fucking madness. 0.99

00:57:21.000 It's like a bunch of chimps with weapons just fighting in a box. 0.99

00:57:27.000 Yeah, it's rough.

00:57:28.000 It's madness!

00:57:29.000 I've appreciated your stance on, like, putting something up and forgetting about it.

00:57:34.000 I just get out of Dodge.

00:57:35.000 It is hard to do that.

00:57:36.000 Of course those are, I mean, it's hard to not get sucked into social media, but it doesn't really speak to you anyway, but it just like absorbs your time.

00:57:46.000 It absorbs your time in a negative way though.

00:57:48.000 Absolutely.

00:57:49.000 I very rarely get anything positive out of it.

00:57:51.000 I get occasionally interesting stories from some of the people that I follow, and I appreciate that, but the actual communication aspect of it, like communicating to me or me to them, like, uh-uh.

00:58:03.000 Not interested.

00:58:04.000 I like this.

00:58:05.000 In a way, even though this is digital, I don't even like when I do them remotely.

00:58:11.000 I only do them remotely because of the pandemic or if someone can't get here.

00:58:15.000 That's why I wanted to show up.

00:58:16.000 Same thing.

00:58:17.000 It feels unnatural.

00:58:18.000 You like looking at people.

00:58:20.000 I want to be in the room with you.

00:58:22.000 It feels better.

00:58:23.000 It's fun.

00:58:24.000 I think that's ironically because podcasts are a digital medium in a lot of ways.

00:58:31.000 It's one of the reasons why it resonates with people.

00:58:34.000 Because they can tell that we are really having a conversation in a way that people don't have that much. 0.98

00:58:41.000 Like, you don't really have three-hour conversations with someone where you just don't look at your phone, just sit across from each other and talk to each other and then talk about all kinds of shit. 0.97

00:58:50.000 Yeah. 0.84

00:58:51.000 Yeah, it's a beautiful thing.

00:58:52.000 It's like...

00:58:52.000 Yeah.

00:58:53.000 And you gotta have that.

00:58:54.000 It's like...

00:58:56.000 Yeah.

00:58:56.000 Yeah, that's one of the things you experience.

00:58:57.000 Like, you know, when I'm in the woods or on that show, it's amazing how little you miss social media, right?

00:59:05.000 You don't miss it at all, yeah.

00:59:06.000 You don't miss it at all.

00:59:07.000 But then when you come back to life, it's still just like pulling in.

00:59:09.000 Yeah, it just sucks you in.

00:59:11.000 It's like a little demon whispering, come into the gutter. 1.00

00:59:15.000 It's like the clown from It. 0.98

00:59:18.000 Absolutely. 0.87

00:59:19.000 Come on! 0.61

00:59:20.000 Just check.

00:59:21.000 Just do a little scrolling.

00:59:22.000 Yeah.

00:59:23.000 Whoa, next thing you know.

00:59:25.000 It's really interesting that those people that live in the village are so close to the happy people.

00:59:31.000 Yeah.

00:59:31.000 They're so close to the tiger.

00:59:33.000 So close.

00:59:33.000 They're so close to...

00:59:34.000 And those people in that Werner Herzog documentary, you watch it and you're like...

00:59:40.000 Why is it that people think...

00:59:42.000 There's a cynical aspect of our society where they look at people that live like that. 0.55

00:59:46.000 Like, look at this dummy.

00:59:47.000 No electricity.

00:59:49.000 He's got plastic windows.

00:59:52.000 Because the bears might attack his house. 0.98

00:59:54.000 Get the fuck out of here. 0.99

00:59:56.000 I'm not living like that. 0.99

00:59:57.000 But meanwhile, he's not on antidepressants.

00:59:59.000 You are.

00:59:59.000 He's not on Xanax.

01:00:02.000 You are.

01:00:02.000 He doesn't drink before he goes to bed every night because he can't deal with life.

01:00:06.000 You do.

01:00:06.000 It's cool because you're out there and it's like...

01:00:08.000 Yeah.

01:00:09.000 Your creative juice is flowing, you know, like you get problems constantly coming up and it's like you gotta think to solve them and they're all, even that's probably how people like developed creativity.

01:00:19.000 It's like, how do I catch this moose or how do I, you know, do this or that and uh...

01:00:25.000 And you really just feel alive in that way.

01:00:27.000 You really do.

01:00:28.000 Well, so many people have done it and, like, detached and then documented it.

01:00:32.000 Like, I'm sure you're aware of Dick Prenicke.

01:00:35.000 Yeah.

01:00:36.000 Yeah.

01:00:36.000 So he's got, there's a bunch of great videos of him before he died where he, you know, he moved up there.

01:00:42.000 I believe he had some sort of an industrial accident when he was, like, in his late 40s or early 50s.

01:00:47.000 Mm-hmm.

01:00:48.000 Almost went blind and then made the decision, like, I'm not living like this anymore. 0.99

01:00:52.000 I'm going to get a fucking cabin and just live in the woods and live off the land. 0.96

01:00:56.000 And there's something so universally appealing about that where those videos are fascinating. 0.99

01:01:02.000 Watching him make his tools, build his house.

01:01:06.000 Right.

01:01:06.000 And that's just to add to that.

01:01:09.000 It's super appealing.

01:01:10.000 What's actually interesting about native culture and stuff is you have that, but you also have community because you've got multiple teepees or whatever.

01:01:18.000 All these people.

01:01:19.000 And you're interacting with your family and loved ones while also...

01:01:24.000 You know, living in a...

01:01:26.000 Yeah.

01:01:26.000 You're not out by yourself.

01:01:27.000 And they're all living that kind of fulfilled life.

01:01:30.000 Right.

01:01:31.000 So you're all like feeding off it together.

01:01:33.000 You're very in touch with like the cycles of life.

01:01:35.000 Like it doesn't...

01:01:36.000 It didn't feel...

01:01:38.000 You know, death feels more like a natural part of the...

01:01:41.000 You're always seeing it with the reindeer and with this and that, you know, there's always...

01:01:45.000 And it just feels more a natural part of life.

01:01:47.000 It's less...

01:01:48.000 There's a little bit less existential angst, I would imagine, amongst the average nomad out there than there is...

01:01:56.000 Here in LA? Yeah!

01:01:58.000 Look, dude, here in LA, it's a fog that just sweeps through communities.

01:02:03.000 Particularly now, because nobody could work.

01:02:06.000 This is the grossest I've ever seen it.

01:02:08.000 How interesting.

01:02:08.000 Because people are so angry and depressed and confused and frustrated and helpless.

01:02:13.000 And it's tough when everyone's in a mask and you don't get the personal connection of just seeing someone and being like, smile.

01:02:18.000 And if you try going out in LA, they'll scream at you if you don't have a mask on. 1.00

01:02:22.000 Put your fucking mask on! 1.00

01:02:23.000 I'm on the other side of the street, bitch! 1.00

01:02:25.000 They scream at you like nowhere near you. 1.00

01:02:27.000 The law!

01:02:29.000 The law! 1.00

01:02:30.000 Fucking everyone's Judge Dredd. 0.99

01:02:32.000 It's like, come on. 0.99

01:02:33.000 Jesus Christ.

01:02:34.000 Common sense.

01:02:35.000 Meanwhile, I was in Texas this last weekend.

01:02:37.000 Normal.

01:02:38.000 People say hi.

01:02:39.000 Shake your hand.

01:02:40.000 Everyone's walking around.

01:02:41.000 No mask.

01:02:42.000 You go to a restaurant.

01:02:43.000 They make the waiters wear masks. 0.98

01:02:44.000 But everybody else, everyone's fucking sitting there like normal people and seems fine. 0.99

01:02:50.000 Right? 0.98

01:02:51.000 Be interesting.

01:02:51.000 So yeah, just life has inherent risk.

01:02:54.000 Yeah, but they're like, coronavirus cases rising in states that have opened early.

01:02:58.000 By how much?

01:02:59.000 They love to blow that up.

01:03:00.000 Three people?

01:03:00.000 Right, right.

01:03:01.000 And they walk it off.

01:03:02.000 But of course it will rise, but it's also like...

01:03:05.000 Yeah.

01:03:06.000 But yeah, you also got to live.

01:03:08.000 Yes, and you really should go outside because that's probably one of the big reasons why you're going to get sick in the first place.

01:03:14.000 Lack of vitamin D, being cooped up, unhealthy lifestyle.

01:03:18.000 Absolutely.

01:03:19.000 All those things that are like a side effect of the city, the bad food, the sedentary lifestyle, the lack of nutrients, all those things contribute to all those diseases.

01:03:31.000 And then people being stacked on top of each other.

01:03:36.000 New York City.

01:03:37.000 Think about how they live.

01:03:39.000 They live in this really weird way.

01:03:41.000 It's exciting.

01:03:42.000 It's fun.

01:03:43.000 A lot of action.

01:03:44.000 Yeah, a lot of energy. 1.00

01:03:46.000 Fuck you! 1.00

01:03:47.000 It's like, whoa, this is a crazy place to live. 1.00

01:03:49.000 But it's not normal.

01:03:51.000 Take someone from the taiga and bring them to Manhattan before the pandemic and they'd be like, what is this? 0.87

01:03:58.000 Yeah, what is this? 0.99

01:04:00.000 If you grew up there and you didn't know and you've never seen a TV, that would be a fucking trip. 0.99

01:04:05.000 It would be. 0.99

01:04:06.000 Oh my god.

01:04:07.000 You'd be exhausted immediately.

01:04:10.000 There's a Vice Guide to Travel special online that you could watch on this guy, Heinmo.

01:04:17.000 And he lives in...

01:04:19.000 Heinmo Koth, I think his name is.

01:04:21.000 And he lives in...

01:04:24.000 Really far north Alaska.

01:04:26.000 And it's Heinmo's Arctic Adventure is what it's called.

01:04:29.000 And this guy moved out there, I believe in the 70s.

01:04:33.000 He was working as a logger.

01:04:34.000 And he has a permit to have a cabin up there.

01:04:36.000 He's like the last guy to have a permit.

01:04:38.000 And he has like the permit on his door in case someone stops by because he's really not supposed to live out there.

01:04:43.000 But he's allowed to.

01:04:44.000 And he's a really intelligent guy, really articulate guy.

01:04:48.000 And he just talks about how he just hunts caribou and catches fish and that he believes this is how people are supposed to live.

01:04:55.000 And he just feels really connected and really healthy and happy.

01:04:59.000 And I mean, he looks great.

01:05:01.000 He's like in his 60s. 0.99

01:05:02.000 He's just wandering around hunting and fishing and occasionally has to shoot a bear because it's fucking trying to steal his food. 0.99

01:05:09.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

01:05:10.000 But there's something about it that, again, this is not a guy who grew up like that.

01:05:14.000 Right.

01:05:15.000 But he just, it resonated with him in a way that nothing else did.

01:05:19.000 Yeah, my wife came with me to Siberia for, spent a winter and a summer.

01:05:24.000 But, you know, it's like, she's from New York City.

01:05:26.000 Oh, no way!

01:05:27.000 Yeah, and she went out there and loved it.

01:05:30.000 You know, like, it's like a way better, she could see what it was.

01:05:34.000 It's, uh...

01:05:35.000 She could feel that connection.

01:05:37.000 It actually, interestingly, is a little tougher.

01:05:39.000 There's Heinemann.

01:05:40.000 There he goes.

01:05:40.000 And he lives up there.

01:05:41.000 And one of the things that he said that was really interesting, and so what's really funny is this dude who's with him is, I guess you could call him a millennial, and just looks like a reporter.

01:05:51.000 Little fellow with glasses on.

01:05:53.000 He's probably never done this a day in his life, but he's got balls because he went out there and lived with this guy for a little bit and stayed in a tent and the whole deal.

01:06:00.000 But this guy had never seen 9-11.

01:06:04.000 Heinemann didn't know anything.

01:06:07.000 He never heard that it happened.

01:06:10.000 And then one day years later, I believe, he saw a photo of it.

01:06:14.000 It's like that Japanese guy that didn't know World War II ended. 0.98

01:06:17.000 Right.

01:06:18.000 Exactly.

01:06:18.000 The guy on the island.

01:06:19.000 Yeah.

01:06:20.000 So this guy, this reporter, lives with him for quite a while and sort of experiences the life.

01:06:27.000 And it's the same thing.

01:06:28.000 It's like there's something about it that resonates with you.

01:06:31.000 It does.

01:06:31.000 You see the way this guy lives his life and you're like, wow, this is amazing.

01:06:35.000 Yeah.

01:06:35.000 Yeah, I think it's, I mean, obviously there's a big, for someone that grows up in a city or something, there's like a big hurdle to get over.

01:06:42.000 But I think it would be fairly, I don't want to say universal, but I think a lot of people would really connect to it once you experience it.

