Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Welcome to episode number forty six of The
Speaker 1: Hunting Collective. I'm Ben O'Brien and I'm joined today by
Speaker 1: Donnie Vincent. Donnie Vincent is a biologist, slash filmmaker, slash
Speaker 1: world adventurer who creates some pretty awesome films. Has a
Speaker 1: new film out called The Other Side, which is an
Speaker 1: hour and twenty minute long feature film about his bear
Speaker 1: hunting adventures up north. It's a great conversation. Donnie is
Speaker 1: is sneakily smart dude, and and has been around the
Speaker 1: world and done some amazing things and collected some pretty
Speaker 1: awesome perspectives in doing so. So it was a pleasure
Speaker 1: to be joined by him in Las Vegas, durning shot
Speaker 1: show hang Out to talk shop to learn a little
Speaker 1: bit about his story and his perspectives. So enjoy episode
Speaker 1: number forty six. Donnie Vincent, Hey, Donny, Hey man, what's
Speaker 1: going on? Man? Just enjoying your awesome hotel room? Are
Speaker 1: you impressed by it? The Mediator? The Mediator budget is
Speaker 1: apparently doing well. It's doing well. I just noticed there's
Speaker 1: a phone in your toilet, So there's no phone in
Speaker 1: in my toilet. Yeah, so this is well listen. You
Speaker 1: never know what's gonna happen in there. Yeah. Yeah, your
Speaker 1: legs could fall asleep. I was in there and I thought,
Speaker 1: what would you need a phone in the toilet? And
Speaker 1: then I thought, hey, you know maybe falling you can't
Speaker 1: get up? Yeah, because you've ever been on there, you're
Speaker 1: you're doing your business and your leg might fall asleep.
Speaker 1: You got a call for help if you compartment syndrome, Yeah, yep,
Speaker 1: he's falling around you don't know, or you got order
Speaker 1: a pizza. Things you could do, and then I bet
Speaker 1: it's been done. I'll bet you a large sum of
Speaker 1: money a pizza has been ordered on this. So you think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you if you're if you've never been
Speaker 1: in like the Venetian sweets, like we're in right now, um,
Speaker 1: and you come in when you feel pretty you're like,
Speaker 1: it's going pretty pretty well. It's nice. You're you've done
Speaker 1: something different, right, you're making feature length film which which
Speaker 1: um with the rivers, divide with your new film on
Speaker 1: the other side, like these these are this is a
Speaker 1: different way to do it, right, yes, and we um
Speaker 1: you know, and I can sit here and say this
Speaker 1: in this chair and and nobody's the wiser other than
Speaker 1: my crew. But you know, we film everything with absolute truth. Right,
Speaker 1: If I miss we show it. If I wounded animal,
Speaker 1: we show what. I went through several years and I
Speaker 1: didn't talk about it on camera at all because I
Speaker 1: didn't understand it at first. But I went through several
Speaker 1: years of target panic, and I went through years and
Speaker 1: years and years of being an archer, and I'll absolutely
Speaker 1: i'd I'd sit with a group of guys and they'd say, hey,
Speaker 1: if you haven't, you know, if you haven't missed an animal,
Speaker 1: you know you haven't, you haven't hunted enough. And I'd say, oh, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: But it's funny because my first several years of being
Speaker 1: an archer, I never missed. I never not just absolutely
Speaker 1: slam dunk shot animal. It went a very short distance
Speaker 1: and fell over dead. It never happened to me because
Speaker 1: I was taking close shots. I was taking very measured
Speaker 1: shots because I was unsure of myself as an archer.
Speaker 1: So I've come to full draw and I'd literally find
Speaker 1: my anchor point, which I didn't even know what that was.
