The Peter Attia Drive - #156 - Jake Muise： Humanely harvesting axis deer while alleviating its impact on Hawaii's vulnerable ecosystems

00:00:00.000 Hey, everyone. Welcome to the drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Atiyah. This podcast,

00:00:15.480 my website, and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity

00:00:19.800 into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health

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00:00:28.880 If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more

00:00:33.280 in-depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of the space to the next level at

00:00:37.320 the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more now,

00:00:41.720 head over to peteratiyahmd.com forward slash subscribe. Now, without further delay,

00:00:47.740 here's today's episode. I guess this week is Jake Muse. Jake is a close friend and we've gotten to

00:00:54.860 know each other very well over the past couple of years. And I wanted to sit down with him for quite

00:00:58.360 some time because as I've gotten to know Jake, I've gotten to really understand what it means to

00:01:04.960 harvest true wild game, something that truthfully I'd never really been exposed to until I was

00:01:11.760 introduced to hunting in Hawaii. Jake has an unbelievable backstory, which we start with

00:01:18.000 growing up in the Arctic and moving to the eastern most coast of Canada before getting a

00:01:24.660 scholarship to come to the University of Hawaii to play volleyball. But ultimately what rings true

00:01:29.980 here is Jake's unbelievable passion for Hawaii and for the conservation and preservation of its

00:01:36.940 resources. In this episode, we get into a lot of details and truthfully, some of them might be

00:01:42.680 difficult for people to understand. I do point that out when we get to them. We talk about the

00:01:47.820 harvesting of axis deer and what that technically means. And I guess I would encourage you to sort of

00:01:52.540 work through your discomfort. If you are a meat eater, which I am, I think it is important to

00:01:58.720 have some understanding of what is involved in that process. I think most people conceptually

00:02:03.420 understand that when you go to the grocery store and you buy a steak, it didn't just miraculously show

00:02:08.300 up there. There was a process. But it was only when I became deeply involved in this that I understood

00:02:14.380 the impact that growing and harvesting food could have on our health. So I do point that out as a point

00:02:21.520 of caution once we get into this episode, if folks want to skip ahead when we get into some of those

00:02:26.320 details. The other thing I want to say is I have to disclose something, which is that I am an investor

00:02:33.120 in Maui Nui Venison. That is the company that Jake is the founder and CEO of. As you can probably tell when

00:02:39.920 you listen to this episode, I'm incredibly passionate about the work Jake is doing. And once we met and I got

00:02:46.720 to understand the impact that they were having on the community, I wanted Jake to scale this thing up

00:02:52.340 and have a broader impact and basically share this with as many people as possible. And so that's why

00:02:59.340 I've become an investor in his company. And I think it's very important that you understand that I have

00:03:04.500 a financial interest in the success of Jake's company. Finally, along with this podcast, we're going to

00:03:09.640 also announce a subscriber only benefit. So if you're a subscriber and you would like to try Maui Nui

00:03:17.120 Venison after listening to our conversation, you can head on over to our website and learn more. And of course,

00:03:23.100 if you're not a subscriber and you want to understand those benefits, you can learn more of those as well. So

00:03:28.320 without further delay, please enjoy my conversation with Jake Mews.

00:03:37.620 All right, Jake, looking forward to talking about a lot of things today here. Thanks for taking time

00:03:43.180 out of work today. I know it's a busy time of year for you guys.

00:03:46.480 My pleasure, man. I'm definitely looking forward to it.

00:03:50.220 So I don't even know where to begin, man. I almost feel like the easiest way to begin this is to sort of

00:03:54.780 have people kind of get to know your story a little bit, sort of the way I've gotten to know it.

00:03:59.420 We're both Canadians. I guess we have that going for us, for better or worse.

00:04:03.380 I was reading my son a book yesterday about Canada that one of his Canadian cousins got him.

00:04:09.120 And I was kind of trying to explain to him, Canada is like the United States. It has provinces

00:04:15.080 instead of states. And he wanted to know which one I was from. And I'm pointing to Toronto and that

00:04:21.380 all this stuff. And then he's looking at the northern part and he's like, well, what's up

00:04:25.260 there? And I was like, yeah, that's the Arctic. Most people don't live up there. But of course,

00:04:31.540 most people isn't Jake. So you're growing up in the Arctic, right? Which is kind of not normal.

00:04:37.340 Yeah. So we grew up in a small town called Rainbow Lake. And Rainbow Lake was technically in the

00:04:44.380 Arctic Circle right up on the northern Alberta border, closer to the Northwest Territories.

00:04:49.360 And who was it? I was just having a conversation yesterday with somebody about ice fishing.

00:04:54.840 Like you try and explain ice fishing to your kid and they're just like, wait, what are you talking

00:04:59.200 about? Like you just sit in a box, like in a hole that's potentially like four feet deep. Oh,

00:05:05.380 that was the conversation we were having yesterday was I remember my dad at six feet tall having one

00:05:11.020 of the ice augers where you cut that hole in the ice and him going all the way down, like burying it 0.98

00:05:17.540 at six feet and being like, damn it. And like pulling it out of the hole and not getting to 0.93

00:05:22.600 the water. Like that's how cold it was. It was a great conversation because I can't wait to introduce

00:05:28.340 my kids to that. It's such an amazing experience. And obviously lots of resilience comes from living

00:05:34.520 in a place like that. But yeah, we started out, my dad was in the oil industry and we moved around a lot,

00:05:41.320 but it was mostly in Northern Alberta. And we ended up in a town called Rainbow Lake. That was

00:05:45.800 a seven hour drive from any other town. Meaning you were seven hours North of Edmonton?

00:05:51.380 Oh no, we were, we were 14 hours North of Edmonton.

00:05:55.340 So you weren't going to like Oilers games or anything?

00:05:57.880 I went to one Oilers game. I got to see, I would have been eight or nine and we drove all the way

00:06:04.020 down. It took like a day and a half. And I got to see Gretzky and Messier. And like,

00:06:09.660 I can still remember walking in and not understanding why they were so big. Like having

00:06:16.760 never been to like a professional sports game before and just seeing on TV, like you walk in

00:06:21.460 and the players are huge. Like they just look like giants. So yeah. But part of that isolation

00:06:27.860 was my dad was a subsistence hunter. And like, I mean, ultimately I think where this, that's where

00:06:33.820 this conversation goes, but my dad every single year would shoot a moose and that's what we ate

00:06:39.340 all winter long. And we would go down to a place closer to Calgary for the summer just to get out

00:06:47.540 of the, like, you remember you got mosquitoes like this big, right? Just to get out of there.

00:06:53.160 And I remember my mom having to essentially pack for eight months, like eight to nine months. She 0.94

00:06:59.080 would be collecting groceries like all summer long. And we'd had a huge trailer that we'd take

00:07:04.000 back up with us to this small town. I think it was only a couple thousand people.

00:07:07.860 And part of that was she wasn't bringing any steaks. Like she, like, I remember telling us

00:07:13.740 stories, like we ate pheasant pablum as kids and moose meat. And yeah. So we were definitely,

00:07:21.560 we were definitely way up there.

00:07:23.200 What kind of chores did you have as a kid? Cause I'm like this morning, I asked my daughter to do 0.93

00:07:28.200 the dishwasher and then it's like taking the trash out. Like these are sort of the, these are the chores

00:07:33.500 you do if you live in Toronto or Austin. What are the chores of the Arctic?

00:07:38.780 Well, there was always the inside chores. And I remember getting relegated to the bathroom and with

00:07:44.160 three boys, that was always a mess. But like, I remember having to clean bathrooms, but I remember,

00:07:49.320 did you ever have to shovel the roof?

00:07:52.360 No, I never, I was the snow shoveler and I loved shoveling snow.

00:07:56.060 Oh, I did too.

00:07:56.680 Because it was such a good workout. It was amazing. But I never, I guess we never had

00:08:00.600 enough snow that the roof was at structural risk.

00:08:03.820 So one of the regular chores was you had to shovel the roof. And so you had to like get up there and

00:08:11.260 you would like, you could never do it like from the top. Cause like if everything came, you'd like

00:08:15.760 do it in chunks.

00:08:16.580 You'd avalanche. Yeah.

00:08:17.560 Yeah. And then you would of course strategically do it. So you would pile it all up so you could

00:08:22.500 jump off after and have fun. But I remember several winters, the snow bank connected to

00:08:30.060 the roof and we were able to like snowboard off the roof into the snow bank. And like we had all

00:08:37.620 like igloos and it was such a, yeah, such an interesting experience to live up there. And then

00:08:43.360 you remember, like, I can remember being so cold, like you would stop moving. Like I think the early

00:08:49.940 onsets of like hypothermia and like having to like come in the house and get warmed up and then go

00:08:55.440 back outside. Like, I remember my dad telling us, like, if you start to feel tired, you need to come

00:09:00.840 in the house. And he realized that was potentially like the early onset of hypothermia. And we just

00:09:07.080 thought like, oh, if we're tired, we should come in the house.

00:09:10.100 Did you live in proximity to people who were generationally there? Inuit? I don't know what we

00:09:15.740 would call. I don't know. I mean, we called them Inuit when I was growing up. I don't know what

00:09:18.980 there's maybe some new politically correct term for Eskimo Inuit. No, we didn't. I think we were

00:09:25.140 primarily in these oil towns. I remember meeting them because it was odd as like a function of

00:09:30.740 diversity. I mean, it was amazing, but it wasn't something that we were really connected to at that

00:09:34.900 point. The reason I was asking is I would have been so curious to know what their hunting methods

00:09:39.720 were out there, you know, because you want to talk about people who have truly adapted to that climate.

00:09:44.380 Yeah. And for eight to 10 months, there's not a single leafy green available. Like you want to

00:09:50.900 chew on a pine cone, it's fine. But, and I think, and I don't know this fair, obviously the vast

00:09:55.260 majority of their diet was meat because that was the only thing available. I can remember the taste

00:10:01.920 of moose meat. Like moose, the nickname up there was, they were called swamp donkeys because the vast

00:10:10.260 majority of the summer, they spent their time in swamps and they're eating all of these like legumes

00:10:15.500 or lily pads or all of these things that were floating around. And there was like a really

00:10:19.340 distinct taste to them. It was so interesting. So, and then all of a sudden everything would melt.

00:10:25.580 Like it was this extreme melt off. Everything would be like absolutely muddy for an entire month. Like

00:10:31.700 you couldn't move anywhere. Like it was such a mess. I just remember my mom yelling at us about like

00:10:35.820 mud being in the house. And then we'd pack up and head South for the summer. And it was this,

00:10:41.560 this, this cycle for several years before I moved out to Nova Scotia, Canada on the East coast of

00:10:47.220 Canada when we were 16. The other thing that came out of reading my son, this story yesterday

00:10:53.060 was explaining to him that I'd never been East of Quebec city, which is kind of weird. Like I grew up

00:11:00.300 in Canada, but you know, go to Montreal, went to Quebec city once, never been to Nova Scotia,

00:11:06.040 which I always, is something I always want to see because the East coast of Canada looks

00:11:10.200 breathtaking to me in many ways. You know, I'd love to see St. John's. I'd like to go to the very tip

00:11:15.100 of Canada. So Nova Scotia is obviously like, you might as well be moving to the Caribbean from the

00:11:20.680 Arctic, but it's still cold water, right? Yeah. It's, I mean, it's, there's still like slush that forms

00:11:26.360 in the seawater during the winter. It's still absolutely freezing. And there was still tons of

00:11:31.380 snow, but the temperatures were just so much more moderate throughout the year. There was like,

00:11:36.620 there wasn't these crazy, you know, ups and downs. And that was where talk about freezing. That was

00:11:42.640 where we started. I started surfing. So like you've, you've experienced this in the great lakes. Like

00:11:48.520 the biggest waves were like these wind waves and went like windswell on a lake was like the greatest

00:11:54.440 thing ever. As a kid, you were just like, these are the biggest waves of my life. And we showed up

00:11:59.140 and I remember like getting to Canada. And one of the first things my dad did was take us to the

00:12:03.120 beach. And I think he already knew what was going to happen and took us to the beach. And we just

00:12:07.940 couldn't believe like the size of these waves. And we were playing in the waves. And then we thought

00:12:12.920 we saw seals out at one of the points. And then one of these seals stands up on a surfboard

00:12:20.560 because they're in like a full black wetsuit. And one of these seals like stand and I can remember

00:12:26.000 it like they stand up on the surfboard and me and my like little brother looked at each other.

00:12:30.040 And we were just like, like we were done. We're like, we need to do that. And that started a long

00:12:35.500 and semi-dangerous career in surfing in Nova Scotia. It was just so cold. And the best swell was always

00:12:43.220 during the winter months. And we couldn't afford like good wetsuits. And we used to wear toques.

00:12:48.620 What are they called beanies here in Hawaii? We used to wear a toque in the water and try not to

00:12:53.440 duck dive thinking that like that would help. And how many millimeters were your wetsuits? 0.79

00:12:59.220 Well, we didn't have any to start. So we would go for as long as we could like end of September,

00:13:05.160 October. And then like you literally couldn't even get in the water. It was so cold. And then I

00:13:09.540 remember getting the first, the first wetsuit I got was an old Navy dive suit and it was four

00:13:17.060 millimeters and like literally could not move my arms. Like it was just like a, it was so thick.

00:13:25.900 And, but we didn't, I mean, we didn't, my parents couldn't afford any of that stuff. Like I couldn't

00:13:30.540 extend my hockey career because my dad couldn't afford skates fast enough. We were growing out

00:13:34.500 of them. Like the first surfboard we made, we went to what is Canadian tire, went to Canadian tire

00:13:41.480 tire and bought a bunch of styrofoam and duct taped it together. And that was like our first

00:13:45.720 surfboard. And then gradually things got better. Like instead of shoveling snow for money, I started

00:13:50.820 a little grass cutting company of my own in our neighborhood and we started saving money and we

00:13:55.560 were able to buy like our first real wetsuit and then buy like our first real surfboard and,

00:14:00.820 and just fell in love with the ocean. And then obviously, I mean, it's jumping forward,

00:14:06.080 but the move to Hawaii after that, you can imagine the university of Hawaii calling and saying,

00:14:11.820 we want you to come out here. And I was like, wait, where, where do I sign?

00:14:17.800 Yeah. Let's, let's back up for a second. In all of this business, where do you discover your passion

00:14:23.020 for volleyball? Cause that's obviously what got you out to Hawaii. 0.99

00:14:26.260 The last year we were in Northern Alberta, you know how it goes. You always do what your older

00:14:30.880 brother does, right? You've got, you've got an older brother or is he younger?

00:14:33.720 No, no. I'm the oldest. You're the oldest. So whatever Josh did, I did. And Josh started

00:14:39.660 playing volleyball. And I remember just going to a couple of practices and I don't know if it's

00:14:46.400 because we jumped on the trampoline so much as a kid or I did martial arts for a while. I did

00:14:51.360 Taekwondo. We picked it up pretty fast cause we were coordinated and then we moved and it was

00:14:58.960 probably my saving grace when we moved to Nova Scotia because it was a skillset I had that let

00:15:05.200 me meet a whole bunch of people. And I think my parents just doubled down on it and saying like,

00:15:08.900 we're just going to stick them in a whole bunch of volleyball, like whether it was middle school or

00:15:14.460 club ball, it was just such a great way to integrate us into a new community at the age of,

00:15:19.620 you know, 15, 16, when it's pretty awkward. And I did, I think every other sport under the sun,

00:15:25.540 like through high school, but it was the one that stuck. And it was one of those things like,

00:15:30.620 you know, driving or bow hunting for, for you, like you just never hesitated to do more and more

00:15:35.180 and more of it. So it was something that we fall in love with and got to do that at a really high

00:15:39.780 level for like through the teens, including like Canada's youth Olympic program and then like junior

00:15:46.580 Olympic programs. And then it was actually at a junior Olympic program that the University of

00:15:53.720 Boy, you saw me play. And you know, it was hilarious because I found out later what sealed

00:15:59.220 the deal was so Tino Reyes, who was like the assistant coach. I sent him pictures of us surfing

00:16:07.920 with icebergs in the background. And I guess they were on the fence about me because I'm small,

00:16:13.580 like I'm only six feet tall. And, um, he had to, like, he fought for me saying,

00:16:19.160 if this kid can do this, whatever we're going to get, like the level of resiliency we're going to

00:16:24.920 get out of him is going to be like, it's going to be worth it. Even if we're losing a couple inches.

