Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIh9BBb24SI
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That's crazy. I'm working on that. That's how you do it though. That you're gonna quit, huh? If you win a million quit, I would never. I would never. Okay, good. I'll give you a raise. Even if you win a million bucks. How about that? I'll take it. Head over to draftkings.com right now and enter the promo code roan to play free to become a millionaire. Could you imagine if you win a [ __ ] million dollars by going to draftkings.com right now using the promo code roan for free and you win a million bucks? draftkings.com. Bigger events, bigger winnings, bigger millionaires. Enter Rogan for free entry now at draftkings.com. That's draft dft tkings.com. If you don't know how to spell kings, [ __ ] off. Anyway, and last but not least, is that it? Ting. Oh, Ting. We're brought to you by Ting. Ting is the official provider, the official cell phone provider for this podcast. And uh I have a Ting phone. I have it right here. It's the Samsung Galaxy S5. And my bill just came in. This is uh the first month of the of official use. My bill was 18 bucks. That shit's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. The average bill is mine's below the average bill cuz I don't really call anybody. I just text. But the average bill is $21. $21 for a monthly bill. What TING is is a cell phone provider that uses a Sprint backbone. So, they rent time on Sprint, but then they do it entirely their way. No contracts, no early termination fees, no packages or bundling fees or any of that [ __ ] no overage fees, and you only pay for what you use instead of having like a fixed bill every month where it's like, you know, whatever you pay, you get a 100red minutes or 50 bucks or whatever the [ __ ] it is. Instead of doing that, it's not that cheap though, right? No, nobody's that cheap. whatever it is, instead of having 100 minutes, if you had it like that and you only used 80 minutes, they're not giving you your money back for that 20 minutes that you didn't use. But with Ting, you only pay for what you use. If you use your phone call once, I mean, if you use your phone once in a month, you're going to have the most ridiculously small bill ever. If you use it every day, it'll be slightly larger, but it'll definitely be
smaller than any other provider you're going to use it with. 98% of people would save money with TING. That's pretty crazy. And again, we're talking about the Sprint backbone. So, it's just like you have a SP a phone on Sprint. You get the exact same coverage, including uh 4G, you know, um and all they have all if you go to TING uh roan.tting.com, they have all the latest cell phones, including what I have, which is the uh Samsung Galaxy S5, which I like it a lot. It's pretty [ __ ] dope. And it's waterproof. It's water. They call it water resistant. I think that's legal ease. And it's because there's a little tab here on the bottom. And if you pop that tab, I guess water could get in there and you're [ __ ] But if you close that [ __ ] up, like it's not that hard to do. Then it's waterproof. Yeah, you can put it in the sink or something like that. Oh yeah, you can throw it in the pool. It's good for like a half an hour at the bottom of the pool. I'm not trying that, but but if you did, it also has a one of those thumb thumb print things. Press it here and you slide that [ __ ] up and it recognizes your thumb print. I like it. I love it. The screen's [ __ ] awesome. And finally, uh Apple came aboard and I'm sure Ting will be carrying the u the uh Apple phones. uh the new iPhones once they have them, once they get them in stock. But like for right now, you can get the Samsung uh you can get a bunch of different ones. You can even go old school if you want, if you're a cheap [ __ ] You can get the Samsung Galaxy S2 for 95 bucks. And uh I have one of those. I that was my first T phone. It's [ __ ] It's a good phone. It's not a bad phone at all. You can get an iPhone 4 if you're a cheap [ __ ] You can get that for 137 bucks. Or you can get an iPhone 5 for 250 bucks. Can't go wrong. And it's yours. You own it. That's it. There's no contracts. Meaning when you buy a phone with most providers, what you're doing is you're you're paying like if a phone like if you go to, you know, fill in the blank whatever major provider and you buy a phone that says the phone's 300 bucks, it's not really 300 bucks. It's probably six. And the other 300 bucks you have to pay over the course of your contract. So if you don't get cell phone service in your house and you're like, "This sucks. I want to
cancel and go with another brand." You can't do it because if you do cancel it, you owe them 300 bucks. It's kind of annoying and you don't think about it while you do it. You just think, "Oh, that's $300." But it's not. With Ting, they don't have any of that [ __ ] If you buy the phone, you have it. It's yours. If you want to cancel, you just cancel. That's it. Rogan. Go there. Save yourself 25 bucks off of any of their fantastic devices. All right, that's it. Tim Bernett from Solo Hunter is here. Why [ __ ] around, Jamie? Cue the music. Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan podcast by night all day. So, um, over the last couple years, I've, uh, really gotten into hunting. Uh, I went on my first hunting trip with Steve Reanella and, uh, started watching a lot of hunting TV shows. I've kind of always watched a lot of them, but your show really stood out. And this is a show uh, you guys on the outdoor channel. Outdoor channel. Outdoor channel. Outdoor channel. It's called um, Solo Hunter. And you go out there, you and uh, I've seen the ones with Remy Warren as well. and by yourself. Just bring cameras, go to these remote locations, hike in, set up the cameras, and you're using your own cameras. You're like setting up the shots while you're aiming. Like you're getting ready to shoot the animals and you're setting everything like you've got like crank little little handheld things here and GoPros and it's got to make it very difficult. It's annoying. It's a pain to not just get out there and and you know, hunting is difficult enough. Creeping up on animals, stalking, getting into position is difficult enough, but I would imagine that being your own cameraman makes it I mean, what's the 50 50% harder, 100% harder? Uh, you know, the hunting part of it is the same. You're still hunting. And actually, it makes me a better hunter because I find that I'm a lot more uh patient and a lot more relaxed about it and more deliberate in my hunting. So, it's not just like I got a rifle, like all I got to do is get within 400 yards. It's like, no, I got a rifle and I got a camera and I got this. So, I feel like I hunt better, but the actual success rate of killing and and getting it on film
and that kind of thing, it's it's a lot harder. Yeah. Is it like do would you say like you're like half as successful this way? No. I mean, no, I don't think it's affected my success rate on on actually harvesting an animal. But, it just makes it more difficult. Makes it more difficult to do. And it's it's it's it's uh it's a it's a hassle. It's not a hassle. I mean, this is what I do, but it's like it's hard. It makes it to where it's not just a hunt anymore. It's a hunt that I'm trying to document. And then now when you when you look at it and you're trying to actually produce something good that people are going to want to watch instead of instead of whatever, then you're putting more thought into producing it than you are the hunting part of it. And then it's like, well, crap, now I'm not a very good hunter because I'm a good produc. So, you have this constant dilemma. You can tell I'm already tore up about it, but it's like you have this constant back and forth between yourself. It's like, screw it. Today, I'm just going to hunt, man. I'm not going to touch a camera. And then halfway through the day, I'm like miserable cuz nothing's going on. I'm like, I don't even have anything to show for it. Well, it's stupid. Turn on the cameras, you'll have something to show for it. So, right. Do you um It's kind of It's a tricky way to to do a television show. And you do all the producing yourself. You do you do all the film editing, a lot of jazz? Yeah, I do all the editing. That's just kind of kind of my thing for it. And I like I like it because I can get more emotionally invested into it and I feel like it can come out different. But I'm I'm not the best editor out there. I'm just the one that happens to edit that show because I'm the lowbudget guy. And when I started out it was I mean it wasn't even it wasn't even ready. It wasn't time yet. You know how long have you been doing it now? So Solo Hunter went to air in October of 2010. But I had done TV since 2004 in a in kind of random ways and that but we had the guys that I was partners with. We hired a producer that was doing all the editing and me and Jeff, we'd be in the studio just all day and all night just hammering out with this with this producer and at the end of the day we weren't 100% happy with what we were
getting. So when we split up and I went my own route, I was like, you know what? Only way I'm going to do this and make money and uh and do it right is I got to learn editing. So I bought I mean I bought a computer and just totally selftaught myself how to edit. And I started cranking out some just some videos online and everything. And that's kind of how I got into it and got more evolved into the TV side of it. So you use like Final Cut Pro or something. Cut. Yeah. In fact, I'm today I'm still using the same exact system that I bought 10 years ago. That same exact system. Really changed. Just a few updates. That's it. Yeah. I'm using Final Cut 7, you know, old school. I don't know what the numbers are up to now. Well, it's like Proax or something. Mark here uses Adobe or whatever. But to me, it's like the editing software in that 10-year-old state is way more powerful than my brain is to keep up with it anyway. So, it's like all I got to do is link video together and slap some music to it and I got a TV show. Yeah. It's it's funny when you look back at computers that were, you know, five, six, seven years ago. They were incredibly powerful and much more powerful than for, you know, the applications that most people use them for. I mean, most people have way overpowered computers. They're just going online, you know, and clicking on links and stuff and they have these ridiculous computers that can edit and crunch video and, you know, do all kinds of massive calculations and they just never use it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, do I have the best TV show on the network? No. Do I have the worst one? No. Do I have one that I really like and enjoy and love? Heck yeah. It's my favorite one of my favorites to watch. My favorite to watch is Jim Shocki's Uncharted, that new show that he does. Oh, bores the hell out of me. Does it? You know, I love it for what it is. I don't think it was intended to be a quote unquote hunting show. No, it's not. It's like a cultural show. Yeah. Branlin is probably one of the best producers that you'll ever find, you know? I mean, it's extremely extremely well produced. And uh I think that's good, but I also think that a lot of producers, especially young producers coming into the industry are kind of
kind of falling into the game where they feel like a show has to be so well produced to be successful. No, it doesn't. You go out and kill something and you bring it home. These are hunting shows we're talking about. You know, they're adventure shows. They don't have to be the best produced shows. Not every shot has to be on a jib or on a slider or, you know, a rack focus or all that kind of thing. Capture the action and the entertainment. And that's where a lot of these productions miss out. But Uncharted is is incredible from a production standpoint and from a like, you know, almost almost like a modern dock. Yeah. Modern documentary type of feel to it. Well, he's if you haven't seen it, Jim Shocki is this guy who's been around forever. This real kind of legendary the great white hunter from uh from uh BC from British Columbia and he he goes all over the world like I mean literally all over the world like these really remote places in Pakistan. He's the man to hunt goats you've never heard of. weird [ __ ] funky looking goats. And the thing of it is is like, you know, he's got the he's got the life to back it up. And you look back beyond television before he started doing television, the man lived that lifestyle. Yeah. Like he had it. I mean, he's one of the true true people that actually grew up in hunting environments in not just hunting, but harsh harsh country, you know, doing it the right way and and building an outfitting business. And it just happened to evolve into television career. You know, I remember watching him on Real Tree when he would do the little segment, you know, in the in the middle. I think it was Real Tree. I don't know. That's a long time ago, but he's really he's really, you know, deserved and earned where he's at. Put himself there. Yeah. He's he's coming on in uh sometime in November. We're working it out now. But he um he he does these shows that are almost like they're documentaries on the culture that he's going to as much as it is about the hunting, the people. He delves in a lot to the people. I like it. Yeah. And uh the way they capture, you know, just like some of those villages and the way people live, you know, I mean, it's it's incredible. It really brings a reality. It's almost like a Nat Geo type of a feel to it.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm not interested in doing that, though. No. You know, and the hard thing that I would like to see, and I don't think it could ever happen, but like can you imagine going to some of those places with somebody and actually experiencing it? And that's the thing that the cameras can't show you. They can't show you the actual experience because inevitably the guy behind the camera or the producer is wanting to bring drama into it. They're wanting to bring something out. What what's going to captivate the viewer? Well, I'm going to do this and this. And he may use a shot that the kid was doing dishes or something and use it in a scene where where something dramatic happened. The kid's crying because he was cutting onions or something. I mean, producers have a way of twisting things to make it look more more glorified and more glamorous than it might have actually been. Well, that's one of the things about hunting shows that hasn't really it hasn't happened where it has with reality TV. A lot of these reality TV shows are the furthest thing from reality that you could ever imagine. Everything is completely scripted. It's calculated. Every event's calculated from the beginning to the end. They're these shows are just they're just drama shows, like [ __ ] fake fiction drama shows that they don't have a necessary they don't have a script, but they have an objective. Exactly. like you and I are going we're going to go buy Mexican food and you're like I [ __ ] hate but I hate Mexican food and we have a conversation and then you know you go we go to another place like how about this place dude I [ __ ] hate Mexican food like come on man and like at the end we wind up at a Taco Bell and you're like hey this isn't bad like that's a [ __ ] reality show scenario the best reality show would be filmed from a drone and the people wouldn't even actually know it was there that would be the ultimate reality show yeah yeah well I I kind of try to do that with like a big brother type scenario but everything changed changes once people know they're being filmed. Exactly. You know, and it's just they're just bad shows. Most of them are just really bad shows. Whereas like one of the things I like about your show and Reanella's show and a lot of these hunting shows is they're willing to show
failure, too, which is a big part of hunting. Oh, it's Yeah. It's a majority of hunting. Yeah. I mean, you're you're doing something that's very difficult to do. You're going into a natural habitat that this animal lives in. They're trying to defy all of it, all of its natural instincts, its sense of smell, it's incredible hearing, all these different evolved instincts that they have to keep them alive, and you're trying to creep up on them, and you're filming the whole thing. Yeah. Well, I think a lot what a lot of people may not look at, you know, and I get it sometimes is like everything's wrapped around that that moment of impact, that kill, you know, and especially when you're filming it by yourself, it's really hard to get that moment of impact and that moment of kill on there. But that's like one moment, you know, and it's and it's like the most morbid moment of the entire the entire episode or the entire 5week long journey after that animal. But everybody focuses on that moment. And it's like, no, you know, there's there's 10 days of planning and preparation and hunting and actual stuff going on outside of that one little kill. How did you get the idea to do this show? Why Why didn't you try to do a show? Did you ever try to do a show with a cameraman that comes with you? Yeah, I did. So I partnered with a guy in 200 late 2004 so it was really kind of 2005 and we produced a show on the was one of the first shows on the sportsman channel way back then and that show's running today you know he's continuing on and he's branched off and he's got a couple shows that he's doing but when I left then show that um it's Buck Ventures. Buck Ventures is where I started and now he's got Major League Bow Hunter and he's partnered with Chipper Jones and that you know somebody with a lot deeper pockets than I have for sure. Chipper Jones was a baseball player, right? Yeah, I think that's what they tell me. No. Yeah, he was. pull pull this thing up to your face. So you're the same volume as me right there. Thanks. These are twicky microphones. So So you know I moved out to Oklahoma. I mean I when I did that I when I do things I like go balls in. It's it's everything. And so I sold my home, moved my wife. I had a one my boy was one year old at the time. We moved
to Oklahoma. We just lived just outside of uh Oklahoma City in Edund. And uh just partnered up and started the show. Loved it. And um he you know everything was going good with it. It was 100% whitetail but it really wasn't my thing. You know, I'm I grew up in central Idaho in the middle of nowhere. And for me to transition my hunting style and what I grew up with to focus just strictly on whitetail, it just didn't didn't fit. What was your hunting style? You I grew up shoot where I grew up in central Idaho, the nearest Walmart's 70 mi away. I mean, the population 101, you know, I mean, it's it's a small farming town in central Idaho. It's called the Lost River Valley. Um, I grew up right in Moore. went to school in Mackey and Arco and and uh so that that lifestyle and growing up on a farm was rugged just in and of itself. And so I don't know any anything different. And I know, you know, I can go out the back door and I can be up on the mountains and just go forever. I mean, you could go and tell till tell till tell till tell till tell till tell till tell till tell till tell till tell till tell till tell for till Canada if you wanted to. But it's it's so you used to like going out hiking going after these animals stalking them. Yeah. mountains, western hunting, you know, where it's you've got elk, you've got deer, bear, mountain lions, I mean, you've got everything. The whole western hunting hunting whitetail is completely different. One, a white tail deer might live in just a few square miles its entire life, you know, and you're hunting farmland predominantly or river bottoms. And so, you're really, you know, that's that's the most widely hunted game animal that there is. But it's like it's almost like a farm animal. The adventure the adventure starts and ends right here, you know, within within 200 acres or whatever. When I go on a hunt for elk, the adventure there's there's miles, you know, hundreds of miles that that a person can go on in the west. And when you get up on some of these peaks and you you may have experience on some of the stuff in Alaska, but like you get up there and it's like gosh dang, there's a lot here, you know? Yeah. I mean, there's so much country and there's no limitation to how far you can go and what you do. So that's that's when I say
my style, that's my style, getting out remote and uh Yeah, that's way more fascinating to me to be in like completely wild environments like that. like you said, standing on a peak looking out at Alaska and what you're seeing is just mountain ranges and just hill after hill after hill and valleys and just it looks endless. It looks endless and there's no one out there. You're looking straight ahead. You're not seeing any [ __ ] people. You're seeing trees and there's some animals out there. Go find them. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's how I grew up. I mean, I would go out a lot of times during school and I'd just go up, sleep on the mountain, come back, do chores, milk cows, go to school, you know, go to football practice, go home, do chores, go up on the mountain, sleep on the mountain, come back home. I mean, that was kind of how how my brothers and I grew up. And it it's just I mean, I just have a yearning for the wild. I mean, there some of the coolest experiences that I've had in life have been when I'm by myself and go and do something just so totally random that that that nobody else would really even think about. I say [ __ ] I shouldn't say nobody, but it's like, you know, in college, I'd drive home 2 hours to my folks house, then I drive another hour up to the canyon. By the time I get to the trail head, it's 11:00 at night. Hike in for 3 or 4 hours, find somewhere to sleep, get up on top of the mountain, and I'm sitting there as as the sun's coming up and three wolverines come up, you know, and circle the lake. And it's like back then, you know, in the in the '9s, there weren't wolverines in Idaho. There weren't supposed to be anyway. I mean, I was one of the very first or very few to actually see wild wolverines in Idaho. And it's like, had I not been there by myself experiencing that in that canyon, you know, if there's other people or or other things, those wolverines might not have been as comfortable, you know, but because I was there by myself and I'm the only one there looking down over it, I had that experience. And there's there's a lot of opportunities like that that when you have someone else there, you're focused on the group. You know, you're focused on your conversations, your buddies, your your friends, and
everything. You're not you're not really tuned in to what's around you. You're not tuned in to your surroundings. And so, there's certain things that I think you miss out on when you've got other people there. And it's not that I don't enjoy that sometimes, but I feel like when I'm there, like there's a connection, you know, there's a connection to the land, there's a connection to the environment. And uh, you know, you could bring all of into if if you're a if you're a hippie, you know, tree hugger, voodoo type of person. You can bring in the nature and the gods and all that kind of stuff into the whole element. But that really and truly is is what it is is you're out there with no one but yourself and God and his creation. I mean, that's it. It's all surrounding you. Yeah. And being like that deep in nature where you're actually a part of it because you're not you're not talking to anyone. So there's no there's no conversations going on. Plenty of conversations. They're just with myself. Yeah. But you know what I'm saying? It's like you don't there's nothing no anchor that brings you back to civilization. You're just seeing wild [ __ ] You're just seeing wild life. You're seeing animals that would exist that way regardless of whether or not you're there or not. Yeah. And the sad part about it is is the more the older I get and the more I live in the city and the more the more life evolves and gets busy and hectic. I mean right now right now it just seems like it's a train ride just straight up. I mean things are things happen are happening fast just like this opportunity here. The more the more those things happen, it's like the more desensitized I come to the natural experience. And so when I'm out there, I find myself checking where's my phone, you know, I wonder what emails I've got, I wonder who's called. And that really sucks because I'm desensitized to the nature of man, you know, to what I grew up as, you know, and that kind of thing. And that's it's good in a way, but it's also bad. And so I I like have taking the opportunity. It's like, you know, this week I was supposed to be up hunting in Idaho, but I had too much work to do. I had projects I had to had to get done. And it worked out great because it it freed up our time where