Speaker 1: I'd look at the deer, I'd put my pin behind
Speaker 1: his shoulder or whatever it was. I was shooting bear
Speaker 1: or whatever. I put my pin behind his shoulder and
Speaker 1: then I remember when I was younger several times, and
Speaker 1: obviously this isn't being filmed, but I would literally back
Speaker 1: my face off of my bow and just look like, okay,
Speaker 1: release my arrows, knocked on the rest strings on the camp,
Speaker 1: everything okay, and I leaned and shoot the deer and
Speaker 1: it'd run off and died. So I'd sit with these
Speaker 1: guys and they'd say, oh, yeah, I mean, if you
Speaker 1: haven't wounded, you haven't hunted enough. If you haven't missed
Speaker 1: a deer, you haven't hunted enough, you know. And I'd
Speaker 1: agree with them, oh yeah, yeah, But really I was
Speaker 1: the guy in the room that hadn't done that yet yet.
Speaker 1: Then it happened to me once, and then it happened
Speaker 1: to me twice. Then it happened to me three times.
Speaker 1: And then I was shooting in an archery league and
Speaker 1: my partner got target panic, and I'll never forget he
Speaker 1: asked me one time, Um, we were just shooting at
Speaker 1: twenty yards and he said, hey, um, when you're bringing
Speaker 1: your pin up to the bull's eye and it's blow
Speaker 1: the bull's eye, what do you do you know, I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you raise it up to the bull's eye and then
Speaker 1: shoot the bull's eye and he's like, yeah, I can't
Speaker 1: do that. My boat gets really heavy, and I thought,
Speaker 1: is this a joke? And then fast forward I got it.
Speaker 1: And then of course I'm trying to establish this career,
Speaker 1: not not to be famous, not to sign hats, not
Speaker 1: to do anything other than I wanted to hunt. And
Speaker 1: when I would hunt, people would ask me stories about
Speaker 1: what happened. And I love telling the stories about what happened.
Speaker 1: And I even loved even more so when I'm hunting.
Speaker 1: I I love long form hunting. I love going places
Speaker 1: for days, so I love telling people about And then
Speaker 1: and then this is all the river fro is up
Speaker 1: and it was cool. You know. I got up one
Speaker 1: morning in the rivers, just covered in skim ice, and
Speaker 1: there's a bull moose and he was grunting on the
Speaker 1: other side of the river, and I can see steam
Speaker 1: pouring out of his nose. I wasn't even hunting moose,
Speaker 1: but here I am ten minutes into a story about
Speaker 1: this moose blowing steam out of his nose, and people
Speaker 1: just sit there and I looked around the room and
Speaker 1: I'd see people just sitting there kind of wide eyed,
Speaker 1: you know, and they're like, you're a great storyteller. And
Speaker 1: I said, oh, oh, thank you, you know, and I
Speaker 1: just move on and and I would do these things.
Speaker 1: And then and then as I started doing these films
Speaker 1: and and developed into having target panic, I just ran
Speaker 1: into uh mess. And so we just started did you
Speaker 1: ever have a time or you had to? You had
Speaker 1: discussion with your team, you got a talent, the team
Speaker 1: of guys around you that film and edit, like should
Speaker 1: we show this wom Yes, just conversations like you know,
Speaker 1: what do we do now? Yes? Too. I'll give you
Speaker 1: two examples. One in The River Divide. In The Rivers Divide,
Speaker 1: Kyle nick Light, who's my producer and editor, very gifted storyteller,
Speaker 1: very gifted filmmaker, film film school graduate. Um, He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I want you to write. We're writing voiceovers for The
Speaker 1: Rivers Divide. And he said, right, I need you to write.
Speaker 1: I want you to write about this, this, this, this,
Speaker 1: Because he's building the spine of the film. So he's like,
Speaker 1: I just want to see what your verbage is going
Speaker 1: to kind of shake out as we progress through the story.