01:06:51.000 Well, my friend Dan, Dan Doty, he actually takes people out, particularly kids, troubled kids, and takes them to the woods for extended periods of time and has them live off the land as a therapy.

01:07:05.000 So you take these kids that have affluenza, you know what that is?

01:07:08.000 Yeah, too affluent.

01:07:11.000 That's a sickness, probably.

01:07:13.000 It's a sickness. 1.00

01:07:13.000 You grow up with nannies, no connection to your father and all that kind of shit. 1.00

01:07:17.000 And they take them out to the woods. 0.99

01:07:20.000 And Dan has this whole...

01:07:21.000 He's got some project he's doing.

01:07:23.000 I forget what it's called.

01:07:25.000 So you can find it.

01:07:26.000 Dan Doty.

01:07:27.000 But he actually has extended this to men.

01:07:30.000 And there's these retreats that they do.

01:07:34.000 And essentially, the idea is to just reconnect people with nature.

01:07:38.000 Reconnect people with hard work and living in the forest in a natural way as a therapy.

01:07:45.000 And there's something incredibly...

01:07:47.000 There it is right there.

01:07:48.000 What is it called?

01:07:49.000 Everyman.

01:07:50.000 Everyman, yeah.

01:07:50.000 And that's my buddy Dan, the guy on the right.

01:07:53.000 I've been hunting with him.

01:07:54.000 He used to be on the meat-eater crew, and then now he's doing this.

01:07:58.000 That's cool.

01:07:59.000 Oh, that's me and him.

01:08:00.000 There you go.

01:08:01.000 And Dan's just a great guy, and it's a really interesting thing that he sort of felt like he had a calling to introduce people to this sort of way of life as a therapy, as just giving them a new perspective and letting them know that there's actually meaning to this. 0.99

01:08:19.000 This is not as simple as like, oh, let's go camping and be an asshole. 1.00

01:08:23.000 Fucking drink beer. 1.00

01:08:24.000 We tried a similar thing in Siberia where we took a bunch of the village, like, young guys that were just kind of drinking their childhood away. 1.00

01:08:32.000 Oh, yeah?

01:08:33.000 Took them out onto that year of guys, you know, trapping lands.

01:08:38.000 And how'd that go?

01:08:39.000 It went well.

01:08:39.000 I mean, they all did great while they were out there.

01:08:42.000 Of course, it's like a temporary thing when...

01:08:47.000 Unfortunately, when I left, a lot of them went back to doing the same thing they were doing.

01:08:51.000 But it gives people an opportunity.

01:08:55.000 That's all you can do.

01:08:56.000 You can't force anyone to change.

01:08:57.000 Yeah, you can show them the stream.

01:09:00.000 You can't make them drink.

01:09:01.000 Exactly.

01:09:02.000 It's got to be hard because if you've experienced that way of life only briefly, but the other way of life is very normal to you.

01:09:10.000 Well, you just go back to your old friends.

01:09:12.000 Although that...

01:09:13.000 That said, there was one dude that did a full 180. Really?

01:09:18.000 Yeah.

01:09:19.000 Well, that's all you needed.

01:09:20.000 Just one is a victory.

01:09:21.000 Exactly.

01:09:22.000 That's really out of how many people?

01:09:24.000 Oh, there was actually only like five that went out there.

01:09:27.000 That's pretty amazing then.

01:09:28.000 So it's actually pretty good, I guess.

01:09:29.000 That's amazing.

01:09:30.000 That's great odds.

01:09:31.000 It felt not like a failure, but it just felt like...

01:09:34.000 Hey man, 20%?

01:09:36.000 Well, yeah.

01:09:36.000 You have to look at it that way.

01:09:38.000 That's excellent odds in that regard. 1.00

01:09:40.000 Fuck! 1.00

01:09:40.000 That's incredible. 1.00

01:09:41.000 I mean, if you could get 100 people and 20 of them turn their life around, that's as good as any therapy you're ever going to have.

01:09:47.000 As good as you could hope for, right?

01:09:48.000 Yeah.

01:09:49.000 For sure.

01:09:49.000 I mean, how many people go to therapy for years and barely budge?

01:09:53.000 Right.

01:09:54.000 Yeah, that's absolutely true.

01:09:55.000 When you think of it that way, there you go.

01:09:57.000 Thanks for the new perspective.

01:09:59.000 So, were you aware of Alone before you went to do it?

01:10:04.000 Yeah, well, it's like I had watched it.

01:10:05.000 I don't watch much TV, but it happened to be the one show that I kind of liked.

01:10:09.000 So I watched the first two seasons and basically just sent them a link to my YouTube videos.

01:10:16.000 I was like, oh, you know, everyone watches it.

01:10:18.000 I'm like, oh, I could do that.

01:10:21.000 And then I forgot about it, and then a few years later, they called me out of the blue and said, yeah, we want you on season six.

01:10:29.000 Well, it must be like Fear Factor.

01:10:31.000 When we were doing Fear Factor, we would get, I mean, I wasn't going through them, but the people that were going through, the casting folks, they would get just fucking stacks and stacks of people trying to get on the show.

01:10:43.000 It was impossible to navigate it all.

01:10:46.000 Yeah, dude, you'd have to get really lucky to even...

01:10:48.000 But they found you.

01:10:49.000 Yeah, they found me somehow.

01:10:51.000 I would think that they would think you were a little bit too good at it. 1.00

01:10:56.000 This fucking guy's already done this. 0.99

01:10:58.000 I guess, I don't know what they thought, but I was pretty happy when... 0.99

01:11:04.000 When I found out it was going to be in the north, I was like, oh, awesome.

01:11:07.000 I like that place.

01:11:08.000 That's your style.

01:11:10.000 And how much money do you win when you win it?

01:11:12.000 $500,000.

01:11:13.000 Woo! 0.99

01:11:14.000 A nice little chunk of change.

01:11:15.000 That's a good chunk of change.

01:11:16.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:11:16.000 So it's definitely motivating.

01:11:18.000 It's a lot of...

01:11:19.000 A lot of manual labor to do that. 0.99

01:11:21.000 Yeah, no shit, right? 0.99

01:11:24.000 Especially 77 days worth. 1.00

01:11:25.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.83

01:11:26.000 If you could bang out a half a mil in 77 days, you're doing pretty fucking good. 0.77

01:11:29.000 Not bad wages, no. 0.84

01:11:30.000 Yeah, real good.

01:11:31.000 So when you sign up for the show, how much time in advance do they give you?

01:11:38.000 You probably hear maybe two, three months before they drop you off.

01:11:42.000 A couple months.

01:11:43.000 So when you hear, okay, you're gonna...

01:11:45.000 I guess, you know, actually, it might be like a month and a half.

01:11:48.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:11:48.000 From when they select you to when you get dropped off.

01:11:51.000 So when you knew you were selected, did you do anything to prepare?

01:11:56.000 You do little things.

01:11:57.000 I had been living with my family.

01:11:59.000 I haven't been in Russia for a few years because I had a few kids and doing the little family thing and I found out I was going on.

01:12:06.000 I was like, oh man, I'm a little rusty on all this.

01:12:11.000 But mostly my main preparation was trying to put on weight, which is always not that easy for me.

01:12:17.000 So I was drinking like as many calories as I could, trying to put on a little extra weight and shooting the bow, you know, getting out there, shooting the recurve, trying to dial in a little bit on that.

01:12:28.000 Why'd you choose a recurve over a compound?

01:12:30.000 Because you're only allowed to recurve.

01:12:32.000 Yeah, it's got to be kind of primitive gear that you get. 0.94

01:12:35.000 They want you to have a shitty bow. 0.87

01:12:37.000 Yeah, it would have been sweet with a compound. 0.98

01:12:39.000 Oh my god, yeah.

01:12:41.000 But no, it was cool.

01:12:45.000 Yeah, my preparations were mainly that.

01:12:47.000 Mainly just trying to put on weight, dial in on the bow and...

01:12:51.000 Now, when you say try to put on weight, that was so that you could burn fat if you ran out of food?

01:12:56.000 Right, just so I had a little more reserves because I have a skinny guy with a fast metabolism.

01:13:01.000 Previous winners of the show had usually been bigger dudes that had a lot of extra weight to lose.

01:13:07.000 You could live off your fat for a long time if you have water.

01:13:10.000 There's actually a guy, Rob Wolf.

01:13:13.000 Was it Rob Wolf that told us about this guy that had lived...

01:13:16.000 No, Dom D'Agostino told us about this guy who lived a ketogenic diet.

01:13:20.000 He fasted for 360-something days.

01:13:26.000 He must have been huge. 1.00

01:13:27.000 He was fat as fuck. 1.00

01:13:29.000 But at the end of it was a normal size. 1.00

01:13:31.000 And what's really crazy is he didn't have the loose skin that plagues a lot of people that lose weight.

01:13:38.000 His whole body shrunk.

01:13:40.000 And he became like a normal guy.

01:13:43.000 Good for him.

01:13:44.000 He lived off of vitamins and water.

01:13:45.000 He took a vitamin drip and drank water, and for a whole year, ate no food.

01:13:51.000 Yeah.

01:13:51.000 And his body just lived off the fat.

01:13:54.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:13:55.000 That's amazing.

01:13:56.000 It's a crazy story.

01:13:57.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:13:57.000 I mean, it takes willpower.

01:13:59.000 There you go.

01:14:00.000 I wonder what he did for just, like, hunger pangs and all that.

01:14:03.000 Well, I don't think you get them.

01:14:05.000 I think after a while, you don't get them.

01:14:06.000 Yeah, they do go away after a while.

01:14:07.000 You kind of...

01:14:08.000 And when you're that fat, I mean, you basically have a year's worth of food just carrying around.

01:14:15.000 I think he got down to like 160 pounds and became a normal person.

01:14:19.000 Like, he was morbidly obese.

01:14:21.000 Do you know it?

01:14:22.000 180. He lost 276 pounds.

01:14:23.000 Good for him.

01:14:26.000 276. That's crazy!

01:14:28.000 That's crazy.

01:14:29.000 I wonder if he was able to hold it off.

01:14:32.000 I wonder if he was able to keep it off, you know? 1.00

01:14:33.000 I know, he's a fat fuck now. 1.00

01:14:34.000 Now he's 3,000 pounds. 1.00

01:14:36.000 Just went back to donuts and only...

01:14:39.000 Yeah.

01:14:40.000 Oh, back in the day, yeah.

01:14:41.000 That's what he...

01:14:42.000 Is that him?

01:14:44.000 It was in the 60s.

01:14:45.000 Oh, was it really?

01:14:46.000 Wow, that's incredible.

01:14:48.000 Yeah, and like you say, he doesn't have a lot of that skin.

01:14:51.000 No, he wasn't plagued with...

01:14:52.000 Is this...

01:14:53.000 This is the only time this was done was in the 60s?

01:14:56.000 When I typed it in, that's what popped up.

01:14:58.000 There's another guy that fasted for 385 days, like a hunger strike or something.

01:15:02.000 Wow, look at what he used to look like versus what he looked like at the end.

01:15:05.000 That's nuts.

01:15:07.000 Yeah, so I was self-conscious about my weight going on.

01:15:11.000 They're like, I'm too skinny for this sport.

01:15:13.000 So what kind of stuff did you eat to pack on the calories?

01:15:18.000 Oh, I was just drinking olive oil and trying to get fat off of that mostly.

01:15:21.000 Olive oil, huh?

01:15:22.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:15:23.000 Really?

01:15:23.000 Dude, what kind of farts did you have from just drinking olive oil?

01:15:27.000 I would imagine your gastrointestinal system would be like, what are you doing?

01:15:34.000 Smelled like your homeland of Italy, right?

01:15:37.000 Just kidding.

01:15:39.000 Now, did you drink soda, too?

01:15:41.000 Did you try to get sugar in you as well?

01:15:43.000 No, gross.

01:15:43.000 I tried drinking those weight gainer shake things, but man, those are brutal.

01:15:49.000 Those are disgusting.

01:15:49.000 Yeah, you feel terrible.

01:15:50.000 All morning, I was just laid out. 0.99

01:15:53.000 They'd fucking just wreck you. 1.00

01:15:55.000 Oh, they do. 1.00

01:15:56.000 It's terrible stuff.

01:15:58.000 Yeah, those were like, I remember back in my, like, right out of high school, there was a lot of guys who were trying to put on muscle, would drink up weight gain and stuff, and would come in this tub, this huge tub, and you had to put many scoops into the shake.

01:16:13.000 Yeah, I hate that stuff. 0.97

01:16:14.000 And just a fucking feeling in your stomach and you just drank sand. 1.00

01:16:18.000 Just not meant to be at that point. 0.99

01:16:20.000 No.

01:16:21.000 So you're just drinking olive oil.

01:16:23.000 Did you wind up putting on any weight?

01:16:25.000 Yeah, I got like 25 pounds or so.