you and I could get together. But I know that Sunday, you know, as soon as I get out of church, I'm hauling butt up to Idaho and I'm going to start elk hunting for a week. So, I'm going to have that, you know, 8 to 10 days of solace to really get back into it, but then at the end of that trip, it's going to be like I've got nine hours to drive home and think about getting back into the daily life, you know, to regular regular world. Regular world. Um, do you do you have a regular job outside of this? This is it. People think that I that I hunt for a living or that it's all about the hunting and the show. The hunting is like 10% of my life, you know. Outside of that, I I run my business. I got products just like you do and and I'm trying to grow grow the business base and this this year I kind of took it upon myself that this is the year I wanted to grow my business. You know I had the TV show established. I had you know you know making a good living and everything but this is the year that I wanted to take it another step and actually make create a business of it. That's where I brought on Mark and we started producing another show on Sportsman channel called Offrid Hunter and and experimenting with that. And now it's like, you know, I've got two other sponsors that have come to me and said, "Hey, you know, you're doing a good job with the productions. We've been thinking about X, Y, and Z. Would you be interested in producing producing our shows for us and doing other things?" So, I'm now branching and trying to grow the production side of it as well as solidify the brand of Solo. Well, you do a good you you do a really good job uh producing the show yourself. The way it's edited, it it's interesting. It's not just, you know, here's a video camera that I turned on when I walked up to the top of the hill like Blair Witch style. Like, you know, you cut in music and sound effects and there's a lot of close-ups. And I mean, Remy calls it the GoPro show. He's like, "We're not the GoPro show anymore." That's awesome. Yeah. You definitely uh edit things uh really well and that that's a that's a big part of watching any kind of a show to to draw people in. But in that show in particular, you're you're telling a story and your story is, you know, whatever animal you're chasing after
wherever you're going. You know, you're entering into that environment and then you kind of like you're you're explaining your thoughts along the way. Like one of them I really liked was you alone um you were moose hunting in Alaska and uh you know you were you know stuck in the tent and it was raining outside. Yeah. See, and I had a guy with I mean people need to know I had a guy with me and I said that right on the episode. There was another guy that had the tag. But I mean, you're out there. You're out there in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. And because you're out there like that, because you're in this like intense, wild environment, you know, you get to when you're when you're talking about it and when you're, you know, expressing yourself to the camera, you're getting this kind of insight of what it's like to actually be there. And for a lot of people, that's the closest they're ever going to come to being out there in the wild bush of Alaska chasing after a moose. So, it makes it it's there's like the solitude comes across on camera and it's a it's an an interesting element that you don't get in a lot of these shows cuz a lot of these shows it's an expedition. You got couple cameramen, you got a guide, you got two hunters, you got all these people there, you got a [ __ ] ATV, everybody's going out into the woods together. It's a it's a journey, you know, but the solitude of you being alone in these remote environments and, you know, quite honestly dangerous environments, especially like the Alaska one cuz there's bears out there, grizzlies. You're packing a pistol when you go to take a [ __ ] You know, it's like it's it's ironic that, you know, the worst the the most hair raising experiences I've had have not even been Alaska. You know, it's been closer to home and that kind of thing. I mean, yeah, in Alaska, I got charged by a black bear. I mean, it was Was it a female? It had to have been because what happened is was we got off the boat to set up to start calling for a moose and uh doing some moose calling and I was like and it was raining real hard and I'm like, you know what? I got to go back and get my camera just in case something happens or I had I had to go back and get something. I don't remember what it was. So, I walk back to the boat
and as I'm walking back, I hear some noise behind me and as I turn this bear's just coming. I mean, it's booking, hauling it just as fast as it it could run. And all I did was just just wheeled the camera and just yelled bear bear as loud as I could. And the thing just skidded, stopped, and took off. And as it turned around, I mean, I thought I saw another one in the back. So that's the only thing that that I mean, it's the only thing it could have been was a a bear hunting, which isn't going to happen. A bear's going to whatever. So it had to been a S with some cubs or something on that. But I mean, really, at that instant, you're relying on luck. you know, you're relying on that bear to stop and turn around because all I had to at that time to protect myself was my voice. You know, by the time I would have got to my gun, the bear would have been on me and, you know, bear's bite. And so things would have been pretty bad for for a little while had that bear not turned around. And you were by yourself? No, I was Ted was there. Ted was um Yeah, he was right in the in the in the general area cuz we were both hunting moose together. Have you ever been out there by yourself and had a situation come up where you're like, "Fuck, I might, you know, I might not be able to get out of here." Like being injured or, you know, [ __ ] your knee up or anything like that? Yeah, I jacked up my knee pretty good in uh in New Zealand when I was when I was went to New Zealand to hunt with Remy. Um, I had just killed my tar and was coming down off the mountain and I mean I wasn't very far from the bottom, but I had stepped in this fern or something and just jacked my knee and I remember falling and I kind of blocked out there for a minute and as I'm laying there I'm thinking just I'm just like please don't don't have blown my knee out, you know? And I just laid there for like 30 40 minutes until kind of the throbbing and the pain kind of went away and then I was able to get up and kind of walk it off. But that's that's when it gets, you know, that's probably when it's the most dangerous is when you're hauling, you know, 100 plus pounds on your back and you're coming down rough country because I'm not going to go back up there and pack my camp out. So, you're going to load as much weight as you can on your
bag. And it's st it's something could happen at any time, you know? I mean, a guy could step and roll his ankle at any time, you know? It's just kind of by us being out there alone, it makes it that much more dangerous, I guess. Stupid really. people who have never um gone hiking in these like remote areas, they you know like these especially when you're going after these mountain animals, whether it's elk or something like that, they don't they don't they probably don't understand how treacherous some of the terrain is. And you add into that the fact that you've got 100 lbs of meat packed onto your back and you're probably going to have to do it several times, especially if it's an elk. Yeah. Yeah. I laughed at my buddy. He killed a deer uh last week and he was posting these pictures on Instagram of the blisters on his feet and everything. and he's like, "I'm on my third trip back in to get my deer." And I'm like, "Hell with that, man. Just cut the thing up and put it all on your bag and come out once." You know, don't How big was the deer? Uh, you know, a boned out a boned out deer is going to be 90 lbs. You know, 90 to 100 pounds is all, but you got your camera gear and or you got your camping gear and that kind of stuff, too. So, that's where a deer, you know, a deer's a one trip one tripper for a guy. Yeah. I've talked to people that like um Reanella's brother [ __ ] his back up essentially for life trying to haul out moose. Yeah. And now he has pack llamas. He has llamas that he brings with him. Yeah. My brother tried llamas for a while. Now I think he's got a goat. No, I think he got a horse now. He had goats, too. He's like, "Can I just Rella has these ll his his brother has these llamas and they put them in a van and like the llamas like they [ __ ] piss in the van. They're disgusting animals, but they're just hearty as shit." And the you know, he lives in Montana and he's got them out there in Montana. They just you just tie them to a tree and leave them there and they just It's freezing [ __ ] cold out. They just stand there. They don't give a [ __ ] Oh, they probably they do. They just can't say anything about it. They probably Yeah, but they're super durable. Yeah. And um the idea is you just got to make sure that you pack them evenly. You know, you can't have like 70
lb off to the right and you know and 100 lb off to the left. It has to be totally balanced out. But once it's balanced out, those [ __ ] can just go. Yeah. Yeah. We grew up hunting with horses. Horses and mules mostly, you know. So, I mean, it's it's nice to have that ability to pack pack camp in and pack all the weight. And I've thought about doing, you know, a pack trip solo a solo hunting pack trip, but that's I mean, you're bringing in a whole another element. You're bringing in an animal that you can't control. You can't control, you know, their moods or whatever. I mean, it's just that one more one more thing that could go wrong. I mean, all it takes is a horse to kick you in the side of the head and you're done. or you know you the horse kicks you in the knee or a horse takes a fall or any of those kinds of things and that's you know it can mess it up in a hurry. So, I've always just I've just lately I've just got to the point where I just want to throw crap in my backpack and go because because I can control me, you know? I know where my brain is going to be and I know where I'm stepping, but all that horse has to do is take take one wrong step and Yeah, it's odds are it's not going to happen. But I've had I've had a friend that was killed on a horse, you know. Really? What happened? He was on a pack trip and I remember I was I was working at the carpet store when I was when I was a kid. And uh I was like, "John, why don't you stay here? I got this job I'd I need you to do. He was a carpet installer and I was one of the salesman. I'm like, I got this job that I want you that I need you to do. He's like, no, man. I'm going on this pack trip. I'm like, come on, it's only a two-day job. He's like, no. And I remember him viv vividly saying, he's like, life's too short. He said, I'm I' I've promised myself no matter what, that money's not going to get in the way and I'm going to live my life. And that on that very trip, his horse, something spooked his horse and it came over on top of him and the saddle horn ruptured his spleen. And uh he went into the hospital when he got back, he went into the hospital like 220 lb. The next time I you know when he got out of the hospital, he was like 60 lbs or something. And it wasn't just a couple months later that he died from
that because he had given his kidney to his son. And so his kidney and spleen and everything were were jacked up and he lost his life, you know, from that event. That can happen. My brother, you know, a couple years ago, horse came over on the top of him, crushed his pelvis. Oh jeez. Stuff happens when you got when you got animals, you know. I mean, stuff can happen, you know. Yeah. I have uh friends that ride horses. They like uh my friend's wife actually, she she jumps horses. They they go to these [ __ ] rings and they they they get their horses to jump over logs and [ __ ] Yeah. And I'm like, "What are you doing?" Like why is that exciting? Like what's going on there? Yeah, it's got to be. I guess I guess. But we used to see we used to my brothers and I we had the reputation of breaking horses. So people would bring the wild mustangs that they catch off the desert and stuff which I know now living in Nevada they're not that wild. But they'd bring us these horses that they'd adopt thinking that they would make them as kids horses or something and we'd have to break these horses. How do you catch them? I don't know how they caught them. I don't know. They just bring them to us in a trailer and we smack them around a little bit and break them. I don't Can you break a wild horse? A real wild horse? We had all I mean, we only had one that we really couldn't break that we didn't break. So, what did we eat it? Yeah. No, I I I can't even remember what happened to that. One of them the guy took back and it ended up getting away and they had to they ended up shooting it, you know, somewhere cuz it got on got out on got on wild land. They ended up shooting that one. Why they shoot it? Because it got on wild. I just I don't think they could catch it. They couldn't catch it for a while. They tried to what they tried to do is shoot it in the neck and hit that uh tendon. So with horses a lot of times like western raining horses and stuff a lot of times they'll go in and snip a tendon in their neck to get them to keep their head level because it's I guess it's better for the the horse reigns better and acts better and that it's not going to flip his head up and flail its head. So they'll flip this tenon. So this horse, so the the sharpshooter went in trying to shoot
this horse in the in the tendon in the back of the neck to kind of just break him down so they could catch this horse cuz it was a big uh black and white tabino stallion that they wanted to catch and they I think he just kind of missed and killed it. What the [ __ ] A little bit of a What kind of a sharpshooter does he think he is? I don't know. They should have hired me. A moving horse and you're going to shoot it in a perfect spot on the neck. I can't imagine shooting a horse anyway. That's why when I see these guys going to Africa and shooting zebras and stuff. I mean, I grew up on a farm. I have such a love and a and a passion for animals that I can't imagine I can't imagine that. Well, we were we were talking about that before the show that it's a weird thing for people to hear when someone says they're a hunter but they love animals. Yeah. You know, like I I got this tweet the other day with this woman. Uh she was someone's tweeted me something and she tweeted, "Why would you talk to him? He kills bears for fun. Yeah, you know that. No, I don't kill I've killed one bear. It wasn't for fun. I eat it. But did you have fun? I did. I enjoyed it. I mean, I guess I kind of killed a bear for fun. Part of it was for fun, right? Like part of it. There's a remorse. Well, bears are pretty [ __ ] cool. They're interesting. They're interesting. And uh you know, I went with uh Cameron Haynes. We're bow hunting in Alberta. And if you've never been up there, first of all, they have to kill bears up there. There's a lot of [ __ ] bears up there. They they estimate between three and eight per square mile. And uh when you get up there, you realize that it's true cuz like when you're sitting and you're waiting, they all of a sudden within, you know, an hour or so, they just start showing up. One, two, three. I mean, we we saw as many six, seven bears at a time. It's [ __ ] crazy. And they're cannibalizing each other left and right. They're eating cubs. You have to kill the males. They're giving themselves diseases and all kinds of stuff if they overpop populate. Yeah. And they are overpop populated up there. You have to kill the boores. If you don't kill the boores, they just feast on babies, you know, and it's it's a just a numbers thing. They don't have anything to kill
them. Nothing kills them. So, if humans don't kill them, then their populations get out of control. They get run into starvation issues. Uh there's all sorts of things that happen. And they taste good, you know, and people are [ __ ] weird, man. there. This this whole hunting thing has really exposed me to a lot of very strange hypocrisies that people just accept. And one of them is this [ __ ] guy came up to me at the airport wearing leather shoes. And he goes, "Man, I was really disappointed to find out that you killed a bear." I go, "Dude, you're wearing [ __ ] leather shoes. Do those are those are leather." I go, "Do you eat meat?" Yeah. They killed a cow for that. Exactly. He goes, "I do eat meat, but I just think bears are different." I go, "Different how? Because they're not in your neighborhood." Like, what are you talking about? It's an animal. Do you understand that anything that a hunter kills lives an infinitely better life than anything you're buying at McDonald's, than anything you're wearing on your clothes? Any any shoes, any leather, any belt that you have, those animals lived lives of unimaginable suffering for the most part. Those domesticated animals that are done they're used for, you know, whatever it's for clothing or for, you know, leather goods or couches or [ __ ] like that. Those [ __ ] things live in pens and their their lives from birth to death are just for utility. They're just they serve a purpose. They're they're they're a commodity. When you're hunting, you're taking an animal that lives an entirely natural life. You dip into that natural world, harvest that animal, pull it out, and in my opinion, that's infinitely better. Infinitely better in every way. First of all, the animal, they're not going to live forever. It's not like, you know, you're taking away an animal that was going to cure cancer if you kept it alive. You know, that animal was on its way to [ __ ] building a rocket to go to the moon and you stepped in and shot it. No, they're [ __ ] bears, man. They're bears. They're eating each other's cubs. And it's really good meat and it's good for you. And the the the the fact that people have a problem with hunters, but they don't have a problem with passing by every restaurant you drive down the
street, every restaurant is filled with meat. Every one of them, every supermarket filled with meat, all these people you're half of them are driving cars with leather seats, half of them are wearing leather shoes, probably more than half, but yet people have a problem with hunting. And it's this weird thing because they don't see the death of the animal that caused their cheeseburger because society is structured in a way that you can just without participating in the animal's death at all, you could reap the benefits of it by just giving a little piece of paper and getting a cheeseburger and that's your connection to it. You can eliminate some yourself from some of the guilt because you didn't kill it, you know, and you didn't see it get killed. So, so therefore it didn't happen. Yeah. Yeah. And people that eat meat have said this to me and I'm like, man, you got to rearrange the way you think. And you should expose I I've told several people that have a problem with it that eat meat. I'm like, you should expose yourself to the death of an animal just to decide whether or not you want to continue eating meat. Because that was a concern when I went hunting for the first time. Like, I've been fishing my whole life, so I've killed things before and eaten them, but I've never killed an animal. And I was like, man, a deer is a big, beautiful animal. Maybe that's going to freak me out. Maybe I'm not going to like it. Maybe I'll be a vegetarian after that. I was like, I was really wondering what it was going to be like. The exact opposite happened. Didn't bother me at all. I mean, I thought it was great. I mean, it was there was a a moment of sadness that this animal died, but the food was delicious. The meat was delicious. The the the experience was exhilarating. It was exciting. It was fun. It was wild. It was enriching. And it's the the healthiest meat you can get. And I think the most ethical way to acquire it. you're you're responsible for what you're eating. And there's something super satisfying about that. Whenever I um not all the time, but a lot of times when I I tweet photos of like wild game that I cook and when I'm like out there and I'm grilling something that I killed and I chopped up and I'm putting on the grill and then I'm eating it, like this is such a different experience. Like the
the feeling of it is so much better than just getting a steak from the grocery store, throwing it on the grill, and eating it. There's nothing there with that. Yeah. Poundfor-pound, it's it's a hell of a lot more expensive, but that's not, you know, that's not what it's that's not what it's about. And and it's one of those things where it's like super super hard to explain to people when they're like, "Well, why do you hunt?" And even my wife, you know, she's she's not into hunting. She never wants to be. She doesn't understand how I can love animals so much and yet go out and kill them and all that. But it's one of those things that there's so many different facets that you can go down. Well, we're doing it for food, we're doing it for this, we're doing it for population control, we're doing it for, you know, whatever, for sport, which I don't I don't look at hunting as a sport, you know, per se. But there's a lot of different things, elements that you can bring into it to explain to somebody. And and at the end of the day, I look at it, I'm like, I don't know why I do. I'm just I'm a I'm a I'm a I'm a man, you know. Like I I posted a a picture the other day on on Instagram that's like a lot of these hunting groups classify themselves as predators or as you know addicts or junkies or, you know, I'm an antler junkie or I'm a this or I'm a that and it's like I'm a man. You know, God put man on this earth to till and to take care of it. And he gave us sustenance and he gave us an ability to sustain not only ourselves but to grow population. You know, that's what that's what Adam and Eve were there. if you're a religious person or whatever, but if you really believe Adam and Eve were really two people that everybody came from, which is pretty [ __ ] ridiculous. So, I just happen to be a believer in Adam and Eve. But anyway, do you do you believe that there was two people and that everybody came from those two people in a way? Yeah. Really? I think there's I think that I definitely think that there's a lot to specific religions that are out there that there's pieces there that you know if you follow the Bible word for word for what it says like literally there's a lot of stuff that's there's no way I mean it's like