Speaker 1: Just really quick scribble so I can scribble stuff down
Speaker 1: handed to him. And he reasons, He's like, I've literally
Speaker 1: never heard you talk like this ever. And I basically wrote, um,
Speaker 1: you know, like TV scribble, like I wrote things that
Speaker 1: you would hear on some of the more writing this
Speaker 1: for TV. And he said, I've never heard you. And
Speaker 1: then I was in the office one day and I
Speaker 1: was talking about how when I killed Steve. Um. I
Speaker 1: was like, man, Steve, yes, I'm sorry, I'm not not
Speaker 1: my neighbor, but yeah, Steve the deer when I killed him. Um,
Speaker 1: I was just telling calm. One day. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: it really I had a heavy heart, you know, I
Speaker 1: was really filled the star And I said, you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny because every animal I've ever killed, it's really
Speaker 1: left me with a heavy heart. Uh. I. I just
Speaker 1: was always aware that that animal would still be alive
Speaker 1: that minute. Maybe not the next day, maybe a mountaine
Speaker 1: would ki him where you get hit by a car,
Speaker 1: died from starvation, whatever, but that minute, that day, that second,
Speaker 1: right then I'm I'm the executioner, right, I'm the hunter,
Speaker 1: predator and prey, and um, there's no no backs to that.
Speaker 1: And so I just I've always realized that that is
Speaker 1: such a big deal coming to full draw, such a
Speaker 1: big deal clicking your safety off your rifle. And so
Speaker 1: I told it to him. He's like, that that right that.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I can't write that. People are
Speaker 1: gonna rip me up like the guys that jacked their
Speaker 1: pickup trucks up. And we're baseball caps and have a
Speaker 1: big chew in right now, those guys are gonna rip
Speaker 1: me off. Perfect, And he's like, who cares? Who cares
Speaker 1: about those guys. Let's make the film for us, how
Speaker 1: you would do it, how we would do it. Let's
Speaker 1: make it for us. Let's be selfish, make this for us.
Speaker 1: We'll put it out there for people like it. Great.
Speaker 1: If they don't, you know, we'll move on with our lives.
Speaker 1: You'll go back to being a biologist. I'll go get
Speaker 1: a job at another company and high five piece out.
Speaker 1: So that too fast forward to you know, when we
Speaker 1: knew we were going to show me missing Steve at seventeen,
Speaker 1: we knew that we knew we were gonna show me
Speaker 1: shooting him in the shoulder at UM thirty four. The
Speaker 1: one thing that I wish we would have shown is
Speaker 1: after I wounded him. We showed a little bit of
Speaker 1: sorrow in the tree stand, and we showed a little
Speaker 1: bit of sorrow that night. But there were days days
Speaker 1: of that sorrow. There were multiple trips where we couldn't
Speaker 1: even really get out of the sorrow. Like we'd go there,
Speaker 1: we'd hunt him, he wouldn't show up. We couldn't find
Speaker 1: him with bionos. That the places a very visual ranch.
Speaker 1: We couldn't find him with bios. We couldn't find him.
Speaker 1: We had not It was just I wish we would
Speaker 1: have filmed all that, but we were so in the
Speaker 1: dumps about it. Not true tragedy here, right, I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about it feels I mean it's not. Yes, you're
Speaker 1: not being hyper violic like it feels shitty. It feels
Speaker 1: really bad. And we were feeling so we're having such
Speaker 1: a pity party where you know, it was spilt milk
Speaker 1: everywhere that we just kind of never even turned the
Speaker 1: camera on. So I didn't have anything to good say,
Speaker 1: maybe nothing to say at all, But I really wish
Speaker 1: we would have harnessed all that fast forward that too,
Speaker 1: the other side and the engagement that happens at the
Speaker 1: end of the Grizzly Bear. You haven't seen the film yet, correct.
Speaker 1: I watched the first ten minutes before you all right, UM, don't,
Speaker 1: I won't. I won't. But there's there's a piece at
Speaker 1: the end that is very volatile and um, it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to watch whether you're a hunter and non hunter
Speaker 1: and anti hunter, a barre biologists. It's very difficult to watch.
Speaker 1: And there's additional footage to that piece. And we played
Speaker 1: with a bunch of different pieces. There's nothing that's secret.