01:16:27.000 Oh, wow.

01:16:27.000 So that was actually pretty good in like a month and a half or whatever.

01:16:30.000 That's pretty impressive because you're a really lean guy.

01:16:32.000 But it was all fat.

01:16:34.000 And honestly, that weight went away really fast too when I was out there.

01:16:38.000 Just from the exercise?

01:16:39.000 Yeah, just from running around.

01:16:41.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:16:42.000 I would imagine the cold alone makes you...

01:16:44.000 Yeah, you burn...

01:16:44.000 I mean, I think it was about, you know, you average around a pound a day, just losing weight, maybe a little.

01:16:50.000 That's kind of scary.

01:16:51.000 Yeah, so you kind of feel like the pressure's on to hunt some big game, hunt some, you know, like, yeah, yeah.

01:16:57.000 So, do you have formal training with a recurve?

01:17:01.000 Do you know how to use it correctly?

01:17:03.000 No, I don't.

01:17:04.000 It's self-taught, so I need to go meet up with Aaron and get some tips, right?

01:17:09.000 Yeah.

01:17:10.000 Well, that's why Aaron really got into it, because he's such a good bow hunter with a compound that he actually found it to be not as challenging as he needed and wanted, and he wanted to kind of prove to himself and other people that he could do the same with a recurve bow.

01:17:25.000 He's super accurate with a recurve.

01:17:27.000 Yeah, that's awesome.

01:17:28.000 Have you seen the videos that he puts on him?

01:17:30.000 He's got these videos of him shooting bullseyes at like 45 yards with a recurve.

01:17:35.000 Kind of crazy.

01:17:36.000 It is.

01:17:37.000 That's really cool.

01:17:38.000 I mean, I just practice getting better.

01:17:41.000 You've got to practice a lot.

01:17:42.000 You do.

01:17:43.000 I did notice on that show, there's something about you by yourself and you need the food.

01:17:49.000 You get so concentrated.

01:17:50.000 You're so dialed in.

01:17:52.000 When I go shoot at a target, it's hard to really be fully focused, but man, when you see the squirrel or the rabbit over there, you're so dialed in that I was pretty accurate out there, which was cool.

01:18:04.000 Were you using the point of the arrow, the tip of the arrow, were you using that as a guide when you aim?

01:18:10.000 Yeah, well, let's see.

01:18:12.000 Maybe it's a little more instinctual than that.

01:18:14.000 But yeah, it's the point of the arrow.

01:18:18.000 Aaron was trying to explain to me how he used it.

01:18:21.000 He actually, to a certain range, he knows where his 20-yard range is based on the point of his broadhead.

01:18:31.000 Oh yeah, that's a good idea.

01:18:34.000 I've done a lot of bow hunting too.

01:18:36.000 You're bringing it way up here and looking down the shaft of the arrow versus a recurve or a compound where your string is much lower in your face.

01:18:44.000 Yeah, you're using the arrow to guess the distance between the target and the top of your arrow.

01:18:52.000 Bow hunting gives you good experience with Estimating range.

01:18:57.000 That's one of the most important things because with the recurve you got a big arc so you're five yards off.

01:19:04.000 It's going very slow.

01:19:05.000 So did you have a target that you practiced with while you were out there?

01:19:09.000 Not while I was out there.

01:19:10.000 I practiced a lot on just rabbits and squirrels you know every day.

01:19:15.000 Got pretty dialed in.

01:19:16.000 And you had nine arrows?

01:19:17.000 Nine arrows, yeah.

01:19:17.000 Did you lose any?

01:19:18.000 I lost a couple, like, shooting at squirrels and trees. 0.98

01:19:21.000 Oh, that's gotta suck.

01:19:22.000 They're just so tempting, because they're up there like... 1.00

01:19:24.000 Now, what about fat?

01:19:30.000 Like, I would think that you would need fat.

01:19:33.000 Well, yeah, you do, and that's why you eat the whole animal, you know, suck the brain out of the rabbit, try to get every bit of fat you can get, and I learned a lot about that out there, because, I mean, I caught a lot of rabbits and squirrels early on, but I still just lost weight as fast as if I wasn't eating,

01:19:50.000 it felt like.

01:19:51.000 Yeah, you know what rabbit starvation is?

01:19:53.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:19:54.000 When I went out there, I was like, I wonder how long that takes.

01:19:56.000 Is that like a year?

01:19:57.000 But basically, it's as soon as you start eating rabbits.

01:20:00.000 Yeah.

01:20:00.000 But there's no fat on them.

01:20:01.000 Yeah, not much on them.

01:20:02.000 It was, like, maybe enough to make up for the energy I was expending by running around.

01:20:07.000 Like, I don't think I lost fat or weight faster than someone that was just sitting there.

01:20:12.000 It was probably about the same.

01:20:13.000 But I was able to run around, have fun, you know, shoot my bow, and, like, learn my land, see how animals were moving and stuff.

01:20:21.000 So you didn't have any supplies that you initially set out with in terms of, like...

01:20:26.000 No food.

01:20:27.000 No food.

01:20:28.000 Yeah, it's a fascinating experience when the helicopter drops you off, flies away, and you've never scouted this place before.

01:20:35.000 You didn't get to choose where you're at.

01:20:37.000 Wow.

01:20:37.000 It just flies away, and you're just like, wow, somehow I have to live here.

01:20:40.000 Did they scout it?

01:20:41.000 Yeah.

01:20:42.000 They did.

01:20:42.000 So they knew there was wild animals there?

01:20:44.000 Yeah, they scout out and basically try to find ten spots that have some form of potential sustainability on them.

01:20:51.000 Wow.

01:20:51.000 And then you've got to try to unlock the key.

01:20:53.000 Did you have any filtration system for water?

01:20:56.000 No, I started by boiling all my water, but then I just slowly drank bits of raw water until I could pretty much just drink raw water.

01:21:06.000 Because it was a big old lake up in the far north.

01:21:10.000 It's pretty clean.

01:21:11.000 And I didn't get sick.

01:21:13.000 I drank out of a lake once in Prince of Wales, Alaska.

01:21:19.000 Apparently it's high enough altitude so there's no beavers.

01:21:22.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:21:23.000 It was still weird, just dipping your canteen in a lake, just drinking.

01:21:27.000 Strange.

01:21:28.000 That's what we had done in Siberia, too, and it's always, even in, like, moss puddles, it's like this yellow water, but they'll just dip right in and drink out, so. 0.98

01:21:35.000 Now, when you said you drank a little bit, that was to test, to see if you get the shits? 0.96

01:21:38.000 Yeah, just to see if I'd get mildly sick, rather than chugging it to begin with. 0.96

01:21:42.000 Right, so you boiled it first, and then started sipping it a little bit, and then eventually just were drinking it.

01:21:47.000 Yeah, although another thing in the cold when you're trying to conserve calories like that, you don't want to drink a lot of cold water, so I'd heat it anyway.

01:21:57.000 What did you do for shelter?

01:22:01.000 A tarp was one of the things we took, so I built a little A-frame shelter just out of logs, covered it, chinked it with moss, put the frame over.

01:22:12.000 I spent less time on shelter, more time procuring food and hunting, so it was a quick shelter, threw it up.

01:22:19.000 I mean, I've lived in a teepee in that weather, so I knew I was going to be fine on the cold as long as I could...

01:22:25.000 Provide enough calories to keep my body warm.

01:22:28.000 So how many days did it take you before you got an animal?

01:22:32.000 Well, I got a rabbit on day one, so that was nice.

01:22:35.000 And then I continued to get rabbits.

01:22:37.000 But it was 23 days when I got a moose, so that was...

01:22:41.000 Well, then you're good.

01:22:42.000 Then you're good, kind of.

01:22:43.000 That's like eight months of eating.

01:22:45.000 Yeah.

01:22:46.000 I mean, again, I was amazed how much fat you eat.

01:22:49.000 I was counting my moose and being like, hmm.

01:22:53.000 That's not...

01:22:54.000 This isn't like an infinite supply of food here.

01:22:57.000 Because there's not enough fat.

01:22:59.000 Yeah, because you're definitely eating more fat than you are protein.

01:23:02.000 Plus, I had a wolverine come and pillage my stores of fat and stuff. 0.90

01:23:08.000 Yeah, I heard about this.

01:23:09.000 So how did that happen?

01:23:11.000 Where did you store everything?

01:23:13.000 Well, initially, to be honest, I didn't expect to see a wolverine.

01:23:17.000 I never have, and it just wasn't something on my consciousness.

01:23:20.000 And so...

01:23:21.000 When I got the moose, I put all the meat up on this shelf I built and thought, man, if a bear comes, it'll be great.

01:23:26.000 I'll have a chance at a bear.

01:23:27.000 You know, I'll wake up in the night and kind of be like a bait pile, basically.

01:23:31.000 Plenty of fat bear.

01:23:31.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:23:32.000 And so I was maybe expecting a bear to come, but I went to sleep the first night I got the moose and woke up and I came out and there were just tracks everywhere.

01:23:41.000 Somehow I hadn't woken up, but Wolverine's a lot slyer animal and he had come and Pulled out all the kidney fat.

01:23:48.000 You know, I had like a jug of kidney fat that I was just like, no!

01:23:51.000 He ate all your fat?

01:23:53.000 He hauled off a full gallon jug packed with kidney fat.

01:23:57.000 I had other fat, but that was like, you know, weeks of fat there.

01:24:01.000 Did you find it?

01:24:02.000 No, it was rough.

01:24:04.000 And so then he was pretty excited, I'm sure.

01:24:07.000 So that Wolverine just kept coming back every day.

01:24:10.000 I figured, I don't know if they're like...

01:24:13.000 I figured they were nocturnal, but sure enough, I'd be out there scraping my moose hide in the middle of the day.

01:24:18.000 He'd come running up and try to grab some meat and run off.

01:24:21.000 I was like, holy smokes, this thing's bold.

01:24:23.000 Is this a photo of him?

01:24:24.000 Yeah, that's the one.

01:24:25.000 Where is he?

01:24:26.000 That's at my shelter there.

01:24:28.000 That's off the show.

01:24:29.000 There he is, sneaking around.

01:24:36.000 Wow.

01:24:36.000 Yeah, so they stole 35,000 calories, which is gold up there.

01:24:40.000 Oh, so you got some serious gear on.

01:24:41.000 You're wearing Kuyu.

01:24:42.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:24:43.000 So you got real...

01:24:44.000 Real gear.

01:24:45.000 It's not naked and afraid, fortunately.

01:24:47.000 No, well, that's serious hunting gear you're wearing.

01:24:51.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:24:52.000 Yeah, and there's your A-pillar.

01:24:54.000 Yeah, there's that little...

01:24:54.000 That's pretty dope.

01:24:55.000 Is that when you pissed off, the moose fat?

01:24:57.000 Yeah.

01:24:58.000 A gallon of moose fat contains roughly 35,000 calories.

01:25:02.000 Wow.

01:25:02.000 Gone.

01:25:03.000 Gone. 0.72

01:25:03.000 Cunty little wolverine. 0.72

01:25:05.000 You should have kept that shit in the little tent with you. 1.00

01:25:07.000 Yeah, I really should have. 1.00

01:25:09.000 I thought I would hear a bear coming, but I didn't think of that wolverine.

01:25:12.000 Then the...

01:25:14.000 Anyway, he kept coming every day, and I knew it was going to be me or him kind of on that island. 1.00

01:25:20.000 They're such scary little fucks. 0.99

01:25:21.000 I heard, I read, maybe Jamie could find it, but that one killed a polar bear in the zoo a while ago. 1.00

01:25:27.000 A wolverine?

01:25:28.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:25:29.000 I'm not shocked.

01:25:30.000 Ferocious little things.

01:25:31.000 I've seen him chase off bears.

01:25:32.000 I've seen videos of them chasing bears off of kills.

01:25:35.000 Wolves, all that. 1.00

01:25:36.000 Bears like, what the fuck? 1.00

01:25:37.000 This is so ferocious. 1.00

01:25:39.000 Yeah.

01:25:40.000 And they're so durable.

01:25:41.000 Yeah. 0.98

01:25:42.000 Like, they get bit by bears and wolves and they just fucking shake it off. 0.96

01:25:45.000 Yeah. 0.97

01:25:46.000 Cool animals, for real.

01:25:47.000 Oh, yeah, man.

01:25:48.000 Such cool animals.

01:25:49.000 It's just a weird animal, right?

01:25:50.000 It is.

01:25:51.000 They're so ferocious.

01:25:52.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:25:53.000 And small.

01:25:54.000 Yeah, just making it on attitude out there. 1.00

01:25:56.000 Yeah, just fucking anger and biting him. 1.00

01:25:59.000 Little muscle ball. 1.00

01:26:00.000 Did you eat him? 0.94

01:26:01.000 Yeah, of course, if you shoot a... 0.97

01:26:03.000 I actually killed it with my axe, but when... 0.99

01:26:06.000 You do that, you've got to eat the heart out of it. 0.95

01:26:09.000 So I cut it open, ate the heart.