no those are probably madeup stories where but there's other things that I you know I'm a religious person and I believe in God and and uh I think there's a lot of things that people have twisted no doubt no doubt but But I'm a believer. There's something to all religions that um I think there's like there's some universal truths and there's universal truths about treating people certain ways and there's universal truths about seeking the good in life and you know and looking out for your brothers and sisters. And I think all of that came from understanding that people developed over time. Wisdom that people developed over time. And then this this this connecting to what is universally good about the world about life with few exceptions people generally and there's there are exceptions that people generally want to do good. People generally want to be happy. You know they generally understand consequence. They understand right and wrong. There are exceptions, you know, people that just don't understand and don't. And then there's people that have callous themselves one way or the other. either they they tow the line 100% religious and everything is is literal or they go the other direction, you know. Yeah. The problem with the literal translations is that the it wasn't English, you know. I mean, we're we still they're still working on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is the oldest version of the Bible, which is in Aramaic and it's on animal skins and they have to they literally have to do DNA analysis on the animal skins to make sure that when they line up the pieces, they're trying to piece them all together, that it's the right animal. like like the way they do the the Dead Sea Scrolls. Have you ever paid attention to it? No. No. I mean, I'm one of those it's like I don't know. It's like Yeah. I don't know. Some of those things are so hard to even get into, right? But if you want to be a religious person, that's the source of it. That's the source of almost all biblical stories is the Dead Sea Scrolls. And um what's what's really unique about it is that it was found in Kuman, I think in the 1940s. They found these um these clay pots. And inside these clay pots were essentially these animal skins that have been wrapped up in, you know, these
these cylinders and these like wrapped up in rolls and they had to unravel them and a lot of them were broken up. And so the broken up ones, the way they, you know, do the DNA test, they do a DNA test. So they say, "Okay, well all animal, all the pieces from this animal, we'll put over here. All the pieces from that animal, we're assuming that's a different piece of skin. We'll put that over here." And um then they have to like try to piece it together like this ancient puzzle. Then they have to take Aramaic and translate it into English. And that's even older than the ancient Hebrew versions of the Bible. The ancient Hebrew the weirdest thing about the ancient Hebrew version is that apparently ancient Hebrew didn't have numbers. So letters were also numbers. So the letter A was also the number one. And like if I said Tim Bernett, there's numbers to your name that like it also it counts in the translation but what the meaning of the word like the word love and the word God have the same numerical value in ancient Hebrew and this is on purpose. It's like things have like value and the sentences have like a numerical value to them that our our brains the way we think the way we talk because we have numbers separate from words. I don't think we totally grasp what a lot of the meaning of a lot of the sentences were. Then on top of that, like a lot of those words in ancient Hebrew, there's something like 25% of them, they still don't even know what the [ __ ] it was. There's a massive amount of of interpretation that uh they have to figure out. Then they take that and take it from there and translate it to Greek and to Latin and then from that to English. So, when you're reading about Adam and Eve, who the [ __ ] knows what the original meaning was? What were they trying to say? The original human beings that God created or that the universe bestowed upon the earth. What What was that? What did What do they really mean that it was just two people? It's so hard to tell. And when you add in all the other [ __ ] the ones where you know that somebody had a grip on it. Somebody we know about Constantine and the bishops and how they they rewrote the the New Testament and they left out a bunch of [ __ ] like they had they chose what was going to be in the Bible or not. Bunch of people chose what was
going to be the word of God. People that had no contact with God. It's not like God came down and he gave him a [ __ ] to-do list like get all this [ __ ] done and then I'll I'll double check your work and then I'll be back. No, there was they decided. So, I'm not opposed to the concept of God and I'm I'm not an anti-religious person at all. Um, I think religion has done a lot of good. I think religion is a good foundation for a lot of people to develop morals and ethics. And I just whenever anybody wants to talk about like literal translations of stuff, I'm like, and I always want to know like how much did you look into it? Like how when you say literal translation, like did you did you go to the actual source of those stories? cuz you got to go to the [ __ ] the epic of Gilgamesh if you want to really know the Noah's Arc story. That's the original version of it. 6,000 years old. I mean, it's it's it's written with these little lines and [ __ ] like on clay tablets. Like, that's the oldest version of that story. Probably based on some real [ __ ] that happened. Probably based on real floods. Yeah. My brother, he just he was telling me the other day he watched that Noah movie. Oh, it's terrible. Yeah. He's like, "Man, that was the worst. That wasn't even close." But then he's like, "Well, there were giants in the Bible, so maybe maybe" and I haven't seen the movie, so I don't have a clue. But he's like, "Yeah, it was so weird and everything." But yeah, it's the problem is people are full of [ __ ] All I know is I guarantee that if there wasn't that that Noah he probably found a chicken and he and it he probably ended up eating it once sometime. He's like, "Yeah, that tastes good." You know, I'm going to eat chicken and I'm going to raise chickens and then there's going to be more chickens. And then he's like, "Well, if a chicken tastes good, then this sheep over here's got to taste good." You know, and so it just continued on, you know. Well, how the [ __ ] did all the animals get to them? That's the big one. Matter. They have to walk there from all over the earth. Now, Rogan, how convenient. That's one thing that's kind of cool about your podcast is the ones that I listen to and everything. It's like what I like about you is when
you bring in different hosts and different guests, a lot of them have completely opposite backgrounds than what I have and probably from what you have too. But I like that you're fascinated by a lot of different things and that you take yourself and just like the you're saying there the research is you'll immerse yourself into really knowing and finding something out and uh you find a lot of different things fascinating. And one thing that's really cool when you're talking about the hunting and when you were first when you first did a a podcast with Reinella and then you kind of were educating yourself along the way as you got into the hunting part of it. It was almost like it's and I don't know if you've gone back and listened to any of your old podcasts when when you did those, but it's like it was like a little kid, you know, just learning something new. And I'm like, that's pretty cool, you know, because here you have, you know, a grown man asking questions that my 10-year-old's asking me. Daddy, why are you doing this or this or that? I'm like, I don't know. Ask Rogan. You know, I'm like that with you, though. Yeah. Mark's like, uh, but it's uh, you know, it's it's it's it's cool to see. And that's one of the questions that I had for you is like, what got you into hunting? Why did you want to start hunting? Well, my wife would be best able to answer that because she's been mocking me for watching Ted Net Spirit of the Wild for the past like I mock you for watching 11 12 plus years. I watch it for a lot of reasons. One of it one of it is because it is [ __ ] unbelievably hokey. I mean, he's just a hokey dude. He's a crazy He's a a master showman, you know? And if you ever seen Ted Nett play guitar, you ever seen his band, he's a master showman. And he uses a lot of that showmanship on his show. And you know, some of it is like really ridiculous. You know, some of it is like very repetitive and very over the top. But I was fascinated by his promotion of this lifestyle, this hunting lifestyle. You know, he has a at the time he didn't have the place in Texas. He had his place in Michigan is a high fence operation and he would just kind of go out into I don't know any hundreds of acres he has set up tree stands and wait for deer and shoot them and that's all
the meat that he ate. He donated it to Hunters for the Homeless and Hunters for the Hungry or whatever it is. And you know and it really constantly promoted how healthy the lifestyle is, how healthy the meat is and how this is like this is about sustainability. This is about these animals are providing him with sustenance and in turn he is providing um he he puts up food plots. He's planting trees like his whole thing is it's very balanced in a in a way that a lot of people who eat organic food that they buy at Whole Foods and they think they're being all earthy. You're not doing mine too. You're not you're not really balanced like Ted Nent living in Michigan is more balanced than you. I know you don't think that, but that's the reality. The reality for a lot of people that go to the grocery store and pick up their organic food is like, man, you don't know how many people were involved in the creating of that food. What what what was put in the soil, you know, as far as it's organic, you know, there's no pesticides allegedly, but it's organic because some inspectors stamped it to say that it is organic. Okay, you don't use this pesticide, but you use this chemical. So, but it's okay. It's organic. Yeah, the word organic is a weird word, too. It's it's too open-ended. I I don't marketed. Yeah. I don't I don't know what the the exact definition of organic groceries are, but there's a difference between groceries that you buy and groceries that you grow. And I grow a lot of vegetables now. And I'm I've been doing that over the last uh say year and a half, two years. And again, it's something super [ __ ] satisfying about plucking a tomato, slicing it up, and eating it and cooking, you know, putting in a salad tomato that you grew. You put that seed in there, you watered it, it grew, you plucked it. It's a the whole cycle. the whole cycle comes together. So, I started watching that show and um from then I just thought, "God, one of these days I want to [ __ ] go hunting." And then I started watching Reella's show. I was watching all kinds of hunting shows for like a a decade before I ever went hunting. Oh, gotcha. Yeah. People would come over my house and look at my DVR. They were like, "What the [ __ ] is wrong with you?" DVR. You got this weird twisted Yeah. It's
when animals attack, kickboxing, MMA, hunting shows. They're like, "What the [ __ ] is wrong with you?" I don't know. I don't know what's wrong with me. But that's uh how I got into it. So, until I met Reanella, I never actually went hunting. Right. You know, the hunt you did with him, was it Alaska or something? A car or something? No, the first one was a mule deer in Montana. Oh, gotcha. We went um to um the uh the Missouri River. We did a float trip. It was really fun. I remember seeing something on the sportsman channel was touting the crap out of that. They're like, "Meater, you know, Joe Rogan goes on me, does this, and I'm like, who's Joe Rogan?" I don't I know who Meater is, but I didn't know who Joe Rogan was. I didn't know what the big deal about it was. And then I watched the episode, I'm like, "That guy seems pretty funny, you know, whatever." And then it wasn't until like Mark when I mean, this wasn't very long ago. I'll be I'll admit I haven't and I'm like, I got to get to know more of this Joe Rogan because he's getting into hunting, you know, he's doing stuff with Vanilla now. All of a sudden, shoot, he's doing a podcast with Cam. I was like, "Okay, I got to get get to know this a little bit more." And because I'll be honest, I was like, "Rogen, he could have been jungle or acrobat, as far as I knew." You know, I had no idea. No idea. You're totally immersed in the hunting world. Well, that's what's funny, too. You You asked me the last time I've watched a meteor episode. Two years ago, year and a half ago. I don't know. I have I just I've watched one episode of Uncharted, you know? I I just don't watch the the shows anymore because I don't know. I'm making them, I guess. Yeah. Well, you're probably so [ __ ] busy, too. Yeah, it's not that I'm that busy. I mean, I definitely am busy, but I have my home life, too. You know, I spend a lot of time at home, but I just don't spend it watching TV anymore. I used to a lot. I used to I mean, when I first started producing television, I would watch all the top rated shows. I'm like, I want to know what Wadell's doing. I want to know what Leiv I want to know what all these people are doing, and I'm gonna do it because it's successful, right? It's a format. And then I started solo, and it
was like all everything went out the window. It's like, you know what? I'm going to do everything these people don't do because I'm sick of seeing the exact same thing every time. And and this conversations I had a conversation with a big sponsor the other day because they're wanting to produce a TV show and we had a big conference call and everybody was talking about all the things they hate about television and things that they like about television and a lot of these different shows came up and without a doubt they're all like we hate how hokey it is. We hate how overproduced it is and this and that and that and but at the end of the day something's got to die you know and it's like everything is the same. the the comments that you get from people is all the hunting shows are the same, you know, and so to do something different is really hard. Well, there are a lot of them that are same. There's so many shows out there right now because of the networks that are that are available that there's a lot of shows that are different. A lot of shows that that that you know Bow Hunter is pretty different. Yeah, there's shows that have their own brand. You know, a lot of people emulate and try to copy what what H Heartland Bow Hunter started and what they've done. And so, you're starting to see a lot of that imagery and that type of shooting into different productions. And I, you know, I I'll be admit I fall into a lot of that, too, where it's like, man, I want to do a shot that looks like that, but I want to do it my way, right? For ours, for solo, what what I think makes it unique is the fact that no matter how we film it, it doesn't really matter because at the end of the day, we're one man out there. We're trying to kill an animal, we're going to kill it, we're going to bring it home, you know, and we're just trying to document that adventure. I think by doing it by ourselves and having that relationship with the camera where everything seems to be so close up and like it's like I'm talking to you, you know, you're watching I'm trying to talk to the viewer and communicate that and that's really hard to do because sometimes you want to just reenact and restate what's happening or what's going on or what you're going to do. But what what Mark
and I are working on with with some of these other projects and what we're going to try to bring into solo is more of that uh more of that what's going on up here. you know, what's going on in my head more so than what's going on that you're seeing. People want to know more what I'm thinking while I'm doing certain things than actually what I'm doing. I I think and so that's an element from a as a producer to try to bring into it to where if people really knew what goes on in my head while I'm up on the mountain, I think they'd be shocked because it's not, you know, it's not all it's not all just complete focus on on hiking and hunting and killing, you know, there's a lot of different things that go on. meaning that like you start thinking about your family, you start thinking about your life, like that kind of thing. Yeah. That and it's like, you know, I may I may be sitting there one time and I may be thinking, you know, I'm going home. I've been up here for 4 days. I haven't seen a damn antler antler antler animal for the last four days. I'm going home. But you have this, you know, this all this interaction that goes on in my head is like the guilt. Okay, if I go home, I've just wasted four days that I've got here that I should have been here to potentially get an episode, you know, or to potentially harvest an animal, bring it home and to eat it, you know, I'm I'm wasting that. If I go home now, I'm a quitter. If I stay stick it out, I'm stupid because I'm not going to find any animals or whatever. So, there's just that constant because when you're by yourself, there's nobody to talk you into things and there's nobody to talk you out of things. So, when you make a decision, it's yours and you got to live with it. You got to do it, you know? So, if I'm hiking up a mountain and a and a deer is bedded somewhere and I know that if I hike around this way 2 miles, I can get to him without him winding me or like I did on the last day of my hunt. I took I said, "Yeah, it's a gamble. The wind's blowing here. If I go here, it's it's it's iffy, but if I go here, I can it's I can cut off two miles of distance, but I might have a chance to get on him. But if I go this way, it's two miles, but it's a guarantee I could get in on him without the wind." Well, the last day I
chose the shortcut, and what did I do? I blew the deer out. You know, the deer the deer caught my scent and was gone. You know, when I Is there anything that works for covering scent? Cuz you were using some stuff on the episode that I saw last week where you were that nose blocker. Yeah, I I tried that nose jammer stuff. Whatever. That's that stuff's different, I guess. I I'm not I'm not a scent guy. I'm not a cover scent guy. I'm not a You don't believe in it? I don't. You know, stuff like that. People are they're trying to convince me that that works. and it may work, but there was an instance on that episode I cuz I don't want to down talk nose jammer, you know, because, you know, they're they're they're advertising on the show, but it's not it's a product that I told I committed to him when I met the owner. I met John Redmond at a trade show in in Reno and he was so stinking passionate about it and I told him to his face, I'm like, "John, I don't believe in that stuff, man. It's all hokey. It smells smells funny. I don't want anything that smells." He's like, "No, try it." Blah blah blah blah blah. So, it turns out I He gives me a can of this stuff when I try it there in Oklahoma. That's the first time I'd ever tried it. And there was a buck that came down wind and he obviously smelled something. Yeah. You could tell. He was like, "What?" Yeah. And that was awesome because I was like, "Is he smelling?" But you know what? The deer could have done that by smelling me or he was smelling the vanilla that I just rubbed all over the tree or whatever that was whatever's in the nose jammer. But something confused his sensory glands. That's the point behind nose jammer, I guess, is to kind of kind of confuse their sensory glands so that it it just pauses them just for that one minute so hopefully you can get a shot at him. But it did it it held that deer up and then he then he moved on. So there was there's some validity to to that I guess. But would that deer have done the same thing if I rub coconut oil on on my pants? You know, who knows? I don't know, right? How could you tell? You'd have to have the exact same scenario with the exact same animal and a bunch of different options. And that's why for me personally, I've had so much experience in the field and and I've had
so many times when I've tried different things and times when I've just gone natural, you know, where it's just me and my body odor where that's it. And ultimately, at the end of the day, my conclusion has been and and it is to the to date, and that's not to say that it can't change over time and as I as I have more hunting experiences, but right now, I don't want to interject any foreign scent into the air. You know, I want I'm gonna have a smell to me no matter what I do. No matter what I shower in, no matter what I spray my clothes down with, doesn't matter. I'm gonna smell a certain way that is not natural to that environment. So, when that deer walks into his bedroom, because a deer a deer is never anywhere by chance. He's never anywhere randomly. He's he's walking where he's walking for a reason. you know, he knows that that's a safety corridor where he can trans where he can move himself from food to bed or whatever safely and so he's there for a reason. So if he smells anything out of the ordinary or sees anything out of the ordinary, he's automatically going to be on alert. And you know that there's variations to everything because crop land and where you hunt some of these white tails, it's farmland. Where I hunt there in Oklahoma, it's an operating cattle ranch. So the deer could have smelled people before. had to have because there's oil rigs in there where there's people in and out. So, they know what people smell like. So, to me, I use that into my into my little thinking is that if they know what humans smell like, they want to avoid it. So, they're traveling these corridors because they know they can avoid humans. So, they're traveling where he's traveling because he knows he's not going to have any interaction with with anything but a deer, right? So to me, I use that as well, that's the point where I want to be and I want to get to so I can kill him, you know? So if he smells anything, I guess getting back to the scent thing, if he smells anything out of the ordinary, it's you're the gig's up anyway. So and deer have an insane capability for smell, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're they say I can I don't know the exact numbers. I mean, I'm not a technical guy. I'm more of a live in the now, you know, feel how I feel kind of kind of
person. So, you know, I've had experiences where a deer has been 1,00500 yards downwind and he smells me and it it blows me away. It's like that deer is 1500 yards away from me and he smells me and he takes off because in the west you can see that. You can see what goes on. So, when you're sneaking around, you see that deer poke his head up and you know you you know when they're smelling and they're gone, if they smell you, they're out of there. But, you know, when I was hunting this year, there's several times where I bumped these two big bucks. I bumped them three different times. The first two times they just saw me and they didn't smell me and they just kind of, you know, mossied off. They were like, "Something's something's weird over there." You know, so that bush isn't supposed to be moving like that. But then the one time that they smelled me, they didn't see me. They just smell me and they were gone. I mean, they booked it. Do they they smell your breath? Like what are they smelling? Yeah. You everything you fart in the woods, don't you? I mean Well, there's there's It depends. It's breath, but it's it's we have a scent, you I mean, I smell myself right now sitting here, but it's like we have a we have an aroma about us just like they have an aroma about them, you know? So, you wash your clothes and the scentfree stuff, you spray whatever, but you know, 30 minutes into a hike, I'm I'm sweating and smelling like Yeah. like a man smells, you know. You could maybe eliminate the very outskirts of their ability. Don't even try. Just play the wind. Just play. Well, I mean, and that's hard, too, because it's like, you know, there's millions of dollar advertising dollars spent in promoting scent elimination products, and a lot of some of my sponsors promote scent elimination clothing or whatever. And at the end of the day, all that stuff can help. It can eliminate, like you're saying, it can take your your scent aroma from here to here, which is good. That's to your advantage. But what about those ozone things? Those ozone things that people put behind speak for that. I don't know. Ozonics. I dealt with ozone with water, but I don't know. I don't know why. Yeah. Was that It's a giant box that's above your Yeah. tree stand. Does it play music? Like you like Yeah.