Speaker 1: Everything bad that happens you see, but it's just we
Speaker 1: just move things around. It's still truth one percent of timeline, um,
Speaker 1: but we just moved things around that we thought would
Speaker 1: We didn't want to linger there for too long, and
Speaker 1: so we shortened some of it up, and we and
Speaker 1: we played with it to where what we did is
Speaker 1: we had some young ladies come in our office that
Speaker 1: were I'm not gonna say they're anti hunters, but they're
Speaker 1: definitely not hunters, and they're definitely not proponents of hunting,
Speaker 1: but they're they're good friends. Came and watched it and
Speaker 1: we watched their body language, watched there and they were
Speaker 1: you know, we played it the first time and and uh,
Speaker 1: it was really cool because we had a long form.
Speaker 1: We played it for him. They're like, um, we totally
Speaker 1: get what's happening here, but um, this was extremely uncomfortable
Speaker 1: to watch. So then I had a couple of friends
Speaker 1: watch it. Girls. I don't know why we lingered there,
Speaker 1: but um, I had a very dear friend of mine
Speaker 1: who's a woman. She watched it, and she's a her
Speaker 1: and she watched it, and I watched her get angry.
Speaker 1: And so she watched it and she just crossed her arms.
Speaker 1: She's like, oh, yeah, okay, this is yep, you're gonna
Speaker 1: put this out there. That's how you're gonna put it
Speaker 1: out there. And I was like, well this, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is what we're thinking. And then you could tell her
Speaker 1: response was visceral. She was upset at this. What how
Speaker 1: this all went down? And um, and I explained her,
Speaker 1: you know, and and she had never hunted bears or whatever.
Speaker 1: So we played with some placement there. Everything is I
Speaker 1: shouldn't even say we placed. We played with placement. The
Speaker 1: placement is the same. We played with lengths of time
Speaker 1: that we showed that. It's interesting that you did that,
Speaker 1: you know. I don't know how many folks in the
Speaker 1: hunting you know, in our content world, would would have
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't hunt or or doesn't understand it, watch
Speaker 1: a film like and then read their body language and
Speaker 1: try to understand, like how that the psychology absorb, you know,
Speaker 1: and absorb what they're watching, because man, we got a
Speaker 1: lot of bubble mentality in our world, you know, where
Speaker 1: we don't. So I think it's really cool way you
Speaker 1: did that, and that was it's important. And I didn't
Speaker 1: know this, but when we started coming out with these films,
Speaker 1: when we started writing for Instagram and writing for Facebook
Speaker 1: and whatever else, I started getting more letters from anti
Speaker 1: hunters than I was from hunters, and not not f you, letters,
Speaker 1: letters with questions like I don't like hunting, I hate hunters,
Speaker 1: but what are what is? What do you? What is this?
Speaker 1: You know, like I really appreciate how you killed this
Speaker 1: caribou and you caught it up and backpacked it out,
Speaker 1: and and so they had questions. So then I started thinking,
Speaker 1: I still wrote the film selfishly for me, still did,
Speaker 1: but I did so in a manner that might help
Speaker 1: answer some questions or elicit better questions, And so I did.
Speaker 1: I told this to rogan Um I know he's a
Speaker 1: friend of yours, but he he made a statement one time.
Speaker 1: I think he did in a joke, but I took
Speaker 1: it very serious. He said, we are shaped by outside,
Speaker 1: by our our influencers. So if I you know, if
Speaker 1: I come into your hotel room and put my fist
Speaker 1: through your mirror, you know, we might still do the
Speaker 1: podcast where you're gonna be like, okay, super never ever
Speaker 1: ever going to have that guy here again. And so
Speaker 1: then you know, we do things that that you know,
Speaker 1: how you behave at a party might might reflect if
Speaker 1: you get invited to a party later on, or how
Speaker 1: you behave yourself fishing, or always say it's like a
Speaker 1: choose your own adventure type of use your own adventure.