01:26:10.000 Then I ate a drumstick, of course, but it tasted like skunk, so I was like, I'll save the rest for a rainy day.

01:26:16.000 Hold on, how do you know what skunk tastes like?

01:26:17.000 Have you eaten skunk?

01:26:18.000 I just smelled them.

01:26:19.000 I was assuming.

01:26:20.000 Oh, okay.

01:26:21.000 No, they have a musky flavor to them.

01:26:23.000 Oh, sure. 1.00

01:26:23.000 It's a fucking gross animal. 1.00

01:26:25.000 Imagine how much testosterone those little fucks must have. 1.00

01:26:28.000 Yeah, they're coarsened through their veins. 1.00

01:26:28.000 They're so ferocious. 1.00

01:26:31.000 So you ate his drumstick and that's it?

01:26:34.000 Yeah, and the organs for the vitamins.

01:26:37.000 Did you try to use the rest of them for bait for something?

01:26:41.000 No, I was just saving it for eating later.

01:26:43.000 I put it up on my storage cache.

01:26:46.000 Yeah, when it's a dark day, I'll eat that.

01:26:48.000 When you run out of moose, it really does go a year.

01:26:50.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:26:52.000 So when you didn't have the fat, what was it like just eating?

01:26:56.000 Did you have some fat left over?

01:26:58.000 Oh yeah, you still have a lot.

01:26:59.000 I mean, to be fair, there's still a lot of fat on a moose. 0.83

01:27:03.000 All the ribs, the butt, the rump has a big old...

01:27:07.000 Thick layer of fat. 0.63

01:27:08.000 It's a weird fat, right?

01:27:09.000 The bone marrow.

01:27:11.000 Oh, okay.

01:27:11.000 Yeah, that's all straight fat.

01:27:12.000 The brain.

01:27:13.000 You know, there's a lot of fat still, but that was kind of the easiest fat.

01:27:19.000 You know, anyway.

01:27:20.000 Yeah.

01:27:20.000 It was sad, but not the end of the world.

01:27:24.000 It was mostly depressing in that I figured somebody else got something big, and once I lose that, now I'm at a disadvantage again.

01:27:31.000 So then it put the fire under me to keep getting more, you know?

01:27:34.000 So you killed him with an axe, but you shot him with a bow first, right?

01:27:37.000 Yeah, the Wolverine, yeah.

01:27:39.000 So you pinned him to the ground with the bow?

01:27:42.000 Yeah, he had come the night before, and I had seen him behind a bush, and I had my flashlight, and I could see his eyes.

01:27:49.000 And I thought about firing an arrow in there, but I was like, surely he's going to come out and I'll get a better shot.

01:27:54.000 But he closed his eyes, snuck away, and I never saw him leave from behind the bush.

01:27:59.000 I was like, dang it, I missed my opportunity.

01:28:01.000 The next day, I saw him again the next night coming down through some shrubs, and I had set up some warning systems around, like cans on string, so I'd hear him coming, and I heard clunk, clunk, clunk.

01:28:13.000 I was like, oh gosh, got my bow, went outside.

01:28:15.000 Sure enough, he scurried down this hill, went behind a bush, and I just sent my arrow in there this time.

01:28:20.000 Through the bush.

01:28:21.000 Through the bush, and so I don't know what it did going through there, but it...

01:28:24.000 Deflected off of some branches.

01:28:26.000 Yeah, pinned his back leg to the ground.

01:28:30.000 The top of the arrow was in the branches.

01:28:32.000 And it just gave me enough time to grab my axe, run over there.

01:28:35.000 He was just like...

01:28:36.000 Is that him?

01:28:38.000 No, no, no.

01:28:38.000 No, yeah, it's a good video one.

01:28:40.000 Those little guys. 0.88

01:28:41.000 Dude, you must have been so fucking terrified to run up that thing, even with an axe. 0.99

01:28:45.000 It happened so fast. 0.95

01:28:46.000 Yeah, it wasn't a cool... 0.91

01:28:47.000 You picture me killing it, like, really...

01:28:50.000 But it was like... 0.99

01:28:51.000 Ah!

01:28:52.000 Ah!

01:28:56.000 Did you film all that too?

01:28:58.000 Yeah, but it was at night, so it's kind of grainy.

01:29:00.000 So that's the crazy thing, right?

01:29:02.000 You're not just doing something, but you're also self-filming.

01:29:05.000 Yeah, trying to film.

01:29:06.000 Did they give you tips on how to film?

01:29:09.000 Yeah, they give you film tips before you go out.

01:29:11.000 I actually found, like, this wasn't everyone's experience, but I found it was, like, kind of nice to have a camera, because when I'd been, like, fur trapping in Siberia, it's like, you're just alone, alone, and everything you do just feels like nobody's ever going to know about it.

01:29:25.000 You know, like, you do all these cool things, and you, no one knows.

01:29:30.000 I remember I'd been out there for a few weeks, and I came into this beautiful woods in Siberia, and I remember being like, wow!

01:29:37.000 And then I was like, oh, weird.

01:29:38.000 That was the first time I've spoken out loud in three weeks.

01:29:41.000 Oh, wow.

01:29:42.000 So I was just saying, wow?

01:29:43.000 Yeah, wow caught my attention.

01:29:45.000 Oh, that was my voice.

01:29:46.000 And then, of course, your mind's really active, but it's just all in your head.

01:29:50.000 But on the show with the cameras, you're constantly talking about stuff.

01:29:55.000 Oh, wow.

01:29:56.000 So it kind of made me feel like I wasn't quiet as alone.

01:29:59.000 So when they tell you and they give you the camera equipment and tell you to go out and film yourself, how much battery life do you have?

01:30:08.000 Well, you get this big, like, car battery-sized pack that you can, like, recharge your batteries with.

01:30:14.000 And then they'll occasionally come on, like, med checks to see, make sure you're not too skinny or something like that.

01:30:20.000 Really?

01:30:21.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:21.000 How often do they check on you?

01:30:23.000 It varies.

01:30:23.000 Sometime around 10 days-ish or something.

01:30:25.000 So every 10 days, they're like, oh, he's dead.

01:30:28.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:30:30.000 Have they had people die out there?

01:30:31.000 Not yet, no.

01:30:33.000 Fortunately.

01:30:33.000 Do they give you a bell to ring or something?

01:30:35.000 You have a thing that you, like...

01:30:37.000 It's the thing you would give up with, like if you were ready to tap out a red button.

01:30:42.000 What is it, like a Garmin or something?

01:30:43.000 Yeah, you can send texts on it.

01:30:45.000 Oh, okay.

01:30:46.000 So you text them every morning and night and basically say, I'm okay.

01:30:50.000 Oh, wow.

01:30:50.000 And so they know you're okay.

01:30:51.000 If you don't do that, then they'll come probably see if you're alive still.

01:30:54.000 Oh, wow.

01:30:55.000 Wow.

01:30:56.000 And so, I would imagine their show is entirely dependent not just on you succeeding, but documenting everything.

01:31:05.000 Yeah.

01:31:05.000 I mean, they were very clear with us, like, you guys have to document everything.

01:31:11.000 We need eight hours of footage a day, minimum.

01:31:14.000 Wow.

01:31:15.000 And when you're out there...

01:31:16.000 Do you have a solar charger?

01:31:18.000 No, but it probably wasn't a lot of sun up there that time of year.

01:31:22.000 But that big battery block, and then you got a lot of little packs, battery packs, and it's kind of what restricts where you live is that you have 100 pounds of gear.

01:31:34.000 So when you're swinging an axe at this Wolverine, you've got all that on film?

01:31:39.000 Yeah, it's like...

01:31:40.000 Even the shot?

01:31:41.000 Yeah, well, you can see me.

01:31:42.000 It's like, I'd like...

01:31:44.000 Because I heard him coming.

01:31:45.000 I heard him coming.

01:31:46.000 And because my cans were a long ways away, you know, a ways away.

01:31:50.000 And it's like, clank, clank.

01:31:51.000 So I just ran out with my tripod, my camera, set it on.

01:31:55.000 Because he had a trail, so I knew generally where he'd be coming.

01:31:58.000 So I just set my camera up, put it in that direction.

01:32:01.000 And that's kind of where it came.

01:32:02.000 That would be a giant distraction.

01:32:05.000 I missed the first moose because there was a different moose that I had shot at that I totally missed.

01:32:15.000 Big, giant dinosaur of a moose.

01:32:17.000 It was so cool to see.

01:32:18.000 But I grabbed my bow and arrow and my camera and ran out there, set the camera up, took my shot, and I was like, oh, I didn't grab my quiver.

01:32:26.000 And so my first shot, I misjudged the distance and dropped the arrow between his legs. 0.99

01:32:31.000 I was like, oh, Oh no, I only grabbed one arrow because I grabbed my stupid camera. 0.99

01:32:36.000 Did he run when the arrow came near him? 1.00

01:32:39.000 No, I dropped between his legs.

01:32:40.000 He looked around. 0.98

01:32:41.000 I totally would have had time for another shot.

01:32:42.000 It was a real kick in the pants.

01:32:45.000 Oh my god.

01:32:46.000 He kind of trotted off and I was just like, meh.

01:32:50.000 Did he know you were there?

01:32:51.000 Was he aware of you?

01:32:52.000 Not too aware.

01:32:53.000 Like, I took a shot.

01:32:54.000 He, like, heard it, knew something was up.

01:32:56.000 What had happened is I had set, again, like, those cans up as a warning system, and I heard him, like, in the morning, hit the cans.

01:33:02.000 And I figured that would just warn me.

01:33:05.000 You know, like, if something hit the cans, it would wake me up, and I could go out and try to hunt it.

01:33:09.000 What actually happened is he went through the cans, scared himself, and ran, like, perfectly in my direction, and turned around and looked at the cans.

01:33:18.000 Like, broadside to me, like, I came out and it was just a perfect shot.

01:33:22.000 But it was 40, I paced it off afterwards, 43 yards.

01:33:25.000 And he was such a big animal that I thought he was closer, so I put him at, like, 30 yards, guessing, you know.

01:33:31.000 And I missed my first and only shot.

01:33:35.000 I was like, ah!

01:33:36.000 Did you call him in?

01:33:38.000 Yeah, I've been calling Moose, like, every day I would just pick berries, call Moose.

01:33:43.000 It's like, oh!

01:33:45.000 Yeah, good one.

01:33:47.000 Yeah, yeah, that's very good.

01:33:49.000 I think they'd come.

01:33:51.000 Get it in your lungs.

01:33:52.000 I learned that from my friend Mike Harkridge.

01:33:54.000 Yeah.

01:33:55.000 Now when you're doing that, you're waiting a long time, right?

01:33:59.000 You're calling them and then you're just sitting there waiting?

01:34:01.000 Yeah, literally it was like I'd find a good berry patch, just sit there and eat berries and call, and eat berries and call, and yeah, that's all I would do.

01:34:12.000 I think both the bull moose that I saw came into that calling because it would always but it would take them a long time so I'd like call all evening and then they would usually come in in the morning which was interesting so it's not like they they come from miles but yeah they must have come from a long ways away they come like huffing and puffing all in the rut and stuff like yeah it's so cool I just hear it going yeah yeah They're so vocal.

01:34:35.000 It's nice you can mimic their voice with your voice.

01:34:38.000 That's the nice thing about moose.

01:34:39.000 Right, it's not like an elk where you need a tube.

01:34:42.000 You can actually make the horny cow moose noise. 0.83

01:34:46.000 Yeah, exactly.

01:34:47.000 Just got to get into it.

01:34:48.000 So was it in the rut?

01:34:50.000 Yeah.

01:34:50.000 Oh, that's lucky.

01:34:52.000 Was that on by design for them?

01:34:54.000 Yeah, they want to give you a chance of getting something.

01:34:57.000 Now, you shot that moose.

01:34:59.000 How did the other people survive?

01:35:00.000 And how many people made it?

01:35:01.000 A lot of people just through toughness, you know, like, just starving out, like, dude, you know, that you were pointing out.

01:35:07.000 Yes.

01:35:08.000 Just catching a few rabbits here and there, you know, like, fishing is a big thing, you know, like...

01:35:16.000 But yeah, it was nice to have the moose for sure.

01:35:20.000 Oh, I can only imagine.

01:35:21.000 I knew I had to.

01:35:23.000 I'm not going to have a chance if it was starving.

01:35:25.000 I would have been out of there so fast.

01:35:27.000 Did anybody else get a moose?

01:35:29.000 No, uh-uh.

01:35:30.000 I assumed someone would.

01:35:31.000 But again, with a recurve, it's pretty hard.

01:35:34.000 Plus, you haven't ever scouted your territory, so you don't know how things are going.