Music. Yeah. Something. It's like elevator music to calm them down. Put some space down. Looks like a project to me. It's like the air cleaner thing. Yeah. It's the ozone. It puts out which I'm experienced with ozone with water when I worked for for water company is the ozone is a it's a form of of sanitizing. Sanitizing. Yeah. It keeps keeps the lines clean and it keeps keeps everything clean. So I guess if you inject that into the air and you can smell ozone like after a good heavy rainstorm or something, you can smell the ozone in the air. You can smell the smell it the ozone from the ozone layer from the Yeah. From just from the environment, the ions it Yeah. It disables the ions and does something. Yeah. Um you can get them for your house. I know people that have got them around their house and it lowers the dust levels, allergens. Really? Yeah. Just paralyzes it. Brings it right to Yeah. But isn't ozone toxic in in hive? Yeah. Yeah, you can get yourself pretty sick from it if you So, if you're sitting in a tree stand blowing ozone on your face, I can't speak to it. To me, I don't know, man. That's one more thing I got to haul up the tree. I don't I'm never going to use one. I mean, they could come to me and say, "Hey, we'll give you 50 grand to use this thing." I'll be like, "I'll take your 50 grand, but I ain't going to use it." Wow. How rude. I can't believe this on a podcast, ladies and gentlemen. You know, well, good for you being honest, though. I appreciate turned down. I had a sponsorship at one time with a send elimination company and they wanted to grow that sponsorship. They of course there was other pretense to it to move to another network and different things and I ended up turning that down because it's it's and I told him exactly I'm like this is not a product that I can get behind 100%. And if I can't if I can't believe in in what it is then people are going to see right through that. Right. So for me it's like that money that you're going to give me does does us both no good. Right. Right. So, I discontinued that relationship with that sponsor. Yeah, I feel the same way about sponsors for the podcast. I I've turned down a bunch. I've turned down one recently. It was pretty lucrative, but I'm like, I don't like it. I don't
like what they're selling. I don't like the idea. Not doing it. Yeah. With the TV show, some of it, you know, you you see some of the ads or the the billboards that are running in the show and everything. What a person's got to realize too from a production standpoint is we have sponsors, you know, quote unquote sponsors that we are backing Under Armour, you know, Prime, G5, all these that that are backers and investor, you know, not Yeah. They're they're pretty much investors in the in you and in your business, in your brand. And then there's ads that you sell, you know, 30 second commercial spots, those types of things. That's ad placement that either the network's going to put in there or I'm going to sell it to somebody to put in there. Yeah. That's uh maybe maybe people don't understand how outdoor shows work. Yeah, outdoor shows work a little bit different than a lot of other shows. A lot of times they get like say if uh a guy uh puts on a show like Solo Hunter, you have a certain amount of advertising space that's for you for your program, but then the network has a certain amount of advertising space of their own for their things. Like I had to tell Reinella about an advertiser that was competing with one of his friends companies that was on the same show. I go, "Do you know that you guys are selling this on your show?" He goes, "What? We're selling that?" I go, "Yeah, your show had an ad for this." And which is a ripoff because they didn't protect the category? Yeah. For like Under Armour and some of these other these the major sponsors, you protect categories. So when somebody buys a a commercial spot on the show for say, that's protected. I'm not going to go out and find another clothing guy, you know, camera sponsor, any of that. I'm I'm exclusive for these guys. And so, yeah, that makes sense. So, it's for folks who don't know what you're exactly how you're saying it. It's it's a kind of a unique thing. You're kind of buying time on a on the network. Yeah. There's that's one thing I tell people, you know, is is there's no rulebook, but there's no playbook either. So, the networks there's a lot of variations. You know, the majority of hunting shows out there, they're called time buys where we buy a time, we buy that 30 minute block on the network and then we
we buy a certain amount of advertising and we sell that advertising and then whatever advertising we don't buy from the network cuz within a 30 minute commercial or ep 30 minute block, you have six minutes of commercial time. So, it's it's three two-minute commercial breaks. So whether I buy any of those commercial times or not, Outdoor Channel is going to put in three two-minute breaks into that that programming. So my 30 minutes turns into 22 minutes, you know. So what I do is I buy however many 30 secondond commercial spots I can sell. I buy that from the network. I turn around and sell a margin. Then within the show content, there's, you know, I get paid to wear somebody's hat. I get paid to wear somebody's shirt. You know, if I use a product, I get paid. And there's different ad placements in there. So it becomes more of people think that it's all about hunting. Hunting is the fun part, you know, but for me the business is the fun part, too. So you're you're trying to calculate in that 30 minutes, how can I maximize maximize my revenue, you know, because you can only have you have a limited number of of advertising spots you can put in there. So it's who can I who can I contract and who's who who can we fit in certain places, you know? It's a very interesting way to produce television that a lot of folks aren't aware of. It's cool in a way because there are shows on the hunting television that are more like Discovery Channel where the network pays for them to be produced and they actually own the content. They're called Outdoor Channel originals or on Sportsman's channel. I don't know what they're called, whatever. Where the network is invested into these shows or they give them the airtime for certain there's there's there's a myriad of ways things can be done, but I want to own at the end of the day I want to own Solo Hunter and I want to own Timbernet. I want to own my brand, you know? I don't want just because they're buying the show off me, I don't want to have them have any control over me or what I do or what I say or what advertisers I can bring in. So, at the end of the day, yeah, I'm I'm having to front some money and and run it as a business rather than somebody paying me to produce a show, but at the end of the day, there's no limit to what
I can make. You know, there's no limit to to the advertising that I can sell. And I own myself. I own the show, own the brand. Are you aware of this whole sort of movement that's going on right now on television on regular television like the History Channel and a lot of these other channels where they're really concentrating on people that are trying to live sustainable lives like the Alaska shows like Alaska Last Frontier or um there's that other show Life Below Zero. Have you ever seen that show? It's a good show. It's a lot of a lot of it is hunting. Yeah. And uh I follow that stuff probably more than I do in the hunting industry because to me that's it's obviously mainstream, but it's more fascinating because you don't have individual little guys like me conceptualizing and coming up with the content. You have big boys in big rooms making big decisions with big big checks doing big analysis on viewership and on what people are looking for and all that. You have them creating the concepts and the ideas. So to me it's like those are the people I want to I want to watch because those are the people with the brains and the backing behind them knowing with with their hand on the pulse of what societyy's looking for. So I follow allegedly allegedly which you know you Yeah. I mean most of the time they're just TV [ __ ] The hard thing with that is is like you know there's a larger part of society that are non- hunters non-outdoorsmen than there are that are you know outdoorsman. But you're starting to see a lot of content you know people trying to portray that lifestyle. Yeah. That's why I asked you because I think it's a there's there's this movement right now. Uh and you see it in like weird ways like you see it like preppers like a lot of these weird people that are like canning foods and digging holes in their backyard and burring water bottles and stuff dumps and coffee cans. I mean whatever. Well, preppers it's weird, you know, because some of them are like living in cities and they're putting all this stuff together and you know I kind of got news for you. If you're living in a city and the [ __ ] hits the fan, you better get the [ __ ] out of that city. That's what I told my wife. I'm like, "You know what? I'm flying through Vegas into LA on 911." It's like, uh, there's
nowhere to go. Like, I don't know how you guys do it down here. There's nowhere to escape. You know, where I'm at, I'm like, "All right, out the back door, gone. Middle of the Nevada desert. You'll never you'll never find me." But here, it's like, man, you can't Well, it's going to be Also, you're going to be surrounded by a bunch of people who don't have any food, who don't have any water, and they're going to find out that you have food and water. You better have a lot of bullets and [ __ ] aderall to stay awake. Don't let people know you've got a year supply of food. Yeah. Don't get on a prepper show where it shows the [ __ ] front of your house and all your neighbors know where your stored food is. Crap hits the fan. There's a lot of us that are in trouble. Ultimately, societyy's going to have to bond together and those that's where that's where religion, a lot of these groups will come together and that's where it'll become valuable, you know, for for people that don't see it. Like that's where little groups, communities, you know, it's where if you don't know your neighbor, man, you should know your stinking neighbor because the guy might be might guy might be covering your back one night, you know, so you need to know your area and you know, half the van, we're all screwed anyway. So yeah, you're almost like I was listening to this other show that I listen to all the time called Radio Lab. uh it's a podcast and they were talking about uh the the impact that killed the dinosaurs. And uh when they were talking about it, it was like they're just going over like what the original human was like this thing that allegedly came out of, you know, that impact like what animals, what fossils they know of. And it's almost like you rather get hit in the head by the asteroid and go through all that [ __ ] I know. You know, you don't want to be the the the people that have babies in in an apoc apocalyptic environment and then those babies grow on to like [ __ ] man. Be glad you live in an era where they can make cotton really really soft and you know, you got soft blankets and warm heat and you don't have to deal with I'm a big fan of civilization, but I am a big fan of this. Well, we were talking about the prepper thing because I think there's this people are sort of realizing as
people pay more attention to a lot of the issues that society has, whether it's environmental issues like um whether it's uh pollution or garbage that's being dumped into the ocean or the amount of uh fish that's getting pulled out of the ocean, sustainability, and they start looking at the ideas of like where their food comes from. Like people are really into grass-fed beef now. Grass-fed beef is a big thing. It was ne [ __ ] non-existent 10 years ago. Never saw grass-fed beef anywhere. Almost every supermarket I go to now has like a little section grass-fed meat, you know, and people are concerned about animals that are eating what they're supposed to be eating instead of some weird [ __ ] grain. Bad news for for people is beef, you know, being here in the West, you know, we see a lot of that and uh the majority of its life is grass-fed. You know, they turn them out on the range, they pay they pay fees for the BLM or wherever it is. They're grass-fed up until about three months at the end of their life where they're put onto a feed lot, fed a bunch of fat foods, fattened up so they taste good when I put them on the grill, you know? I mean, that's there's a reason why, in my opinion, why foods have been engineered and and changed is because it makes them We got a lot of pop a lot of people to feed, you know, for one. Yeah. But so, in a way, that's good. But as long as I can go out and still obtain a deer tag or an elk tag and go out and get my own meat for myself, I'm going to continue to do that, you know? Well, it's just it's a totally different kind of meat. That was the the point is that that when you eat a steak from an elk or a deer and then you eat a steak from a cow, like one of them is a fat lazy [ __ ] that's like like marbling. Like that shit's not supposed to be there. Oh, it tastes so good. It does taste so good. I had a ribeye last night. A bone in ribeye. Oh, delicious. I'm sure it was not [ __ ] grass-fed whatsoever. Probably never even saw grass. Probably never feared for its life either. Oh, probably not until the end. It didn't even know the end. You know, the axe fell and I don't think it's an axe. I don't know what it is. A piston. Piston. What it is? That thing like uh No Country for Old Men. That thing that he uses to take foreheads. Then they
take a rod and go. Uh, I remember in high school I watched a video on uh on the butchering process, you know, and it made me sick when when they when they killed the cow made me made me sick. After that, it wasn't that big of a deal, you know, because I' I had dealt with that before. But Well, what's weird is when they do it kosher style, like kosher, you have to cut its throat and it suffers way more. It's very strange. Like they have rules and a lot of the rules are like old school religious rules like the reason why you're not supposed to eat pigs. Well, it's because a lot of pigs carry tchinosis. That's what they did back in the day at least. And so they were telling people, "Don't eat pigs." Why? Because people ate pigs and they got really [ __ ] sick. So they wrote it down. Don't eat pigs. It's against the religion. The way I grew up, you know, I mean, you talk about organic and you talk about raw. I mean, the way I grew up is probably about as organic and raw as you can get. I mean, whole milk straight from the cow. You milk the cow, take it in, strain it through a cloth. you know that a cloth, chill it, skim the the cream off or shake it in and you drink it. You know, no pasteurization, nothing. That's how that's how we grew up. There was a time there when when my dad was a farmer and he lost the farm, so he had to go back to college. Well, there was a a big time stretch in there where we had to sustain off the land, you know, or off of the farm. we had animals to eat and you know you the farmers would come and drop off a sack of potatoes because they knew that you know these those little ruggedy kids you know their dad's off going to college and their mom's trying to take care of them and and so we literally lived off the land for So your dad was somewhere else and you were on the dad went to college in uh Provo Utah while we lived in central Idaho you know cuz he was went back to school to get his teaching degree because we lost the farm that um he was a potato farmer for a long time so we're living on the farm and it wasn't It wasn't unusual for mom to go out, grab one of the rabbits that we were raising. And I'll never forget the first rabbit, you know, that that I watched watched her kill. Hung it up, smacked it on the head, and you know, we we had rabbit for
dinner. And it was there was a lot of times where it's like, Timothy, can you go grab a chicken? You know, we need we need some we need dinner or whatever. And you'd go out and you'd get a chicken and you you take care of it and bring it in. You know, there it's just part of the lifestyle that I grew up that you didn't go to the grocery store and get things. You went out to the garden and you pulled off out of zucchini, you know, you went and pulled some tomatoes. You What was really cool is the irrigation system that was there, the little ditches. I mean, asparagus everywhere, wild rhubarb. I mean, there's all these different kinds of things that we probably did out of necessity during that time span more so than out of, yeah, we're going to live off of our farm, live off of what we create. But I think that time span taught me a lot about the reality of life and death, the reality of hey, you can create and be self completely self- sustained. You know, you can be create your own food, everything right here just on one tiny little farm. And then also, you know, that's that's what kind of gave me a love and a passion with animals because you're raising, you know, a calf from the time it's born. You're bottlefeeding it. you're you're feeding it all through through the winter time, you know, breaking the ice off the water trough and everything else. The next spring you're killing it and then you're gonna eat it, you know. So, there's that that whole span where you go from life to death in a five, six, eightmonth period of time. And as a young kid, that could be either traumatic or that can be a major life learning experience, you know, and I took that as this is the way life is. That's the way that's the way things happen. So when I grew up and you get older and you get to college and people start throwing the ah you you know you eat animals or this and that and the vegetarian stuff and you start learning the things of the world that's where it's like man you people are the ones that are crazy not me you know there's just so much ignorance involved in people that live in cities and you know claim that there's something wrong with people that eat animals. It's the the what's wrong is factory farming that there's something
wrong about factory farming. There's something wrong about jamming a bunch of chickens into a box that's so small they can't move and they cut their beaks off so they don't peck each other's eye. But do they have That's the thing is do they have to do that in order to provide enough food for people? That's that's where I don't know. That's where I'm ignorant on the subject because it's like man part of it is like well we got to produce food. We've got to have GMOs. We got to have grain grow faster. We got to have these different things just to provide food for people. There's so many because we're providing food for people all over the world, you know? So it's like dang, where's the fine line there, you know? Where's where's a good point. I just think that the ethics involved in in raising animals. I think it is important. It is important and it's important that these animals don't suffer needlessly. But the idea that eating them is wrong. It's like boy, there's some weird it's it's a very shallow-minded argument in my opinion or the not shallow-minded but the the the exploration of that idea. The exploration of that idea is is kind of simplistic because if you just let the animals free, okay, no more no more livestock, no more this. Well, what are you going to do with all those animals? Are you gonna just let them roam free? And if you let them roam free, how you planning on driving anywhere? Because if you're planning on going play, do you want to keep them penned up and you want to keep feeding them and just not eat them? Okay. Well, what are you going to do when there's too many of them? Well, there shouldn't have been that many to begin with. You know, it's because of the factory farming that there are that many pigs or that many turkeys or whatever. Well, do you know what they're doing in the Hamptons? The Hampton's like a really rich area. I've heard on your your podcast. That's the first time I heard about that. They're trying to give them birth control. Yeah. They're trying to give deer birth control. I mean, birth control. They're doing it. Are they doing it? Yeah. Right now. The [ __ ] is wrong with these people? They've done birth control in certain cities, I think. The [ __ ] is wrong with these people? You know what? Birth control,
it's like, you know, it's a 22 cent 308. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, that's birth control right there. Yeah. Just or arrows. I mean, in one of the um shows uh Wadell and um uh that dude T-Bone, never heard of him. You know those guys? Never heard of them. They uh went to uh New Jersey and they were in like this residential neighborhood in New Jersey that has a deer problem. So, they were like posted up on these treeands and these people's backyards. Just [ __ ] deer everywhere. These guys who Mark here grew up in New York. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. So that place is mobbed mob with deer. You can't even drive at night. Yeah. So what they do is they shut down the parks and they allow you to go in after all the deer season's done. And you're allowed to take up to five deer. Wow. And it's so controlled that they want to know at the end of every day. You have to log on a piece of paper part of your license what you've seen and how many where they were. The guys in Boston like Mitch and Tim were they were showing me where they were hunting, right? I went to visit them. It's like 5 minutes away from New Plymouth Rock, you know, and all this. Is there like hunting right there on the ocean and everything? I was just like, man, that's crazy. Just overwhelmed with like urban deer or suburban suburban deer. Yeah, it's a big issue also with ticks because those deer are the ones that are carrying those deer ticks and those are the ones that are carrying that Lyme disease. And my wife's obsess obsessed with ticks every every time she talks to me on the phone. Did you check yourself for ticks? No, babe. I can't see that far. Did you check yourself for tick? Reanella and his kid both got Lyme disease and one of his producers never heard of him. He got uh he got it really bad though. He had his kid had Bell's palsy. I don't know if you sad. Yeah, that's crazy. It was ugly. But he was saying on the last podcast I did with him, but they they did some study of ticks in um the uh Hudson Valley. Hudson County or something. Something like 70 to 80% of them have Lyme disease. Wow. It's a [ __ ] epidemic. That's crazy. Well, they had uh stinking whatchamacallit uh Burning Man in Nevada out there. I guess a bunch of the people got N West Niles something from all the mosquitoes. Yeah.
16 to 23,000 people. What came down with West? Yeah. What? All the more reason not to go to Burning Man. There's there's no need for any more reasons to not go to Burning Man. But if you did need one, that's it. If I go to Burning Man is to hand out soap. I do find myself up on the mountain though. Sometimes you're like, I wonder if I got any ticks. But you know, I've never I mean, there's when I that deer I shot last week. Holy cow. Did you see the cape? There was ticks everywhere. Just just literally just And what's crazy is when uh after the animal dies and you you're you I brought it back and I caped it out and everything, which is if you don't know what caping is, is when you take the hide for mounting, you know? So, you take it off the head and neck and and you bring it back, you tan it and you have it mounted so you can preserve your whether it's a trophy or you can preserve your memories or whatever it is. But once it dies and it goes through the cooling process, the ticks no don't have anywhere warm to stay anymore and there's no blood and there's nothing. So they just start coming out like crazy and uh I mean there was just this pile of ticks. I was like, man, that's Do you kill them? What do you do? Ah, you just let them down. What? You can't kill a tick. I mean, we used to when we'd have sheep and stuff and we'd be on the farm, you'd kind of roll your fingernail over and crush them and try to kill them, but they're they're tough. They're like a flea. Just don't get them on you. Yeah, they're they're bad. They're yucky. Duh. I don't know. I'm I I could have Lyme disease. I would never know. I mean, I think you start feeling like [ __ ] Some days you feel bad, some days you feel good. Well, they say that, you know, do you remember there were like in the 80s or ' 90s a lot of people were coming down with chronic fatigue syndrome and they linked it to Lyme disease. Is that what you're Yeah. People were saying, well, there was it was a real issue. Like people were saying, oh, you know, my friend has chronic fatigue syndrome. Like, what does what does that mean? Well, sometimes people just get, for whatever reason, they're just tired all the time. Their body aches. Well, why? They don't know. Well, now they believe that a lot of those people have Lyme disease
because apparently there's a lot of doctors to this day that are reluctant to diagnose someone with Lyme disease. And that's what Renell ran into with his kid. He was like, I think my kid's got Lyme disease. And then doctor's like, ah, don't worry about it. It's nothing. And then it turns out he did. And you know, he was really [ __ ] pissed off cuz he brought his kid in there three times. But they'll sure slap him on Riddle in a hurry. Oh yeah. Yeah. Go put your kid on Prozac. Maybe it'll help us. I guarantee if I took my kid in, they'd be like, "Ah, he's ADD. You got to you got to calm that kid down." I'm like, "No, man. He's a boy. He's no Burning Man was not infected with West Nile virus." Mark what what happened? That's the Huffington Post. I'm going to believe that. We found it in that area. Yeah. And some traps, but it wasn't on any people or Oh, okay. Only one case in that county. Yes. Oh, so that whole last 5 minutes of that segment, there was so many people out there screaming, "You guys are wrong. You're so full of crap for spreading lies." every podcast I've ever done. Ever. I got news every Yeah, I just Yeah, there's no way around that. It doesn't matter. You just got to do your thing. So, I guess it's not 16,000. It's zero. Close. Close, Mark. But well, when you think about, you know, 7 billion people on the planet, you heard. Close enough. Um, so back to uh this uh this this movement, this trend that people are having to sort of I think I think a lot of it comes with people that are kind of trying to shy away from GMO foods and these people that are trying to move towards sustainability and I think that's what's being reflected in a lot of these shows. Um, but I find it fascinating that people are really into these shows that have never had any desire to hunt and they accept it like especially like Life Below Zero is a really good one and they accept how these people live because well, hey, those people live out in the bush. They have no choice and it it's a unique lifestyle choice instead of, you know, hey, Tim Bernett likes to go out and shoot things and hunt them and and film it. But I feel like it's the same thing. I really do. I feel like it's exactly the same thing. It's just they've
stylistically labeled it in a different way and it became, you know, a reality show about unique people. Does that mean I have to accept the hippie, you know, that's out there humping like minks all over and, you know, transmitting diseases everywhere because that's the lifestyle that they chose, you know? So, it's like they hump humping like minks. I don't know. Whatever. I'm just like the animal. Rogan, you're ruining my example here. just saying just because they're they're saying that it's acceptable because those people interjected their themselves into that lifestyle. Also, it's like, okay, so the people that are living a, you know, whatever lifestyle, should I accept that just because they're they're putting themselves in that lifestyle? It's like, I don't know. Well, I have no problem accepting any lifestyle that doesn't intrude on mine. But when I see these um these reality shows, whatever you want to call them, where these people are living this sustainable life, I just I I find it super intriguing, like almost like in a primal way. Like I I love watching those shows. I think it's there's um Life Below Zero. There's one guy, I think his name is Glenn, and uh he lives deep in the woods, okay? He lives right next to this lake and uh he doesn't have any power. He's not no he doesn't have a [ __ ] snowmobile. Like there's levels that these guys do it. Some guys have snowmo. This one guy, Eric, he has a snowmobile and he traps and hunts and he sells the know the furs and things along those lines. And so he gets some money for that for supply and then he also guides. He's a hunting guy. But this other guy, Glenn, he's not none of that. I mean, all he he has some furs that he sells. And with that, with the money, he gets bullets. And that's basically he has tin can, you know, pots and pans and things along that those lines for cooking. But everything he does, he's he's chopping his own wood. He makes his own fire with like one of those things. He puts like the piece in his mouth with the stick so he can hold it in place and does the whole thing with the [ __ ] with the u It looks like one of those things you play the violin with, you know, like a like a bow. Just a fire bow. A fire bow. But he it's an old school one where he holds a piece in his mouth that keeps a stick in
place. So he could like a he's like a got a bow. Use both hands for the momentum. You can really get it fast. You push down with one arm and you bow with another arm. So he bites down on it with his teeth. Holds the stick in place and he can make a fire pretty quickly like that. It's pretty interesting to watch. But he said, "Hey, you know, you could lose matches. Matches get wet. This I I'll never lose." So, he's gone so old school, like as as old school as old school gets. And it's amazing. It's fascinating. But for this guy, when he talks about it, he talks about how exciting and enriching every day is for him. Every day has a purpose. Every day is, you know, acquiring food, living off the land, figuring out a way to store that food. He's got this um like this meat cooler room that he's built that's like a sod house. So he has all this sod over it, you know, to kind of keep it essentially underground, keep it cool, and he has all his meat hanging in there. It's just it's inc it's incredibly fascinating that people are like tuned into this stuff and geared and a lot of my friends that have never had any desire to hunt whatsoever watch these shows and sort of sparks that little fascination inside of them. It's got to be good. I mean, that's got to be a good thing. Yeah. Um Yeah. I mean, that's just like Alaska, the Last Frontier. That's one that I really like and I think that one's kind of twofold. The reason I like it is one because the cast me the characters, you know, they're they're pretty pretty interesting and I like I like that. But two, it's it's the subsistence lifestyle, you know, subsistence lifestyle. Yeah, that that's an interesting one, too, because there's different people that are in that family that do it different ways. like the one guy Otto's a cattle rancher and he's got his cattle and then there's the son who just decides no cattle ranching just going to go off a hunting do the whole thing you know good luck yeah good luck well you need it can be done but man it's not as easy as people would think it is a 24-hour proposition you know and then there was there was one just on Discovery Channel it must have only ran for a few weeks called the hunt or something where they were they were documenting or following 10 weeks
outfitters or thing. Yeah, that's James Hatfield from Metallica was the the host of one of the guy. He got a lot of flack for for going on there or something. But it's like it's like, you know, the mainstream networks. And I guess that's kind of a frustration, too. It's like, well, why can't a hunting show go mainstream? Why can't a typical hunting show go mainstream? Well, I don't know if society would accept that or not at a mainstream level. And yet, the Discovery Channel can come out with a series like that that is hunting and it's it's bears, you know, they're hunting bears. It's like how why do why is that okay for Discovery Channel to do that but for me to go out and you know kill a deer or an elk I think it's changing that's why I brought that up and I was going to bring up the hunt because I think it is changing they tried to get James Hatfield removed from the Glastenberry music festival because he hosts the hunt and they used a photograph that they said was him standing over a grizzly bear but it wasn't even him it's not him but pull that photo up you know that photo that guy who is the actual hunter um he he's been sort of um going out publicly and promoting this. Like I don't know why these these anti- hunters use this photo of a guy who kind of sort of looks like James Hatfield, but it's not James Hatfield at all. So it's complete [ __ ] It's not he's what he's doing is just narrating it. They took into, you know, this this idea and they they ran with it and they're being uh really um dishonest with it. This is the guy. See, and they're promoting that as James Hatfield just because he was the narrator behind the series. Yeah. And well, he kind of looks like him a little bit, but it's not it's not James Hatfield at all. That's James Hatfield. I mean, James Hatfield does hunt, but that's not him standing over that grizzly bear. So, the entire premise of this thing that they were doing to try to get people off of uh or get Metallica removed from this music festival was just a [ __ ] photograph. Have you had anything against you for for you going hunting is like anything publicly where it's like Oh yeah. Yeah. Don't let Rogan, you know, don't let him do anything with UFC anymore. How could you do that? Cage fighting.