Speaker 1: Every decision has a tree, and every tree, every secondary
Speaker 1: decision has another tree. That's how you get yeah, And
Speaker 1: so that's basically what it was is. Even though I
Speaker 1: wrote this thing selfishly for myself, the fact that I
Speaker 1: started getting a lot of letters from non hunters and
Speaker 1: anti hunters made me think like, okay, I have to
Speaker 1: write this so again. The same woman that watched the
Speaker 1: same woman, the friend of mine, her names Crystal. She
Speaker 1: watched this um the the snare at the end that
Speaker 1: was uncomfortable. She also, this was really good because she's
Speaker 1: a hunter, but she watched these different scenarios and she
Speaker 1: didn't realize some of the differences techniques of like hunting
Speaker 1: brown bears or hunting grizzly bears, and well, why are
Speaker 1: you doing this and this and this and this and
Speaker 1: so then I thought, oh, okay, so here's a hunter
Speaker 1: that understands she's a deer hunter. She understands deer hunting,
Speaker 1: but not having ever gone to Alaska hunted these different
Speaker 1: species of bears, you didn't know. So then I so
Speaker 1: then I realized, okay, we have to be a little
Speaker 1: bit more blatant in some of our voiceovers and some
Speaker 1: of our guidance to carry people along that may have
Speaker 1: questions or may have never done these things. So it's
Speaker 1: really good. It's it's an interesting thing. It's almost like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's writing a book. If you're presenting a
Speaker 1: book to two different people, then one person has already
Speaker 1: read it, has already read the first six chapters, and
Speaker 1: the other person has to still read the first six chapters.
Speaker 1: You know, hunters, you're like, I don't if I'm watching
Speaker 1: you hunt Steve in a tree stand. I'm not wondering
Speaker 1: why is he in the tree? Yeah? What's he doing
Speaker 1: in the tree? Why is this bo hanging there like that?
Speaker 1: Why is he looking that way? Why is he set
Speaker 1: up where he is? Yeah, I know what you're doing.
Speaker 1: It's inherent, just based on the being a hunter and
Speaker 1: have shared experiences like yeah, I know what Donny's doing there,
Speaker 1: but so I'm looking at something different. And if you've
Speaker 1: never something and appreciate something different, if you've never done it,
Speaker 1: then you're you're you're reading all those things like Okay,
Speaker 1: what is this? What is this? What is this? And
Speaker 1: it seems just it's a more And I've done this
Speaker 1: too and talked a lot of nine hunters about a
Speaker 1: lot of different things, and it comes up in podcasts,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's hard for us who are hunters
Speaker 1: to see how somebody absorbs that information, who has a
Speaker 1: million questions before we even get to the drawing your bow?
Speaker 1: And the cool thing is that you being a hunter.
Speaker 1: You know when I missed Steve, Like at first, you'd say,
Speaker 1: why would you show you missed a giant deer at
Speaker 1: seventeen yards? Why would you show that? Well, because maybe
Speaker 1: you've missed a giant deer at seventeen yards. So then
Speaker 1: when you see that, you're with your body and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: do you remember when we're in Texas and my my
Speaker 1: arrow hit that branch and deflected over that deer and
Speaker 1: you you know that emotion. It's why books are successful,
Speaker 1: It's why movies are successful. It's why Joe Rogan is
Speaker 1: successful at as a comedian because what he's talking about
Speaker 1: on stage, we're all like, yeah, I've done that. It's
Speaker 1: I loved listening to comedians talk about that stuff because
Speaker 1: especially talking to Joe and how they like craft, you know,
Speaker 1: the craft, their sets and craft build like because nothing
Speaker 1: they say until gymnastics, nothing they say is funny. It's
Speaker 1: just that we sit there and go, I have done that.
Speaker 1: I've been I've been with specifically Joe. He's the only
Speaker 1: comedian I fucking know, so it's like I've been with him.
Speaker 1: We were to hunt in Texas one time and he
Speaker 1: wrote a bit about you ever been to a Bucky's
Speaker 1: gas station. It's like this giant gas station in Texas
Speaker 1: with like a thousand pumps and it's the you know,
Speaker 1: it's like a Walmart with a gas station and we
Speaker 1: went there like two in the morning, and I just
Speaker 1: remember Joe was like bouncing around, He's writing stuff on
Speaker 1: a piece of paper. What the fun is he doing?