00:16:30.320 So yeah, it helped me get there. And I mean, volleyball has taken me all over the world. It's

00:16:36.460 been, it's been amazing. So you arrived to this amazing division one volleyball school at literally

00:16:43.880 the furthest place you can go. I don't think you can stay in North America and go further

00:16:49.420 than Nova Scotia to Oahu. Can you, I mean, I guess you could have gone to maybe somewhere

00:16:55.760 Kauai or something, but okay. So you've gone as far as possible. How much of a culture shock is that?

00:17:02.600 And how quickly do you kind of assimilate? Cause there's actually kind of some similarities I

00:17:07.000 think in the culture as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. I think the initial shocks

00:17:11.080 were tiny. Like I remember, oh, here's a good one. When I came on my recruiting trip,

00:17:16.460 they were obviously really smart. They were like, here's the university. Here's this amazing stadium

00:17:21.080 that holds 10,000 people. They got like their best attendance for volleyball in the country.

00:17:26.100 And then they take me to the beach and they're like, here's a pair of board shorts and here's a

00:17:30.600 surfboard. Go for it. We're going to pick up like tomorrow. And they had dropped me off at my hotel

00:17:34.680 and you'll love this as a Canadian. I go to put the board shorts on and I'm like, well, where's the

00:17:43.560 liner? Like, where's the white stuff? Like, where's the liner? And obviously every pair of shorts I'm

00:17:51.000 wearing, like we didn't even, board shorts didn't exist in Canada in 1999. And like, I remember like

00:17:58.000 being so confused and I was like, what must mean I have to wear my underwear with these things,

00:18:04.500 which of course you're not supposed to do. So I put the tighty whiteys on underneath the board shorts, 0.98

00:18:10.100 tie them up, head out to like Kaiser Bowls, which is like a straight local break. Like it was right

00:18:14.900 in front of the hotel. And then paddling out with like the tighty whiteys hanging out the back and 0.99

00:18:18.540 like locals are looking at me and just shaking their head like, oh, what are we like? And pasty white.

00:18:23.060 So like there were definitely some incremental culture shocks, including realizing that your

00:18:29.700 shorts didn't have to have liners in them. And then when I got to the university of Hawaii,

00:18:34.440 so that would, recruiting trip was the spring before. And then when I arrived in September,

00:18:38.960 also like a accidental shock, which turned out to be the best, probably the best thing in my life was

00:18:44.940 they messed up my dorm assignment and they put me, and this is where like all of the folks,

00:18:51.120 you know, come into play. They put me in the dorm for all of the local kids that didn't have good

00:18:57.360 enough grades. So they were taking the summer program to get into school. And they happened

00:19:02.880 to throw me in the wing with all the Molokai kids. And the recruiting trip was so short. Like I remember

00:19:10.080 seeing different things, but like I had never been around a Polynesian population before. And you're

00:19:16.600 astounded how big these people are. And so I remember walking in the front door at Johnson

00:19:20.820 Hall and opening up the door and they're all sitting around playing music. They're playing,

00:19:25.720 like playing their ukulele. And the biggest person I've ever seen in my life, like six to 300 pounds

00:19:30.560 had an ukulele that looked like this big, like he's playing music. And they're like, you in the right

00:19:37.000 place? And I was like, Johnson Hall B? They're like, yeah. I was like room 201. And I was like, yeah.

00:19:44.200 And there's just like dead silence. And there's like eight of them. And they're like,

00:19:47.480 the biggest one was like, boy, we're going to eat you. And I was just like, and true Molokai

00:19:54.800 fashion, true Allah fashion, best friends, like literally after that statement, they're like,

00:20:02.700 well, you're here. We're going to take care of you. And that's like, there's this resounding theme

00:20:07.680 here that they'll always give somebody the chance up front. They will always assume everybody's best

00:20:14.960 interest in mind until you don't. And it was the best thing that ever happened in my life.

00:20:20.280 They took me under their wing and all of the best parts of my life have come from walking into the

00:20:26.300 wrong dorm for sure. Let's hit pause for one second and give people a little bit of an understanding

00:20:32.960 about what is so unique about Molokai. Because for many people listening to this podcast,

00:20:38.880 they'll certainly understand the big island Kona. And most people have, you know, if they've gone to

00:20:43.480 Hawaii, they've probably been to Maui. And people understand that, you know, Honolulu sits on Oahu

00:20:48.400 and that's the most populous island. So you've sort of got these three islands that get all of the

00:20:53.000 attention. But then there's some other islands that are a little less understood and sort of,

00:20:58.040 you know, you go into the more exotic, you go out to Kauai and people would maybe even go to

00:21:02.680 Lanai. But Molokai is very rarely touched. I feel privileged to have been there several times.

00:21:11.160 It to me is a very special place. But I think it's worth spending a few moments diving into what you

00:21:17.920 just talked about, which is tell us about this island, both from its geography and perhaps more

00:21:23.080 importantly, its culture and why that would lead you to conclude what you've concluded since.

00:21:27.440 I mean, no part of what I'm about to say is going to justify how special that place is. So I'll start

00:21:33.400 there. It's 10 miles by 30 miles. I think it's about 180,000 acres. And there are 7,000 people.

00:21:44.520 And that population has, I think, stayed the same for a long time. And of those 7,000 people,

00:21:50.760 I would guess 6,000 of them are true locals. Like it is very much an island of a local population and

00:22:03.420 certainly one of the higher peridensity populations of Hawaiians as well. What makes it so special is

00:22:11.200 they have fought for years and years and years to keep Molokai the exact same way it has always been.

00:22:19.500 There's no stoplights. There's no major resorts. Like I mean, there's a few that came up in the 80s.

00:22:26.920 And no escalators. There's actually a town ordinance that says,

00:22:30.100 no building can exceed the height of the tallest palm tree on the island.

00:22:34.920 Yes. And the people there are so active in maintaining this community. There's no people

00:22:44.660 on Molokai that are hungry. But you don't see homeless people downtown. It's an extraordinary

00:22:51.600 place. They really do care for all of the members of their community as best they can. And on top of

00:22:59.260 that is, I think, the vast majority of the food there, maybe not vast majority, but I'd say 50-50,

00:23:04.560 comes from the ocean or comes from the land. So they're either, either are subsistence hunting.

00:23:11.300 So there's deer, black buck, goats, and pigs on that island. Or more importantly, they're the ocean.

00:23:19.060 They have the longest standing reef in Hawaii on the south shore of Molokai. The ocean is

00:23:24.460 teeming with, I mean, it's still teeming with fish and people are constantly eating it. So all of these

00:23:30.780 things, like they've fought to protect all of these natural resources. They fought to protect

00:23:36.000 their way of life because Molokai's beaches are extraordinary. Like there's no,

00:23:43.620 they're probably the nicest in the state. Like you could easily put up a Ritz Carlton or something

00:23:47.680 else there, but the community has said no. There was a failed attempt to put up a fancy resort on

00:23:54.080 the north shore, wasn't there? Yeah. La'al Point. And they fought for years and years and years and

00:23:59.040 they won. And that comes with consequences as a function of economics and all, and they don't

00:24:05.040 care. Like everybody said, this is the way we want to live. The community at large has said,

00:24:09.660 we don't need to look like a Waikiki. We don't need to look like a Maui. And coming from 1.00

00:24:16.240 Northern Alberta and Canada as a whole, I think there were so many similarities in culture. I think

00:24:23.820 that's what made it really easy for me to assimilate into that place and like find so much

00:24:30.380 comfort in those visits. And part of that was the East coast of Canada was so damn far

00:24:36.420 that I couldn't afford, but I couldn't go back. It was just too much of a haul to go back and forth.

00:24:41.680 So every long weekend or Christmas break or anything, like they picked me up and like the

00:24:46.840 family said, they're coming with us. It was just an overnight, they call it Hanai. It's the

00:24:52.680 Hawaiian word for adoption. So I was Hanai'd by the same family as Mike, good friend of mine,

00:24:59.600 incredible human being, incredible hunter. So I was Hanai'd by that same family and it's history. 0.62

00:25:05.980 Like I've been a part of that family as long as I've been a part of my, you know, that family in

00:25:09.540 Canada. So yeah, just so lucky and so fortunate to get to be a part of that place and part of my adult

00:25:15.980 life. Like I grew up as a function of that place and the cultural values it has.

00:25:20.500 Yeah. Well, we're going to come back to Mike, I'm sure, because he's certainly one of my favorite

00:25:25.160 people on the planet. And some of my favorite images are just the thoughts of Mike as a teenager.

00:25:30.000 Like the concept of high school Mike is so funny to me. Just-

00:25:33.400 Oh man, it was the best.

00:25:35.260 Yeah. Yeah. I love that idea.

00:25:36.940 Yeah. We'll definitely get back into that for sure.

00:25:39.760 So let's just briefly kind of get through. So you end up having a very successful career at the

00:25:44.440 University of Hawaii. You guys win the NCAA title during one of your years, right?

00:25:48.480 Oh man. Yeah. We, we win it and then it gets taken back.

00:25:52.520 Oh, I don't think I knew that part.

00:25:54.320 A little bit of a, like, well, it's a long story, but we win the title. Some rules get changed

00:26:02.360 after the title is won for political reasons. Then they take the title away. It was a mess.

00:26:09.180 But yeah, we, we were top three in the country every single year. Incredible program in integrating

00:26:17.660 that into just regular college life as a whole, tossing on top of that, like a student athlete

00:26:23.140 schedule. I think lots of lessons learned there as well. And then obviously post college, I

00:26:30.260 continued that career into Europe, but that entire time, like being, you know, being able

00:26:34.460 to go to Molokai and learning more about that culture, learning more about access to the

00:26:38.000 year, it was an amazing experience. And as an athlete, and I don't think I really realized

00:26:43.660 this till like the third year, because your first two years, you're, you're still 19 and 1.00

00:26:48.780 20 year, probably you're an idiot anyway. Like I remember in my third year thinking, I feel 0.99

00:26:54.620 so much better when I have deer meat in my freezer. So we were going back and hunting and

00:27:00.280 bring, like, we were broke. Like I had to starve through college without access to you. Like

00:27:03.860 we were going back hunting, jumping on like the super tiny plane, like filling up coolers that

00:27:08.860 were way overweight. And then bargaining with people on our floor for freezer space. We're like,

00:27:14.820 Hey, we'll give you a couple pounds. If like you store 10 pounds in your freezer. And I remember in

00:27:19.740 my, in my third year, as I like, I think I started like realizing how the benefits of building strength

00:27:27.180 and lifting weights and all of those things. And I remember thinking like, man, I feel so much

00:27:31.160 better when I have access to you here. Yeah. So they kind of all got intertwined and college was

00:27:36.940 just such an amazing experience to combine those two things. You know, obviously we're going to talk

00:27:41.160 in such depth about access to you at the time. How much did you understand? Was it frankly, just

00:27:48.440 like, Oh yeah, this is kind of a local pest here. And you know, this is something that we hunt here

00:27:53.920 because it's so prevalent. Or how much did you understand the history of how they got there and

00:27:57.860 what the true significance ecologically was? But did you, did you know any of that at the time?

00:28:02.040 I honestly didn't. It was entirely recreational. It was only later. It was only later when I saw like

00:28:10.420 the first instance of like, there's these, there's these periods where there's too many access deer

00:28:15.840 and essentially they'll lay down and die. They don't have any feed. It was only when I started

00:28:19.320 seeing the impact that I started saying, wait a second, because that animal on the island of Moloka'i

00:28:26.980 is revered. Like nobody's running around Moloka'i calling it an invasive species.

00:28:32.800 That's been a part of that culture for a hundred plus years. They find extreme value in it.

00:28:38.620 They understand the detriment that it's there. And I think there's hope for better management options

00:28:43.840 in the future. But when the family introduced me to it, they didn't introduce it to me as the idea

00:28:50.040 of it's an invasive pest we need to control. It was introduced as this is an amazing resource that

00:28:55.840 we get to utilize and something we really enjoy recreationally. And I didn't know anything more

00:29:01.440 than that. It wasn't, again, it wasn't until I experienced or saw some of those things that

00:29:05.660 started to kind of put it together.

00:29:07.700 So post-college, you go off to Europe, you're playing professional volleyball and you decide

00:29:14.980 you're going to try out for the Canadian Olympic team. Obviously, you don't get to make that choice

00:29:19.140 just willy-nilly. You have to be invited. You're good enough. You go to camp and you come up one

00:29:25.560 short, right?

00:29:26.660 Yeah.

00:29:27.540 Which by anybody's standard is remarkable, right? To be the last guy that almost made it to the

00:29:34.080 Olympic team. And Canada's a very good team in volleyball, right?

00:29:37.940 Yeah. They're top 10 in the world.

00:29:39.760 Yeah. It's like in swimming in the United States, that poor person who finishes third at the Olympic

00:29:44.580 trials, because the United States only takes two per event. That person who finishes third would

00:29:49.500 easily be in the finals for most events in swimming. So it's sort of similar. How heartbreaking is this?

00:29:56.340 I mean, I was honest. I don't think I've ever talked about this with anybody. I was devastated.

00:30:01.380 Like I flew, I closed my contract in Bali a month early, flew back to Canada to like make

00:30:11.780 it to tryouts. I thought I had like an incredible tryout and they just had this guy that it, and

00:30:18.600 a guy I'd looked up to. He just had this guy there for eight years and he was so calm and

00:30:24.240 such a phenom and Canada had one of its best teams ever. So it wasn't like, this is going

00:30:29.560 to be a building year. This was like, we're going to try and get our best placement in the Olympics

00:30:34.360 ever. And they did. And they just, yeah, said, you're one short. And it was amazing because that was

00:30:41.300 the last goal I had. That was the last goal I had for my volleyball career after who even knows

00:30:49.060 hundreds of thousands of hours. I just remember thinking like, well, what now? And the first

00:30:55.520 thing was, well, I'm going to Molokai. Like I had zero plans. Like my plan was I was going to stay

00:31:02.900 in Canada for the, indefinitely and train with the Olympic team. Like that was the plan.

00:31:08.260 Like I hadn't thought of any other alternative. Yeah. So this is Athens game. So was your,

00:31:12.980 did you think that, okay, I'm going to make the Olympic team. We're going to go off to Athens.

00:31:17.060 I'm going to come back and then I'm going to do what? Did you think I'm going to coach or did you

00:31:20.980 always think you were going to go back to Hawaii? So I had to take a little step back because my

00:31:26.300 capstone class in college for marketing and management, I wrote a business plan that actually

00:31:34.020 won to mimic the model of New Zealand and domesticate access deer. So near the end of college,

00:31:42.340 I started to formulate these ideas of what could we do that was a better option. And so the two years

00:31:50.280 in Europe, I started a nonprofit called the access deer Institute and well, you're, you're a good

00:31:56.440 buddy. So I can tell you this. It was a complete farce because nobody would give me any of the

00:32:02.280 studies out of India. So now you get like those little snippets when you go on Google, you can

00:32:07.620 like pull up a study and you get the snippet, but you can't download the whole thing through

00:32:11.660 the capstone class in college. I was trying to collect all of this population information on

00:32:16.180 access deer or biological. Like I was trying to figure it out and nobody would give me any

00:32:21.920 information. So I started a nonprofit called the access deer Institute. So when I emailed somebody,

00:32:26.760 I could say, Hey, this is Jake Muse with the, I'm the executive director of the access deer Institute.

00:32:31.740 I'm still in college now. We'd love to get this study to incorporate with what we're doing here in

00:32:36.380 Hawaii. And all of a sudden, like all of these studies started flooding in. I was like, this is amazing.