That's the thing about being a cage fighting commentary. You're already doing something so [ __ ] up. You know, you're involved in what some people think is human [ __ ] fighting. They don't really care if you go out and shoot animals. But yeah, I've had people angry at me. Definitely people call me a piece of [ __ ] Especially for the bear. The bear was a bit there's a photo of me and Cam standing over this bear I shot and I got more heat for that than anything I ever did because I think it's because people have this what they call anthropomorphication I think is the word where they connect uh animals to h with human characteristics like yogi bear and [ __ ] all these ridiculous and we grew up that way. We grew up loving those animals, you know. Yeah. and they have this idea of what wildlife is that's completely alien from wildlife itself. Those folks that I went uh bear hunting with uh Cameron Haynes and the Rivets, uh Johnny and Jenny Rivet, they run this uh livein the dream uh outfitter company up in uh Alberta. The nicest [ __ ] people you ever want to meet in your life. And they have they have animals. They have dogs. They love their dogs. They have a puppy. Like people who don't understand hunting would never imagine that these people go out, shoot bears all day, and come home and pet their puppy, you know? It's like to them it seems like completely contradictory and alien. Like how do you decide what animals you're shooting and what animals you're you're petting? And I can respect that. I mean, you can see why. I mean, my wife's the same way. She's like, "How can you love animals so much?" And uh you know, when you see a deer hit on the side of the road, you're like, "Oh man, that sucks. It's really And then the next week you go out and kill one." She's like, "I don't get that." And I'm like, "Well, it's it's it's hunting. It's not killing, you know." Does she eat meat? She eats meat. Yeah. Yeah. She uh she's funny. She'll try to like I'll cook up some milk steak or something. I'll be like, and I I got to admit, I'm not a vanilla. I'm not You know, Rey's a great cook, but I'm like I'm one of those guys. I want a slab of meat. I'm going to put it on the grill. It's going to hit 120 degrees, whatever, and I'm going to eat it, you know? I mean, that's it's like I don't want to spend
my time preparing food. I just want to eat it. And so some of the stuff I cook doesn't taste that great, you know, and that's where it's like, but it's meat, you know, and it's meat that I killed and meat that I brought home, so I'm going to eat it. But to her, it's like, ah, it's a waste of time. So, you know, if I spent more time preparing it and aging it and doing whatever needs to be done with it rather than just cooking it and eating it, she she might taste it, but who knows? So, she doesn't eat your game meat? No. I cooked one time where I was like, "Babe, this is the best." It was tenderloin from an elk, you know, and and granted I cooked it on the grill like I probably shouldn't have. And it was doused with barbecue sauce. I mean, you couldn't tell. I couldn't tell cuz I was like, I want this to taste exactly like beef. Mhm. Which it did. And she chewed on it, took one bite into it and spit it out, blah blah blah. And of course, my boy sees this. So, he's like, "I don't ever want to eat deer ever again, Dad." You know, cuz mom spit it out. It's like, "No, no, no, no. Mom just doesn't like it." But that's funny. I don't know what it is. Interesting. I hammer her on it all the time. I'm like, "Babe, just try it." But she's like, "You can't even cook that in the house, you know. Don't even cook it in the house." So, it's She won't let you cook it in the house. She will. I mean, she will. It's not. I mean, I I wear the pants around there. Damn it. You know, he's going to try to reclaim power here. Like, please let me be the man. No, but yeah, she's like, "If you're going to cook that, go outside." So, it's like I'll put it on the grill and I'll chew the crap out of it and I'll I'll eat it. And I enjoy it. Well, my my wife grew up in a hunting family, so she's used to eating like wild game. She likes it. And our kids have been eating it since uh I started hunting two years ago. So, when uh my my youngest daughter was two, it was like the first time she had deer. So, she's been eating deer since then. Like they they'll eat anything. Oh, my kids have my kids have been raised on I mean, they've eaten more wild game than a lot of kids, I'm sure. They just don't know, you know? It's it's the same. It's meat. Meat. When we cook meat, it's meat. Whether it's a deer, an elk, chicken, whatever.
My my 2-year-old, she's everything's chicken. More chicken. More chicken. You know, and it could be it could be a buffalo for all. It doesn't matter. Everything's chicken. Yeah. It's it's a weird thing where people have this uh like this connection, but some animals are like your friends and some animals like you should you should never hunt this. Like I have an agent. She's a very nice person. She loves animals. But she told me, "Oh, I don't mind if you kill pigs. Wild pigs are disgusting. They're so ugly." like that. She's like, "They're ugly. You can kill them cuz they're ugly." I'm like, "Is it their fault that they're ugly?" ugly. That's the thing that kind of I'm It ticks me off because like the network promotes this apocalypse crap, you know? And I have here's the thing. A little background story to this. I grew up on a on a farm. Obviously, at one time we had a hog operation. We had hundreds of pigs, you know, whatever. But like I have a love for pigs. I love the I love animals. They got personalities. They're really cool, you know. I mean, they're they're cool. And so, when I see somebody who will remain nameless on a TV show shoot one arrow through two pigs, and that's okay. But yet, if I shoot one arrow through two deer, you know, even if it's legal, or two whatever, it's not okay. And then the very next minute shoot, you know, a weanling 10 lb pig in the head with a pellet rifle and watch it sit there and flail on the ground. That's bull crap, you know, because I have a relationship with that hawk with that little pig where it's like, don't show me that. Do it. You can do it. I don't care. Don't show me that, you know. Don't show public that because to me, I think the worst enemies for for hunters and hunting television are hunters and hunting television. We're we're our worst worst advocate. And I say we, I lump us all on broad broadstrokers. But it's it's like there's so many out there doing things that Yeah, it's the reality of it, but it's not it's not what needs to be seen. I know what you're saying and I'm going to explain it to people who don't know what you're saying. Um there there are certain shows and there's this one show called Pigman and I wasn't going to say it. I said it. I said it. Sorry, Matt. Um anyway, uh
Pigman, he what they're doing a lot is population control rather than hunting. And they are shooting animals, but they're shooting animals that have overrun these farms. So some of them, when you were saying apocalypse, what they're doing is they're getting these helicopters. We've played video of it. It's the craziest [ __ ] ever of him and Nent up in helicopters with [ __ ] automatic rifles taking out pigs like in mass. They shot 450 of them or something in a day once. It's the craziest thing you've ever seen. These pigs are running and then boom, head shot as they're running. They're tumbling. And it's not about like we're going to go out and shoot an animal, harvest it, and then use it and eat it and you know and and show the hunting lifestyle. No, it's it's like it's a murder fest. Yeah, it's like pigs have a pass because of what they are, you know, what what they're doing. I mean, because they are causing billion probably billions of dollars in damage to crop crops and that. So, it's like it's like pigs pigs have been removed from the game animal category. It's like a cat. It's like a coyote. They're varmints. Yeah. But I will say probably on those shows, I guarantee they have to, you know, that meat has to be used somewhere taken taken and donated and processed. They can't just leave them lay. I mean, that's I don't think so. But when you're dealing with 450 of them, do they even have the resources to gather up all those? They better because if they're shooting that many hogs and they're not doing anything with it, to me, that's bull crap. They've got to have the resources just like in New Zealand when they go in and call out, you know, the the the wild deer and that in there because there's no predators, they have the resources to go in with a chopper and pull it out and they they they harvest that meat. So, if they're shooting 450 pigs, bastards better have a way to to keep that meat cuz that's ridiculous if they don't. In my opinion. My opinion. Yeah. I Well, I agree with you because it's a massive waste of great meat, too. Wild pig is absolutely delicious. It's really good for you. It's completely different from domestic pig in the way it looks cuz these animals are eating all kinds of different natural things, roots and and grasses. And they're not just eating
grain. It's not like white. It's not like a white meat. Like that was the thing that they had this thing. Pork, the other white meat. You remember that? That campaign. If you ever see a wild pig, folks, it's not white. It's not white at all. It's [ __ ] red. I It's not as red as a deer, but it's a dark meat. Yeah. It's cuz it's healthy. We should we should invest in a barbecue house and just go and put a barbecue house in Texas and then just go kill all the wild pigs and use that to to get all your meat. Well, that's what Pigman does. Is that what he does? Yeah. See, I saw that that show he had. I called it was going to call it that stupid series on Discover. Here I go. It was like, don't worry about it. I saw this and it's like, you know, the whole concept behind is cool, but it's just, you know, well, it's a reality show. They were they were doing that. They were killing the hog and then going and and providing it to this uh he had his own barbecue place. Yeah. Which is a great idea. Yeah. But I don't think it's totally legal. At least it might be in You can't sell wild game. Like if I kill an elk, I can't sell it, you know. Um which is a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. But I I can donate it. And I tell you, the amount of traveling and hunting I do, I donate a lot of meat, you know, in a lot of a lot of different places. Yeah. What a lot of hunters do. Yes. Um, but don't you think that like wild pigs, if they became a revenue source like that, if they had a restaurant that if they have an animal that is so completely overpop populated and overrun that they don't have any tag limits, which pigs are at right now? You could just go and shoot [ __ ] pigs all day long and they'll they'll be happy for you. Including California, which is like one of the most liberal states ever, which has all sorts of crazy regulations on animals that need to be called and aren't. Like, there's real issues here with mountain lions. And there's a a real issue with uh with people that don't want people to hunt mountain lines. And they don't understand how ridiculously overpop populated these [ __ ] things are getting. And these poor people that are running farms have to deal with these animals coming in and just decimating their the population of their calves, you know, the the the the game animals.
Like the people that will tell you about when mountain line hunting was legal in comparison now and then the deer population levels. There's no comparison, right? I mean, they're there's they're [ __ ] everywhere, man. At Tahone Ranch, where I've been pig hunting before, the guy who was uh our guide told us that he has a trail camera set up over this water hole and he got 16 different mountain lions on camera. That's [ __ ] crazy. Yeah. Do you know how many deer a mountain lion's going to eat in a week? Yeah. Like one every couple days. It's unbelievable how many mountain lions they have. And it's because you can't hunt them. And that is when you have a predator that can't you can't if we're going to be the stewards of the land which is what most people look if you're going to accept that we have regulations on game. We have regulations on on you know fish that you can pull for the ocean. We're supposed to be managing the population of these animals in a smart intelligent way and that's good conservation. But when you remove some animals from that management simply because of public opinion, non-informed public opinion of people who are animal lovers, that's ridiculous. You can't do that. That's that's contrary to the very nature of conservation in the first place. Conservation isn't simply, oh, we need to preserve the habitat and give these animals food and make sure their water is not polluted. Sure, that's most certainly a part of it. And for people who don't know, hunters have been responsible for way more money that goes to conserving wildlife habitat, conserving wetlands than any other group by far. It's not even close. No, no like tree hugger conservation group has come close to generating the amount of money that has gone into conservation as hunters have. But because you you're controlling populations of deer, controlling populations of elk, pigs, all that's good, but you got to control [ __ ] predators, too. And they're realizing that now in a lot of these states where they reintroduce wolves, and people are fighting against people hunting wolves. Like, you better [ __ ] go online and research those giant super PACs of wolves in Siberia that storm a farm and kill a hundred horses and no one could do a goddamn thing about it
because you've got a thousand wolves. Mhm. Can you imagine being in a [ __ ] farm and you're looking out the window and you see a pack of wolves just tearing apart horses and no one could do anything about it? Well, that's what happens when [ __ ] gets out of line. And that's the way wolves work, too. You know, they'll generate those super PACs. There's a great story from World War I where the Russians and the Germans had a ceasefire. They were in they were in the woods in Russia. They had a ceasefire because so many of them were getting killed by wolves. They would send out these packs. They would send out rather these um these uh parties would like like search parties at two two men at a time and they would never come back and they would go out and they'd find their clothes torn apart covered in blood and then they realized oh my god these guys are getting taken out by wolves they were getting targeted by wolves so when they would have small numbers these guys had rifles they were [ __ ] soldiers and the wolves were eating them I mean and so stop talking about wolves wolves are [ __ ] scary dude talking to a guy that spends a lot of time in the wild alone next week next week I will be camping where there's a lot of wolves by myself and it's like where you going I'm not afraid of bears as much or mountain lions or anything wolves scare the crap out of me you know wolves and lightning I don't know what it is but what it is about wolves wolves because there's so much unknown about there's so much unknown about modern wolves we know about you know wolves of of history old you know and in times like that when there were super PAs and all that well they're just now being reintroduced and there's a whole new generation my generation included that we don't we don't know and understand wolves and how they hunt and how they, you know, how they are evolving. And so to me, there's just so much eerie about them, you know, so much unproven. You know, I could be that first guy that does get attacked and killed by a wolf, you know, that's that's there because there's more people now, too. So, they're they're they there's more of a chance of a wolf being conditioned to people or public than there ever has been before. So, I think that it's just it's a different animal today than it
was 100 years ago or 200 years ago. And the thought of me, you know, me or a hunter somewhere in there, you get a pack that's just in the wrong mentality that maybe hasn't been hunted that much or hasn't been pressured that much cuz you're you're way back in the wilderness, you know, they may be a little bit more aggressive than than what you would like, you know? So, they just kind of creep me out a little bit. They should creep you out. In the 1400s, there's a story called the wolves the wolves of Paris. Have you ever read that story? No, I haven't. Yeah, wolves killed 40 people in Paris to the point where people had to in the city itself of Paris. They had killed 40 people and um it was there was a man-eaten wolf pack in uh in 1450 and the animals entered the city during the winter through uh breaches in its walls. This is so crazy. And this one uh they they had eventually uh counter they had cornered the wolves and they were killing them with stones and spears in front of the not Notre Dame uh cathedral. That's a [ __ ] crazy story. That's like taking coyotes of today cuz there's coyotes roaming around here probably or someone and turn them into wolves, you know, if that's if that's a wolf in that environment. That's crazy. Yeah. Well, even scarier because they're obviously a lot bigger and creepier. But people throughout history have had real issues with wolves. But today we associate wolves with being dogs. We think of them as dogs. Like anybody would hunt a wolf as an [ __ ] What do you think the Little Red Riding Hood story? Why was that about a wolf? Why was that about a wolf? Why is it the big bad wolf? Why is Why is the the three little pigs and the big bad wolf? Cuz wolves were a [ __ ] issue. You would go into the woods and the thing you'd be worried about was wolves. Yeah. Do you want your kid not to be able to walk to school because there's wolf roaming the the area, you know, or whatever? It's like, I don't know. But people don't want people hunting wolves. It's one of the biggest blowbacks. It's well, it goes back to what you just said, you know, said earlier, and it's not exactly the same thing, but you're like, you don't care what lifestyle people lead as long as it doesn't affect you. Same same concept here. People don't give a crap
about other stuff as long as it doesn't affect them. So, it's like they can we all we all fall into it a little bit is we can be hypocritical and say, you know, I don't like this and I don't like this and this because that's going to affect me. But if somebody wants to if you know, if they want to go out and do this, that's fine. I don't care, you know. So they look at it as well. I guess I don't know where I'm going. I just kind of lost that. Well, nice. No, but it's like you're right that like the people that don't interact with those wolves. Don't kill the wolves because the wolves don't hurt me. The wolves don't bother my kids walking to school, so don't kill the wolves. Well, yeah, but you know, my kid might get pounced on by a mountain lion because we live in the rural countryside, you know. Well, not only that, you have to keep their populations down for the health of all the other animals that are around them as well. Like they they can start decimating wildlife populations. They've done that with elk. They've done that with deer in the areas where they've been reintroduced. The numbers of elk have drastically red. Dude, I'm from Idaho, man. I know that full full on. The valley where I grew up, I mean, in in the late 90s, early 2000, I mean, elk elk, it was elk hunting heaven. There was elk coming down in our eating out of our cattle feeder, you know, right at the back of mom and dad's house. Wow. You know, there was elk everywhere. And uh the hunting was awesome. And they weren't bothering the crops or anything. Well, then the wolves come in. Can you imagine? Can you picture a a a herd of elk, you know, and all a sudden there's, oh, there's a real big dog over there. Oh, that's a big coyote. The coyote starts picking them off and it it takes them quite a while before they learn and condition themselves that, hey, that's not a coyote. That's something different. So, those herds were just standing. They were just it's like turkey shoot. No, they'd experienced mountain or mountain lions, coyotes, and bears, which don't hunt like wolves do. They don't hunt in packs. So, a pack of wolves comes in. They think there's those damn coyotes again. Whoa, where'd Jimmy go? You know, where what's going on here? And the next thing you know, it