Speaker 1: And then he went We went and hunted, and on
Speaker 1: the way back he did his show in Austin and
Speaker 1: he had a bit about BUCkies in the show. It
Speaker 1: was the first time I had been a part of
Speaker 1: I'm like, holy sh it, Like he I watched and
Speaker 1: he developed it over like a day, a three day
Speaker 1: hunt that we did for BIGS, and I was like,
Speaker 1: it's unbelievable how he took what is normal, what was
Speaker 1: a normal stop to get some like beef jerky, and
Speaker 1: turned it into this like hilarious experience for the people
Speaker 1: of Texas, because there's nothing funny about BUCkies other than
Speaker 1: the irony of the size and the complexity of this
Speaker 1: gas whole thing where there was like some Texas oil
Speaker 1: tycoon doing cocaine and be like, we need more gas pumps, man,
Speaker 1: more gas pumps. And I was like, god, it just
Speaker 1: you know, that was the first time I was like
Speaker 1: truly had been a part of that process and seeing
Speaker 1: somebody turn normal life into comedy, and uh, I was
Speaker 1: just I was amazed by it. And that's what we attempting,
Speaker 1: our attempting to do. And I'm not gonna say we're
Speaker 1: good at our craft, but I worked with an exceedingly
Speaker 1: talented group of guys and we we do put our
Speaker 1: best foot forward like this is right now. We get
Speaker 1: better all the time, but this is all we've got
Speaker 1: and um, and it's cool from everything from the writing
Speaker 1: that I do to the editing that Kyle does, because
Speaker 1: he'll bring in you know, he's taught me things where
Speaker 1: you know, we'll be editing something, he'll be editing something
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, our minds do everything left
Speaker 1: to right and then all of a sudden will come
Speaker 1: into a scene that is going to feed you some contention.
Speaker 1: And you'll see this in horror movies. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: all the scenes will start moving from right to left,
Speaker 1: and instantly your brain doesn't like it. So instantly you
Speaker 1: know you'll be in the movie theater and you don't
Speaker 1: even realize that, but you'll sit up and be like,
Speaker 1: you know, what the hell is going on? And then
Speaker 1: the music changes, you know, and you're like, okay, great,
Speaker 1: now something something's gonna happen, and you know, like you're
Speaker 1: hyper aware. And so we'll do the same thing in
Speaker 1: our films. And then we have a musician, Casey Olsen.
Speaker 1: He goes by Rodriguez. He'll like, yeah, Rodriguez, I gotta
Speaker 1: get I gotta get like a name call names. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he don't have a name. I don't, but I wish
Speaker 1: he would. I wish he was a fighter pile because
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, so he um, but he'll score the music.
Speaker 1: He knows nothing about hunting. He don't, you know, other
Speaker 1: than he eats, like I give him tons of meat
Speaker 1: and he just loves it because he doesn't spend money
Speaker 1: on anything. And so you know, he's messy hair and
Speaker 1: covering tattoos and he's skinny and super super talented musician.
Speaker 1: But he'll come in my office and say, hey, I
Speaker 1: gotta get him for the podcast. So writes music. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: he'll score music for you. He's super dominant. But he
Speaker 1: he'll come in my office and say, hey, when you
Speaker 1: saw that grizzly bear, you know, were you afraid? I'll say, no,
Speaker 1: you weren't, No, well, you know what were you feeling?