01:35:39.000 Because I was so...

01:35:41.000 Focused on getting one right from the bat like right when they dropped my helicopter off it was like I went out and scouted like where might moose come in?

01:35:49.000 Did you bring binos?

01:35:50.000 No you can't take those but I just put my shelter where the wind would always be blowing my scent out to the sea you know out to the and taking into account all those little things you know like yeah building my shelter away from where moose might walk by so that I wouldn't blow up a spot you know all that kind of stuff.

01:36:10.000 So how did the other people...

01:36:12.000 What did they eat?

01:36:13.000 Yeah, it was...

01:36:14.000 Did you talk to them after it was like someone made it to 77 days before they quit, right?

01:36:19.000 72 or 3. So they let you go an extra 4 days?

01:36:22.000 Yeah, because a storm came in and they couldn't get out there.

01:36:25.000 Did you know about it?

01:36:26.000 No, I had no idea.

01:36:27.000 Oh, wow.

01:36:28.000 I was just plugging along out there. 0.98

01:36:29.000 So who the fuck made it to 72 days after... 0.98

01:36:32.000 It was a girl named Wonia, and she and another guy named Nathan made it, you know, his shelter burnt down, and that was kind of the end for him. 0.99

01:36:41.000 Both of them made it right up to 71, 72 days.

01:36:45.000 His shelter burned down.

01:36:46.000 He said, I'm not making another one.

01:36:47.000 I quit?

01:36:47.000 Yeah, I mean, it was cold at that point.

01:36:49.000 It'd be pretty tough.

01:36:49.000 Wow, there's a girl.

01:36:50.000 Yeah.

01:36:50.000 Look at her.

01:36:51.000 This is her.

01:36:52.000 She caught something with her bow.

01:36:54.000 Like a little game pheasant or something.

01:36:56.000 Oh, and she's sad?

01:36:57.000 She's happy, I think.

01:36:58.000 Happy to finally eat.

01:36:59.000 Yeah, then she cooks it up here. 1.00

01:37:00.000 Wow.

01:37:03.000 She's chopping it all up.

01:37:05.000 Yeah, and so, yeah, they would eat, you know, as everybody did.

01:37:08.000 Look how red that is.

01:37:09.000 You just eat everything.

01:37:10.000 How crazy a red that bird's meat is.

01:37:12.000 That's nuts.

01:37:13.000 It looks like a beef.

01:37:15.000 You know what I mean?

01:37:16.000 It looks like a venison bird.

01:37:19.000 Doesn't it?

01:37:20.000 Yeah.

01:37:21.000 It's crazy.

01:37:21.000 Look at her so happy.

01:37:22.000 Oh, I'm so happy.

01:37:25.000 So she almost made it.

01:37:28.000 Yeah, she did really well.

01:37:30.000 But, uh... 1.00

01:37:32.000 Some fucking ballsy people to do this. 0.99

01:37:34.000 Yeah, it's pretty intense. 0.99

01:37:35.000 Good for everybody that tried. 0.99

01:37:37.000 Yeah, but they don't get shit. 0.99

01:37:39.000 They get zero. 1.00

01:37:40.000 They get umgats.

01:37:41.000 You get 72 days of starving, baby.

01:37:43.000 I know.

01:37:44.000 It's rough.

01:37:45.000 And one guy walks away with a half a mil.

01:37:47.000 That's crazy.

01:37:49.000 How much moose did you have left at the end of the show?

01:37:51.000 A couple hundred pounds.

01:37:52.000 I still had a lot.

01:37:54.000 You were good to go.

01:37:57.000 How many pounds of it were you eating in a day?

01:38:00.000 As much as I could.

01:38:01.000 You must be so hungry.

01:38:02.000 Plus, I was having fish, so I would have fish for lunch and then breakfast and dinner I would eat mousse.

01:38:09.000 Basically, I told myself, well, I can't quit until I finish this whole mousse.

01:38:13.000 Let me eat it as fast as I can.

01:38:15.000 So how were you catching fish?

01:38:17.000 Did you have a homemade pole?

01:38:19.000 Yeah, I caught most of them.

01:38:20.000 This is a birch pole.

01:38:21.000 I had rigged up a little thing that made me so I could cast, and I could cast a long ways out, and it was the funnest fishing I've ever done.

01:38:28.000 You could cast?

01:38:29.000 Yeah, I made with like a spool that I'd brought for my fishing line or whatever.

01:38:33.000 And what did you use for like the eyes?

01:38:36.000 A wire.

01:38:37.000 A snare wire was one of the things I brought.

01:38:40.000 So I'd made like, rigged up a little fishing pole and it worked great.

01:38:43.000 It was real similar to what they use in Soviet, like old Soviet reels.

01:38:48.000 So I had been, it gave me the idea for making that style of a reel because they're just so basic, you know?

01:38:54.000 Right, right.

01:38:55.000 And it takes a little practice to use.

01:38:57.000 But anyway, I rigged it up.

01:38:59.000 It worked great.

01:38:59.000 I could cast way out there.

01:39:01.000 It took me a long time to catch my first fish, a few weeks.

01:39:04.000 But after I did, I kind of like dialed them in and it was such fun fishing.

01:39:06.000 Were you using bait or lures?

01:39:08.000 I made a lure, like a little spinner I made.

01:39:11.000 Really?

01:39:11.000 And I caught a fish, but it snapped my line.

01:39:15.000 And then I tried moose meat and they loved it.

01:39:18.000 So I would just be catching them all on moose meat or like fish belly.

01:39:23.000 You know, you catch a fish and cut out a...

01:39:26.000 A strip.

01:39:27.000 A strip, and they loved that.

01:39:28.000 And it was mostly lake trout, but some of them were over 20 pounds, and you got this homemade rod, and you're like reeling it in, shaking your hands out.

01:39:37.000 It was so fun.

01:39:38.000 20 pound lake trout.

01:39:39.000 That's insane.

01:39:40.000 With a homemade lure and a homemade...

01:39:43.000 What kind of string are you using?

01:39:45.000 That's a different thing.

01:39:45.000 That's paracord.

01:39:46.000 I was just testing out making a fly line out of paracord there.

01:39:52.000 And did you have a leader as well?

01:39:54.000 Using the paracord and braiding it down.

01:39:56.000 That's not the thing I used on the show.

01:39:59.000 That was just experimenting.

01:40:00.000 Now, when you were using the line, what kind of line?

01:40:04.000 Did you bring fishing line?

01:40:05.000 Yeah, that was another item I brought.

01:40:06.000 Like braided line?

01:40:07.000 No, you can only bring monofilament and barbless hooks, so it made everything that much more intense.

01:40:13.000 Why barbless hooks?

01:40:14.000 I think it's Canadian regulations or something.

01:40:17.000 Yeah, I can count.

01:40:18.000 So long. 1.00

01:40:19.000 Silly people. 0.99

01:40:21.000 There was never going to be any release in that situation anyway. 0.97

01:40:24.000 Yeah, that's why it's so confusing.

01:40:25.000 It's so weird.

01:40:26.000 Why would they have barless hooks?

01:40:27.000 Yeah.

01:40:27.000 But they allowed you to...

01:40:29.000 What pound test did you use?

01:40:30.000 20. Oh, wow.

01:40:32.000 So you got the limit with the lake trout.

01:40:34.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:40:34.000 And you got no drag, so you're just kind of going on field.

01:40:37.000 Yeah, it was very...

01:40:38.000 Wow.

01:40:39.000 Did you try to drag it out like a fly rod where you let it slip through your fingers a little bit?

01:40:44.000 Yeah, let it pull away, reel it in, let it pull away until it finally wears itself out.

01:40:47.000 Are you stripping the line in?

01:40:49.000 I had my little reel so I could put my thumb on it, on my spool, and it would drag, make drag, and then I could reel it.

01:40:58.000 Did you reel it with a finger?

01:41:00.000 Yeah.

01:41:00.000 Oh, wow.

01:41:01.000 When it was cold, I made this rabbit fur glove where just the tip of my finger stuck out.

01:41:06.000 Oh, wow.

01:41:10.000 So how many fish did you wind up catching?

01:41:12.000 There's 13, but they're all big.

01:41:15.000 So you can eat them for a couple days?

01:41:17.000 Yeah, from between 8 and 20-something pounds.

01:41:20.000 Did you eat the fish guts at all?

01:41:22.000 Yeah, I ate the stomachs and the head was the best part.

01:41:27.000 When you're out there starving and you need fat, a lot of times I would eat the fish and put the main meat part of it away for later.

01:41:35.000 But you eat the belly, the head.

01:41:37.000 Did you make, like, a soup with the head?

01:41:39.000 Yeah, I made all my fish into soup, and then I would fry all my moose, basically.

01:41:44.000 Oh, no kidding.

01:41:45.000 All your fish you made into soup?

01:41:46.000 Yeah, just to get all the nutrients out of the bone.

01:41:49.000 Did you find any edible vegetables or anything?

01:41:51.000 Lots of berries, like, up north, so it's awesome as far as berries go.

01:41:55.000 Although, my spot didn't really have many, but I found patches, you know, like...

01:41:59.000 Well, where you find berries, you find bears, too.

01:42:01.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:42:03.000 Did you find any root vegetables or any, like, wild onions?

01:42:06.000 Not much.

01:42:07.000 There's not a lot of that up there.

01:42:09.000 There's lichen, so I boiled reindeer lichen.

01:42:12.000 Oh, that's...

01:42:12.000 What does that taste like?

01:42:14.000 Real bland.

01:42:15.000 It's kind of acidic.

01:42:16.000 It's not great for eating, but I would...

01:42:18.000 Mix it with my moose meat just to get carbs, like some kind of carbs maybe.

01:42:22.000 That's what all the caribou eat, right?

01:42:23.000 Yeah.

01:42:25.000 That's weird.

01:42:26.000 It's weird what you can turn into an animal, you know?

01:42:29.000 Just take a pile of lichen and it turns into a ranger.

01:42:31.000 It's weird stuff too, right?

01:42:33.000 Yeah.

01:42:34.000 You have no seasoning or anything, right?

01:42:36.000 Right, but man, I gotta tell you, you know elk too, but man, I didn't miss it at all.

01:42:41.000 It was so good from the first bite to the last.

01:42:44.000 Oh, mousse.

01:42:45.000 Mousse is so delicious.

01:42:46.000 Every time, you're just like, mmm!

01:42:48.000 Just mousse over fire?

01:42:50.000 Yeah, no complaints.

01:42:50.000 Did you eat some of it raw?

01:42:52.000 Yeah, like the liver.

01:42:54.000 Yeah, just for the extra boost.

01:42:58.000 You had a knife, obviously?

01:43:00.000 A Leatherman, yeah.

01:43:01.000 Oh, just a Leatherman?

01:43:02.000 Just a Leatherman. 0.88

01:43:02.000 So you butchered the moose with a Leatherman? 0.88

01:43:04.000 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

01:43:05.000 Holy shit. 1.00

01:43:06.000 How long did that take? 0.99

01:43:08.000 Oh, I think I got the moose finally at like noon, and then I think I was done cutting it up and hauling it by like 10 o'clock that night.

01:43:17.000 And do you have a sharpening stone or anything?

01:43:19.000 Yeah, just a rock, you know.

01:43:21.000 Oh, just a regular rock that you'd find laying around?

01:43:23.000 Yeah, I'd find one that looks like it might work well.

01:43:25.000 Oh, did it work?

01:43:26.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:43:27.000 Wow. 0.91

01:43:29.000 That's so crazy to rely on a Leatherman, that little tiny-ass blade.

01:43:32.000 Yeah, but you got only so many items, you know, and I wanted the wire cutters, I wanted the little saw for craft and stuff, you know, so I figured...

01:43:41.000 If my worst problem is that I have a small knife to cut up a big game, I'll be pretty happy.

01:43:46.000 Was there anything that you wished you brought that you didn't?

01:43:49.000 Yeah, I would have taken probably a gill net instead of my saw.

01:43:53.000 I took a saw and I almost never used it.

01:43:56.000 You thought you would use it for trees?

01:43:57.000 Yeah, I just thought it would just be a calorie saver rather than using your axe, but it was kind of a risk I took and it ended up not being worthwhile.

01:44:06.000 That's pretty good though.

01:44:07.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:44:08.000 It was nice for building.

01:44:10.000 I built like a 12 foot tall cache where I stored all my moose meat and stuff.

01:44:13.000 It was nice for that.

01:44:15.000 So what other objects did you bring?

01:44:17.000 You brought a tarp.

01:44:18.000 You brought a fishing line.

01:44:19.000 Fishing line.

01:44:20.000 Oh, there it is. 0.99

01:44:21.000 Fucking James, the best. 0.99

01:44:23.000 Ferro rod. 0.99

01:44:24.000 What is a ferro rod?