takes them years to condition themselves to where now elk hunting today is different than it was 15 years ago cuz the elk act differently. I mean, there's certain instances where it's similar, but they're a different animal to hunt today than they were 20 years ago. Have you ever been uh hunting in any way and had a kill and had to keep a predator off the kill? Yeah, so uh I was hunting deer, white tailed deer actually in northern Idaho with a bow. This was in like 2008, 2009, something like that. And I was filming the hunt, you know, this was before I started the TV show, but at that time I already had had the concept of Solo Hunter in mind. So I'm filming everything and it just the light light gets dark and so I go to take the camera off the the arm that I had and I flip the switch and the camera down the bottom of the tree crushed. So I was like, crap. Well, then a deer comes out. I'm like, well, I'm going home tomorrow anyway. So, I grab my bow, thump the deer, and uh I'm sitting there and the deer kind of goes over and starts to do the wobble thing. Well, next thing you know, a bear pulls up, a black bear comes up and takes the deer down. Immediately pulls it over this hillside. And I'm like, that was pretty dang cool. I wish. And I was just I was more mad at myself than aruck because I was like, I dropped my damn camera out of the tree and I could have filmed that, but um so I was more like just upset. So, I thought, no big deal. I'll just climb down, go down, spook the bear off, get my deer, go home. No big deal. So I go and I'm trailing trailing this deer and all I've got is my flashlight in one hand and my bow in the other and I can hear the bear sliding it down the the hillside and it's a pretty steep grade and I'm like bear making noise doing whatever cuz I'd have experiences with bears and it didn't wasn't that big of a deal. But then everything got quiet and then I was like and where I screwed up was I picked up the phone and called my wife. Hey babe, I'm uh trailing a deer. I'll be home tomorrow. What's going on? I'm like oh this bear took it. And I was like oh stupid. Why would you say that? cuz then from then on I was like ah and so from then on my wife's been freaked out about bears. But so I'll finish the story. But so I'm I'm trailing all a sudden things get super quiet. I'm like
ah good. The bear just kind of ran off. I'm going to go find my deer. And I I stood up on this uh this stump. It was kind of a a logged area. I stood up on this stump and I'm looking around with this flashlight just kind of panning around looking for the deer. And all a sudden I hear heard just kind of a noise. I went right like this. Right at the base of that stump, that bear was on top of that deer and he's just like he just hoofed one time and I just How far away from you? Oh, four or five feet, six feet, I don't know. I mean, it was close, right? I mean, I'm standing on the stump and he's on this side on top of the deer. So, I just kind of jumped back and went back up. I'm like, what was I thinking going after a bear that just took down a deer that thinks that's a deer he just took down, so he's going to be like defending it. Defending it. And I was like, you stupid fool. You could have just you could have just it could have been over right there, you know. So, the next morning I go in, no big deal. Daylight, the deer the bear doesn't have, you know, he's not doesn't have big of coonies during the day, I guess. But he just ran off. I grabbed the deer and I have that on film. Actually, if you look at the the first solo hunter episode, it's it's episode 101. It's got that where I I kill a deer, but then I do a flashback of the year before when I was filming that hunt. And I've got my little handy cam that I filmed. You can see all the scratches all over the the deer and you can see where the bear had eaten it out from the hind end and all that kind of stuff. So, how much of the bear how much of the deer did the bear eat? He had only eaten part of the hind quarters. You know, they always go in through the butthole and through the soft soft tissue, but he you can see where he had scratched it up and where he had had drug it down and and uh just ate part of the hind quarters, but you know, for the most part, the deer was fine, salvageable, so I just cut him up and took him home. So, when you when you have an animal like that that another animal has eaten part of it, do you worry about it being contaminated in any way? Is there any concern? I didn't even think about it there. I mean, obviously, you're cooking it above a certain temperature anyway, but I didn't even
think about that. I don't I don't even know, honestly, if that could have been an issue, you know, with a bear eating eating the meat. I I don't know. You think anybody out there know if I could have gotten sick? Do you cut around? That's why I have troubles getting out of bed. Something's wrong with my eyeballs. Do you uh do you cut out around the airway? Yeah. Yeah, I cut out. But, you know, it's just I don't know. I didn't even think about that. The ri the rivets that I told you about, the guys up in northern Canada, they uh they shot a bear and it was getting dark and so they went back in the morning to recover it and another larger bear was eating it while they got there and they're like, "Oh, great. It's crazy. That's a real issue up there. Cannibalism. Cannibalism is standard. It's it's just going to get worse, you know, as the numbers increase. It can only get worse, can't it? I mean, until they get get disease or, you know, and have a die off. I mean, because nature has a kind of a way of taking care of itself. I mean, before man came along anyway, there was how many millions of buffalo roaming the countryside. And I'm sure there were areas where a disease or something was spread and there was a die off and so the herds moved off and split off. And that's how that's kind of how animals maybe maybe moved across the countryside is is different elements of of nature that happened, you know. So, we look at this is we're like, you know, I'm on this earth for 80, 90 years hopefully. Well, that's that's nothing in evolution of animals or in the the how how a a herd or or or certain species might evolve in an area. You know, an elk herd could grow up to a certain number and then it could have a die- off because of sickness. They could grow again. Well, that might take a hundred years, you know, for that process to so for us to actually see that that population curve. But then that's when you start talking about introducing the wolves. That population curve takes a big dive quick. But you know what was the logic behind reintroducing wolves? Bureaucracy, I guess. I don't know. Because wolves are cute and cuddly and they want them in Yellowstone cuz it's a park. But oh, there's no fences around Yellowstone. I didn't know that. Did you know that
there's no fences around Yellowstone? I mean, grizzlies the next next thing. We got grizzlies in Idaho that are starting to cause issues. And you know, there's there's there's all kinds of instances in Montana that grizzly is the next animal to to start causing issues, I believe, just because for some reason now it seems like nature is at its prime for bear populations to grow. You look at bear numbers, hog numbers, all these all these populations of animals numbers are continue to steadily grow massively. And I think that's just the the na na natural curve of where we're at that if we weren't involved in managing it or anything. It had hit that precipice where diseases and cannibalism and all these things would take over and and nature would would curve itself back down to get sustainable numbers or they would just out eat themselves out of home. You know, when you stumbled upon that bear and that bear was like 4t away from you with the deer, did you just back out of there? I just backed away. Yeah. I was just like, whoa. Went back up and then uh slept in my truck that night and then the next morning I just kind of went around. and I had my and brought in my gun and uh just couple shots on the hillside, the bear runs off, you you get the deer. Do did you ever watch that show, The Hunt? I did. I watched one or two episodes of it. And my problem is is I look at it, I'm ruined because as a producer, I watch everything as a producer rather than as a viewer. And so it kind of I hate that because I can't ever watch something and and get true entertainment out of it or true value out of it. Well, yeah, I know what you mean. But that it was badly produced in my opinion. I I felt like first of all they kept using this fake bear sound, the same sound over and over again. They would interject it and you knew that they were interjecting it cuz all of a sudden like there would be like a shaky camera. Why is a bear going to be growling and roaring? A bear is going to be damn silent until he's ready to kill you. And they would do it over and over again right before they cut to commercial like so like to get you to like tune in like look the camera's shaking. But you know what? I guarantee everybody watching that it's like, "Wow, bears make noise in the wild." And
that's the problem with shows like, you know, like that that they're putting on the mainstream. There was one called Chasing Tales on there for a while on on A&E or one of those where it's like everybody associates hunters as flannelwearing, overweight, middle-aged bearded men, you know, and we're not. We're businessmen. We're regular people. We're whatever. You know, you there's all these types of people that are hunters that are outdoorsmen, but society sees us as Bubba. Well, in movies too, they're like Wolverine movie. They're [ __ ] that had poisoned the deer ass. And I didn't know, but drunks, they're usually drunk, you know. And that's that's because it's the same same concept as, you know, Disney portrayed animals as people. So, we think of animals as people. Well, mo Hollywood and whatever else portrays hunters as the dumbest. Yeah. The most simple-minded. When in reality, you look at you look at the science and the management behind conservation and wildlife conservation. It's not stupid stuff, you know. No, it's not stupid stuff at all. It's very calculated. Contraceptives for deer. That's stupid stuff. Yeah. That's birth control for deer that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars when deer are delicious. So, they're running around instead of just having hunters come in and shoot them with bows and arrows or crossbows, whatever. You could to control the population like that. it would only take a couple of weekends and they could, you know, do big and get a lot of meat out of it. But instead, they're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and give them birth control. What do you think is the answer for people when what I mean, what is it going to take for Have you ever if you've ever convinced somebody that hunting is okay? I mean, what's the answer? What's what's the main thing? How can we how can we educate people to where it's like, you know what, hunting is not what what you've been taught or what you think it is or what certain people say it is? Well, I try to do it. Well, I don't I'm not trying to educate people, but in discussing it and people listening to these discussions, they kind of get a more nuanced, balanced perspective. And I know for a fact that there's a lot of people that post on my
message board that have talked about how they had one opinion of hunting before the podcast and a completely different opinion of it now. And they also never factored in the hypocrisy of wearing leather, having a leather couch, leather seats in your car, leather jacket, and then complaining about hunting. They they don't they're we're disconnected. And that disconnection has led us to be like spoiled little kids. We don't understand where all this is coming from. We don't have a direct interaction with the food itself. And when you do have a direct interaction with the food itself, when you've killed the animal yourself, the whole process is a completely different thing. I I you know I'm eating an animal that I stalked, shot, butchered, sliced up, put into packages, vacuum sealed it, put it in my freezer, thought it out, cooked it, ate it. From A to Z, it's been in my hands. And that's a completely different experience than 99% of anyone who eats meat is ever going to have. And I encourage people, I think if you could do it, if you have the time, I think a lot of people don't know where to start. That's one thing. Yeah. Yeah, I'm deal I've got some friends right now. There's three of them that are just starting starting out hunting. Last year they killed their first deer, you know, and it's it's funny to it's not I say funny, it's it's interesting to see their their evolution cuz they're like searching YouTube for everything. They're like, "Well, how would you do this? How would you do that?" And I'm like, "I don't know. I just do it." They're like, "Well, they had to search on YouTube to find out how to gut a deer." And so they have this little video clip of them gutting this deer and trying to take it all apart. It's the funniest thing, but it's like, "Well, these are grown men figuring it out on their own. There's nobody out there to teach them. There's no schools that are like, "Hey, you want to be a hunter? Come to my school, you know, pay tuition, do this." And it's like, if you want to learn, it's got to be hands-on. It's got to you've got to have a mentor. You've got to have cuz I get emails like that all the time. How do I get started? How I live in I live in uh Arizona and I hunt these mountain ranges. How do I find the deer? Cuz I spend countless
hours trying to find deer. How would you hunt this area? I don't know. I don't live there, you know. Well, not you'd have to. There's a lot of information they're asking for, too. You'd have to go there. You'd have to tell them. How much do you know? You have to explain to them what deer habitat is, where they where they nest, where they bed, rather. And there's also, it's interesting, but it's sort of there's a comparison to be made for you learning how to use computer software to edit video. You just taught yourself. You if you want to do it, you just got to kind of figure it out and teach yourself. And the cool thing about today is you can watch those YouTube videos. I mean, in back in the day, what would you have done? you've gotten a book or something and you try to like look at the diagrams and do what I did. You start cutting bloody hands and yeah, start cutting stuff comes out. You can [ __ ] things up like that. Just start cutting, right? You you know, mess yourself up and you get the tarsel glands all over the meat and smell like [ __ ] and you know there's a lot of people that ruin meat because they don't understand the proper preparation and how to take care of it once they actually kill an animal. Yeah. Yeah. There's a there's a lot to it and I think talking about it is real good. I I think it's important to have guys like Yuan and Reanella and Cameron Haynes and and Jim Shaki when he comes on to so people get an understanding of who these people are that actually are hunters that they're not those flannel shirtw wearing yokals that you see in these really cartoonish and character uh you know caricature caricature. What's the word? Caricature. Caricature. Caricaturure. Why am I saying turature caricature? The caricatures of of hunters. These cartoonish [ __ ] I think Yeah, I think you're smart by having somebody like Shocky because he's he's at a different he's a different person than me or Steve or Remy or or Cameron, you know, we're we're different than what he is. He's something special in that even if you took that man outside of the hunting industry and put him into something else, if he was an oil man or say if he was a cattleman or whatever, he's got a personality about him. and a phil philosophical way of speaking and knowledge about him that
he's going to educate people just based off of what he knows and how he's going to say something. He and I could say the exact same things, but the way he says it, you're going to be like, "Damn, I I get that." The way I say it, you're going to be like, "The guy's a fool." You know, Tim, you're a little hard on yourself. Well, I'm just I'm trying to build up Shocky here. I mean, I know the guy needs every bit of it he can get, right? You know, guys like me, we got it all. Like, no. What I'm saying is I'm glad you're having him and I'm going to It's definitely a podcast I'm going to be tuning into because I like his philosophy behind not only hunting but life and also behind, you know, family and everything else. I think he's a I think he's a great person for that, you know, and I think it's I think that's the type of person that for broad society is your spokesperson. Somebody like that. Reinella is a great one as well because he's so well read. He's a great writer and he's super educated. Super educated and a guy who really truly cares about environment, really truly cares about hunting, really truly cares about conservation and he's a guy that's in [ __ ] fantastic shape. I mean, I went hunting with him and the one thing that I was blown away with is how physically demanding hunting is. Like hiking, I looked at hiking, I'm like, that's for [ __ ] people don't really work out. Bunch of [ __ ] Walking but uphill. It's [ __ ] hard, man. Especially when you're holding a rifle, so you're not swinging your arms, you got a pack on, like you get exhausted quick. Did you have to pack your deer out or was it like in an area where you didn't have to break it down and put it in your pack? Uh, what do you mean? Your deer when you hunted in Montana, did you have to break it down and pack it out on your back? We we Well, there's three of us. It was me, Ken, and Reanella. So, my friend Brian Ken. So when we went to get my deer, we had it we we shot it that night, gutted it, uh took the liver and the heart, cooked that that night, and then put it up in a tree. We hung it out in a juniper tree. So we went there to get it in the morning cuz it was kind of late. And uh we had seen some mountain line [ __ ] in the area. It was kind of disconcerting. Big ropey [ __ ] filled
with Yeah. But the mountain lions have been hunted in that area, so they probably wouldn't even come close to you. So Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. I don't I don't like those [ __ ] things. I've seen two mountain lines in my life. How do you really You haven't here. Well, you're in California, I guess. No, never shot one. I lived in Colorado. You did? I saw the picture on you on uh social media. Come on, man. I belt. That's what I heard. So silly. Off and strangled it. My own sister asked me if I killed a mountain line. Really? Yeah. I'm like, what the [ __ ] do you think? Kill a mountain line with a belt? You can't even kill a house cat with a belt. Try to get a house cat, hold on to that [ __ ] and kill it with a belt. That thing will scratch your eyes out. Yeah. Yeah. It's a 150 lb house cat. Are you [ __ ] crazy? I've seen two. I saw one in Colorado uh really briefly. It's just like both of them have been about the same size, like 60 70 lbs, like dog sized. And the other one I saw in Monaceto, which is like a residential area in Santa Barbara. I was driving down the street, we saw this thing run across the street. And at first we thought it was a coyote. Then I saw the tail. His tail's like bobbing. I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] that's a cat." Oh, and it had a more of a bouncy way of like coyotes have that sort of stiff Yeah. [ __ ] creasy, scared to death, shitty way of running. You ever seen a coyote sleep? No. That's because they don't. They're too used to getting shot at and chased down. Can you imagine being a coyote? That's like the worst life ever. It's a sucky life. Other than like a rabbit. I'd rather be a rabbit than a coyote for real cuz people have rabbits for pets. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. They're dirty. They're stinky [ __ ] little animals. I got a coyote cushion at home. Like a a pillow that's covered in coyote skin. It's gross. It's like sleeping on my wife bought it. It's not mine. She's like, "I like coyotes." Well, she she ordered like a couple different kinds of animal skins that were converted into pillows and for whatever reason, she hates coyotes. So, for whatever reason, she got a coyote one. Yeah. She's like, "Babe, I brought home this uh this animal skin couch." That's a sheep, babe. It's a sheep tart.
Well, we have chickens. We have uh 24 chickens. So, we have this uh fencing area where the coyotes are trying to figure out how to get to the chickens. So, we'll find them near our backyard all the time. And she loves these chickens. She takes care of them. So, she particularly hates coyotes. They're always trying to figure out a way to sneak in. You know, they've killed dogs in our neighborhood before. You know, they'll they'll snatch one off a leash. I have a friend who lives in uh Brentwood, which is another residential area, and his neighbor was walking her dog. She had like a little dog walking. She heard click click click click click click click click click click click click. She didn't know what it was. She thought it was like a dog, you know, behind her and the coyote just ran up, snatched the dog right off of her [ __ ] leash and ran. That's a hungry dog. That's a hungry coyote. It was running away with her dog. Like the dog was just trying to and she's screaming and the leash is being dragged behind and it's just running with her dog. A sad sad and weird. It's weird that this those creepy predators are wandering around and it just decided to bust a move like this is the time time to take that by a a coyote. Did you really? Yeah. Yeah. I was uh I don't know. [ __ ] it. And uh it just No, 11th grade. 11th grade. It Yeah, I was It was uh long time ago, but I was doing the dishes and look outside. It was about 5:00 in the afternoon and I'm and looking. We lived in a trailer park. So, the trailer next door, there's a there's a coyote underneath underneath there just batting around, playing around with uh some toys and all kinds of balls and stuff. So, I get out and I had a 22. Go around the backside and I see him and he jumped up at the close on the clothes line and I rifled like two or three at him and I missed. He ran straight into the woods. I went back in. I had a freaking rabbit call. Like a distress call. Whoa. I Yeah, I shot back probably 200 yards. And I got up against a tree and I started blowing that freaking thing and sure as [ __ ] that thing came running right at me and he backed me up against the tree and I lift my my uh foot up and he latched right onto my boot and I shot him point blank and I emptied out the whole the whole entire clip. Whoa. Yeah.