Speaker 1: I was just hyperwary, you know, like everything fell quiet,
Speaker 1: and his oh okay, and then he'll run back to
Speaker 1: his office into our little we have a recording studio
Speaker 1: which is basically h ice fishing house with sound equipment
Speaker 1: in it, and he'll go play his violin, as cello,
Speaker 1: his bass, piano, whatever, and he'll create music but his
Speaker 1: sat So he's following the emotion. Kyle's editing to kind
Speaker 1: of drive your guy's emotion to how we felt in
Speaker 1: the space to bring you along. William is filming the
Speaker 1: little tiny birds and the leaves and the frost and
Speaker 1: the sunshine, and the clouds in the rain, the mosquitoes,
Speaker 1: so that because if you're a hunter, you've been in
Speaker 1: all those places. Even if you're not a hunter, you
Speaker 1: can appreciate those things. Even and even if you live
Speaker 1: in New York City you never leave New York City,
Speaker 1: you see this stuff and you're like, wow, I never
Speaker 1: thought I was going to see the artic circle. This
Speaker 1: is pretty cool to kind of experience. This guy took
Speaker 1: us there. So williams bringing you there. I'm writing to
Speaker 1: tell you what's going on and how I was feeling
Speaker 1: in it. And then the animals in the wilderness and
Speaker 1: wildlife are all doing their part naturally, and we blend
Speaker 1: it all together to try and tell a tale, right,
Speaker 1: talk about a craft man, talk about as like I'm
Speaker 1: always interested in those things like craft. How you know
Speaker 1: me too? It's it's and you guys have developed over
Speaker 1: the years. I mean, oh, I want to get into
Speaker 1: the kind of like how you how you came along
Speaker 1: in hunting and eventually here. But it's this this selfish
Speaker 1: because interesting to me just because you're talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: not the manipulation of a story, the telling of a story,
Speaker 1: telling of a story. You know, how do I craft? Um?
Speaker 1: What happened to me in such a way to make
Speaker 1: compelling to interest folks and and for them to be
Speaker 1: able to take something away from it? Um. And when
Speaker 1: you and when you're looking at you, you have a
Speaker 1: wide people, a wide array of folks that watch your films,
Speaker 1: and they'll all take something different from it, which is
Speaker 1: which I'm sure is the challenge, you know. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's it's been really rewarding. We just did um premiere
Speaker 1: in Fort Collins, Colorado, a very artsy theater and there's
Speaker 1: a very diverse group and there, I mean mostly mostly
Speaker 1: people that were got invitations from most partners of ours
Speaker 1: and things like that, and um, so that was a
Speaker 1: really good group of people. But there's several people in
Speaker 1: the theater that I have never hunted, do not really
Speaker 1: know hunters. Because that's the funny thing if if you
Speaker 1: think about it, not to digress, but you know, the
Speaker 1: people that we came from our parents. Like if you
Speaker 1: asked your dad and your mom, Hey, did you guys
Speaker 1: grow up annoying hunters? Oh yeah, yeah, of course. But
Speaker 1: you get to our generation and you ask some of
Speaker 1: your friends, say, yeah, you guys know any hunters. No.
Speaker 1: Our parents all new hunters because it was a mainstay
Speaker 1: of society. And now, unfortunately, as some generations are moving along,
Speaker 1: you don't really know hunters. And we hunters used to be,
Speaker 1: you know, statesman if you will. They used to be
Speaker 1: like upper classman guys that knew everything from um it
Speaker 1: was kind of the guy that knew how to navigate
Speaker 1: in the dark. He knew how to live off the land.
Speaker 1: He knew how to break down an animal and get
Speaker 1: it back to his wife and kids, and he knew
Speaker 1: how to forge and have space. And he also was
Speaker 1: strong and tough and um, honest and true. And these
Speaker 1: are these are things that kind of followed that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a lot of important jobs, right, a lot
Speaker 1: of a lot of important jobs, which makes them exalted
Speaker 1: in the community. And yeah, yeh. Had a guy on
Speaker 1: the podcast that us told us um he game from
Speaker 1: Czechoslovakia and he was telling there they have a term
Speaker 1: over there, and I always fuck it up. I think
Speaker 1: it's like mechlovic or something like that. Mesovic Um it
Speaker 1: means hunter and thinker and that's you know over there
Speaker 1: coming up they had to um learn about that. They
Speaker 1: had to go to class to be a hunter and
Speaker 1: learn about the flora and fauna and there, you know,
Speaker 1: their model of conservation, if you will, was to the
Speaker 1: more work you did outside, the better opportunities you had
Speaker 1: to go hunt. So if you worked all day, you
Speaker 1: could go hunt red deer. If you only hurt half
Speaker 1: the day, you could only go and then hunt a
Speaker 1: squirrel or a rabbit. So it's interesting like that, like
Speaker 1: the idea in that community that the hunter was this
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, thinker and someone who had to make
Speaker 1: like the most important decisions when it came to wildlife.