00:32:41.300 So I had all of this information and that came with me to Europe. That was like kind of my past

00:32:49.240 time in Europe was digging into all of those things. So to answer your question of what was

00:32:53.180 the plan after that, at that point it was, well, what can we do? That was like the next obsession

00:32:59.520 and passion was what can we do to better manage access deer? So that was already a thought part of

00:33:04.240 the thought process. So there was a little bit of a backdrop when I remember sitting in front of the

00:33:10.520 two coaches and them saying, yeah, you're, you're not going to make it. And like, I didn't even have

00:33:17.060 a return flight because like, this is one way. And I called my mom and I said, I'm going to Hawaii.

00:33:24.640 And interestingly enough, I landed, went straight to Moloka'i and four days later met my wife

00:33:36.200 on Moloka'i. And that started, I mean, started a whole bunch of things, but spent the summer there,

00:33:42.740 played another year in Europe. And while in Europe, she said, well, what are we doing? Like,

00:33:51.140 let's go home and let's go home and do this thing. Let's make babies. Let's just do it. And that was

00:33:55.660 it. Like that was the trigger to say, okay, like we're going home. So that's how I found my back,

00:33:59.820 my way back to Hawaii permanently was through Moloka'i and my wife is from Moloka'i and access

00:34:06.340 deer was already, it was already there. Well, I didn't know, I didn't know what I was going to do,

00:34:10.400 but it was there. Let's now go back and explain to folks what these access deer are, how they got to

00:34:16.840 Hawaii, how many of them there are, where they are. Because again, now it starts to kind of dovetail

00:34:23.080 into my obsession, which is relatively new. This is an obsession for me personally, that's only been

00:34:28.500 going on for two years. And that coincides with when you and I met. So before you give the real

00:34:35.020 story, I will just say at a distance that my attraction to access deer can only be described

00:34:41.600 as a love at first sight. Growing up in Canada, you see whitetail all day long. I basically just

00:34:47.700 saw them as things not to hit with your car. That is basically like, this is like, this is a thing you

00:34:54.100 don't want to hit, right? They weren't an issue in Toronto where I grew up, but because my dad had

00:34:59.040 a quarry outside of Toronto, my dad had a couple of quarries north of Toronto where we would spend

00:35:03.920 some time. That's where you would really see the whitetail. But it was something very different the

00:35:09.700 first time I laid eyes on an access deer, which was, oh, that's a totally different animal. That's

00:35:15.620 regal, right? That's breathtaking. And obviously, as we get more and more into this discussion,

00:35:21.480 when you start to talk about what it means to hunt that deer and what it means to harvest that deer

00:35:25.680 and what it means to eat that deer. Again, it just lives in kind of its own category. But this is

00:35:32.180 obviously not a species of deer that is native to Hawaii. So how did it get there and where did it

00:35:36.540 come from? Okay. 1868, King Kamehameha V hired the Matheson Trading Company to get them out of India.

00:35:49.740 My wife, Ku'u, she translates Hawaiian newspapers. Odd sidebar here, only 5% of Hawaii's newspapers are

00:35:59.300 translated. So 95% of their history is buried in there. So she helps translate newspapers. But she's

00:36:05.680 found, she can search them digitally by Hawaiian words. So she's found all these incredible articles

00:36:12.160 and the article explains them coming down the Yangtze River on a boat called the Lakhnagar,

00:36:18.600 them arriving on Oahu. There were two bucks and five does.

00:36:24.720 And just for folks who maybe aren't familiar with deer, the bucks are the males, the females are the

00:36:30.280 does. Yeah. And so they stay on the ship on Oahu. And actually, on the way from Oahu to Moloka'i,

00:36:37.760 a baby buck was born and they named it King Kamehameha V. And they arrive on Moloka'i.

00:36:44.580 So they're only placed on the island of Moloka'i. None were put on Oahu. And they put a kapu, 0.99

00:36:49.340 they put a restriction on harvesting them for the local people there. They were at that point,

00:36:54.620 the king's deer. And they didn't understand this animal. I still don't know why he

00:36:59.780 sought this particular animal. At that point, Hawaii was trading with people all over the Pacific.

00:37:05.920 And they could have done whitetail or elk. I mean, who knows? So it's really interesting to

00:37:10.900 understand. Like, I don't know why he picked that particular animal. I mean, it is beautiful.

00:37:15.860 Exactly. Yeah. And maybe that's what it was. But they get to the small island of Moloka'i and they

00:37:20.360 start to proliferate very quickly. And I think as early as, I think it was 1898, there's articles

00:37:30.780 about them thinking there was, estimating there were 7,000 deer. And they were already decimating

00:37:37.620 what they were like describing in the upland forests. And the subsequent year, there's an

00:37:42.500 article about them hiring shooters. They called them sharpshooters from California. And the sharpshooters

00:37:49.380 from California recorded killing 5,000 deer. And it's amazing. Like, at the same time, a couple

00:37:57.260 years later, there's an article in the then, what would have been like territorial government

00:38:02.300 about them arguing over the management of axis deer. And two of actually the Hawaiian reps were

00:38:09.920 saying, we have to do something about this. Like, they're going to continue to destroy our upland

00:38:15.660 forests. So as far back as, what is that? That's 100 years ago. As far back as 100 years ago,

00:38:23.440 people were already recognizing the impacts axis deer were having on the communities.

00:38:30.140 What's their replication cycle? How long is their gestation cycle? How many babies and blah, blah,

00:38:36.200 blah. Gestational period is 238 days. It's very similar to humans. Yeah. Right?

00:38:42.040 Yeah. So three fawns, sort of three baby deer every two years. They don't do twins. But what makes

00:38:51.180 axis deer so prolific, and they're one of the very few deer species on the planet that are like this,

00:38:57.200 is a deer every year, it's called casting their antlers. So a deer every year, their antlers fall

00:39:03.760 off. And during that period where the antlers fall off, their testosterone levels drop and their sperm

00:39:10.260 is not viable for reproduction. So you'll see those long periods. And I'm sure that's evolutionary

00:39:16.700 throughout the winters, et cetera, et cetera. So axis deer are a tropical species. And when they

00:39:22.880 cast their antlers, their testosterone levels stay high enough to breed year round. So their

00:39:30.780 population dynamics look like 33% a year. Like they look like those hockey stick curves once they get

00:39:38.340 started. And I'm sure King Kamehameha V had no idea that was the case. And you toss in, I mean,

00:39:45.300 you've seen these animals. They're extraordinarily healthy. We take data on every single animal we

00:39:51.740 harvest. And of the 15,000 deer we've harvested, of those does of those females, 89% are lactating

00:40:01.280 or pregnant at the time of harvest. So they are such a prolific species. And then you put them in

00:40:10.100 Hawaii where there's obviously no predators, perfect feed that can jump six to eight foot fences and move

00:40:17.660 wherever they need to maintain their own health. And you've got a pretty astounding, well, invasive

00:40:25.160 species, but also resource. That's part of the thing too is, you know, the other day I posted

00:40:29.980 something on Instagram, something archery related. And, you know, someone asked a comment, which was,

00:40:36.040 I don't see the sport in this. How hard can it be to shoot a deer with a bow and an arrow?

00:40:43.640 They're actually very inquisitive. Like, you know, again, I am not normally one to get into

00:40:47.540 discussions on Instagram, but you could tell this person really asked from a point of inquisition.

00:40:51.780 And that's not an uncommon question. And I didn't get into it on Instagram, but if someone asked me

00:40:58.440 that question, I typically say, look, you're absolutely right. I mean, there are some animals where

00:41:01.820 shooting a pig isn't the hardest thing in the world, but every animal does have a superpower

00:41:07.060 and you need to know that. So for example, with pigs, their superpower is smell. They can smell you

00:41:11.760 at a very great distance. And so if you are not downwind of them, they will sniff you out. You

00:41:17.880 don't just walk up to a pig and take a shot at it. You have to at least use its capacity for smell, 0.84

00:41:23.780 which is so far an excess of ours, your advantage. We've talked about mouflon, right? Mouflon have a

00:41:29.000 superpower of sight. It's sort of comical what they can see. The thing I sort of explain to people

00:41:34.800 when they ask me, why are you so interested in this axis, dear, is I say, as far as I can tell,

00:41:39.640 they have three superpowers, their sense of smell, their vision, and their hearing. They're

00:41:45.920 preternatural. I mean, this animal is so superior to us on at least those three senses that it's about

00:41:54.800 as hard as any animal to get within 100 yards of. You have to be doing everything right to get within

00:42:03.840 100 yards of it. And that's not close enough to take a shot, by the way, with a bow. So then you

00:42:08.720 really have to do something heroic if you want to be able to take that shot. So that's sort of an

00:42:13.400 aside, but I think it comes to this point, which is this is an animal that spent a billion years

00:42:17.700 evolving to escape tigers. And jaguars.

00:42:20.600 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like it honed its skill in an evolutionary environment that was

00:42:25.600 remarkable. And when you consider how clumsy we would be relative to the animals it evolved to

00:42:32.220 avoid, in some ways, it's amazing we can ever get near them.

00:42:36.340 Yeah. And it goes a little bit deeper because you look at, I mean, tigers are probably

00:42:41.180 one of the most efficient predators on the planet. But then you look at how axis deer,

00:42:47.960 like what their natural habitat is. And they're these, there are fringe grazers throughout the

00:42:53.760 Indian like forests and plains. So they had to evolve all of these evasive skills in thick jungle.

00:43:03.580 And I think there's a fourth sense sometime because I'm like, they didn't see me. They didn't hear me.

00:43:09.120 Wind's perfect. I'm like, there's no way. And I think they, to evade tigers in dense brush and

00:43:17.520 foliage and like they would have had to have such incredible observational skills. And I think that's

00:43:25.300 where you see it in, in India, they team up with monkeys and they use like monkeys as alarms in Hawaii. 0.85

00:43:32.020 They'll team up with like minor birds. Like they are so advanced and you're right, like a hundred yards.

00:43:40.420 And you're like, this is amazing. And then even if inside of 50 yards, they can dodge an aerial

00:43:46.800 unless they are completely oblivious. So you, I mean, we've, how many times have you seen this?

00:43:52.260 We'll come back to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll come back to that for sure. I agree with you,

00:43:56.720 by the way. I think there's a pattern recognition that they have that other animals might not have to

00:44:03.880 the same extent, which is it's like they know in a certain situation, even if they can't smell,

00:44:11.020 see, or hear you, there's the potential risk that something could be there and that's enough to make

00:44:17.040 them skittish. Yeah. They are relying on third party information. Like they're not relying on just

00:44:24.280 their own. They're so tuned in to their environment. And I think it plays into, they have one of the

00:44:31.500 smallest home range of deer as well. So they encompass and they're highly opportunistic. So

00:44:37.520 they'll bounce around from area to area. So I think when they find places that are safe and they recognize

00:44:42.460 that both as a function of probably like feed and water, but what inputs they're getting from their 0.83

00:44:47.740 surrounding environment, they stay there. So to the person's point on Instagram, I mean, you'd hear

00:44:55.020 this from every hunter. Like if you can successfully harvest an axis deer with a bull, you can do almost

00:45:01.820 any other animal on the planet. And to your credit, you're getting pretty good at it, my friend.

00:45:08.380 So let's go back to your arrival to Molokai. Are you now back in contact with Mikey? What is he doing

00:45:14.480 at this point in time? And because obviously I know where I want to go with this story is how you guys

00:45:20.260 get into basically the rescue side of this. And the most amazing story is where we're going to go

00:45:26.620 with those axis deer that make their way over to the big Island. Help me with that path.

00:45:30.900 Well, Mikey's always my first call. And so for the folks listening, like Mikey is the second adopted

00:45:36.420 son to this family. So we're both like an adopted son to this family. And Mikey's my first,

00:45:41.560 one of my first phone calls after knowing I wasn't, I was going to Molokai because I'm like, Mikey,

00:45:46.940 what are you doing? I'm coming home. The plan was we were going to put our backpacks on and we were

00:45:54.060 going to go hunt at least four or five areas that we'd never been to. We weren't even sure if you could

00:45:59.800 walk to, but we're like, we're going to find out what's over there. And I met my wife and Mikey was

00:46:06.420 like, what happened to our plans? And I'm like, well, but Mikey was always that first call for me.

00:46:12.860 He was, he was my partner. So in coming back, it actually took a little while. There was no

00:46:18.640 opportunity right in front of me. And I didn't have, like, I had a little bit of money saved up

00:46:22.720 via volleyball, but I also didn't have like the answer yet. I didn't quite know what, what was

00:46:27.560 going to do. So like, it was always this like instance of learning more. And Mikey was my hunting

00:46:32.060 partner and great story. I actually bought and sold a real estate publication for a year.

00:46:38.840 I then got a job managing a pest control company. So doing fumigations, those huge tarps on your back

00:46:46.640 and the place was a mess. Guess who the first person I called was? I was like, Mikey,

00:46:51.080 you're going to be my lead fumigator. We're going to show everybody. Like Mikey's putting like 200 pound

00:46:58.060 tarps on his back and like going up and down ladders, like he's a squirrel. Me and Mikey crushed

00:47:03.860 that business for three or four years or about three years. And then in and amongst doing all that,

00:47:11.860 the Axis Deer Institute was still going. We were collecting all of this information. We're starting

00:47:15.160 to actually help other folks better understand Axis Deer with the information we were collecting.

00:47:20.860 And then somebody illegally dropped off deer on the big island, which is all of the islands can fit

00:47:29.460 within the big island. It's the big island for a reason. It's Hawaii Island. Somebody illegally drops

00:47:34.160 off Axis Deer and we happen to be, you know, the Axis Deer Institute, but me and Mike happen to be

00:47:42.080 the experts on Axis Deer, maybe accidentally.

00:47:46.660 Hey, wait, just I want to hit pause. I want to come back to this right away, but I don't think

00:47:50.880 I knew that. I think I didn't know the story about you being the Axis Deer Institute. I love

00:47:55.940 that. And we're going to come up with a logo. Nick is going to come up with a logo for that.

00:48:00.340 I've got a t-shirt. It's so old. You can have it.

00:48:02.740 All right.

00:48:03.040 Like I actually like made t-shirts.

00:48:05.120 But I think one part of the story we missed was that by this point in time,

00:48:10.480 two other islands are now inhabited by Axis Deer, Lanai and Maui. How and when did that

00:48:16.640 happen relative to the 1860s with the initial introduction to Molokai?

00:48:21.200 In the 1920s, the then owner of the island of Lanai, a really amazing story about how they

00:48:29.180 round up all the deer, but they chose to introduce deer from Molokai to Lanai. Lanai is half the size

00:48:36.720 of Molokai. Very, very shortly, that population became fully established at what we call carrying

00:48:44.120 capacity. The overall population of deer is only going up and down each year with available feed

00:48:49.700 and or how many fawns are surviving. And a survey five years ago, there was 21,000 Axis Deer on this

00:49:00.640 very, very small island. Which topographically doesn't have anything in common with Molokai.

00:49:06.340 I mean, Molokai, I believe has the tallest, the highest freshwater waterfalls in the world. I mean,

00:49:12.240 it looks like something out of Jurassic Park. It is not anything like what people think of when

00:49:17.060 they think of Hawaii. Yeah, absolutely. And I think to that point shows how adaptable Axis Deer 1.00

00:49:23.700 really are to become established so quickly, regardless of the environment. So the next phase,

00:49:30.240 which is really interesting. So deer are introduced to Maui in the 1960s, but under controversy.

00:49:38.880 You think by now, there's common knowledge that there are issues with this animal.