01:44:25.000 That's like that sparker.

01:44:26.000 You know, you scrape it and it sparks.

01:44:28.000 Oh, so that's how you started your fires?

01:44:29.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:44:31.000 Fishing line and hooks, all barbly.

01:44:33.000 How many hooks did you have?

01:44:34.000 25. Ooh, that's scary.

01:44:36.000 Nice chunk. 1.00

01:44:37.000 But yeah, no, they go fast.

01:44:38.000 77 days.

01:44:39.000 They go fast.

01:44:40.000 That was down to my last ones.

01:44:42.000 A bow, and you're allowed nine arrows only.

01:44:44.000 Yeah.

01:44:45.000 Did you think about constructing arrows?

01:44:47.000 Yeah, I thought, and I was thinking, uh, by the time I got the moose, you know, it was early enough that I didn't really need to make arrows, but I was thinking, if I want to shoot more at squirrels, I better make some arrows.

01:44:56.000 Trapping wire.

01:44:57.000 What is that?

01:44:58.000 That's just thin gauge wire, like 20 gauge wire.

01:45:01.000 And would you use that for?

01:45:02.000 For snaring rabbits.

01:45:03.000 I put hundreds of snares out.

01:45:05.000 And then I built, you know, for building my fishing pole, stuff like that.

01:45:08.000 And did that in a sleeping bag.

01:45:10.000 Yeah, a sleeping bag. 0.99

01:45:12.000 You must have brought a fucking warm sleeping bag, right? 0.99

01:45:14.000 Minus 40, and then you'd heat up rocks, throw it in there with you. 0.99

01:45:17.000 Oh, okay.

01:45:18.000 Yeah.

01:45:19.000 And then a multi-tool.

01:45:20.000 Crazy, you didn't bring a knife.

01:45:21.000 Just a multi-tool. 1.00

01:45:22.000 Wow.

01:45:23.000 Wow.

01:45:24.000 I guess that makes sense though.

01:45:25.000 If I was looking at that list, like what would I take off for a knife?

01:45:29.000 Yeah, it's kind of redundant.

01:45:30.000 If you didn't have the saw, what would you take if you didn't have the saw?

01:45:33.000 I probably would have taken a gill net.

01:45:34.000 I ended up making a gill net out of the paracord, but I think that would have been useful.

01:45:39.000 Wow.

01:45:39.000 It's crazy.

01:45:40.000 You only get 10 things.

01:45:42.000 Yeah, it puts the pressure on for sure.

01:45:43.000 Oh my goodness, it does.

01:45:47.000 So once you shot the moose and you knew you had all that meat, and then what did you do with your time after that?

01:45:55.000 Oh, I kept busy.

01:45:56.000 I just always assumed somebody else was going to get something.

01:45:59.000 So I spent a lot of time right after getting the moose, like preserving it, smoking it.

01:46:05.000 Trying to store it where it would be safe.

01:46:07.000 Because everywhere you put it, something's getting it.

01:46:09.000 You hang it in trees and the birds are pecking it.

01:46:11.000 You know, everybody's going for it.

01:46:12.000 Did you have a tarp that you could cover it with?

01:46:14.000 Well, I only had the tarp for my shelter.

01:46:16.000 That was an item I also thought had I known I was going to get something big, it would have been nice to have a tarp.

01:46:24.000 Yeah, it was a lot of work protecting my meat, but then also just continued fishing, continued, you know, all that kind of stuff.

01:46:33.000 And after you got the wolverine out of the picture, was there any other animals like that?

01:46:36.000 I thought, man, after I got the wolverine, I was so happy.

01:46:38.000 I was like, yes, I just got to eat and live.

01:46:41.000 And then like two days later, I was sitting there frying up some meat and...

01:46:44.000 I haven't been able to find on the internet a good wolverine sound.

01:46:49.000 Another one came home?

01:46:49.000 Another one came and I just hear it out in the woods.

01:46:52.000 No, it's like a witch in the woods.

01:46:54.000 It's just like, and I was like, oh, did I? I was like just praying like, oh, I think I made that up, right?

01:47:01.000 I didn't really hear that.

01:47:03.000 Like a dream.

01:47:04.000 But sure enough, he started coming around.

01:47:06.000 But we have regulations, right? 0.84

01:47:08.000 So you can only kill one Wolverine. 0.77

01:47:11.000 Oh, really?

01:47:12.000 Then I was just on defense mode trying to set up all these cans so that when I walked through, it'd clank and then I'd wake up and chase it away. 0.99

01:47:22.000 Yeah, I'd be like, fuck, shut that camera off. 0.99

01:47:23.000 We're going commando on this fucking Wolverine. 1.00

01:47:26.000 It's tempting for sure. 1.00

01:47:28.000 Oh, 100%.

01:47:28.000 I mean, that's survival.

01:47:31.000 It is.

01:47:32.000 This isn't just hunting.

01:47:33.000 Yeah, it is.

01:47:34.000 It's survival.

01:47:34.000 You're trying to survive.

01:47:35.000 Man, talk about intense hunting, Joe.

01:47:38.000 I can imagine.

01:47:39.000 When I hit the moose, you know, like unlike anything I've ever experienced, you're like, oh my gosh, that was a good shot.

01:47:46.000 And you're just like, oh.

01:47:47.000 You knew you had him.

01:47:47.000 But then you got to wait, you know, you got to wait like an hour to go look because you don't want to spook it.

01:47:52.000 It's such a big animal.

01:47:53.000 How heavy were your arrows?

01:47:55.000 Let's see, I had 180 grain...

01:47:59.000 Broadhead.

01:47:59.000 So a heavy broadhead.

01:48:00.000 I mean, 125 grain broadheads and 80 grain insert.

01:48:03.000 Oh, okay.

01:48:04.000 So, pretty heavy up front.

01:48:06.000 Heavy FOC. Yeah, yeah.

01:48:07.000 And then, like, all the shafts.

01:48:09.000 What kind of shafts?

01:48:09.000 Full-length shaft.

01:48:10.000 Carbon?

01:48:11.000 Like, what are you using?

01:48:11.000 Yeah, carbon wood-look, like, shafts.

01:48:15.000 Feathers?

01:48:16.000 Yep, with feathers.

01:48:17.000 Mm-hmm.

01:48:19.000 And...

01:48:19.000 Yeah, did the job.

01:48:20.000 It sunk all the way in to the moose entirely and didn't come out the other side because it was a quartering towards me shot.

01:48:27.000 Oh, wow.

01:48:28.000 And it sunk the feathers in.

01:48:30.000 The back of the arrow touched its back hip.

01:48:34.000 Oh, so you must have shot it perfect between the ribs.

01:48:37.000 Yeah, it was great.

01:48:39.000 But I only hit one lung, so it was a long...

01:48:43.000 You know, of course, I was tracking it.

01:48:45.000 Lost track of the blood.

01:48:47.000 It was like a big ordeal, tracking that thing down.

01:48:50.000 And then you gotta worry about something finding it before you.

01:48:52.000 Yeah, yeah. 0.99

01:48:52.000 What would you do if a fucking bear found it? 0.99

01:48:55.000 Hunt a bear, I guess. 1.00

01:48:58.000 I mean, I was expecting a bear to show up, and I never did.

01:49:01.000 You never saw any bears while you were there?

01:49:03.000 No, my spot must not have had bear.

01:49:06.000 Like, I was expecting one to come for the kill.

01:49:08.000 Maybe they hibernated, you know, right around that time.

01:49:10.000 So it was like right on the edge of when they would go in.

01:49:13.000 Yeah.

01:49:13.000 And, uh, yeah, just got away with that one.

01:49:16.000 Or, you know, I actually, to be honest, was kind of hoping one would come.

01:49:19.000 What did you eat first?

01:49:21.000 When you got the heart.

01:49:23.000 I love the heart, man.

01:49:24.000 The heart's delicious.

01:49:25.000 Yeah, with that ring of fat around it.

01:49:26.000 It's so good.

01:49:27.000 And how did you cook that?

01:49:29.000 Just slice it?

01:49:29.000 Just fried it.

01:49:30.000 Sliced it and fried it.

01:49:30.000 Put it on sticks or something?

01:49:31.000 I had one of my items was a frying pan.

01:49:34.000 Oh, that's right.

01:49:35.000 Oh, that's nice.

01:49:36.000 Man, it was so good.

01:49:37.000 Did you use the fat as like oil?

01:49:39.000 Yeah.

01:49:39.000 So you like cooked the fat first?

01:49:42.000 Cooked it first.

01:49:42.000 I rendered a bunch of fat into like Mmm.

01:49:45.000 You know, oil. 1.00

01:49:46.000 Wow, you must have felt like a fucking caveman. 1.00

01:49:49.000 Like a successful caveman. 1.00

01:49:51.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:49:52.000 It was interesting to get into that mindset because you're just, you know, you're just living.

01:49:57.000 You feel really connected to everything.

01:49:59.000 You feel like, Out there carving steaks with a leather man. 0.86

01:50:02.000 That is so crazy.

01:50:05.000 And did you use the axe to chop up the bones to make marrow?

01:50:08.000 Yeah, just break open the bones with rocks on a rock and then pick out the marrow and that was so good.

01:50:14.000 Raw or did you cook it?

01:50:15.000 Yeah, cold and raw, so creamy and delicious.

01:50:19.000 So healthy for you too when you're out there, right?

01:50:22.000 Yeah, it's exactly what you're craving.

01:50:23.000 Wow.

01:50:24.000 And so when you had that stashed in your cache, a lot of pressure must have been relieved though, right?

01:50:31.000 Oh, yeah.

01:50:32.000 It felt like just a demon lifted off my back.

01:50:35.000 It's just like, you know, the whole time you're like, you're going to starve, you're going to starve, you're going to starve.

01:50:38.000 You're just like trying to fight this thing off.

01:50:40.000 And then, man, when you shot that and it was like three hours, I tracked it and I had lost its blood trail and I lost its foot trails because it was like hard ground.

01:50:52.000 And I was just like, no, I cannot lose this moose.

01:50:55.000 But I was like, well, I hit it in the lung, I'm sure.

01:50:58.000 So I think it's going to stay downhill.

01:51:00.000 So I just followed the shoreline.

01:51:02.000 Sure enough, I came up on it.

01:51:03.000 But it was like sitting there alert and alive.

01:51:06.000 Still alive with one lung.

01:51:07.000 And I was just like, oh man, I ducked down.

01:51:10.000 I was debating, like, can I sneak in and try to get another shot?

01:51:13.000 But no way.

01:51:14.000 And it's like, so I just waited it out.

01:51:16.000 And it was a long three hours where I would just be like sitting there and it would stand up.

01:51:21.000 And you're just like, no, no.

01:51:22.000 Then it would fall down and you're like, yes!

01:51:24.000 Oh my god.

01:51:25.000 It like really dragged it out.

01:51:27.000 But when it finally died, yeah, I walked over there and I'd, yeah, talk about a weight lifted off your shoulders.

01:51:33.000 Do people give you a hard time for that?

01:51:35.000 Oh yeah, I got some good internet hate. 0.93

01:51:37.000 But honestly, it's people, I can understand it, like it sounds good, like why don't you go finish it off with an arrow?

01:51:43.000 Because it could run away.

01:51:43.000 Of course.

01:51:44.000 You can't even let it know that you're out.

01:51:45.000 You've got to let it be calm and just go away.

01:51:48.000 How close were you when you saw it standing up?

01:51:51.000 How many yards?

01:51:51.000 50 yards, probably.

01:51:52.000 So you really don't want to send 150. Yeah.

01:51:55.000 All you're going to do is poke it, and then it's going to know it's being attacked and get up and run away.

01:51:59.000 And I understand the people that were mad just having bow hunted, so fair enough. 1.00

01:52:03.000 Yeah, and also, it's survival.

01:52:05.000 It's not just regular bow hunting.

01:52:06.000 Yeah, you can't make any risks.

01:52:08.000 That's a crazy situation, man.

01:52:11.000 Yeah, it was intense.

01:52:11.000 God, there's the anticipation.

01:52:14.000 That's even more crazy, right?

01:52:15.000 Like, you hit it, but it's still alive, and then you're hoping you can get that moose?

01:52:21.000 I've lost, I don't know if you've ever done that, where I've hit a deer, you know, you wait 45 minutes, and then you go out there, and then you see it stand up in front of you and run off.

01:52:30.000 And at that point, it's almost impossible to find because it's already bled out mostly, and I've lost you that way.

01:52:37.000 And the adrenaline kicks in.

01:52:38.000 Yeah, and it can run for miles.

01:52:40.000 It's crazy.

01:52:41.000 They're built for survival, man.

01:52:42.000 They're built to get away from wolves.

01:52:43.000 It's amazing what they can do, too.

01:52:46.000 So that was in my mind, for sure.

01:52:48.000 Do you have the antlers?