And the thing smelt uh like skunk really bad. Smelled like a coyote. But yeah, there's a lot of hair missing off of it. But though, it was weird because that week before I had uh two two little dachshunds in the family and I let we used to let them outside, no leash, they go take a [ __ ] come back. Only one came back and uh we think that maybe he, you know, he may have taken Yeah, most likely. Right. Yeah. We never got it back. Last week in Silicone Valley, a mountain lion viciously mauled a six-year-old boy. Some kid was hiking with his parents and uh the the kid was behind them and a mountain lion came up behind, attacked the kid. The parents yelled at it and screamed and chased after the mountain lion and just like tried to hit it and it dropped the kid and ran off, but the kid got [ __ ] up. Yeah, I heard that. They they scared it away, but uh so then they uh set hunters loose on this uh cat and dogs and everything like that. And they they you know, this is another another issue that they have with mountain lions in California cuz they're not hunting them. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, it is crazy. And it's crazy how people have this idea that there are these beautiful things and they are beautiful. They're they're they're interesting. They're fascinating, but you got to keep those [ __ ] in check. You know, and and that's a real issue with people that don't understand wildlife. They just have these liberal points of view that's based on no reasoning, no logic, not a balanced perspective, no real true understanding of wildlife. Their understanding is just based on what they think is right, what they think is it's leave them alone. There's natural animals. Yeah. And then you go hiking and you're going to get eaten, you [ __ ] Do you understand that? They're big giant monsters. If those were werewolves, you would be sending packs of [ __ ] military people in the woods to try to kill the werewolf. Well, mountain lion's way [ __ ] scary werewolf cuz it's not just a mountain lion one day out of the month. Okay? The wolf man turns into the wolf man when the full moon comes out. Mountain lions wake up every morning a mountain lion. I'm a mountain lion. I'm going to kill something. And they kill big things with their face. They're used to killing deer
and elk and [ __ ] that runs really fast and they kill it with their face. And you're you're content with those things wandering around because they just look beautiful. That's ridiculous. I'm not saying that we should wipe them off the face of the earth, but we should come really close. There should be like four left. We have four left in Oklahoma with radio. Yeah. Leave them with Oklahoma with tags on that. We we have a [ __ ] a group of scientists that are monitoring their uh their progress on a screen whenever they come anywhere near a person. hunters. I think hunters would be glad to take the place of the mountain lions and keeping the population in check for sure. Yes. And and and eat that meat and you know use it for people. I'm on team people, you know. I like people. Team man, team human. That's right. Yeah. Like like people way better than other animals. I think animals are amazing. People are way better. You can talk to them. They make you laugh. You hang out with them. There are species. You breed with them. They live in your neighborhood. I mean, it's [ __ ] ridiculous that animals that you can't, though. You can't. You can breed them, but you can't. Even if you [ __ ] them, nothing happens other than you get happy. I promised my wife I'd keep everything straight. Impossible on this show. Did you promise her? No, I didn't. I told Mark. Mark's like I'm like, "Mark, you know, when we get to talking, I have a tendency to dip a little bit." I'm like, "You need to keep me on that level plane. Don't let me What does that mean? Dip what?" I like good humor. I like good humor. Tim can get raw. Are you trying? Are you worried about your your perception the perception of people? No, no, I'm not worried about my perception of people because uh you know people are going to think of you what they what they do, right? You know, but I I'm I worry about me, you know. I I have a perception of myself that I that I like to maintain, you know, which is which has been and I believe is is it is what it is, you know. When you meet me face to face, it's the exact same as when you meet me anywhere else, you know. Well, you're the same guy from that show. You're the same guy from your show. Yeah, I think,
you know, I think I'm more of a badass in real life than I am on the show, honestly. I watched back of the editing, you know, like I'm combing through some of the footage that I just filmed last week. I'm like, man, I got my guts hanging over my belt and I'm like I'm talk I slurred over my voice and everything and I'm like, I just don't look tough, you know? And I'm like, I'm tough. Whenever you say it like that, I'm tough. I'm tough, man. It's tough to convince people. I don't, you know, I don't have that, you know, I don't have that deep raspy voice and stuff. So it's like, you know, yeah, we're all we're all we're all tougher in our own minds. You don't you don't you don't have to project an image. It's everybody thinks they do, but when you try just if you try to if you try to create your brand and who you are and what you think you want people to think of you as, you're just going to be a doof. You're a douchebag. You just got to be yourself. Yeah. I like how you went with doof, but I know what you were trying to say because I didn't want to go I didn't want to I wanted to keep that even playing cuz I did post a picture today, you know, last night of the had the word douchebag in it. how I felt. Yeah. You got in trouble? No, I just kind of second thought it a little bit. I'm like, I just posted that. Should I have done that? You know, and it's like, what's wrong with douchebags? Because it's really how I feel, you know? It's really how I felt about the man. So, it's like, who was the douchebag? What was it about? He's running our country, you know. So, it was it was a bumper sticker on this truck. It said it had had uh douchebag with the Obama with the president's emblem. He has the O and then underneath it the guy was selling his truck. So, he had written his soap for sale. So, I just I'm like, "Oh, that's pretty cool. Douchebag for sale." Click. And so, I I post this, not even thinking, and it's like, "Whoa, is the CIA going to come after?" Because I've seen stuff that guys post or whatever. They're like, "Shut down my Facebook page or whatever." And it's like, they can do that. And it's so weird. They can if you criticize uh the president too harshly or if there's any threat whatsoever of violence, like I'm going to kick the
president's ass, they'll come after. They should too, though. You know what? They should. But so, I I cuz you know, I'm the nice guy. I'm on the outward side. I'm a nice guy at home. I'm a nice guy. Whatever. But I'm a badass on the mountain. I'll tell you that. I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. The Second Amendment is a is a funny issue when it comes to Obama because there was this uh they had this recording of him doing this speech and talking about guns. And he was talking about how people want to keep their guns. They'll never they're never going to let you take their guns. And I'm like, what a weird thing it is where people representative government where where people are elected, they get into a position of power and then they look at people and they say things like they're never going to let you take their guns. They're going to like why would you why do you what are you trying to do? Like why are you trying to take their guns? If you're just a person and what you are as a president, yes, you're the leader of the country. Yes, you're the commander-in-chief and all that, but essentially you're just a person. So if you're a person, why are you trying to take away other people's guns? Do you think that people shouldn't have guns because they're all dangerous? Because statistically, that's a real tough argument. Don't matter to people like that. They don't care. Well, that's why those people are ridiculous in anybody in in that sort of a position that has that sort of a point of view. Like you if you're going to be the [ __ ] president of the United States, you got to be able to back up everything you say with logic and science. And if you look at the amount of people we have in this country, there's 350 million [ __ ] in this country. Okay, not all of them are [ __ ] but some of them, good and bad. 350 million people in this country. There's probably 350 million guns. H half of them are gun owners. Yeah, statistically speaking, half of them are gun owners, probably. Then look at how many people are actually getting killed by guns. The number is ridiculously low, which means that most people are really good at controlling themselves. Most people have cars and they don't just drive into crowds of people, but some people
occasionally do. If enough people do that, are we going to take away cars? The thing of it is is like you could have those people sitting here across from you and you can be explaining to them and you can have the statistical data and you can have the proof and the facts and everything. They're still not going to care. because there's more to it than just doing what's right and doing what is statistically fact. It's there's always a an agenda behind it. There's something that they want to push. Well, is it control? Is it that they just want to control people or or what is it? Who knows? But when you look at everything that like like the government is doing and even small things of something as simple as giving out 12,000 bayonets to the police force, what are you trying to do? Create your own your own army? Are you waiting for a civil war? I mean, what's what's going on here? Why are you buying? Yeah, they provided the army's or the uh local police. Local police and I, you know, I'm probably speaking out of turn here cuz I don't know all the facts, whatever, but it's like 12,000 bayonet. What do you need a bayonet for anyway? This isn't this isn't the World War II, whatever. Yeah. But then it's like, well, you bought how many millions of rounds of ammunition, you know? So, it's like, well, there's all the conspiracy theories and all that kind of thing, but you sit back and you think, you're like, why are they doing that? You know, what what's going on here? What are they trying to create? What are they? Why did they decimate, you know, the military? Why did they fire all these commanders that that that did such a badass job of taking taking out the bad guy? You know, why did you pull out of Iraq? Why did you do all these there's there's always something more to it than just fact and data and numbers and what's right and what's wrong. There's it's it's man, you know, there there's power hunger or something to it. There's a lot of public there's something freaky about it. I don't there's something sick going on that I don't get. In what way? It just nothing makes sense. Wouldn't you think that if you're the if you're the leader of of the country, you would do things that the majority of people would think make sense? Like what what doesn't make
sense to you? I think what doesn't make sense to me is pushing like say take the immigration issue. I heard a statistic the other day whether it's right or wrong that 9 million people in the greater LA area potentially half of them illegal. There's more than 9 million people here, right? And there's like Well, it was like the greater LA city area. It was a small area. Whatever it was, they used the number 9 million. They said they said potentially there's there's h up to half of those are illegal or not documented, which to me is like, well, that's one city. But why would they allow the people to come across the border just so openly? And now it's like as a parent, I have a kid in school and if they're putting these people and busing them all across the country and letting these people go in school without even asking their ages or having to go through medical checks like my kids do or any of those types of things, it's like what's the reasoning behind that? It's not humanitarian. You know, if you were humanitarian, you'd block the block the damn border off and and not let people come across and experience all that, you know, suffering. But then as me, as the humanitarian little bit of humanitarian that I have in me, it's like, man, if I'm in that position, I'm coming across the border, too, and I'm working here. You know, I'm providing my family with a better situation. But as a man government, a managing government managing a country, to me, it just doesn't make sense that you would allow open borders. Well, I don't think it's totally open. I mean, it's difficult to get over here. They risk their lives. It's very tough to and I know what you're saying, but I also think that politically it's if you want Democratic votes, um, the more lenient you are towards people coming across this border, the the more lenient you are towards illegals, Latinos, giving them rights, giving them education, giving them the ability to drive cars, or maybe even possibly vote, that's going to be very advantageous if you're a Democrat. If you're a liberal, and if that's what your your agenda is, that's what you're trying to pursue. It's interesting in um Republican circles, Cubans are almost all Republican. I mean, there's a
massive, not all obviously, but like Miami has a large population of very conservative Latinos. It's a completely different sort of environment. Very Republican, very conservative. It's a it's a completely different setup than they have with uh Latinos or Mexicans in LA. And a lot of it is to do with what they've experienced in Cuba and you know how the hardships that they encountered in a communist land and coming over to America and realizing the opportunities and what what you can accomplish here and what's going on with Americans and Mexico. The disparity between California and Mexico is so vast and the distance is so small that it creates this really weird environment where like I was in San Diego a couple weeks ago and I was joking around about how nice everybody is in San Diego. One of the reasons why they're so nice is because you can walk to a third world country. Like they know how good they got it. If you want to get confused, you want to think that uh hey man, the world's all [ __ ] No, no, no, no. You're in [ __ ] San Diego, dude. This is awesome. Why don't let's go for a walk. You and I are going to walk. It'll take us about an hour. We'll be in Tijana. And then you're going to see something that's not good. You're gonna see this is what happens when you don't have taxes and the United States government and this the school system that we have. This is what these people are trying to escape. And as a human being, when I go there and I see that environment, I want to I want to, you know, say, "Hey, yeah, they should be able to do whatever the [ __ ] they want. They should be able to come over here, but they also should be able to figure out how to someone should engineer that society better. Someone should figure out how to make that culture at least as accessible or as advantageous as the American culture. I don't know. Right. And I think that's where I'm talking where is is they should be doing that rather than just saying, well, if you can't have it there, come here and do it here then. You know, for the individual because you can't in Mexico as an individual. I'm doing exactly what they're doing. I'm coming across and I'm I'm working and I'm doing whatever I can to provide for my family. And we know and interact, you know, they're in Reno. I know and interact with a lot of people
that with within some of the the churches and stuff where it's like they they've come here to better their lives. And you can't hold them account. You can't it's hard to look at them and say, "Well, yeah, but you broke the law, so you got to go back." You can't do that. No. Because you want as a whole, you want people to have what I have. You want people to be able to succeed. It just sucks that their country doesn't see that, you know, and hasn't done that. But does that mean that our country has to be have liberal open polic or relatively open policies where they're like if you don't have it there come here we'll give it to you. But do we they don't really say that though. I mean you do have to go through the border and it's [ __ ] hard. It's not easy to get from Mexico. Probably not as hard as it used to be. Really? Yeah. I don't know. I mean I'm a guy that spends a lot of time in the wild. I could pro I could I I'm not going to say that I could get across the border, but kids women and children and and people are getting across. They're getting across and it's got to be hard. It's got to be difficulting difficult and some of the stuff that some of those kids, you know, have gone through and that is devastating. It's just it's it's disgusting. You wouldn't want to ever have to have your family have to go through that process. Also, we're a nation of immigrants. This whole nation was started by people who came from someone they didn't like and decided to try to make a better world here. And at what point does that get closed off? At who who is that available to? You don't ever close it off, I don't think. But it's hard for people that come from Mexico to like legally immigrate to America. It's very difficult. They make it hard and you have to have some reason why they should have you here. If you're a scholar and you're coming from Norway, it takes time. You know, you have to go through all sorts of checkpoints. There's a lot of a lot of things have to happen. I've I've had friends from Canada that wanted to get green cards to to work in America. And, you know, white people that speak perfect English that are well educated and it's hard. It's it's not that easy to get a green card. I'm just glad that I produce outdoor television and I don't have to deal with
it. I don't have to do it, you know, or manage it or that kind of thing. Obviously, we all deal with it in in wherever we live in that. But it's also it's weird when you got half the population's illegal. What do you want to make half the people criminals? Like there should be some sort of a way that they could, you know, contribute as well because a lot of them are not paying taxes. So, it's even it's more advantageous to make them citizens. Didn't Reagan do that for for how many million? 9 million or something? They said, "Okay, amnesty. Everybody that's here." Yeah, I believe they did. Reagan, I thought it was Reagan. I'm Again, I'm just going what I heard off the radio, you know, I'm just the uneducated white hunter guy, you know, Bubba. But it's like, you know, they they did that one time and now it's built up where they're there's almost no way around it that they're going to have to do it again. And unless they there's stop measures to keep it from happening again, it's going to be 20, 30 years down the road it'll happen again. It's a compassion issue in a lot of ways cuz when people are in an undeniably shitty environment like you know Wararez, Mexico and they want to get out and they see San Antonio is right over there and everybody's I'm doing the same thing. I would do the same thing. Yeah. It's the the real issue is like why are borders there? Why why are why are nations there? What is it? It gets real tricky. Gets it's a very complex issue. I'm going to keep hunting. I'm just going to keep doing what I do. Yeah. I'm not even going to try podcast. I'm just going to do what I do. when you're on top of a mountain with just a camera and a rifle. How many cameras do you take when you go do that? You know, I used to take several. Now I just take one main camera, which I use a DSLR camera that'll take stills and video, and then I have one GoPro. But anymore, I find that I don't use the GoPro hardly ever. The only the main reason I'm using the GoPro now is because I had so many people calling BS on me. They're like, "There's no way you're filming that. You've got a cameraman, whatever." I'm like, "I'll show you." So, I mounted a thing off the back of my camera, my main camera that is just basically a stick that I have a GoPro on. So, you can see me. I mean,
there's there's an instance in one of the episodes that was on this year where you see me like fumbling. I have to take a lens off. I put another one on. I spin the camera in the GoPro. You can see the elk coming up. Then you see me reach up, focusing it, turning it, clipping onto the bow, and then shooting it. You know, like everything happens just that fast. And it's like there, take that, stick it in your ear. You know, I filmed this all myself. And but it's it's become kind of a personal challenge that way where it's like yeah it can be done and it and it adds more of a challenge to the hunt. And to me it's it's in a case like that I didn't get nervous about making the shot on the elk. I just drew back. I didn't even range it. Drew back naturally just boom. And the same thing happened with a deer that year. Same thing. Drew back. Boom. Because my brain was on the cameras. My mind was on what I had to do with the cameras to get everything right. And so hunt mode was natural because I'm I'm a natural hunter. I grew up as a hunter from the time I was a kid. So that that motion just took over. Whereas if the cameras weren't there and I'm just thinking and I have time to watch that elk come up and I'm clipping on and I'm like, "Okay, where am I going to shoot him?" And I'm trying to arrange him and get a distance and you're trying to do all these things that you're supposed to do as 100. And then it's in your head that that that you've got to do all this. And so when you anchor back, your mind might not be right. You might be nervous. I might be shaking cuz there's been times where I mean elk's coming in and I'm literally just shaking whether it's an elk or a deer and I'm just physically just I can't control so jacked up. Yeah. Because it's like it's almost like a fear adrenaline. Holy crap, this is happening, whatever. I mean, I remember as a kid sitting in a treeand for elk and the guys that taught me how to bow hunt, I was 13 years old and they're like, "Yeah, best way. Just go get in this stand and just wait for the elk to come into the water hole." Well, shoot. I'm a 13-year-old kid up there by myself and you hear this herd of elk coming in. So you have 50, you know, 800 to 1,000 lb animals coming in screaming, chasing each other and and just you just freeze. And I could I was shaking so bad that
that platform on the stand was like and I was like, "Hold it together, man. Hold it together, man." You know, and it's like that's what you get when an animal comes in. And I I don't know what what gives you that adrenaline rush. Is it the fact that you know you can kill it? I don't think so. I think it's just the fact that this wild animal is getting close. You know, it's something anticipation. Just there's so many factors. Same thing when you go, you know, you're getting off the ski lift and you you you know, you strap on the snowboard and you know you're going to go off this this one run that you just looked at as you're coming up the the hill. You're like, I'm going down that. And then you get there and you're like, holy crap, this is scary, man. I don't know if I want to do this or not. But I think it's that feeling that thing is more so even I get more out of it because that's more me you know I get more of a thrill out of elk and it's you know hunting and golf that's kind of my two things outside of family and it's like I get excited over that you know you hit you hit just a just a killer iron and you're just watching that thing fall and it's just kind of cutting into there and you're like you get that feeling a little bit that could go in the hole you know or that's going to get close. That's kind of the same thing. But with hunting, it's like that much more amplified because it's a live thing. You know, it's a live event and you don't have any control over that. That elk could come in and do whatever. Yeah. Anticipation and buildup for one moment. And also the amount of work involved in getting up there and it's like all for this one moment ready. Don't [ __ ] it up. Don't [ __ ] it up. But what people don't see too is on TV, you know, I posted a comment on on Instagram the other day was like, you know, for your guys' information, hunting is not as easy as it looks on social media and on television, you know, which to me is a simple comment, but people like, "Oh, that's so true." Blah, blah, blah. It's like, well, I might be on the mountain for 9 days not seeing an animal. Like on that moose hunt, I saw one moose before I shot my moose. So, you're there for 10 to 12 days, not seeing anything. All a sudden, there's a moose. Bang. Whoa. Crap. that just happened, you know, it's