00:49:45.580 And they had, if I remember correctly, they had about 20 deer in a pen on Lanai. And 10 of them

00:49:52.280 were slated for Maui and 10 of them were slated for the Big Island. And the Cattlemen's Association

00:49:57.760 on the Big Island, and I remember like reading stories about like national park reps from across

00:50:04.540 the country. Like there's this huge outcry on the Big Island that said, no way, we're not bringing

00:50:10.140 this animal to the Big Island. It'll be detrimental. And this is the state now. So this isn't like a

00:50:17.160 private introduction. This is the state saying, we think it's in the island's best interest to move

00:50:23.740 more of these Axis deer around. So long story short, the Big Island says, no, they get introduced to the 0.98

00:50:29.480 island of Maui. Maui's 460,000 acres. So the population on Maui is still what we consider

00:50:38.320 an emerging population. So they're continuing to grow. They haven't reached carrying capacity.

00:50:43.180 So this year, we estimate the population on Maui to be about 60,000 deer, but the population will

00:50:50.640 max out at 210,000 deer. And essentially Maui is another very dynamic landscape that looks in some

00:50:59.160 areas completely different than Molokai, but they'll find all of those places and they'll fill

00:51:06.080 themselves in unless we're able to, you know, get ahead of that. And just to round it out, where is

00:51:11.440 Molokai today population-wise? It's an estimate because we don't have a full survey, but I would say

00:51:16.940 Molokai is at about 60,000 to 70,000 deer. And remember, there's only 7,000 people. And probably

00:51:25.380 the best way, oh, this will be really interesting. How far are you from what they consider Texas

00:51:31.140 hill country? Isn't it outside of Austin? Yeah, we're three hours from, I mean, we're,

00:51:36.440 depends, but we're three hours from where the Axis deer are in Texas, which is, I think, the only 0.90

00:51:40.960 other state that has Axis deer, right? I don't think any other state in the US has Axis deer besides

00:51:46.320 it's Hawaii and Texas. No. Where I'm going with this is, I remember reading a whole bunch of studies

00:51:52.900 on deer densities per acre. And Texas hill country had the densest deer acreage or densest number of

00:52:01.820 deer per acre at about six per 100 acres. And like Wisconsin and Mississippi was behind that.

00:52:08.060 Hawaii in established areas has 25 deer per 100 acres. So at least three X, whatever the densest deer

00:52:21.100 populations on the continent are. So yeah, that's how they get to the three main islands. And then in,

00:52:30.080 I think it was 2010 or 11, was when that introduction by private individuals, it wasn't

00:52:37.420 the state, they decided they were going to trap deer on Maui, fly them to the big island via

00:52:43.920 helicopter, drop them off. How many deer did they take? They dropped off four. Two and two? Three

00:52:49.900 does and a buck. And they do it quietly. And nobody finds out about it till about a year and a half

00:52:56.080 later. And that's when there was like, wait, there's a camera trap image. Actually, a rancher

00:53:02.340 saw it. They called me and Mike because we were already closely tied to, I mean, both my wife's

00:53:09.080 family and my Hanai family are in the conservation community. And so we found out about it right away.

00:53:14.280 And everybody said, if you got any chance of like finding these things, here's the two guys to ask.

00:53:19.840 And we went out and looked in the area. Actually, I remember doing this. The area they dropped them

00:53:25.780 off. They didn't know where they were. Somebody had just seen one in passing on the road. The area

00:53:30.520 was the size of Molokai. It was 70 square miles was like the management area. So I remember like

00:53:39.600 getting to the first one and being like, we think there's deer in here. It's like a 70 square mile

00:53:46.000 area. And I just remember thinking, how the hell are we going to find these animals? And me and Mike

00:53:53.480 already knew how extraordinary these animals were to find even when there's thousands of them.

00:53:59.940 Yeah. I mean, it's safe to say at this point, you and Mike know almost as much as any two people

00:54:04.700 about their behavior. Now going back to Mike, growing up on Molokai, I mean, literally walking

00:54:10.580 to school every day, hunting, eating this animal every day. I mean, and I've hunted with Mike, which is

00:54:17.720 one of the most remarkable experiences anyone can have. This is basically a guy who knows

00:54:23.820 everything. This is the closest human to an axis deer. He's almost able to sprout antlers of his

00:54:30.520 own. That's as close as we will get in our evolution to them. He just knows where they go.

00:54:36.720 Yeah.

00:54:37.500 But this is the government. This is basically the state is saying, we have a problem because we've

00:54:42.480 got these three potentially more deer on the big Island. And if this thing's left unchecked,

00:54:48.160 it's going to be a catastrophe.

00:54:49.500 Millions of deer.

00:54:50.420 Yeah.

00:54:50.740 Yeah. And the big Island being like our primary ag hub, our primary food hub for, and these

00:54:57.020 obviously axis deer eat almost anything. So it started a three year project and it took us three

00:55:04.440 years to find those animals. And you know how difficult it is to wake up every morning,

00:55:12.460 morning, and either like walk quietly enough and in tune enough to like assume you're going to see

00:55:20.660 something or sit quietly enough. Like the level of like, I just remember being so exhausted mentally.

00:55:27.580 And we went a year and a half before we saw a deer and you know, Mike, like, so it's like,

00:55:35.260 they're not here. There's no way. It was this constant mental battle. We literally hunted almost

00:55:41.720 every single day for a year and a half without seeing an animal.

00:55:46.420 Yeah. What I think is amazing about that is everything you just said, which includes the

00:55:51.280 idea that at some level in the back of your mind, you have to be entertaining the thought they didn't

00:55:55.840 survive. And we could be sitting here looking for a skeleton.

00:55:59.460 Yeah. And I remember me and Mike being probably the perfect partners for this. Cause whenever I was

00:56:06.540 like, there's not a chance, man, we've walked this place eight times, but part of it, it was so big.

00:56:12.220 It was an area that has, it's very, very windy. So there's windblown trees over the vast majority

00:56:18.500 of the area. So think about a briar grove. Literally it was like doing yoga all day long. Like you were

00:56:24.920 crawling in and through all of these trees, which deer love. So it was like physically exhausting,

00:56:30.680 but then it was mentally exhausting. Cause you're only covering a certain amount of acres. You're

00:56:34.620 looking for like a single piece of scat or like deer feces. You're looking for like a single rub.

00:56:41.120 You're looking for like anything that would tell you that they're there. And what we didn't know was

00:56:46.800 they had found a safe spot and we're encompassing. It was less than a hundred acres, Peter.

00:56:54.960 So we were looking in like, but part of, I think what's important of this story is at the point we

00:57:01.320 were like, there has to be a better way. That's when we learned and started like working with the

00:57:07.440 military for the flurry equipment. And the flurry equipment was ultimately what found them for us. So

00:57:14.300 flurry equipment picks up infrared or heat signatures from bodies. And then they'll translate

00:57:20.420 that into an electrical optical image for you to be able to view. And the military was involved. Like

00:57:25.800 it was such a big deal. And the military loaned us one of their binocular units. And it was that

00:57:33.920 instant realization, like how did we ever do this without this thing? And that ultimately over a

00:57:39.360 period of a couple of months, we were able to start chunking off huge areas of land in being able to

00:57:44.080 view with great detail, these areas from a thermography standpoint. And that's how we found

00:57:50.700 them. Do you remember that first day that you actually saw one?

00:57:55.780 Oh, it was crazy because Mike was looking through it and it was, we're doing all of this in the

00:58:02.900 middle of the night because you can only really use flurry effectively in the middle of the night.

00:58:06.460 And I'm kind of have like my seat back in the Tacoma. And I see like Mike take his eyes off the

00:58:11.700 binocular unit and then put his eyes on and then take his eyes off. And he turned around and he looked

00:58:17.480 like he'd seen a ghost. I didn't even know what it was. Like I thought he saw like a dead body or

00:58:22.800 something. And the only reason we saw it, it was a buck in velvet. And the velvet antler has so much

00:58:29.020 blood in it. It's so hot. And it was, it was like five miles away. And we just saw like this velvet

00:58:36.900 antler in this super dense cover. And Mike was like, that's a deer. I think that's a deer. And so I got

00:58:45.360 on the binocular unit and we had been training for this forever. And so I stayed there and we cooked up

00:58:53.680 via radio. And basically over the next four hours, Mike went down. I guided him in like via binocular

00:59:01.380 unit. And while he was going down there, we saw several other deer. I think it was two, three more.

00:59:07.600 And yeah, Mike was able to find and get that buck. He just missed the doe that was with it,

00:59:14.100 but it was a brand new realization. Like they're here. How many deer were there at the time? Was it

00:59:19.440 still just four or had they reproduced like crazy? It was still just four actually. It

00:59:23.560 ended up being five, but at the time there were only four that we knew of.

00:59:27.340 And it still took you another year and a half to capture them all?

00:59:31.240 Yeah. Cause we weren't, we weren't smart enough. We bumped their home range and they moved several

00:59:38.360 miles away and we had to go find them again. At some point has the state of Hawaii forgotten

00:59:42.600 that they've hired you to do this? Like, I mean, this is unbelievable. This is the longest

00:59:47.880 contractor job ever, right? I think everybody assumed we weren't going to do it.

00:59:52.980 And for a couple of reasons, one invasive species are such a prolific issue here in Hawaii.

01:00:01.120 You think everything evolved here over millennia, like anything we introduce is just like, it's

01:00:06.640 such a disaster. It doesn't matter if it's a frog or a plant, there's so much money spent

01:00:11.680 on invasive species every year. And the vast, vast majority of it, I would say the projects

01:00:18.000 aren't what we would consider to be successful. Like we don't eradicate that animal. On top

01:00:23.420 of that, everybody's basic knowledge of access deer were like, these things are impossible

01:00:27.640 to find. I think everybody assumed it wasn't going to happen anyway. So we had like a minuscule

01:00:34.200 budget because me and Mike rolling around like in an old Tacoma that was lended to us with

01:00:40.140 like half-ass equipment. Mike's shoes have duct tape all over them. Funding boosted pretty

01:00:45.480 quick after we got the first deer. But I think everybody just assumed we would fail. And I

01:00:50.820 think we would have had it not been for, I think just some of the resiliency that came

01:00:56.680 with my and Mike's partnership. I would be like, this is it. This is a waste of time.

01:01:01.300 And Mike would be like, ah, let's just check over here. And then Mike would be like, this

01:01:04.060 is ridiculous. Like we're not going to find anything to be like, you know what? Let's

01:01:06.620 like, and I think that partnership was what ultimately got us to the first deer. And then

01:01:11.880 once we, like, once we knew there were more deer, we could have took 10 years. We were

01:01:15.940 going to find the rest of those deer. So part of that process with that floor equipment was

01:01:21.380 now we were able to, and we didn't realize how important the floor equipment would be for

01:01:25.760 us in our lives. But is that because you didn't appreciate how nocturnal they were, or you

01:01:30.760 didn't realize what an advantage you could have with that asymmetry of information at

01:01:36.620 night?

01:01:37.040 You nailed both of it. We didn't understand how much more active they were at night. We

01:01:42.820 didn't understand all of the behavior cues of what was happening at night. And then on

01:01:48.400 top of it, we started to realize really quickly through repetition, wait, that's the same pig

01:01:57.400 we saw via, like we're doing these surveys via helicopter. That's the same pig we saw three

01:02:02.120 days ago. Wait, that's the same goat we saw three days ago. We started to then realize how

01:02:07.680 accurate their equipment was in its detection rates. And so on top of being able to find more

01:02:15.020 animals, we're also getting significantly more confident in what we weren't seeing, that we

01:02:19.660 weren't missing anything. So we were able to start a certification process to be like, we know

01:02:25.220 they're not here. And ultimately when me and Mike realized, wait, this thing is accurate enough that

01:02:30.800 we can trust it. It started like narrowing down hundreds of thousands of acres to like, wait,

01:02:36.820 they're not here. We know we can go to the next place. When you're walking on the ground and me and

01:02:41.980 Mike are 20 feet apart and I can't see him, you're constantly questioning, did I miss something?

01:02:48.240 So that was ultimately what led to finding the rest of those deer. And then that tool equated to

01:02:54.560 developing survey procedures for it, which didn't exist anywhere else. And that ultimately was

01:03:02.420 brought us to Maui, but I remember like finding and removing that last deer and me and Mike looking 0.98

01:03:08.380 at each other, like, and we knew we were like, oh shit, we got them all. How did you know that was 0.86

01:03:14.680 the last one? Because it would suggest that these animals were so under stress that they didn't

01:03:19.480 reproduce if they were together, but not, I mean, they certainly had ample time to reproduce, right?

01:03:25.420 Yeah. We were confident that was the last one in that area. During the process of those three

01:03:32.000 years, we had sightings all over the big island that people thought were deer. There's no way I

01:03:35.860 can say there's no deer on the big island. I can confidently say at the time we were done that

01:03:41.760 project. The helicopter pilot that dropped it off, who ended up being our best friend,

01:03:47.820 got, for his restitution was 300 hours in a helicopter with us. So think about when you sit

01:03:55.400 in your car, how much area you can cover, like we can cover 10,000 acres in an hour. We were

01:04:01.060 recertifying acreage almost 10 times over with equipment we believe was like 95% accurate in

01:04:09.380 detection rates. We're getting so good. We're, we were marking beehives as our detection protocol.

01:04:17.620 Okay. We're going back into this area. If we find the same beehive, we're at a thousand feet in the

01:04:23.680 air. If we can find that same beehive in this area, we'll consider that we didn't miss anything.

01:04:30.280 Ultimately, that's what gave us the confidence to say we're done. And I'm not sure, but anecdotally

01:04:36.080 now eight years later, there hasn't been another sighting in the area. And man, talk about life

01:04:43.780 lessons. So the second half of the project, waking up every night at like six, eating dinner with your

01:04:48.580 family and then rolling out for 12 hours of using that floor equipment, not knowing what you were

01:04:54.980 going to find for three year hunt. Apart from athletics, I think any level of resiliency I have

01:05:01.020 probably came from, came from that project for sure. What did your wife think? I mean,

01:05:07.000 was this what she had signed up for? The nighttime working husband and you're on the big island. Was

01:05:12.420 that, had she always wanted to stay on Molokai? Her family in her teenage years, some of them moved

01:05:18.200 to the big island, most importantly, her mom and her mom are very close. And we love Molokai, but it

01:05:24.340 takes like, there wasn't any opportunity at that point. Like after we were married, we had, we were

01:05:29.300 married on Molokai. Like there wasn't anything for us to do. Like there's no jobs on Molokai.

01:05:34.020 And if they are there, somebody is already lined up for whenever that position opens up. So part of

01:05:39.720 it was we needed to, we had planned to start a family and wanted to start a life. And we knew we

01:05:43.960 needed a little bit more opportunity to do so. We went to the big island and a lot of our family

01:05:47.040 were here. So we did that. My wife and I'll give her a shout out here. And maybe, you know,

01:05:54.980 it's interesting because I remember you telling me something about Jill. Unrelenting support.

01:06:00.500 There is no way I'm where I'm at. I think I could probably say this about you without that level

01:06:06.760 of support. It was always, if that's what we're doing, that's what we're doing. And she is

01:06:12.980 extraordinarily talented. She's one of the best writers I know. She's a graphic designer. She's

01:06:18.500 a genealogist. Like she constantly is putting things aside for, and now, and she's a, she's

01:06:24.300 our co-founder at this company and one of our most important people, but she constantly put 0.75

01:06:30.140 things aside for what this was. But part of it was these were huge ecological and community

01:06:37.100 issues. And she was behind me a hundred percent. Would have never happened without her because 0.99

01:06:42.500 convincing any significant other to sleep by themselves every single night. And then you

01:06:49.160 roll in an absolute mess in the morning. It's not, it's not conducive. So.

01:06:54.760 And I remember you telling me a long time ago that you didn't even take a day off for the first

01:06:59.960 year, right?

01:07:01.100 Oh yeah.

01:07:01.960 It was seven days a week for the first year. Yeah.