01:52:50.000 Unfortunately, no.

01:52:51.000 Maybe somebody in Canada is listening to this.

01:52:53.000 I was flying out on the airplane and the lady wouldn't let me bring him on the plane because I had him improperly wrapped, I guess.

01:53:00.000 Oh, no.

01:53:01.000 And then my plane was just about to leave from Northwest Territories.

01:53:05.000 So you just left it there?

01:53:06.000 I just had to set it in front of the airport.

01:53:08.000 And I was like...

01:53:10.000 Oh, what a bummer.

01:53:11.000 It was a super bummer.

01:53:13.000 I didn't have any of the locals numbered, like, hey, could you come grab this for me?

01:53:18.000 That would be something you'd want on your wall for the rest of your life.

01:53:21.000 Absolutely.

01:53:21.000 That was a sad one.

01:53:22.000 Was it a big moose?

01:53:23.000 No, it was like a young moose, which, great eating, but it wasn't huge.

01:53:27.000 But the first one was a monster.

01:53:29.000 Yeah, the first one was a monster, and that was...

01:53:32.000 I mean, have you seen moose, like, up close?

01:53:35.000 No, I shot one.

01:53:35.000 Oh, you did, yeah.

01:53:36.000 I shot a young one.

01:53:37.000 Yeah, but it aren't, like, cool animals to see.

01:53:39.000 The young one that I shot was, like, a Forky. 1.00

01:53:41.000 It was, like, 900 pounds.

01:53:42.000 Yeah, that's about what I got.

01:53:43.000 Three points on it.

01:53:45.000 Yeah.

01:53:45.000 And, uh...

01:53:46.000 But yeah, they're just such cool animals to see.

01:53:49.000 They're so big.

01:53:50.000 They're so big.

01:53:50.000 Yeah, so big.

01:53:51.000 I was with my friend Ben O'Brien and he shot one that was huge.

01:53:55.000 And when it was walking across the road, it walked across this dirt road, it looked like a dinosaur.

01:54:00.000 That's exactly what I thought.

01:54:01.000 It didn't look real.

01:54:02.000 Even the one I missed, I can't even say I was upset because I was just like...

01:54:07.000 That was so awesome to see.

01:54:08.000 That was really like seeing a dinosaur.

01:54:10.000 You don't realize how big they are until you're in their presence.

01:54:14.000 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

01:54:15.000 I guess that's probably like all animals that are enormous in Africa, right?

01:54:19.000 I mean, you see them at the zoo, and they're not impressive for some reason.

01:54:23.000 Yeah, they don't have their wild energy in the forest.

01:54:27.000 And you know where they are.

01:54:28.000 It's like, look at the map.

01:54:29.000 Oh, there's the giraffe cage. 1.00

01:54:31.000 Let's go check out those motherfuckers. 1.00

01:54:33.000 Yeah, not as interesting. 1.00

01:54:34.000 No, it's not like you'd turn a bend, go around a corner, and you see one.

01:54:38.000 You're like, what?

01:54:40.000 It's just out there living wild.

01:54:43.000 It's so indescribable, just seeing something.

01:54:45.000 Even if you just stumble into any kind of animal that's in the wild, and you realize this is how this thing's species has been existing for hundreds of thousands of years.

01:54:56.000 Just how you're chilling. 0.59

01:54:57.000 When we were doing that project trying to get guys to stop drinking out in Siberia, we had a little hunting cabin we were based at, and I woke up one morning and we had a stupid dog that just barked at everything, and I just hear the dog going, and I was like, 0.97

01:55:13.000 oh, it's probably a squirrel. 0.96

01:55:14.000 So I got up and...

01:55:17.000 I didn't get up.

01:55:18.000 I let it bark.

01:55:19.000 And then my buddy got up like an hour later and went out to brush his teeth and came running back in.

01:55:23.000 He's like, dude, there's a bear out there.

01:55:24.000 So I went up, jumped up, looked out, and a bear had killed a moose.

01:55:27.000 Like less than a hundred.

01:55:29.000 We could have watched the whole thing if I would have just woke up right away.

01:55:32.000 But it killed a moose right next to our cabin.

01:55:35.000 Wow.

01:55:35.000 We're good to go.

01:55:57.000 The other one started like out there barking like...

01:56:00.000 And so we grabbed the SKS and go out there and it felt like...

01:56:07.000 Have you ever seen The Ghost in the Darkness?

01:56:09.000 That's what it reminded me of because it's like all this tall brush and you just hear like...

01:56:14.000 You know, the dog's barking over here.

01:56:16.000 And so I'm like, oh man, the bear's over here. 0.86

01:56:17.000 And then over here you hear a, and you're like, oh crap, it's over here.

01:56:21.000 And then all of a sudden we're like, man, we're kind of in this tall brush.

01:56:25.000 But I was like, well, I got my camera.

01:56:28.000 So I handed the gun to this...

01:56:30.000 Dude, and he's just like, I figured he knew what he was doing.

01:56:33.000 It was a bad choice, but I got my camera.

01:56:36.000 He got the gun.

01:56:37.000 And then again, we're looking at where the dog's barking and the bear like pops up right here and stands up.

01:56:42.000 It's like, and dude just took off running with the gun.

01:56:47.000 Left me with a camera?

01:56:48.000 Yeah, left me with my camera.

01:56:49.000 I recently had a knee surgery.

01:56:51.000 I wasn't running out of there, so I just stood there and ducked back in the brush.

01:56:56.000 And then dude comes back almost a minute later.

01:57:00.000 I was just like there. 1.00

01:57:00.000 Give me that gun, pussy! 1.00

01:57:02.000 He's like, my knees are shaking. 1.00

01:57:03.000 I was like, dude, you got a gun, don't run.

01:57:05.000 And just as I said that, it stood up again and he's like, sounded like Vietnam.

01:57:09.000 It was just like...

01:57:10.000 He shot the bear?

01:57:11.000 And he shot it.

01:57:12.000 So did you guys want to be eating it?

01:57:14.000 Well, they were all the Venki people, and we ate the heart, but they have a whole ritual when they shoot a bear. 0.94

01:57:23.000 Because they're so wormy up there, you can eat them in a serious situation, but...

01:57:30.000 They cut the head off and put the eyes under a rock because they didn't want the spirit to see who got it.

01:57:38.000 And then they put the other parts of it in the river so that it floats down to a different village so that The bear thinks those are the people that got it.

01:57:48.000 All these weird little things.

01:57:51.000 But in general, because there's so much trichinosis and stuff, they don't eat the brown bear up there.

01:57:57.000 Although you can if you boil the heck out of it.

01:58:00.000 Yeah, or just cook it over 160, right?

01:58:02.000 I guess.

01:58:03.000 I don't know.

01:58:04.000 Yeah.

01:58:05.000 My friend Steve got a trichinosis.

01:58:07.000 Oh, did he?

01:58:07.000 Steve Ranella.

01:58:08.000 Oh, yeah.

01:58:09.000 Yeah, he got it.

01:58:10.000 So the whole crew got it.

01:58:11.000 And they even got t-shirts.

01:58:12.000 Isn't that mild?

01:58:14.000 Trichinosis crew.

01:58:15.000 Yeah.

01:58:16.000 Did they get rid of it, I imagine?

01:58:19.000 It just goes away, but it's always in your body.

01:58:22.000 So if somebody ate him someday, they would get trichinosis.

01:58:25.000 Oh, interesting.

01:58:26.000 Good to know.

01:58:27.000 But he said it felt like his muscles, like you could feel the little parasite worms burrowing into your muscles, so everything is in pain.

01:58:37.000 Yeah, gnarly.

01:58:38.000 And then eventually it just goes away.

01:58:40.000 Oh, yeah, okay.

01:58:41.000 Well, at least it goes away. 1.00

01:58:42.000 These fucking worms just living in your body. 1.00

01:58:44.000 You get used to it. 1.00

01:58:45.000 It's creepy, man, because when you...

01:58:47.000 I haven't experienced this, but I know that some people who eat bear have cut open the bear and seen the worms literally crawling underneath the skin.

01:58:56.000 Oh, yeah.

01:58:57.000 Yeah, no, you could see him even on the bear, that bear.

01:58:59.000 Yeah?

01:59:00.000 Yeah, yeah.

01:59:00.000 You'd see him in there.

01:59:02.000 They're like, yeah, it's pretty gnarly.

01:59:03.000 So you guys ate the heart only?

01:59:05.000 That's it?

01:59:05.000 Just the heart.

01:59:06.000 To me, it did seem a little bit of a waste, but that's just, I was kind of doing, I went in Rome, you know?

01:59:12.000 Yeah, that's one of those things, right? 1.00

01:59:13.000 Like, if you insult them and say, you fuckers don't even know what you're doing. 0.99

01:59:17.000 They had this whole tradition of things they were doing, so... 1.00

01:59:19.000 And you're out there making bear barbecue.

01:59:21.000 You're going to bring the ghosts.

01:59:25.000 How big was the bear?

01:59:27.000 It was a brown bear, big old brown bear.

01:59:29.000 I mean, it wasn't an old one.

01:59:30.000 It was probably...

01:59:31.000 It's hard to say, but it was a full-grown...

01:59:34.000 Eight foot?

01:59:34.000 Nine foot?

01:59:34.000 Yeah, somewhere I put a picture of the hide.

01:59:37.000 But anyway, yeah, yeah.

01:59:38.000 It was a big bear.

01:59:39.000 I don't actually know what I did with that video, which is very sad, but...

01:59:44.000 So you guys, you ate the moose, you ate the heart of the bear, and how did they do that?

01:59:49.000 They just sliced that up?

01:59:50.000 Yeah, I just sliced it up, fried it up.

01:59:52.000 And then...

01:59:54.000 Yeah, there's a lot of bear stories out there.

01:59:56.000 You're constantly...

01:59:57.000 I can only imagine.

01:59:58.000 Yeah, constantly interacting with them when you're always in the woods like that.

02:00:01.000 Well, and Happy People, the guy was talking about losing his favorite hunting dog to bears.

02:00:05.000 Yeah, yeah, that happens.

02:00:06.000 The way they do dogs over there, the Venki are interesting because they have a different dog for every type of animal. 1.00

02:00:12.000 So if you got like a dog that's really good at treating birds and you got a dog that's...

02:00:16.000 Good at going after bears.

02:00:17.000 And you got a dog that's good at sable.

02:00:19.000 You know, like, you just keep raising dogs until you get one that likes to go after what you need it to go for.

02:00:24.000 Where are they getting their dogs from?

02:00:26.000 It's just like this Avenki breed of dog. 1.00

02:00:28.000 I don't know.

02:00:28.000 Just random.

02:00:29.000 What do they look like?

02:00:30.000 They're like either white mutts. 0.87

02:00:32.000 Yeah, mutt-looking things.

02:00:33.000 They're not very big, but they're not small.

02:00:35.000 There's average coyote-sized dogs.

02:00:38.000 And they...

02:00:39.000 Yeah, usually white or red or spotted.

02:00:42.000 What do they feed them?

02:00:44.000 Just mush, like this oat and mush stuff they buy in the village.

02:00:48.000 It's not very good food, but then the dogs try to fend for themselves and stuff, catch mice and things.

02:00:55.000 It's like not an envious...

02:00:57.000 Well, the dogs seem pretty happy, but they also go out in super cold weather and this dog will have melted a big hole in the snow and it snowed on top of it and it pops up out of this hole.

02:01:08.000 That's how they're sleeping?

02:01:09.000 Yeah, they just sleep outside.

02:01:10.000 They're tough dogs.

02:01:13.000 And they're eating just mush?

02:01:16.000 Yeah, they're just eating mush and certain scraps and stuff, but yeah, not an enviable diet they have.

02:01:22.000 They're usually kind of thin, but...

02:01:25.000 But...

02:01:25.000 They don't know any better.

02:01:26.000 Yeah, they don't know any better.

02:01:27.000 They like it.

02:01:28.000 They seem happy running around free like that.

02:01:31.000 Incredible animal dogs are.

02:01:32.000 Yeah, super cool.

02:01:33.000 It's just so...

02:01:34.000 What a strange...

02:01:35.000 What is this?

02:01:36.000 Oh, there's one.

02:01:36.000 That's Petya.

02:01:38.000 He's such a cool guy.

02:01:40.000 But that's him and his reindeer. 0.93

02:01:41.000 If I didn't know any better and I saw a dude with a reindeer with a saddle, I'm like, get the fuck out of here. 0.96

02:01:46.000 That's not real. 0.98

02:01:47.000 You can't just ride a reindeer around.

02:01:50.000 Because a reindeer's not that big.

02:01:52.000 That looks like about a 200-pound reindeer.

02:01:54.000 Yeah, they're not, but they're pretty strong.

02:01:56.000 They're like...

02:01:57.000 They'll pull you and like, but it is border, like a guy like me or whatever, it's starting to get borderline, but...