like, wow. So, that's hunting. That's the reality of it. Whereas on TV, you see 6, 8 minutes of me traveling, oh, he killed a moose. That's awesome. You know, that moose show was wild. The one where uh you shot the moose and then it started floating down the river. Yeah. He wasn't in the river, but yeah, he was just he was just he was in the the marsh. So where he was standing, it was like knee deep and then he kind of went back in the willows and so I had to actually go in the willows and pull him out because the boat we tied him onto the boat and tried to get the boat to pull him out but it wasn't happening. So I had to go in and filled my waiters. I'm just tugging on the video. I put the GoPro on my head and I'm just I had to just basically just leverage and get this moose broke out of the willows to where the water was deep enough for it to float. And I don't know how I did it physically. I don't have How much does it weigh? Oh that's a 12,400 lb animal. God, that's a big big damn 1,400 lb. I don't know how I did it. It had to have been adrenaline because the moment we got him and tethered to the boat and floated over the sandbar, I was People don't realize I was closer to death right then on any than any other hunt that I've ever been on. I was so hypothermic that I had to get off the boat and I literally just took all my clothes off and just piled on one dry coat that I had and uh a pair of pants and I ran up and down the sand bar back and forth because it it started out like kind of a hunched over little little trudge and it it took me about 40 minutes before I generated enough body heat to get myself out of that hypothermic state because I was so I was so cold because I was so excited about the moose that I just jumped in and I'm like, "Yeah, look at my moose. my waiters filled up everything and you're in water that's you know just comes off of the the glaciers up there probably 34 35°ree water maybe maybe a little warmer I don't know I didn't have a thermometer but it's damn cold so it just got me so close to the point where my body was starting to just really get crazy and I was not thinking right the only thing that I could think of because everything was so wet was just to run and so I just ran up and down the sand just back and forth and back by yourself
no I had 10 one guy Wow that's scary as [ __ ] And hypothermia kills a lot of people. It's a lot of folks don't know. Slow killer. Yeah. You get to the point, that's why I tell people I'm like, it's a lot easier to stay warm than to get warm. So, if you start to feel a chill, put a coat on, you know, don't get yourself wet. The other thing about hard hiking, too, when you're hoofing it up the mountains is you start sweating. That's why wool's so important. People don't um many people who don't go into those environments and don't understand like how you can start sweating when it's really cold out don't know how great wool is. Yeah, wool's awesome. I like there's some great synthetics out there, too, that that wick the moisture away from your body. Like wool. Same way. Well, I like, you know, I I grew up as a wool guy. Everything was all wool, wool, wool, wool. Well, a lot of synthetics, they'll pull it away from your body and then they'll dry fast. Really wool wool's going to pull it away from your body. And the cool thing about wool is even when it's wet, it's going to keep you warm. Mhm. But it doesn't dry real fast. Whereas the synthetics, synthetics will pull it away, but then they'll dry fast, too. Why does it dry faster? Just It's just the fiber. Just the fabric. I don't think it holds the moisture as as well, but it pulls it away. It's like a more closed off moisture. Wool is still amazing because if you can't get dry, wool's still going to keep you warm. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. But it's heavy and bulky. I mean, I don't know. There's there's some good stuff. You guys mentioned First Light. That's some amazing stuff. But, you know, I've grown to to where probably about 10 years ago, I moved away from wool and into synthetics just cuz they the technology was there. It started getting better and then cuz it's lighter. Yeah. Now I'm with Under Armour, so it's, you know, obviously and Under Armour, but even them, they've got some clothing that we prototyped this last fall that was a kind of a wool acrylic blend that was pretty amazing. Pretty good stuff. So really a wool acrylic blend. Yeah, we just announced Yeah, it's not necess it's it's similar texture and feel to to the wool, but you know, you combine that with some of the synthetic base layers and that and it's
you just got a really hardy, durable fabric that can be, you know, replicated and printed on and all kinds of different things. But that's a consideration that you have to uh really uh plan out, right? Like how much weight you're carrying, like what how much stuff do you actually need? You take you take what you need and uh that's it. I mean, there's no reason to take any comforts. I mean, that's one of the things that I that I probably should be better at. Like, I hate sleeping on the ground. When I when I hunt, I'm miserable. Like, at night, I'm I basically just roll from one side to the one side to the next because I can't sleep because I'm like, I'm not taking that 2 lb pad. I'm going to take a take the 16 ounce pad instead, you know, thinking one pound. Well, it's like, you know what? I've got seven pounds around my stomach that I that I'm carrying around that I shouldn't be carrying around either, right? But we all get so caught up into the weight that, you know, you you kind of neglect certain things. And that's important when you're going on a backcountry pack trip where you're going to be in several days and that weight. We weight's a big deal because when you start hiking up a mountain, you're just thinking, I mean, I know I do. I'm thinking in my mind, what could I have left out of my pack? You know, what could have made this trip lighter? Because if you don't have a pack, it's a lot easier to get up the mountain. But you you got to be comfortable or you're going to hike your butt back off the mountain. Do you wear like a lightweight boot, too? I do. I'm a light I'm super lightweight boot all the time. Even in rugged country, I like a really lightweight boot. I've never I'm the kind of guy I've never sprained an ankle. Never never had any knee or any ankle issues. I've had knee issues, but that really doesn't have anything to do with the boot. But it's like I like lightweight. I like maneuverability and just I feel more feel more mobile. I don't like the big heavy rock mountain boots, you know, and I' I've worn them a lot a lot, but they're just rigid and I just feel like my legs get tired and I just can't move. But when I have a light boot that's more like a sneaker, I don't think my legs get as tired and I can just Yeah, that's
what I'm thinking because I'm going um uh hunting in Alaska first week of October and uh I had these uh these heavy boots, heavy boots. They're real. They're excellent waterproof and everything like that. But man, I I went hiking with them recently trying to break them in. I'm like, my [ __ ] legs tired. Try drying leather when it's raining a bunch, too. I mean, it's it's hard. But that that boot is made for that environment. That's the type of boot that's made for that. You know, there's some synthetics out there, too, that that might dry a little easier and that, but I've always been one where it's like, you know, I just I I don't have issues with blisters. You know, I I I don't I just I'm just lucky that way. I have never had to deal with that. When I wear a pair of my lightweight uh you know, Under Armours, my Speed Freaks or whatever, it's like I I wore them. I'm in my halfway through my second season on one pair of boots, which typically I go through a pair of boots easy in a season. But this lightweight pair of Speed Freaks, I've had it in the snow, you know, the shale. Those Under Armour Speed Freak. Under Armour Speed Freak. These ones are prototypes. I don't know if it's the actual Speed Freak. It's a prototype boot they sent me last year. A new product. That's got to be cool. That's awesome. That's one cool thing about, you know, I've been on knocking on Under Armour's door for three or four years and last year I was fed up. I was like, you know what, these guys are never going to give me the time of day. They're cool guys and everything, but they're looking for bigger fish. And so, this is probably the first time they've heard that, too, is like I I got rid of all my Under Armour gear and uh was decked out with another brand. They decked me out everything head to toe, everything. So, I was like I was all geared up to go on my first hunt in this other brand. And uh then something just hit me. My wife's like, "Where'd you get all that camo?" I told her the story and she's like, "What about Under Armour?" And I go, "I can't give up on Under Armour, can I?" And she's like, "You were going to give up on Under Armour?" So, I went to I I was leaving for my hunt. I went to Shields and I bought a
pair of pants and a shirt. Under Armour, a pair of pants and a shirt. I went on my hunt. I killed this deer. While I was driving back, Kobe gave me a call and said, "Hey, things have developed. We've we've got some stuff freed up. We'd really love to have you guys on board." So, it's like, "Holy crap." I just about threw Under Armour away, you know, just from that. But it but as a TV guy, it's like you want to have the best brands. You want to wear the best gear and everything. But on the second part of it is you got to pay the bills. You got to make it worth your while to do it because at the end of the day, I'm not doing it because I'm a passionate hunter. I'm doing it because I'm a businessman and I want to make a pile loads of money, you know, and it just so happens to be a sport that I love and I'm passionate about and that's going to help me be a better business person. A lot of people don't know that Under Armour does hunting gear. They're huge in the hunting world. People think of them as terms of other athletics. Yeah, we're just they're just getting we just announced uh the coming soon of their new uh Rididge Reaper Baron Baron camo pattern. Remy and I and there there's like six or eight of us nationwide that had these prototype clothing and they wore this camo pattern. Cameron Cameron's got it as well and uh they just announced that it's going to be releasing I I heard September 15th one of the dates was thrown out, but they're going to be coming out with that uh at under arm.com. The Ridgeer line with the Baron camo pattern. Pretty sweet. Do you ever go out and realize that you [ __ ] up? You should have brought more [ __ ] Always. Really? No. Yeah. Yeah. That's happened. And it's also gone the other way, too, where I've gone there and I'm like, why did I bring this? Mostly camera stuff. I mean, I pack around this 5 lb, 11,000 mm, whatever, 1100 mm lens that weighs like six lbs. I pack that sucker everywhere and I never use it. It's like, why am I packing that thing and my spot and scope and all this? It's like is there anything that you like when like if you haven't brought it with you like if you gone out there and god why didn't I bring this? Is there anything like dangerous about that? Have you ever taken Have you ever like taken a trip and not having enough clothing or
not having enough Yeah. Um survival [ __ ] I always have survival stuff with me. I carry a survival medic. It's just a little uh super lightweight first aid kit, but it has survival tools with it too, you know. So, I have that in every I've got one in every backpack I use that's just there like to start fires. Yeah. Thankfully, I rarely have to use it, you know, and if I do use it, it's just more just for fun to start a fire or something. But, it's there if I do need it. Um, I don't know when I've run into a situation where it's like, man, I wished I would have had this or that. Um, cuz it's such a unique style of hunting. So few people do that that way where you go completely on your own. Well, and I grew up hunting with nothing. You know, I had a bow with piece of crap arrows and it was the cheapest thing we could find. And I hunted with that same bow. The bow that I bought when I was 14 was the first I think it might have been 15. I bought that bow. I hunted with that until I was till I got into TD till 2004. Was it a compound or compound bow? Barely. It was a Polaris, a PSE Polaris that I bought that bow. It was like $109 or something. 100 feet per second. I don't I don't know. Maybe. Who knows? But I hunted with that thing and then I got back, you know, out of college. I was hunting with that thing and I got I hunted with that clear till 2004 before I I got a a Matthews bow and I'm like, "Holy cow, there's a there's a 12 years, you know, 15 years span of time there that I hunted with a piece of crap." And so I think that by me learning to get by with so little that it makes it easier for me when I do have good equipment, I can appreciate it that much more. And it's like I can get by with just a good just good equipment. The world of hunting, you don't have to have gizmos and gadgets, right? compound bows is that's the the one world where 10 years makes a giant leap whereas like with rifles 10 years ago it's a rifle you know I mean scopes are a little better but rifles essentially a rifle bullets are bullets but the the bows of 10 years ago in comparison to the bows of today I mean they they are making these little incremental leaps like every year where they're getting a little bit lighter little bit more feet per second a little bit more accurate a little bit better
tolerance it's really kind of interesting to see the technology that's involved in compound bows both for target shooting and for hunting. Yeah. And it's interesting the the bow company that I deal with with G5 and Prime is like G5 is an engineering firm. You know, they're an engineering company. So, if anybody's going to know how to make something better and get the most out of a piece of iron, it's an engineering is somebody that that has that background. So, that's what's really cool about them. And these companies are smart. They're not just going to just blow their wad on all their technology all at once. they're going to incrementally bring it out so they can have a new bow every year. And that seems to be like the craze right now is every every bow manufacturer has one or two new bows every year. And it's like, man, how how do you keep up with that? You know, how do you keep up with technology? But as a hunter, I'm kind of addicted to that. It's like, yeah, I like this bow, but in October, as soon as that new prototype bow comes out, I want it in my hand, you know, because we're addicted to that new bigger, better battery, just like the iPhone 6, you know. Mark was telling me about that, and I'm like, you were mocking the iPhone 4? Yeah, I got an iPhone 4. You know, I've had it. I've had it for like forever, you know, with a crazy lens attachment that you put on your uh I've seen that, too. You put it on a spot and scope and you can film it, right? What is that called? This is a phone scope adapter, and I've just gotten used to having it on my phone. Every once in a while, I'll take my phone out and put it back in my lifep proof case, but then I reach in my pocket and I'm like, "Where's my handle? I'm missing my handle." But this is just an adapter. It goes onto a bayonet mount uh sleeve so I can slide it over my spotting scope or and you can zoom in. You can video. Yeah. Take pictures. And what's cool is you shoot a little video clip or take a photo and bam, you post it to Instagram. Wham, you're done. And that kind of stuff. That's pretty cool. So you take a photo from straight from the spotting scope. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Digos scoping with it. And I just leave it in the case because, you know, my phone I just like having that handle. It's just
kind of convenient. Yeah. I love it because when I take it off, I'm like missing it. And it's not that I I don't use this phone scope other than when I'm hunting. So, it's like when you were talking for for folks that don't know what you're saying, you you were talking about ranging. These laser rangefinders are another really cool invention where you you look into it, you press a button, it tells you the exact yardage. And for people who've never been hunting with bows before, never shot a bow before, they don't understand that like there's a big difference between a scope on a rifle. A rifle's pretty good for a couple hundred yards, but a bow, there's a big difference between where it's going to hit at 20 yards versus where it's going to hit at 40 yards. And all this is sort of crazy calculations on feet per second and where your yardage pins are. And it's so I that was one thing that I really got into when I started uh playing with bows was how how much you have to learn like develop a a sight tape and you know and and and arrange things out and figure out like sighting in your bow and making sure everything's tuned up and this there's there's so so many weird adjustments that you have to make between 20 and 50 yards and how difficult it is to shoot something at 50 yards. Yeah. Just a target. You don't have a steady rest or a bipod like you do with a rifle. I mean, the bow, you got you've got your arm that's not very rigid to begin with holding it out there and you've got your other arm back here and so you're trying to anchor it. Mhm. And no magnification either. No, you can't. There's there's some magnification scopes out there, you know, that you can put on there, one or two power, six power, whatever to make your pins. I don't I'm so old school when it comes to my equipment. I mean, it's just it's like I I'll take a bow and and I set up all my own equipment. I don't take it into the the archery shops cuz everybody has their own way of doing things. But I do it the way I learned, but I'll just put a peep sight, you know, sight it in. The guys are guys are all wrapped into these these super long range sights. Well, I'm a hunter, so I need a sight that's going to go from 20 to 80, you know, and and I'm good. I don't need 120 150 these rolling single. I mean, it'd be fun to shoot that far,
but I I don't. If I want to shoot that far, I go get my MOA rifle and I shoot that far, you know? It's like, well, you know, I learned from Cameron. Cameron does all of his hunting with bows and arrows. And Cameron Haynes, uh, never heard of him. Uses a spot hog. Who? Never heard of her. Cameron Haynes. You keep doing that same joke. You're going to have to let that go. We're almost done here. That's like my joke. But, um, do you use a multi-pin sight? Yeah, I do. Yeah. For the longest time, I just use a single pin site, but once I started really filming my bow hunts real heavily, it just became too much to have to adjust the pin. Mhm. So, I just went to the multiple pin sights again so that I don't have any adjustment on the bow. I can focus on adjusting the camera. When you said that you just sighted in the animal, you didn't even sight it in. You just just looked at it and you just took a an estimate. Is that something that just comes over time? Like you look at something go, that's about 30 yards. Until I was 25 years old, I didn't use sights. It was all instinctive. So, every every time I would shoot a bow, it was fingers and it was bare bow instinctive. Even though it was compound, everything was instinctive. And so I think it just ingrains into you if you're a traditional shooter or whatever when you draw back you're like your body just like shooting a pistol you know your body automatically gets into that position and more times than not if you'll if you'll draw back and get in that position and then look at your pins you're there. I mean you're if if you you've done it a lot and you're conditioned to that and I think that's where your instincts kind of take over. And in those cases I drew back and and you just look at your pin verify bam you know and you go. So, you're still aiming, but because you're not thinking about it, it's happening so much quicker. They say that that's, you know, what some of the sharpshooters, that's why they're so good is because it's just all instinctive with pistols or anything else. They're not aiming, they're just shooting. There's a lot of practice involved in bow hunting, too, right? I I've had a bow I started bow hunting as at 12, 13 years old. You know, I have have had a bow in my hand my entire life, basically. Um, just because of my
upbringing. I'd go out to do chores. You grab your bow off the freezer, you walk out, fling a couple arrows at the carpet target that we had taped onto the hay stack, and you go milk the cows, you walk out, you pull your arrows, you do it again. It was a lifestyle. It's it's life for me growing up that way. I shoot less now just because of the busyiness of life and the other other responsibilities I have, but it's still it's still part of it and it's natural. So for a guy picking it up for you to go out and and be able to experience that instinctive anchoring and everything is just dialed. It's going to come over time, you know, and there will be times where you might go out next week and you're like, "Man, I know what he's talking about. That feels good." And then the next day you're going to be like, "What the hell am I doing wrong? This just isn't working." And that's archery. That's that's the nature of your bow. Your your your wrist is going to tweak. Things are going to change from day to day. So don't feel like you have to adjust your bow every time you go out and shoot. Just be like, "Yep, today I was pulling them left." you know, today I'm dropping them out. No big deal. Tomorrow will be a different, you know. Well, that's the cool thing about archery is how difficult it is. It's so it's so involved that it sort of takes away all the other things in your life away. It takes away all the other things you're thinking about, all the other distractions in your mind. You're so concentrating on putting that pin, holding it steady, making sure you release, no added movement, no no twitching, no pulling. And it's I find it like almost like meditative in that way that when I do it I it cleans my mind out. I love doing it at the end of the day. I have a busy day, I go out my yard, I you know pull out some targets and and start shooting. And I I feel like it it's a nice stress reliever, too. Even if people never want to hunt, I recommend uh do just doing archery just for fun. And get a bow and do it instinctively. You should get a recurve or get a bear bow and just go out and just do it close, you know, 10 10 ft and just get that feeling of just release. Do you think that helps your It helps. It'll help your I I believe so because I grew up that I mean that's that's how I
did it and and you know to this day I think it's made me a better shooter in a hunting situation. It's tricky to hunt with a bow because more animals get wounded and escape bow hunting than probably any other style. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what the statistics I mean there's a lot of a lot of deer get hammered by a rifle too and walk away. It's hard it's hard to say. There's just that many more rifle hunters out there. Bows are tough because hemorrhaging is lethal. You know, hemorrhaging is I mean, you can shoot I shot a bear in the ankle one time, you know, in the wrist, bled out within 80 yards. You know, hemorrhaging is super lethal. Whereas a bullet doesn't necessarily have to give you hemorrhaging. It can give you puncture and impact and and shock and trauma, but it doesn't necessarily hemorrhage. Not the same way because of the heat and everything gets cauterized and Yeah. could could be. So, I don't know. I I can't can't say for sure. Yeah. I just had a I felt I had a massive responsibility to put in a lot of practice before I ever went bow hunting. And I mean it was I put I I [ __ ] my shoulder up because I was shooting 150 hours arrows a day. Well, don't pull the Cameron Cameron Hannes is it? Don't pull the Cameron Hannes and shoot a 90 lb bow. Shoot a 70 lb bow. All you need is 70. Is that all you need? I had a 40 45 you know. But do you because what if you hit a bone and then the animal runs away? Cameron has this this philosophy about P. Well, he's his philosophy, you know, and that's great and it works for him. Sweet. And I Yeah, it's Ted Nent has the 45 lb philosophy. He's got whatever he's got. Ted N's got his What do you shoot? A 70. I shoot mine at like 63 lbs or something. Yeah. I mean, I'm I'm a strong guy. I can pull 70 80 lbs. Sure. But But you choose to do the other one. Yeah. Just because it's more convenient. I'm more accurate. I found that with my arrows and my broadheads and my setup, I I take my bow and I max it at 70 lbs. And as I'm sighting in and and and tuning my bow, paper tuning or whatever, I back it off a quarter turn at a time, my limbs. So, you're taking the weight down. And I found that that 63 to 65 range for me and my setup, I'm getting bullets just Yeah. Cameron's like does all these crazy workouts just
so he could pull it effortlessly. Yeah. It's awesome. But he's into like shooting water buffaloos and [ __ ] and Oh, yeah. Passroughs on giant elks. You know, that's his whole deal. Uh, listen man, we're out of time. Sweet. That was three hours. That's good cuz I got to take a leap. I bet you do. Go take it. You had a great This is great, man. Solar Hunter. Solo Hunter TV on Twitter. What's your Instagram? Solo Hunter TV on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Everything. The whole deal. Tim Bernett. Thank you very much, brother. That was fun. It was really enjoyable. Uh, and watch the show. It's on the Outdoor Channel. It's called Solo Hunter. It's one of my favorite hunting shows. It's It's a really enjoyable show. Even if you don't like hunting, it's very, very well done. Uh, thank you to our sponsors. Uh, thank you, thank you, thank you to draftkings.com. Go to draftkings.com, enter in the promo code Rogan to play for free and become a millionaire for real. Um, go to the website, check it out. You you you'll you will be blown away. It's amazing how much money you can make with fantasy football these days. Um, what else we have today? Ting. Ting. Thanks to Ting. Go to rogan.ing.com ting.com uh and save 25 bucks off of any TING device. And thanks, of course, to onit.com. Go to nnit and and take part in human optimization. Use the code word rogan and save 10% off any and all supplements. We will be back, ladies and gentlemen, next week. I got Rupert Sheldrake, Graham Hancock, and others. Until then, enjoy your weekend. See you at the ice house. And uh big kiss. [Music]