01:07:04.600 Yeah. Because we thought we were going to find him in the first week. We're like, oh,

01:07:08.780 they saw him over here. Me and Mikey were like, we're going to walk every single day

01:07:13.220 for 12 hours till we find them. And I can remember like finishing the first month. Like

01:07:18.740 by the end of the first month, we were already like, oh, there's no deer here. That guy didn't

01:07:22.020 see something. But what ended up spurring on the rest of it was me and Mike look through

01:07:26.980 the entire area. And this is why Mike is so good. Mike said, if there is a deer here, it's

01:07:33.640 going to walk right there. We're going to put up a camera trap. So not like we're going

01:07:39.600 to put up a hundred camera traps and see, I think we had three camera traps. Mike was

01:07:43.560 like, if there is a deer here, he's going to walk right there. I think like thousands

01:07:48.820 of acres. And sure enough, like month four, we got a camera trap image of a deer. And that

01:07:55.360 was hard evidence. And we were, we were honestly as surprised as anybody at that point. And we're

01:07:59.860 like, there's deer here. And so that obviously spurred on everything else that went along with

01:08:05.580 it. So it was, yeah, I mean, you think how me and you've done some really hard four day

01:08:11.040 hunts together. And at the end of that four days, you're just, it was a doozy, man.

01:08:18.000 Now I have a better understanding of why after a hard four day hunt, that's hard for me, you

01:08:22.820 look like you've been sitting at the beach all day. Put that into perspective. So you guys

01:08:27.900 go back to Maui. Is there something about the burden of axis deer there that has you

01:08:35.940 start to focus your effort and refine your thinking about what you and Mike can be doing

01:08:42.520 specifically there? Because at this point in time, it's safe to say there's no real concerted

01:08:49.740 strategy around what to do. And by the way, in Maui, I don't think, correct me if I'm wrong,

01:08:55.200 but I don't think the relationship between the people of Maui and the axis deer is as

01:09:00.060 affectionate as it might be on Molokai, right? I mean, I think the destruction is much greater.

01:09:04.840 Yeah. I mean, the first meeting I went to on Maui, they were, I won't mention the person,

01:09:10.440 but calling them spotted rats. I think they had already for sure found value within the subsistence

01:09:17.100 community as that, but they were dropped off in the central area for all ranching. And so they,

01:09:23.820 they obviously directly compete with cattle for feed and they break fences and, and they started

01:09:29.000 to see that, that population grow pretty quickly. And so the, the move from the big island to Maui

01:09:36.300 was primarily because of opportunity. What ended up happening is the ranchers on Maui who were of

01:09:42.760 course, watching this closely and saying, don't let these things get established on the big island.

01:09:48.800 One particular rancher on Maui said, wait, you guys actually got it done. Like you guys might know

01:09:55.780 what you're doing. Like right. As we closed that project, they said, we've got tens of thousands

01:10:01.720 of deer over here. We don't care what you do with them. Just come and shoot them. And we couldn't do

01:10:08.340 that. All of the learnings and experience and like cultural values that came from Moloka were still 0.86

01:10:14.000 very much like a part of who we were. And so for a rancher to be able to say like, well, just shoot

01:10:19.140 them all, like bury them. We don't care. And we had already had, like, I'd already done some research 1.00

01:10:23.420 on Europe has an extensive venison industry. New Zealand has an extensive venison industry

01:10:28.860 and already had like thought, that thought process. And that, but that was the trigger to say, wait,

01:10:33.940 there's got to be a better way. Because by this point that was already happening on Lanai,

01:10:39.300 they were basically shooting these things out of helicopters and just letting them die on the,

01:10:43.380 I mean, it sort of became this issue of, look, these things are causing so much damage. And I also

01:10:48.360 want to get into some of the specifics of the damage because as I would learn, and I was surprised

01:10:53.240 to learn this, it wasn't just, Hey, they're competing for the same resources as the cattle, which is the

01:11:00.400 business here. But it's how that would even trickle into the ecology of the ocean. That was

01:11:05.620 completely new to me. And I simply wouldn't have understood the nitrogen balance and the change and

01:11:10.640 all of that. So the farmers understandably are saying, look, I don't care what has to happen.

01:11:15.760 If the government is willing to get into helicopters with AR-15s and shoot these things out of the air,

01:11:21.620 I'm happy to have the carcasses laying around. And explain a little bit more about what the full

01:11:27.700 extent of the life cycle is in terms of the disruption to the native species there from

01:11:33.560 basically land to water.

01:11:34.760 I mean, we have to take a little bit of a step back in terms of evolution in that Hawaii is the

01:11:41.480 most isolated landmass on the planet. Everything here evolved kind of textbook, adaptive radiation,

01:11:48.700 like everything over here has evolved over millennia to be best suited for its environment right here,

01:11:53.780 which included no large mammals apart from a bat and certainly no grazing herbivores.

01:12:00.120 So like we have mints that are mintless and now we are the endangered species capital of the world.

01:12:07.280 We have more endangered species per acre here than anywhere else in the world.

01:12:11.820 I think we're, I think 30% of the endangered species list in the U.S. is all plants, birds from Hawaii.

01:12:21.560 And that is a function of the introduction of non-native species and how they affect biodiversity.

01:12:29.580 So the impact of access deer, you know, Peter, probably the most influential impact to our communities as a whole

01:12:37.820 is at the very top of our mountains. And you've been to one of those places.

01:12:42.440 They are, again, as one of the most isolated landmasses, water is probably, I mean, you guys had some issues

01:12:49.180 with water this week. Like water is one of the most important things for us as a community.

01:12:54.380 And you guys had snow on Haleakala recently, right?

01:12:57.680 We still do. Yeah. Yeah.

01:12:59.800 Amazing.

01:13:00.660 Water is, and the Hawaiians knew this, the word for wealth was vaivai. It was water for native Hawaiians.

01:13:08.100 Our watersheds are our most important resource. And those watersheds developed, it was, it's almost

01:13:14.540 like in this permaculture fashion where there's these three layers and they've developed to capture

01:13:19.300 all of this fog and rain and they go directly into our aquifers. Any ungulate, deer included,

01:13:25.340 ungulate being a cloven hoofed animal. So goats, pigs, deer, et cetera, et cetera. Any ungulate in

01:13:31.300 our forest, it might as well be a salad bar.

01:13:35.000 They literally can eat anything. There are no protections. Those plants have developed no

01:13:40.060 protections for themselves. And once those animals affect the efficiency of our water feds, 0.94

01:13:47.600 they affect how much water they capture at a significant rate. So their most profound effect

01:13:54.680 is in our mountains and affecting how that ecosystem collects water. And so as we come down the hill,

01:14:03.580 that's when they start interacting with our ranchers and farmers. And like we talked about,

01:14:10.740 they directly compete for feed at a rate of about seven to one. Every seven deer equates to about

01:14:16.740 one cow, but a lettuce farmer can lose 10 acres of lettuce overnight. When a herd of a thousand deer

01:14:24.420 come in, like they'll absolutely decimate that. Fencing is optional for deer. Like we've seen deer hop

01:14:30.180 over six foot fences like nothing. So this downstream effect of them impacting how we capture water and then

01:14:38.960 them impacting our food systems all the time. They're also degrading the understory. And what happens when

01:14:48.040 we have large rain events is all of the sediment, all of our soil. I mean, if there's anything more

01:14:54.640 valuable than water, it's soil. All of the soil that have taken tens of thousands of years to form on this

01:15:03.860 tiny island, especially like coming from lava rock, all of the soil, all of this incredibly valuable top

01:15:11.760 soil will run off into our oceans. And it doesn't even stop there. Deer scat are extremely high in

01:15:20.260 nitrogen. You kind of mentioned this, like the downstream effect of not only the soil depositing

01:15:25.840 on our reefs, but also the impact of like the nitrogen from like thousands of deer's feces starts to

01:15:32.680 bleach our reefs as well. And I can't say for sure there's a direct link between that nitrogen and

01:15:37.880 how it affects it. We know that may be the case with soil, but more than anything, thousands of

01:15:43.720 pounds of sediment come down in these events. And when you fly over our islands, I fly every week,

01:15:52.580 you just see these crazy plumes miles and miles wide of this red dirt that is just going out and

01:15:59.740 covering the reefs. And well, guess what's important about our reef systems? Apart from

01:16:04.120 obviously the incredible ecosystems they support, food. We've lost significant amounts of reef and

01:16:13.620 the fish that then go along with them. So they call it mauka to makai. There's this downstream effect of

01:16:20.900 their impact. That is, I mean, I don't think we completely understand the cumulative impact,

01:16:27.320 but it's, we can see it every time these events happen and we can see it when we're in watersheds.

01:16:32.680 And so that understanding was obviously what spurred on the want to better manage them. But along with it

01:16:38.560 is like we talked about, they're a food resource. So they're not only a food resource, but they're

01:16:43.300 impacting our food security. And so it's just when they're imbalanced, it's a double-edged sword in that

01:16:49.460 they're significantly detrimental and they're impacting our food security here as the most

01:16:54.400 isolated landmass on the planet. So it's just all, the vast majority of their impact is not a net

01:17:00.360 positive for our communities when you're at such imbalance in these populations.

01:17:05.340 And as you're coming into sort of your deeper and deeper understanding of this,

01:17:10.440 you're also continuing to develop with Mike, this unbelievable credibility with the community

01:17:17.140 in terms of, it just blows my mind what you guys continue to do. So now fast forward to the

01:17:22.680 volcano eruptions. Oh man.

01:17:24.920 So let's talk a little bit about what happened and what type of a threat that was to livestock

01:17:29.780 and what, you know, you guys are doing with helicopters. I mean, this, this is the stuff

01:17:34.720 that's out of movies. Then again, I think I'm not asking you to tell this story from the sake of

01:17:39.400 boasting about what you've done, but I think, I think it kind of continues to round out the story of

01:17:45.000 these are guys who first and foremost are here to protect Hawaii.

01:17:50.600 Yeah. I mean, with Mike as a partner, we just develop a knack to get things done. And like,

01:17:58.100 there was so much problem solving. And as we developed solutions for access deer and

01:18:02.520 a couple of years in, we had a large eruption on Kilauea on the big Island and we had already

01:18:09.360 developed, it was the first of its kind. It was a live cattle net capture system. You got to imagine

01:18:17.220 a cow is a really big thing. And basically what it was, if I can explain this properly, it was,

01:18:22.520 it was a large metal frame, a circular frame with a triangle net. And there was, it was attached to the

01:18:32.400 tip of the net. So the top of the cone, and it was attached to the frame of the circular structure.

01:18:40.380 And what would happen is via helicopter, we would put the cone over the animal. We would release the

01:18:47.040 top of the net. The net would fall down. The animal would walk out to the end of the net. And then we

01:18:54.800 would pick up the frame and it would be sitting in this like perfect cradle.

01:18:59.140 Like a little hammock.

01:18:59.820 Yeah. So it had like, it was a little hammock ride. Well, several years ago, we had a very

01:19:05.200 unexpected and very quick moving lava flow. We're talking, it was about 500 yards wide moving at

01:19:12.640 50 miles an hour. And it ended up completely destroying an entire community. Like it's gone.

01:19:20.780 There are no remnants of it. It just completely wiped the whole community out. And it was this amazing

01:19:25.620 community. It's there's still, it's, it was a significant loss for the community, but in the

01:19:30.260 process too, lava flows formed and they cut off a huge portion of a ranching area and including homes

01:19:39.260 and a bunch of things in there. And the state needed a solution for, they wanted to find a way for these

01:19:46.500 animals not to die. And me and Mike of course said, well, we can do that.

01:19:54.120 Having zero context, we can go and do that. And I remember driving out the first morning. So we bring

01:19:59.720 in all of the equipment, like got it in the back of the truck and we're driving out early in the morning

01:20:04.120 and it looked like Armageddon. Like the entire sky in the middle of the night was red and roiling.

01:20:12.560 And like it was creating, there was so much heat. It was creating its own weather system. It was

01:20:16.860 lightning. Like it was such an odd experience to be driving towards it with the idea that we were

01:20:23.860 going to fly around and pick these animals up flying over these 50 mile an hour lava flows.

01:20:33.020 But me and Mike were like, yeah, we can do it. And at that point we, Uka was already a part of our

01:20:39.480 team and you've met Uka. So now we're talking the dream team here. And Uka's like, boys, we're going

01:20:46.300 to be lava cowboys. And you know, Uka, I'm just like, oh man. But I think we needed that level of

01:20:54.680 positivity. Like what we were facing was fairly substantial and it was risky. And I was never

01:21:00.120 going to risk any of my guy's life. Ultimately, it was my responsibility. I wasn't going to risk any

01:21:05.140 of their life for a cow, but long story short, we get on site. We use the FLIR really quickly to

01:21:11.260 figure out how many animals are there and where they are. And then we come back and we hook the

01:21:15.220 net up and there's lots of good stories, but probably the first one is probably the most

01:21:20.200 interesting. We go over to find the first one and we were working with a helicopter pilot.

01:21:25.600 We'd only worked with a couple of times before, but he was, he was amazing. And he goes and he

01:21:30.240 puts the net over. How long do you have? Like what's the distance? How close do you need to be

01:21:35.560 to the cow? Well, we need to be, it's a hundred foot line. Oh my God. This cone is hanging under

01:21:42.240 the cow and there's like your eye level with like lava flows. And there's, there was something

01:21:47.000 called fissure eight. There's like fissure eight is blowing in front of you a couple thousand yards

01:21:51.800 and you're seeing like chunks of magma going everywhere. And like, you're seeing the ground heat

01:21:55.400 up on two sides. How is that heat by itself not interfering with what the pilot

01:22:00.200 is able to do in terms of stabilizing the helicopter? Because the cows had moved themselves 0.80

01:22:05.420 into the internal area between the two flows. So we were coming over the first lava flow and

01:22:12.120 the helicopter went like this pink. There was so much heat coming off the flow. It was tossing

01:22:18.460 the helicopter three, 400 feet in the air, like almost instantly. And so we get to the inside

01:22:26.080 and constantly they're like, are you sure we like, we're good. I'm like, if you're good,

01:22:29.800 I'm good. And there's GoPro video of all of this. So he makes not the mistake, but the cow he happened

01:22:37.560 to catch first was a huge bull. And it was right at the max lifting capacity of the helicopter.

01:22:45.020 But once that bull, he has a 2000 pound animal. Once that bull is in the net system, it's fairly

01:22:52.680 difficult to get out by yourself. And it wasn't CO2. I can't remember what chemical we were most

01:22:59.900 worried about or what gas we were most worried about. But we all had like indicators while we're

01:23:04.120 wearing like indicators. And like, I remember like having to get on the ground and like seeing blue

01:23:08.780 spots, like the gas levels were fairly dangerous as well. So we didn't want to get on the ground.

01:23:14.620 We wanted to be where airflow was good. He goes to pick it up and he can get it off the ground and he's

01:23:19.180 moving. And he's like, what do you want to do? And I was like, can you get this thing across the lava

01:23:25.060 flow without me getting on the ground? And he's like, I think so. And I'm just like, you son of a

01:23:31.160 bitch. Like, he's like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to use the heat from the flow 1.00

01:23:36.960 to lift us up. And I'm thinking, what if that doesn't work? Like we're going to barbecue this cow.

01:23:45.300 He was confident. And I've learned along the years, like you trust your pilot. They're the

01:23:50.180 one that's going to keep you safe. And so this cow is flying under the helicopter at a hundred feet. 0.97

01:23:57.100 So we're 250 feet above the ground. And as we get to the flow, sure enough, the helicopter just goes

01:24:03.160 and it lifts straight up. And I looked down and it's like depth perception is pretty tough at that

01:24:09.840 point. When I looked down and the entire cow, I thought lit up with smoke. I was like, what did

01:24:18.460 we just do? Like we just burnt this cow and state officials, humane society, everybody is at the

01:24:26.740 corral system on the other side where we're bringing this cow in. And I'm just like, I didn't know what

01:24:31.960 to do. Like, this is going to sound terrible. I honestly contemplated like if it was dead, just

01:24:36.680 dropping it in the lava flow. And so we're flying over this lava flow. And all I see is smoke coming

01:24:44.740 from this cow. And what I didn't realize is it was steam. I had forgot that it was raining and the cow

01:24:53.500 had water all over it. And I realized as we got over the flow, all of the steam came off the cow and the

01:25:01.260 cow was fine. Like it's just sitting there in its hammock. And we brought that cow in. So the way

01:25:07.000 it works is it's hanging in its cradle with the frame above it like this. And you put it down and

01:25:12.840 then you put the frame right back over it and it just stands up and walks up. And so this cow just

01:25:18.740 and we have all of this on video, this cow just stands up, walks out like nothing wrong, walks over,

01:25:24.100 starts grabbing some feed like that's on the side. And we had never done it before. And like Uka and

01:25:30.600 Mike are looking at me like I was the first one in the helicopter. They're like, is it going to work?