02:02:02.000 How much do you weigh?

02:02:03.000 Like 175. And so if you're on a 200 pound rain gear...

02:02:07.000 You just gotta get a stronger one, yeah.

02:02:09.000 And they do it, the strongest ones will carry well over a 200 pound person.

02:02:13.000 How big are the big ones?

02:02:15.000 I don't know the weight.

02:02:17.000 Like a 300 pound caribou is really big.

02:02:20.000 Not the domestic ones, they're probably a little smaller.

02:02:23.000 I don't think they get that heavy, maybe 250. But they're strong, man.

02:02:31.000 There'll be some cool times where you're just out in the middle of this field in Siberia.

02:02:35.000 You know those swamps have that tuft of grass that you walk on and you're carrying your reindeer along.

02:02:43.000 He's in tow maybe and then you get to this big flowing river with ice and everything.

02:02:49.000 Jump on your reindeer and just hope he can make it through without stumbling and you're like on the back of this reindeer like feels life or death if you fall in this river you know and you just hang on to him and trust that he won't stumble you know and Make it across this river, pull up on the other shore,

02:03:05.000 and you're just like...

02:03:06.000 Do you ever have dreams of that life after you've done it?

02:03:10.000 It's always present with me.

02:03:12.000 I always think about it.

02:03:14.000 Like I was saying, it's interesting to live in a modern world and see the things that suck my time and how in some way it's very unsatisfying, the social media thing, but it's so engrossing.

02:03:28.000 And I miss it, and those are the reasons why I always think, man, how could you get this a little more in our modern society?

02:03:40.000 That was the initial catalyst for why I thought about it.

02:03:44.000 I wonder if something like that would be able to be revived.

02:03:48.000 Now, after you've had all these wild experiences, do you long for more?

02:03:52.000 Is it something like where you go live a normal life for a while and you start getting an itch?

02:03:56.000 Yeah, definitely.

02:03:57.000 It's like...

02:03:59.000 And again, it's like that thing where it's like, if it was my friends and family living that life, I would just choose it.

02:04:05.000 But because it's not, it's hard to feel fully committed into it.

02:04:10.000 Because you've got your kids and your wife, and they're all over there, and none of your family can see them.

02:04:16.000 It's such a different, separate life.

02:04:20.000 That said, I do know that it's very satisfying on a deep level.

02:04:25.000 So it's kind of interesting to...

02:04:27.000 But, yeah, I try to incorporate as many lessons as I can, you know, and, like, anything that keeps you connected to, you know, how we were designed to be.

02:04:36.000 You're just connected to the land, to nature.

02:04:39.000 I love all those things.

02:04:40.000 So what do you do now for a living?

02:04:43.000 Well, we're gonna...

02:04:44.000 What I generally do for a living is renovate crappy houses and then...

02:04:48.000 Flip them.

02:04:49.000 Rent them out, usually.

02:04:50.000 But, uh...

02:04:52.000 I'm gonna start doing, trying to do some survival schools, you know, in Idaho, in the wilderness.

02:04:58.000 Oh, okay.

02:04:58.000 Take some people out there.

02:04:59.000 And then, so...

02:05:01.000 Maybe get connected to my friend Dan Doty.

02:05:04.000 Yeah.

02:05:04.000 Yeah, who's he?

02:05:05.000 That's the guy we were talking about earlier.

02:05:07.000 Oh, yeah.

02:05:08.000 Yeah, yeah.

02:05:09.000 That looked like it really...

02:05:10.000 I should.

02:05:10.000 I should get in touch with him.

02:05:12.000 And so you teach people.

02:05:14.000 I'll do some stuff like that.

02:05:15.000 Yeah, I did a class in Ontario this winter, you know, taught some folks just general survival skills and stuff.

02:05:22.000 When you do that, how does that set up?

02:05:25.000 Do you give a lot of specific amount of time?

02:05:28.000 Yeah, the classes we're going to have in July, we'll just ride horses up into the wilderness in Idaho and Spend a week up there.

02:05:37.000 And a lot of it is teaching, you know, there's definitely hard skills, all the hard skills.

02:05:41.000 There's also a lot of just mental, what's the mental framework that you need to have to survive, you know, and to be resilient and stuff like that.

02:05:51.000 And that's a whole fascinating topic in and of itself, you know, like you get a...

02:05:56.000 You dig deep when you're out by yourself.

02:05:58.000 It's amazing how deep your thoughts go.

02:06:02.000 When you say mental skills, what do you teach people in terms of mental skills?

02:06:07.000 If someone wanted to prepare to go There's a few things that would be really helpful.

02:06:15.000 One, you need to practice gratitude, right?

02:06:17.000 It's like just being thankful for what you have, even in a rough situation, is key, you know?

02:06:26.000 And that can come from having like perspective, you know, like reading.

02:06:31.000 If you read the Gulag Archipelago, it makes it hard to complain about your particular situation.

02:06:37.000 And so having like perspective like that, I think is good.

02:06:43.000 For me, it was good knowing my family history.

02:06:46.000 You know, they're like Assyrians who got, you know, in the Armenian genocide kind of got wiped out.

02:06:51.000 And so they have brutal stories of what happened to them.

02:06:54.000 And it's like, oh, it puts all my suffering in perspective.

02:06:56.000 And I see that the people who lived through that...

02:07:00.000 Came out joyful people somehow and, you know, and so resilient, resilient people.

02:07:05.000 Not.

02:07:05.000 Yeah.

02:07:06.000 Not only did they live, but they went on to have a family that was like my aunts and uncles who were like really happy, beautiful people.

02:07:13.000 And so how do they get that resilience is something that I've thought a lot about.

02:07:19.000 And, you know, gratitude is a big deal.

02:07:22.000 Think, you know, having experience That puts perspective on time.

02:07:29.000 Knowing that your relationships are strong.

02:07:31.000 So having gone to Russia a bunch, you spend a year over there.

02:07:35.000 The first time you're like, oh man, I miss everybody.

02:07:38.000 But then you realize when you come back, they're right there.

02:07:42.000 They still love you.

02:07:42.000 So having strong relationships is very important.

02:07:45.000 You don't want to have a lot of skeletons in your closet.

02:07:48.000 If you get out there and you're alone in some survival situation. 0.99

02:07:51.000 And you have to think about all the shit you've done. 0.99

02:07:52.000 Yeah, it's amazing what you do. 0.99

02:07:53.000 I think of people that I'd long forgot about, you know, like, and, like, people like, oh, I should call that guy and make it right with that guy.

02:08:00.000 But I think if you had a lot of, like, issues that you'd never dealt through, you'd guarantee you they're going to come up out there, you know?

02:08:07.000 Yeah.

02:08:07.000 Stuff that you forgot about.

02:08:09.000 And so that's, like, combing through and making sure you're just mentally everything's in order, you know, like...

02:08:17.000 Kind of knowing why you're doing what you're doing, you know, like, yeah, yeah.

02:08:21.000 So that's, yeah, there's a lot there that you can kind of unpack.

02:08:26.000 So when you have this survival school that you're teaching, do you have a specific curriculum?

02:08:32.000 Do you write out the things?

02:08:33.000 No, basically I've thought, like, what is it that I've learned over the years that's allowed me to do, you know, to be successful or to do...

02:08:43.000 To thrive in some of those situations.

02:08:46.000 And how can I impart that?

02:08:48.000 You know, that's mainly...

02:08:49.000 I'm just trying to show people what I've learned and what's practical in the woods.

02:08:56.000 Because it's easy to get a lot of skills that you're not really going to use or whatever.

02:09:00.000 But I think if you...

02:09:02.000 Know what, you know, I've experienced what people in the wilderness really do to live and like having those skills, hopefully being able to impart the, you know, mental and also physical skills to thrive.

02:09:16.000 I don't know.

02:09:17.000 I just think that's...

02:09:19.000 Yeah, and some of it's experience.

02:09:20.000 So somebody just going out in the woods, a lot of people haven't spent a week in the woods just going out there and seeing what it's all like, like what it's like to scout out a new place and be like, okay, where am I going to build my shelter?

02:09:32.000 How am I going to get food?

02:09:34.000 You know, like all that stuff.

02:09:35.000 When you have those people come out for a survival school, what do they bring with them?

02:09:40.000 Well, it depends.

02:09:41.000 I haven't done a lot of these.

02:09:44.000 My first ones in Idaho are going to be in July.

02:09:48.000 The one I did in Ontario, we basically told them to act like they were on that show.

02:09:54.000 Bring ten items and we'll make the best of it.

02:09:57.000 And how many people are there at a time?

02:10:02.000 Up there, I think it was six.

02:10:06.000 And in Idaho, if COVID's still a thing and there's a limit of ten people, then I guess it'll bring eight and it'll be me and my brother and we'll teach them what we know.

02:10:19.000 How do you vet those people? 0.99

02:10:21.000 How do you make sure they're not completely out of their fucking mind? 0.99

02:10:25.000 Trapped in the wilderness with someone you don't want to go to sleep next to? 0.99

02:10:29.000 Learn a whole new set of survival skills real fast. 0.71

02:10:32.000 Yeah, I mean, you would imagine if someone was a real psycho.

02:10:35.000 Dealing with social...

02:10:36.000 Yeah.

02:10:37.000 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

02:10:37.000 That'd be a way they'd want to express themselves.

02:10:40.000 Totally.

02:10:40.000 Out there, alone, in the forest.

02:10:42.000 Totally.

02:10:43.000 With a bunch of people trying to survive.

02:10:46.000 Hopefully we can keep that in check.

02:10:47.000 Yeah, do you ask about their background?

02:10:50.000 Do you do a background check on them right now?

02:10:51.000 Not really.

02:10:52.000 No.

02:10:53.000 Just let it ride.

02:10:54.000 Let it ride.

02:10:56.000 She wants to put themselves in that situation.

02:10:58.000 It's alright.

02:10:59.000 It'll be cool.

02:11:03.000 I've dealt with a lot of people, so I think it's okay.

02:11:08.000 In general, what are the type of people that want to learn this kind of stuff?

02:11:12.000 Oh, I think it can be broad.

02:11:14.000 It's not too extreme.

02:11:15.000 It's not like I'm looking for people that, like, you don't have to be super hardcore.

02:11:20.000 It's just people that want to have a new experience, broaden their horizons.

02:11:23.000 It's kind of like choose your own adventure.

02:11:24.000 You don't have to go out there and starve for a week.

02:11:29.000 Yeah, just come out.

02:11:31.000 I'll be there with you to teach you things and we'll, you know, make the best of the week and see what we can learn.

02:11:37.000 And I don't know, whoever, it could be anybody.

02:11:39.000 Do you have a longing for personal adventure though?

02:11:42.000 Is it a thing like outside of just teaching this?

02:11:45.000 Yeah, oh yeah.

02:11:45.000 Like one of the things I want to do now, I feel like I got a little more freedom because I got, is just spend more time in the mountains.

02:11:52.000 You know, I love it.

02:11:53.000 It speaks to me.

02:11:55.000 So I'm going to...

02:11:57.000 Try to do that.

02:11:58.000 I want to also stay connected with the Avenki over there.

02:12:01.000 When the borders open back up, I want to go back with my family.

02:12:04.000 We've tried...

02:12:05.000 You know, restoring some reindeer herds to people who have lost their reindeer and want to go over and kind of check on that project, see how they're progressing, see if they're, if they are, you know?

02:12:18.000 And like, it's like that type of thing.

02:12:21.000 If I see that people are making progress and like building their herd back or making some kind of progress, then I'll try to support them more and like, you know, feed into that.

02:12:31.000 So there's things that I want to remain connected to.

02:12:36.000 We'll see.

02:12:36.000 I'm also really interested in like, I like all those like restoring, like when the people I hear about restoring elk to the out east or restoring buffalo herds, all that kind of stuff to me is pretty exciting.

02:12:49.000 So we'll just see, I don't know, see where it all goes.

02:12:52.000 Yeah, take it a day at a time.

02:12:54.000 Well, dude, I really appreciate you being here.

02:12:56.000 You've lived a really fascinating life.

02:12:58.000 That's fine.

02:12:58.000 I appreciate you having me on.

02:13:00.000 It's cool to connect with you and be able to do this.

02:13:02.000 Yeah, come on up to Idaho sometime when you're bored or out to Virginia.

02:13:07.000 All right, man.

02:13:08.000 I'm not going to Siberia, so that's about as far as you get to.

02:13:12.000 Well, thanks, brother.

02:13:12.000 I appreciate you, man.

02:13:13.000 Thanks for being here.

02:13:14.000 It's been good.

02:13:15.000 All right.

02:13:15.000 Bye, everybody.

02:13:16.000 Bye.

02:13:17.000 That was great, man.

The Joe Rogan Experience - May 28, 2020

Joe Rogan Experience #1482 - Jordan Jonas

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