01:25:33.960 I'm like, it works. And then we spent, we had four separate missions to get out all of the cows

01:25:42.420 over a period of a week or two. And I think we ended up doing 40 or 50 cows. The stories are just

01:25:50.780 like, you imagine like Uka every morning thriving on this like lava, like he had like lava cowboys on

01:25:58.060 his coolers. But to the rancher that was potentially going to lose it all and to communities

01:26:04.000 that were seeing all of this loss, like there was not like there was just all of this loss from this

01:26:09.520 flow. It became this really interesting rallying point for the local community. A, it was probably

01:26:15.700 like fantastical to see, but B, like it's like, wait, we're not going to lose it all. We're going

01:26:19.980 to get some of this stuff back. Yeah, a long line of projects and innovations that are like,

01:26:25.920 I think we can do that. We just had a knack of like figuring it out as we go. Cause there were

01:26:30.460 certainly some bumps in that road. You imagine like me, Mike and Uka standing around with very

01:26:35.140 limited math experience between the three of us. And we're looking at this huge cargo net and like

01:26:39.500 these pipes. And we're like, I think we argued for like three hours before we built this thing.

01:26:44.640 Like, God, I just, I just, I just wish I was there for that. Like that is, cause I know how much fun

01:26:50.420 it is to just be sitting around the campfire talking about the, that stove that we like the

01:26:55.860 short stove, whatever the heck it's called and getting into the math of that. So this is,

01:26:59.500 you know, talk about the stakes being high. So, so how do you go from that to where you are now,

01:27:05.980 which is you've created this company called Maui Nui, which is effectively an unbelievably efficient,

01:27:14.380 humane way to operationalize the harvesting of access deer for food at a USDA certification,

01:27:22.180 which is, it's important for people to understand you and I could go out and hunt access deer,

01:27:26.660 but that doesn't really mean anything because that's, even if you had a hundred people hunting

01:27:31.340 these things, you can't sell that to somebody like a restaurant isn't going to do that. There's

01:27:36.140 food safety issues. So how did you get to the formation of what it is you're, you're doing now,

01:27:42.220 which is by that point, this is about now when you and I are getting to meet each other.

01:27:46.420 Well, it was a little bit before then, because after we finished the project on the big Island

01:27:50.880 and we went to, we were getting those inquiries from Maui and like the light bulb went off,

01:27:57.460 like, Hey, there's gotta be a better way. So we understood population dynamics. We understood

01:28:01.700 what we were dealing with, like from an animal standpoint, the question was like,

01:28:06.440 why can't we eat these things? And we understood the legality of it. So on the continent,

01:28:12.220 all native game mammals are owned by the public. So a resident of Bozeman, Montana owns the elk

01:28:23.660 that's on private property on a ranch somewhere else. Like the state owns that animal and therefore

01:28:28.180 you own that animal. As a non-native invasive species in Hawaii, the ownership of that animal

01:28:36.180 falls to the private landowner where that animal lies essentially, and also the management of it.

01:28:43.720 So you can ask, but the state isn't responsible to manage that animal on private property. State is

01:28:51.040 really only responsible to manage that animal in public spaces. So we, we are not allowed to operate

01:28:57.440 on public land. So we only operate in privacy. And I think it's really important to understand

01:29:02.300 the difference. So we knew that the landowner owned the animal. And so I remember one of the

01:29:09.860 first calls to the USDA where I was like, Hey, we want to be able to manage these animals. What rules

01:29:15.500 would we have to follow? And what would we have to provide in order to have this animal be USDA

01:29:21.080 inspected? I remember the guy, he actually laughed. He just said, here's the Meat Inspection Act

01:29:27.720 from 1930. It's the Federal Meat Inspection Act. If you can follow these rules somehow,

01:29:34.640 we'll give you guys a shot. And so it's this thick. And so I remember like reading it nonstop

01:29:42.740 for several days and like finding the couple of spots in there that require humane handling and

01:29:48.740 all of the things that come into the process of like harvesting an animal or like rendering an animal.

01:29:53.000 And I was like, I think we can do this. I called them back and explained the process. Like we have

01:29:58.320 this amazing flurry equipment where we can see these animals. I believe we can render these animals. So

01:30:03.020 one of the most important things is we have to follow all of the rules of a brick and mortar facility,

01:30:09.040 but in the field for wild harvesting, which the most important thing is how that animal dies.

01:30:14.420 And it has to be done. The terminology is rendered immediately unconscious, but it has to be shot 0.97

01:30:20.520 in the head. It has to break the skull cap. So it dies immediately. And they doubted whether or not we 1.00

01:30:28.860 could do that. And if we couldn't do it efficiently, they essentially shut you down overnight. It's one of

01:30:34.480 the most important things. The other part of that was we needed a USDA certified slaughter facility.

01:30:41.280 And when I did the math on it all, it wasn't possible to use the current facilities on Maui.

01:30:47.920 So there were two major hiccups to start. It was like, A, can we do this efficiently enough? And B,

01:30:53.720 will my wife let me remortgage my house to buy a slaughter facility, a mobile slaughter facility?

01:31:01.780 And at the beginning, both those answers were no. I wasn't willing to remortgage the house

01:31:06.520 knowing that we might not be efficient enough to harvest these animals because we didn't know yet,

01:31:12.500 right? So the way we started that venture, and it wasn't perfect. Everything we do isn't perfect.

01:31:20.060 The way we started the understanding and moving forward to be able to help those ranchers was

01:31:25.260 just through pet food. So we were able to test a lot of these theories, create, it wasn't a lot,

01:31:33.060 but like a super tiny margin for me and Mike to operate and get to understand what that looked

01:31:37.820 like. And then it was only after six to eight months of keeping data every single night on,

01:31:44.460 like I was huge on this, like keeping data every single night on proficiency rates and miles and

01:31:49.680 occurrences. Like it wasn't until I could justify the requirements for the USDA that I called the

01:31:56.580 USDA back and said, I want you guys to come view our process. And if it's approved, I will get the

01:32:01.520 USDA slaughter facility. They came out, they were blown away by our process. So a combination of

01:32:07.900 flurry equipment to view the animal. And again, this is happening all at night.

01:32:12.080 Yeah. Let's actually explain to people what this is. And at the outset of this podcast,

01:32:16.060 in the introduction, I explained that we're going to get a little bit graphic here. And I think

01:32:20.460 this would be one of those moments in time where if this is a subject matter that's very sensitive,

01:32:25.500 please hit a little bit of forward on the podcast. But unfortunately, if you choose to eat meat,

01:32:31.120 which most of us do, I think you need to be familiar with what that entails. I always feel

01:32:36.100 that it's wrong to consume meat without having some sense of what's involved. And if you go to a

01:32:41.500 grocery store and you buy a piece of steak, you can't just assume that piece of steak just showed

01:32:46.100 up there without a lot of work. And I think when you contrast how that piece of steak showed up

01:32:51.720 there or how that chicken breast showed up there with the work that you guys are doing in the field,

01:32:56.640 you get a real sense of what the difference is and why a USDA inspector can show up and say,

01:33:03.620 which I know he has said, I've never seen anything like this ever in the history of the USDA.

01:33:11.760 So what was your strategy? How is it that you can most humanely hunt an animal?

01:33:17.940 We have to follow a certain set of rules. So the inspection portion of what we do in the field

01:33:27.260 is called an anti-mortem inspection. And in that inspection process, the inspector has to be able

01:33:33.280 to view that that animal is healthy. It has to be able to view that it's both like at rest and in

01:33:40.740 motion. And typically that is done in a corral. So if you think about what a typical bro like brick 0.82

01:33:47.880 and mortar looks like, there are a whole bunch of cows that get trailered in from somewhere else.

01:33:52.340 They're sitting in a corral system and the inspector is able to go outside, look at these

01:33:56.900 animals very closely, view them, determine that they're safe for human consumption, they're healthy.

01:34:03.140 And then that animal, unfortunately, like this is kind of the graphic part is that animal goes into

01:34:08.720 a shoot system, goes into a press, or sometimes it's hung up live. And then that animal is rendered

01:34:16.380 immediately unconscious with a stun or a bolt gun. And that looks like in most cases, and I know people

01:34:22.380 are trying to get better at this, but that looks like in most cases, an animal that is stressed and

01:34:27.980 unhealthy to be like, it's in this press and it's moving around. And an employee has to then render that

01:34:32.860 animal immediately unconscious. We had to follow those rules. Our process for that same

01:34:39.940 anti-mortem inspection is we don't pen our animals. We don't bait our animals. Over a period of years,

01:34:46.760 we knew if we cover enough miles, we'll see enough deer and have enough opportunities to harvest them.

01:34:53.300 So translation, the animals you harvest are a hundred percent in their natural environment.

01:35:00.280 They're not in a high fence area, let alone a pen. They're not being baited. You're not leaving food

01:35:07.740 to lure them in. They're literally just out in the evening roaming about. Yes. And I think this is

01:35:15.620 probably one of the favorite parts about what we do is, and it's similar to hunting, we're driving

01:35:22.320 around looking for animals. And if we come over a hill and this group of animals is 50 yards away

01:35:29.000 and we scare them, they hear the bike or they hear whatever else, they'll run away. That animal is

01:35:36.100 already in a stressed state and it runs away and we're not able to harvest it. But if we come over

01:35:41.740 that same hill two nights later and an animal is out at 200 yards and they don't hear us or they're not

01:35:47.580 stressed and they stand there, that's the indicator for us that we're able to start the

01:35:55.260 anti-mortem process. And what that looks like is that same floor binocular unit that can pick up

01:36:00.780 a deer at six miles. We use that for inspection with extraordinary detail. Like we can see

01:36:07.820 abscesses. We can see old scarring. We can tell if they're pregnant. Like the level of detail is 0.95

01:36:15.140 actually better than an inspector standing, looking at an animal in a corral to determine

01:36:19.520 whether or not it's healthy. So the inspector is staring at this screen, all of the lights are off

01:36:24.220 and he says, yep, all of these are healthy. You can, guys can go ahead. So there's a pause there.

01:36:30.660 Again, that animal isn't stressed. So it's not going anywhere. And then what we learned over years

01:36:36.080 and years is we then have to render that animal immediately unconscious, which is shoot it in the head. 0.73

01:36:41.240 But that animal is in a zero stress situation and dies immediately, which is important to

01:36:49.600 distinguish from archery. In archery, you think about like you've, you've taken me on some amazing

01:36:56.460 hunts where I've had what for archery would be considered a perfect shot where you go lung,

01:37:01.060 heart, lung, but that animal doesn't die immediately. It takes 10 seconds to die.

01:37:06.620 And if you're anything but perfect in archery, if you hit say one lung, but not the other lung or not

01:37:13.900 the heart in the lung, I mean, it could be much longer, but at least I've never had an experience

01:37:19.440 in archery where an animal died in less than a millisecond. It's always a few seconds, even with

01:37:25.780 perfection. And that's, I think in part because of the nature of archery. The type of death that an

01:37:32.240 animal suffers from an arrow is that of hemorrhagic shock. So they die from blood loss. Now there's

01:37:40.660 exceptions to that rule. You can die from a tamponade, but it's still some form of hemorrhagic

01:37:44.780 shock. But this is different from the wound that you inflict on the animal, because when you're

01:37:50.940 putting a high power ballistic, which is a bullet into the head, that's a central nervous system death.

01:37:57.040 So that animal is dying immediately because the brain swells. So that's a brain death versus a

01:38:03.340 cardiopulmonary death. And that's why it's an immediate and instantaneous death. And by definition,

01:38:09.680 there is simply no more humane way to die. Because as you point out, that animal has absolutely no

01:38:16.940 knowledge that that is happening. And the moment it happens, they cease to have awareness of anything.

01:38:22.440 Yeah. So not only are they not aware, and great explanation, but the animals that are with them

01:38:30.280 in a herd, they don't even jolt. They literally just drop straight down. And in almost every case,

01:38:37.620 the animals that are with them won't even move. That's the part when you first told me, Jake,

01:38:42.180 I couldn't imagine. Because I assumed you came up on a herd of six animals. You would shoot one,

01:38:48.240 it would die, the others would scatter. That was it for the night with that group. 1.00

01:38:52.440 You would have to then drive for another 30 minutes to find another group. But I was amazed

01:38:58.000 to learn that no, you could probably shoot all of them because A, it's so dark, they don't see 0.99

01:39:04.740 anything. And two, there's no movement by the animal other than just falling to the ground. And 0.91

01:39:10.660 that must be a common enough sound to the other deer that it's not, it doesn't alert them or frighten

01:39:15.940 them. Yeah. So every situation is a little bit different and it's highly dependent on moon phase and

01:39:21.660 the amount of illumination and what they can see. More importantly, they feel safer,

01:39:28.220 most often not running. I mean, they don't have perfect night vision. It's pretty phenomenal,

01:39:32.420 but they'll feel safer most often staying there. So in most instances in a herd of 10,

01:39:38.460 we'll typically harvest three or four of those animals. So that inspector has viewed that

01:39:43.380 that's so processed. The flur equipment is so good that the friction from the bullet passing through

01:39:50.760 the air creates a tracer. So the inspector is actually able to see the bullet path and it hitting

01:39:58.620 the head. And one thing to be clear on here is we're not perfect, but we've trained to be imperfect

01:40:06.380 so we don't injure any animals. And so what that means is typically where the perfect target would

01:40:13.900 be central to that brain cap system. We train ourselves to miss 30% of the time. A perfect

01:40:24.000 evening of shooting is at 70% efficiency. But the miss is always high.

01:40:29.400 The miss is always high and there's never any consequence of that. And that was hard for us to

01:40:35.360 learn and develop the skillset that a perfect miss was still perfect. Because it's an odd feeling to be

01:40:43.300 like, oh, I missed. And then there's so much pressure that surrounds shooting each evening.

01:40:49.480 We had to train ourselves to understand that imperfection was actually the best way to go

01:40:54.300 about harvesting this animal. And in that case, that imperfection is what allows us to meet

01:41:01.560 the proficiency level of a brick and mortar for the rendering process.

01:41:07.580 Well, that's actually what I was going to ask you is, isn't your level of proficiency

01:41:10.420 better than any brick and mortar? Because from a humane perspective, I think you said in the entire

01:41:16.620 time you've done this operation, there has only been one bullet that hit the animal, but didn't hit it

01:41:22.520 in the skull. And it was a shot to the neck, which still resulted in an immediate death. So for all

01:41:28.200 intents and purposes, it was the exact same, but it was off the target. Is that correct still?

01:41:33.040 Yep. We've only ever been written up again, like once for that infraction. And part of that is also,

01:41:43.080 so we train for those imperfections, but we also train for the scenario. So I think me and you have

01:41:46.940 talked about this, like Mondays when we're making the conversion from being awake to like working

01:41:54.600 nights, my expectation for the boys is to shoot at 50%. And what that does is it increases their margin

01:42:02.380 of error for something like bad not to happen. Cause we now know through poor sleep, it absolutely

01:42:09.500 affects our nervous system and our reaction time. I didn't completely understand that until you did that

01:42:16.600 podcast with, with Matthew Walker, which was so cool. So a brick and mortar facility is asked to

01:42:24.700 operate at a 95% efficiency. We are operating right now at a 99.9999999. Well, functionally you're

01:42:33.760 operating at a 100% efficiency. And to think that a 95% efficiency is all that's being asked. That means

01:42:40.800 one out of 20 animals is not dying in a humane way. Isn't that what that means?

01:42:47.800 Or requires like a, they may be unconscious, but they may require an immediate. And I think that's

01:42:52.360 really different. I mean, I won't speak about anybody else's operation. I'm sure there are,

01:42:56.600 I think, I'm sure everybody would aim to be perfect in those scenarios. But anecdotally,

01:43:02.900 I've actually had the opportunity to work in a brick and mortar. An animal that comes into a pen

01:43:08.240 stressed out and is moving around, even at point blank range is significantly harder than an animal

01:43:15.900 that is at rest and just like unaware and staring. And part of that's also is we have such a,

01:43:24.200 the shooter has, has to have such an intimate understanding of axis steer behavior. Like

01:43:29.320 a right ear starts to dip and you know, like the head is going to go, like a nose starts to go up and

01:43:34.900 you know, it's going to start nosing. Like there is, there are half millisecond instances that you

01:43:39.520 have to understand. This isn't something where I could bring in a military sniper and you can

01:43:46.140 operate at this efficiency. I need a military sniper plus an axis steer expert in order to take those

01:43:53.000 shots. And that's why for so long that was Mike and me. And now you've met Kalena, like it requires a

01:43:58.840 very specific skill set. What's the typical range? You're 100 to 400 or 500? Yeah. A hundred to now

01:44:07.940 it's about 200 max. Oh, so which is very close with the, you're using a 308? 308. Yeah. And it's not

01:44:15.700 because we're not effective past that range. We're only given a three hour window to harvest at night.

01:44:21.700 What we've learned in collecting data is we carry almost every single one of these deer on our backs.

01:44:28.180 And it's an awesome way for the guys to connect with each animal as we're doing the process.

01:44:34.360 But there's also, it's also very technical in that we don't want any bruising. We don't want to,

01:44:38.340 we go to all of this effort. Like we don't want to like affect carcass quality after all of that work.

01:44:44.000 And so you're carrying, I mean, like that last buck that you shot, you saw me do it that process.

01:44:50.460 You're carrying a 200 pound animal on your back over extremely varying terrain.

01:44:56.060 And the record should show that's why you had to carry my buck because I couldn't carry this 200

01:45:02.340 pound buck for that first part of the terrain. It just speaks to how pathetic I am. 0.98

01:45:07.760 No, no, no. But I mean, we've developed the perfect way to pick up a deer. Like it took us 0.98

01:45:12.880 hundreds, if not thousands of animals to figure that out. So back to my point of range at 200 yards

01:45:21.120 with a 200 pound animal, you're getting back to the bike or truck exhausted. And so what we learned was

01:45:29.420 we could actually harvest more deer in a given night, skipping the animals that we're seeing

01:45:35.380 out past 200 yards, assuming, and we knew this through data collected, we are going to see more

01:45:40.380 animals at closer yardage. So we have like all of these parameters in place, these harvesting systems

01:45:47.020 in place that allow us to be in a situation where in starting an evening, we really don't know where

01:45:52.720 any animals are. Like we talked about, we're not baiting them. And we have this very stringent

01:45:57.120 process with the USDA. We've had to collect crazy amounts of data to be able to do so efficiently

01:46:03.620 on a nightly basis. And even then it'll vary.

01:46:05.900 The USDA just continues to be amazed by your process because you're basically self-imposing

01:46:11.100 things that no one else really would think to do. And I think that just continues to amaze me.

01:46:17.300 I guess I want to shift gears for a moment and just now talk a little bit about bringing it back

01:46:21.080 to sort of my interest in this type of meat, which was, I'm still relatively new to hunting,

01:46:27.320 but as you know, I've taken a real keen interest in the harvesting part of it. I'm very fascinated

01:46:32.200 by the anatomy and the differences in the meat. And there's something that's very different about

01:46:37.880 access, dear. And in some ways it sort of spoils you with respect to other types of meat. It seems

01:46:45.980 infinitely cleaner, healthier. The animal itself seems to be, you know, very clean. There seems to

01:46:54.380 be something about its meat that's unique. Now, as I've gotten to learn over time, a big part of that

01:46:59.840 has to do with the intramuscular fat content. You know, most people who have tried venison say,

01:47:05.400 oh, you know, it's okay, but it's a little bit gamey, certainly black tail more than white tail.

01:47:10.600 And, but axis deer sort of exists in its own camp, which is not particularly gamey at all.

01:47:15.640 And I suspect this, you know, it's basically 0.4% intramuscular fat. I mean, it's a very unique

01:47:22.520 animal in that regard. How much have you been able to learn about their eating habits and how that

01:47:28.760 contributes to what you're seeing in terms of the meat quality beyond what you just said? So everything

01:47:36.520 you just said speaks to why they don't have these high levels of cortisol and lactate at harvest,

01:47:42.680 which definitely contribute to the, some of the taste that you can have in wild animal. You've

01:47:47.820 basically eliminated the lactate cortisol response completely, but now we're talking about something

01:47:53.220 that's much more long-term, plays a much longer-term role in the development of the muscle.

01:47:58.480 Yeah. And to your point there, that conversion of glycogen stores as that animal goes through

01:48:04.540 rigor mortis and what, and you can walk me through this, but what I assume is like that muscle trying

01:48:10.260 to continue to do something. So pulling on ATP and that ATP, a function of that process being lactate,

01:48:16.300 that lactate is so important as that, that rigor mortis process gradually takes place over 16 to 24

01:48:24.680 hours. And the pH level of that meat, the pH level of that meat in like, it completely changes color

01:48:31.280 and texture in animals that are stressed and don't have that gradual process to go through.

01:48:39.300 Didn't you guys have a camera on, on a deer one?

01:48:43.020 Yeah. So there's so many, I'm just trying to figure out where to start.

01:48:46.300 So we've done two, what are called satellite telemetry video collars. The company was

01:48:51.720 low techs. It was the first, some of the first like iridium satellite collars. And what that allowed

01:48:56.480 us to do was a understand home range and how often they're drinking and when, and when are they resting.

01:49:02.760 But there was a tiny little camera that sat right under the bottom of the collar. And we got in 10

01:49:09.380 second increments, 48 hours of footage of what they were eating. And what was astonishing

01:49:16.140 and we already knew this based on studies in India, they are primarily grass eaters,

01:49:21.860 which is not the case for most deer species, which are primarily browsers.

01:49:27.520 Browsers being they're looking for legumes and shrubs and trees that they're constantly pulling

01:49:33.220 on different plant species. Axis deer are primarily grass eaters. And I think when you talk about what

01:49:38.820 little intramuscular fat they do have, it's interesting to see, and we're only learning this now,

01:49:43.540 like there's high omega threes in there because they're eating so much leafy greens. And I think

01:49:50.700 that's attributed to them primarily being grass eaters, but what's, what's crazy. And we've seen

01:49:56.440 this via the collar and we've seen this anecdotally is how intelligent, it's awesome. I never get to have

01:50:03.820 these conversations. It's how intelligent of an eater they are. And I think that comes down to

01:50:09.560 these crazy acute senses. So for example, we've seen me and you together have seen after walking

01:50:18.020 three miles down a hill with dew all over our boots, we walk through an axis deer trail,

01:50:25.760 which for all intents and purposes, there should be no scent on our boot. Our boots are soaked

01:50:29.780 and I'm wearing boots and you're wearing socks. That's another story. And an animal, not even in

01:50:37.920 interacting with that specific spot, but five yards away, that deer is picking up the scent

01:50:44.500 from that boot mark, which was three hours earlier. And we see this in like the both the satellites.

01:50:52.840 They are so picky in what they're eating and not even between different plant species,

01:50:59.340 but within the same species. So they're going up to one of their favorite little legumes is called

01:51:05.900 glycine. They're going up to a patch of glycine and they have unlimited feed. So they're not eating

01:51:10.940 like voraciously like a cow or something. They're going up to a particular like group of glycine and

01:51:16.700 they're saying like, they're smelling, smelling, smelling, saying, oh, I'm going to eat this small patch

01:51:21.020 right here. And I think what we don't understand is an animal that is that intelligent in what it

01:51:29.600 eats, how that impacts its nutritional value. And we're starting to kind of see that with some of

01:51:36.180 the results we're seeing. But I think that plays into how extraordinarily healthy they are. The vast

01:51:43.780 majority of other animals look at like a, you've seen a pig now in a field or it seems like some goat,

01:51:50.300 a pig plowing through a field, it's not stopping to plow in particular areas. It's getting started

01:51:57.380 and it's just going to bulldoze its way through the entire thing. This was a really transformational

01:52:01.780 thing for me. So I think I've talked about this on the podcast with John Dudley once, but

01:52:06.140 I took up archery because I wanted to do archery. That was all I wanted to do. Like I just wanted to

01:52:12.000 shoot a bow. And it struck me as the type of thing that you could spend a lifetime never coming close

01:52:20.300 every itch for my obsession. It was only two years after I took up archery and all I was doing was

01:52:27.380 plowing target after target, after target, after target that I got invited on a hunting trip, which

01:52:32.620 I'd been invited many times prior to and was like, why would I go waste four days to go and take two

01:52:37.660 shots when I can take 150 shots a day in my backyard? Didn't seem like a good idea, but I got talked into

01:52:43.360 it and JR, as you know, close friend of mine was like, no, no, this would be good for you. So let's

01:52:47.720 do it. So we go and we do this thing. And as you know, it just sort of changed everything for me in

01:52:52.340 many ways, but among them is it really changed how I thought about food because I got to see on that

01:52:59.660 one first hunting trip, you know, I'm shooting pigs, goats, sheep, axis deer. I mean, I got to see

01:53:07.940 everything from the lowest to the highest and eat it all and realize it's hard to be healthier than

01:53:16.100 the animal you're eating. And it's hard for the animal to be healthier than what it's eating. Like

01:53:20.560 this is not an accidental process and it's never been the same since. And I was talking about this

01:53:27.020 with my wife the other day. My appetite for store-bought meat has never been the same since

01:53:32.860 that trip. And I think that's true for a lot of people that experience really good wild game,

01:53:39.780 be it axis deer or elk, which would be for me personally, my two favorite. I think axis deer

01:53:44.760 and elk live in a different category from every other type of wild game, but even chickens. We had

01:53:51.980 chickens back in San Diego. They couldn't have lived a better existence. The amount of space that they had,

01:53:58.220 the amount of care we took of them, they're eating some organic, ridiculously expensive overpriced feed

01:54:04.800 plus our leftover fruits and vegetables. Like they're living large. They're making us these

01:54:09.480 beautiful eggs. I had zero desire to eat one of them because they lived in filth. I mean, all they

01:54:14.820 did was eat their poop all day, right? It just didn't appeal to me. Even going to the store and

01:54:19.740 having a steak, it's like, it's not that I don't eat those things anymore, but my appetite for the 32

01:54:25.000 ounce ribeye has pivoted a little more towards the eight ounce filet. Whereas if I can eat elk and if

01:54:31.880 I can eat axis deer, that to me is far better. And I think part of it is the taste acquires once you

01:54:39.040 kind of start to understand what's going into it. But I also think a part of it is just, you can't

01:54:44.840 disconnect from what the process was like to produce that food that winds up on your table.

01:54:50.460 And I just realized, even if I'm buying the most organic grass fed, beautiful steak,

01:54:58.520 it didn't have the same stress-free existence that that axis deer had or that elk had. But again,

01:55:04.420 with elk, it's a different situation. You have to go out and hunt it yourself. You don't have the

01:55:07.660 luxury of doing the USDA certification. So did you experience that or was that, is that so far in your

01:55:14.180 rear view mirror that what I'm saying doesn't make sense? Definitely. And anecdotally,

01:55:18.560 I think it was my third year of college. And I kind of, I think I mentioned this before,

01:55:24.000 when I stopped pouring in Hawaii, it's axis deer for most folks is just teriyaki. So like 0.99

01:55:31.560 you pour a whole bunch of sugar and you pour a whole bunch of shoyu. When I stopped doing that

01:55:36.340 and I started eating it like just straight steaks every night. And it admittedly, it was because I

01:55:43.420 ran out of money. You couldn't afford the teriyaki sauce. No, I couldn't afford the cafeteria anymore.

01:55:51.480 So I became a dorm advisor to try and like, anyway, I ran out of money and at a 60 bucks a

01:55:59.100 pop for the plane flight and being able to bring back a hundred pounds of meat, it was like a no

01:56:04.320 brainer. So by no means was it on purpose, but when I started eating it the right way,

01:56:09.420 I started noticing. And I think at the age of what would have been like 20, I started getting

01:56:15.240 stronger and I was really challenging my body as a function of like my vertical. And like,

01:56:21.200 I realized as a small player, like I needed to start taking some of that seriously. If I was

01:56:24.740 going to like take the next step. By the way, what is the vertical of a six foot tall national

01:56:29.440 level volleyball player? At its peak, it was 43 inches. I was going to say, is it possible it

01:56:34.420 was over 40 inches? Holy cow. My vertical is 12 inches, I think. Yeah. It's not the case by any

01:56:40.640 means anymore, but I can, I think fondly look back at pictures when I was playing in the Netherlands,

01:56:46.500 Netherlands already being the tallest people on the planet. I had two players beside me that were

01:56:51.960 six, 11 and seven feet and have these really cool pictures of blocking. So you're jumping up and

01:56:57.560 putting your hands over the net and our hands are at the same height and our heads kind of match.

01:57:02.620 And then our bodies start changing proportion and my feet are at like their mid thigh and hip level.

01:57:09.840 And it's just like these comical. Anyway, I started to notice I was recovering better. And at that point,

01:57:17.000 and it almost happened simultaneously. I think I've told you about this. We had the opportunity to train

01:57:22.140 with the Olympic sprinting team. And I don't recommend this for anybody, but they did this workout

01:57:28.660 called gravity drops. And so they were incorporating gravity into all of their workouts where we would

01:57:36.400 be squatting and you would fall to 90 degrees and you'd try and stand up as quickly as possible.

01:57:43.260 And never in my life have I felt like every day I was sore. And at that point, it was hard to make

01:57:50.220 like these physical gains. And every day I was sore. And then I, like, I remember making this transition to,

01:57:56.140 I just needed more food. Like I could feel it. And I started eating the right way. And then I started

01:58:01.440 noticing. I got so strong and I went from 190 pounds to 220 and it was all muscle. It was a function

01:58:10.380 of this workout. And I think the use of this ingredient. Well, that's interesting because

01:58:15.440 very recently, like meaning in the last four or five months, you sent me the nutritional information

01:58:23.420 from the company that has been looking at the bone broth. Because one of the things that you've

01:58:29.300 done with this company that I think is so amazing is you've taken this notion of nose to tail to a

01:58:34.900 whole new level, right? So it's like, okay, there's a 200 pound axis deer that yields what? How many

01:58:41.600 pounds of meat for the human? I mean, the bucks are on the big side. A typical axis deer is about 60

01:58:46.720 pounds whole carcass and will yield about 50 pounds for a typical human. But there's also hides and hooves

01:58:55.200 and awful and all kinds of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you've got the pet food, you've got the dog chews.

01:59:00.600 And then I remember saying like, where's the bone broth? And then all of a sudden, you know, you start

01:59:07.360 making this bone broth. And what did they say? How did they evaluate that bone broth? Which by the way,

01:59:11.660 we can't stop, I can't stop drinking it. Yeah, it's amazing. So we have to send all things into

01:59:18.480 the USDA labs for testing. And they evaluate that. And then they'll, they'll put that on your

01:59:24.660 nutritional panel. And we sent in the first batch of bones. And they called us. And they didn't call

01:59:32.860 it outright. They had thought we adulterated the bones. They had thought we had done something

01:59:38.920 because they tested so high in protein per ounce. And it was statistically like an anomaly. And so

01:59:47.740 we didn't know what was going on. So we sent them, I think we sent them a second batch or they retested

01:59:51.820 it. And in the end, it tested 33% higher in protein per ounce than the best regenerative beef bones on the

02:00:04.000 market. And I say regenerative because there is something to a regenerative agricultural process

02:00:10.820 with cattle where there's additional soil health. And I believe that soil health translates into your

02:00:15.620 food. But that animal is still given the grass it's going to eat. It doesn't have a choice. So we got the

02:00:25.300 results back. And we didn't have an explanation for it. And I mean, that's a statistical anomaly. I think

02:00:32.200 they're like between what we'd call like conventional beef and regenerative beef is about 3%. Usually

02:00:37.080 they'll see a difference, but 33% is. And so essentially at like, you know, 25 grams of protein

02:00:46.400 per, I think it's a hundred ounces or something. No, no, no. I think it's less volume. Yeah. Much less

02:00:53.280 volume than that. 16 ounces or something. 16 ounces. Yeah. Yeah. You're in protein powder category

02:00:59.960 as a function of protein per calorie. So we're, I think we're just, and I'm not a nutritionist.

02:01:06.000 Like I'm not a biologist. I only know what I've seen over like thousands and thousands of hours of

02:01:12.880 like interacting with this animal coming back to the previous conversation is I think their level

02:01:18.180 of intelligence in what they eat is translating to their nutritional value. And we're just starting to

02:01:24.780 see that like me and you were emailing back the other day. Like I don't even know where to start

02:01:29.980 to better understand their fatty acid levels and how I know there's important ratios of like omega

02:01:36.700 sixes to omega threes. I don't know enough about it, but I are already seeing indicators that we might

02:01:43.380 have something special there as well. And why when we're eating it, I don't feel like I need to go get

02:01:51.380 like a slab of salmon, even though like I'll have one every once in a while. Like I feel like I'm

02:01:55.160 getting a complete nutritional profile from that animal and we're eating it. And my wife, my wife

02:02:01.000 laughs. She calls us Wiegans now. So if it's not wild and it's not vegetables, we're not eating it.

02:02:08.980 And so. That's actually funny because I'll tell you one of the great joys I have is introducing people

02:02:15.460 to this and people fit into different categories, right? So you've got, you know, just your friends who are

02:02:20.440 over for dinner and they'll eat anything and whatever. And then that's great. And in that

02:02:24.000 category, it's usually, Hey, we're having venison. And they're like, Oh, uh, you know, I don't know.

02:02:29.320 I don't love that. It's a little gamey. And I'm like, you know, that's cool. Just tell me what you

02:02:32.820 think. And then they're always like, no, that's totally different than anything I've ever had.

02:02:36.960 But truthfully, one of the more enjoyable experiences that I had was during our quarantine

02:02:42.260 when our nanny was staying with us. This is at the early part of the quarantine when for two months,

02:02:47.280 we all just sort of hunkered down and our nanny is a vegan. So, you know, luckily we've got an

02:02:53.060 infinite supply of vegetables and non animal matter and stuff like that. But we would, you know, sort

02:02:57.920 of, she'd have her dinner, we'd have ours. And we were at the time I had 500 pounds of access deer 0.70

02:03:02.700 in our freezer. So we were basically eating this every single day because we had just come back

02:03:07.400 from that huge trip, like in December. But eventually she was like, you know, she wanted to try it

02:03:13.360 because we would talk about it over dinner. You know, we would have this type of a discussion.

02:03:17.340 And I think for totally understandable reasons, her opposition to eating meat was, look, she had

02:03:22.860 some health concerns, but she also had, you know, great concerns over how the animals are treated.

02:03:27.800 And so, you know, night after night, she's sort of asking questions about this and asking questions

02:03:31.380 about this. And then she's like, can I try some of course? And, you know, I mean, needless to say,

02:03:36.220 she loved it. She had these two awesome dogs that stayed with us. And it was like, hands down,

02:03:42.060 like it was crack to the dogs. So I became like the dog's best friends because I'm giving them like

02:03:47.280 venison treats every night. But to me, that was like, it was a very special experience, right?

02:03:52.500 It was like, look, I respect whatever choice a person makes with respect to what they want to

02:03:56.800 eat and don't want to eat and what the reasons are. But it's also important to understand not all

02:04:00.820 meat is created equal. And I think this is just sort of an example of that.

02:04:04.520 I think we, we share that experience in, I had seen that in the past, like personally

02:04:10.420 and people, and it did, it really took them like listening and understanding. And I think

02:04:15.800 they recognize the crazy lengths we go to, to make the process technically humane, but

02:04:22.220 like we love these animals. The relationship with them started in this place where there was

02:04:28.620 nothing but respect for them. We didn't understand the negative portions of that relationship to

02:04:34.260 our ecosystems and ecology. And, and that's still very much the case for me. It's a continual drive

02:04:39.800 to like, how do we better manage this animal for it's a net positive. But now with Maui Nui,

02:04:44.640 we're seeing these testimonials coming in. And most of, most times it's like them writing to us

02:04:50.720 individually, like via the website, or I get a phone call and they're just like, it's been 20 years.

02:04:56.160 And I decided to have meat after watching your video or after hearing you like talk here. And I mean,

02:05:04.200 that's not to my credit. Like I've had amazing people help us along the way. And they'll mention

02:05:08.880 like, Oh, I watched Cowspiracy. Something along the way told them it was no longer okay to eat meat.

02:05:15.000 And it's been such an amazing experience for them to see our process. And I think the intent in what

02:05:21.660 we're trying to do and be like, wait, this is an opportunity to eat meat again. And I completely

02:05:28.400 respect everybody's body is different. And you know this better than anybody. And maybe being a vegan

02:05:33.040 works in most instances. But I think for the vast majority of the people, it's important they get

02:05:39.400 this protein, right? And again, you would know better than me. But it's been such an awesome

02:05:44.780 experience to have somebody come to you with that level of trust. And be like, I'm going to introduce

02:05:50.880 this into my life again after 20 years. And you'd be like, thank you so much. Like, we're so glad we can

02:05:58.580 do that for you and help bring that into your home. And that's the big part of this is our mission is to

02:06:05.020 balance populations. Our mission isn't to get rid of these animals. Like we find them.

02:06:08.940 It's an incredible resource for our communities when balanced. And the only way we do that is

02:06:14.700 people need to eat them. So what does balance look like, Jake? Lanai is in balance at about 20,000

02:06:20.260 animals. Molokai, you said it's about 60,000. It's out of balance right now, it seems. That seems to

02:06:27.320 be past capacity. Because my recollection from talking with you and Mikey and others is there's

02:06:34.980 basically axis deer dying on the side of the roads in Molokai. So it's past that capacity.

02:06:41.740 And then Maui, I think you said was 60 on the way to 210. Was that right?

02:06:47.540 Yep.

02:06:48.100 What does sustainability look like?

02:06:50.840 So it's a super nuanced subject. Because we don't have the capacity to manage deer on all lands.

02:06:59.880 So like we talked about, it's illegal for us to operate on public land. And honestly, I support

02:07:05.200 that. We don't ever want to affect resource availability for a subsistence hunter. And

02:07:12.340 anecdotally, we see on public lands on Maui, it's pretty hard to find a deer. I think there's a

02:07:19.600 scenario where subsistence hunters play a huge role in what balance look like. But we also don't

02:07:27.120 dictate balance on a private landowner's property either. They own that animal. What we're able to

02:07:33.900 do is say, here's how many animals you have. Look, we understand what they're doing as a liability,

02:07:42.260 as a function of dry feed or watersheds or fencing or like our roadways. Oh, what a mess.

02:07:48.660 We say, this is how many animals you have. How many do you want? And then they say to us,

02:07:54.900 well, let's try and bring this from 6,000 to 2,000 and see what it looks like. And because we're able

02:08:01.860 to manage them with such precision via these aerial surveys, we're able to toggle that balance based on

02:08:10.100 like we're going through a pronounced drought right now. We're bringing down numbers in the

02:08:13.940 areas we're working in. But one of my favorite things we talk about, apart from this vegan

02:08:20.100 conversation, one of my absolute favorite things is we walk into a meeting with a rancher that is

02:08:27.820 calling an animal spotted rat and it only presents liability to them, right? Like, of course, their

02:08:33.100 cowboys enjoy harvesting. Like there's, there's of course value in, in them as a, as something being

02:08:39.760 able to hunt. By the time we leave that room, that animal has value because our harvesting process,

02:08:47.740 we pay, it's not a lot, but we pay them a small amount per pound for that animal so that they find

02:08:54.540 value in that animal. And we didn't have to do that. In other words, it's more valuable for them

02:09:00.540 to let you harvest it humanely than for them to just shoot it and leave it sitting there.

02:09:06.260 Exactly. So in varying this balance each year with rainfall and ingress and all of the different

02:09:12.700 things that happen at balance, the rancher is happy because more importantly, he has optimal soil

02:09:19.100 health and no runoff and he's not losing feed, but he's also making like, he's seeing a small amount

02:09:24.920 of additional value from this animal. And that combination, when we talk about like what balance

02:09:33.100 looks like on a large scale, we have several ranchers that are saying like, come help us.

02:09:39.360 We're not there yet. We need to grow. So a, we need to like grow our harvesting capacity. And we have

02:09:45.240 the system to do that now, but B, we need more people to eat these animals with us and bring them 0.76

02:09:50.680 into their homes. And in, in that scenario, we'll be able to achieve balance by both growing and then

02:09:57.060 working with all these private landowners and each one, that's the best part. Each one's going to make

02:10:01.360 their own choice. That's not up to me to decide what balance looks like for that family or individual

02:10:07.960 or board or whatever it is. That's up to the private landowner. What we do know is if we're

02:10:14.700 able to grow large enough and we are able to operate on most of the private lands, between all of them,

02:10:20.560 we can find a population level that is also best suited for our community because

02:10:26.940 Molokai is a great example. I mean, Maui as well right now too, but sun goes down. Everybody on

02:10:33.520 that place is doing 10 miles an hour. There are so many deer on the road. The risk to like hitting a

02:10:39.100 deer is like at those densities we discussed is profound. And on Maui, you can do 55, 65 miles an

02:10:45.940 hour. So as a function of like our watershed health and sediment, like the net present value of this

02:10:52.740 species that balance makes sense. It doesn't make sense to eradicate them. We talked about

02:10:58.200 food security. I understand this is like a hard conversation too, because we're also the endangered

02:11:04.000 species capital of the world. So there's a very real conversation. If I was a conservationist, I would

02:11:09.300 say, get rid of all of these invasive species and let's work to bring back or rehabilitate the

02:11:15.240 endangered species in these same spaces. Is it even technically feasible, Jake, if the Hawaiian 0.93

02:11:19.940 government decided tomorrow, we don't want a single access deer here by 2030, could that be done

02:11:25.860 technically? No way. They're too smart. I mean, we were able to accomplish that because they were in

02:11:31.400 such low numbers on the big island. I don't believe there's a way to do that. So there's no choice but

02:11:38.260 to find balance. And balance looks like I support the idea that there shouldn't be deer in our

02:11:45.260 watersheds. There's nothing more value as an isolated landmass and a community trying to be

02:11:51.400 self-suspicion, especially through COVID. Like we've donated 50,000 pounds of venison, over 100,000

02:11:59.460 meals through COVID because food banks were empty. Like Hawaii's economy teeters on absolute disaster

02:12:07.240 because we're so dependent on tourism. And when COVID hit and we shut the door, the vast majority of

02:12:13.200 our community was in trouble. So there's this nuance between, yes, like there's ecosystems and

02:12:19.240 ecology we have to respect and every native species has a right to exist in its own place. But there's

02:12:23.920 also economics and food security. So it's finding a balance for where these animals should be in the

02:12:32.100 long run. And that's where we produce food. It's not in our mountain where we depend on water.

02:12:36.200 And that's just my opinion. But yeah, so the conversation of balance isn't just like what's

02:12:42.700 the deer density in this particular place. The conversation of balance is like, how do you

02:12:47.060 interact with all of these things across your communities and ecosystems and all of these other

02:12:51.380 things? And I think that story about the amount of food that was donated during COVID is kind of

02:12:57.360 another example of this. I think it's part of why Maui Nui has been in such high favor with local

02:13:05.900 people because that's a big step back for a business that's trying to grow to basically give

02:13:11.300 away an enormous chunk of its product. It's one thing if you're Nike and you're 50 years into your

02:13:18.880 existence and you're going to give away 5% of your shoes for free or something, this is totally

02:13:22.940 different. But at the same time, it was sort of a no brainer because it basically just meant,

02:13:27.780 look, we're going to delay the growth of the business by a year and a half, but we're doing

02:13:32.160 the same thing. And it still serves the same mission, which is you're feeding people and you're

02:13:36.460 managing a population. Yeah, you're right. There wasn't even like a choice. And two, everybody's

02:13:43.060 credit on the team because we need to grow at a profitable, healthy margin so we can scale and

02:13:49.760 achieve that mission of balance. But it was like an overnight, it was like an instant decision

02:13:55.120 because a hunter can't, in Hawaii, a hunter can't go harvest an animal and take it into the food bank

02:14:03.620 for donation. The food safety requirements are far too stringent. And so probably one of the things we

02:14:09.180 are most proud of is we had created this system and tool that in a time of need as a function of

02:14:16.400 food security, we could call on it instantly. Yeah, that's the point. Because if you didn't

02:14:21.100 have that USDA certification already set up, you wouldn't have been able to have, you could have

02:14:25.020 all the deer in the world, you couldn't do anything with them. Yeah. And that's not to say subsistence

02:14:30.260 hunters didn't rally to harvest more animals themselves and get them into the community. But doing so

02:14:37.640 in a, at a recreational or subsistence level versus a commercial level is like 50,000 pounds of food

02:14:46.500 in eight months is like, that's a lot of, that's a lot of meat. And that's not possible in, without

02:14:52.760 like systems for food safety and slaughtering and all the other things that go into it. So as we look

02:14:57.840 to our communities 20 years from now, and either weather instability or governmental, all of the

02:15:05.920 things that are happening in our world economy, especially like the conversation of domestic

02:15:12.400 production, having it at home in Hawaii, a resource we can always call on, it's important. And when we

02:15:21.220 look at the total value of access deer for our communities, that's important. And that all interacts

02:15:28.240 with this idea of balance. And again, there's no perfect answer one way or the other, but man,

02:15:33.840 were we happy rolling two full pallets of venison into the food bank with an empty freezer. We were

02:15:39.540 just like the boys, you've met the boys. Like you imagine the smile on like big Eddie's face,

02:15:46.060 who's been like a community member for 40 years and him being able to like have this impact at like a

02:15:52.740 time of need. It's, it's awesome. Like you feel amazing. Jake, it's been amazing for me to sort of

02:15:59.240 be a minuscule part of this journey alongside for a couple of years and getting to know you and

02:16:05.300 having you share this story has been great because I've never heard it in one piece. And there are

02:16:10.320 even pieces of this that I hadn't heard before. So I know folks are going to have their curiosity

02:16:15.020 piqued by this and, and maybe some belief systems challenged, but if you're not doing that, then

02:16:19.700 what are you doing? Yeah, absolutely. And, and I think you underestimate the impact you've had.

02:16:25.540 You know, it took us seven years to figure out a harvesting system, but being able to take that

02:16:31.780 next step in understanding how you move this into somebody's home and what e-commerce looks like and

02:16:37.580 all of these other things, like the resource you've helped us find, we would not be here without your

02:16:45.100 help and the rest of the group. And we can't thank you enough for that. And I mean, we're just excited

02:16:49.980 to see what the next couple of years look like and how we can move that mission forward and what

02:16:55.160 continued good we can do within our communities. And yeah, we can't thank you enough, but I really

02:16:59.440 appreciate it. Well, I need more bone broth because like my wife has pretty much consumed all the bone 1.00

02:17:04.420 broth you sent. She doesn't even let me have it anymore. It's sort of like her little secret drink.

02:17:09.520 Yeah. Well, we can, we can make that happen for sure. Thanks brother.

02:17:14.120 Thank you, Peter.

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02:19:55.060 Bye.

The Peter Attia Drive - April 05, 2021

#156 - Jake Muise： Humanely harvesting axis deer while alleviating its impact on Hawaii's vulnerable ecosystems

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