Speaker 1: And it was funny. So I was in several years ago,
Speaker 1: but I was in Nepal. I was in southern Nepal
Speaker 1: and the Royal Chitwan National Forest, a place called death
Speaker 1: Up and I was studying tigers for UM, the local biologists.
Speaker 1: They're working in conjunction with them, and they are very
Speaker 1: much against hunting. Uh in this region, the guys that
Speaker 1: I were working with and uh, um the native people
Speaker 1: very much against hunting. UH. They do some hunting, of
Speaker 1: course for themselves, and some fishing to supply meat for
Speaker 1: their families, but I'm mostly uh talking about the tiger
Speaker 1: right there. Everyone's there to save the tiger, other than
Speaker 1: the poachers that are trying to sell their skin. But UM,
Speaker 1: so they quote unquote hate these guys that are killing
Speaker 1: the tigers. They're not hunters or poachers, but they hate them.
Speaker 1: But it's funny. When I came into camp, they asked
Speaker 1: what I like to do, and I told you, let's
Speaker 1: back up about how you find yourself. Let's not skip
Speaker 1: over how the fund do you find yourself working as
Speaker 1: a as a It's actually pretty interesting. So I I
Speaker 1: graduated from the University of Minnesota with a degree and
Speaker 1: wildlife biology and scientific biology. And UM, you hunter, then
Speaker 1: I was a hunter, then you're in fact, That's what
Speaker 1: led me to I was hunting and and and had
Speaker 1: no idea what I want do for a career. I
Speaker 1: was really unsuccessful in high school. UM basically remedial classes
Speaker 1: all the way up through high school, just challenged as
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna necessarily say challenged as a as a student.
Speaker 1: But teachers didn't believe in me. I certainly didn't believe
Speaker 1: in me, and parents didn't believe in me, and so
Speaker 1: I just was Monday became a Friday, became a Sunday,
Speaker 1: turned into a month, into a year, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: ninth grade of serious, tenth grade it was we were
Speaker 1: supposed to be more serious. Eleventh grade was supposed to
Speaker 1: be really serious and get ready for life. And all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, like, I'm just a high school student.
Speaker 1: What am I supposed to do? And I saw the
Speaker 1: other kids around me that were really smart and talented.
Speaker 1: We're taking post secondaries classes, and they weren't getting in trouble,
Speaker 1: and not naturally that I was getting in trouble for
Speaker 1: trivial stuff, but I was getting in a little bit
Speaker 1: of trouble. And anyway, flast forward and I went to
Speaker 1: the University of Minnesota, and UM, I ended up seeing
Speaker 1: a cow moose on a brochure. Uh kalmo standing in
Speaker 1: a pond eating vegetation on a roster. Yeah. Um for
Speaker 1: the UH School of Natural Resources. And I thought, and
Speaker 1: I loved wildlife, loved I loved wildlife and I loved hunting.
Speaker 1: To me, those two things were synonymous. There wasn't zoos
Speaker 1: the outdoors. I'm also a hunter and a fisherman like
Speaker 1: guys now are like, I'm a bass fisherman or I
Speaker 1: hunt white til deer. I did this to me that
Speaker 1: none of that exists. Still to this day, none of
Speaker 1: that exists. To me, I'm all of those things, and
Speaker 1: I'm a zookeeper and I'm a wildlife biologist and I'm
Speaker 1: a steward of habitat like that. To me, being a hunter,
Speaker 1: your job is all of that. You own all of that.
Speaker 1: That's a responsibility. And so um, I was hunting and
Speaker 1: wanting to hunt more and more, and so I saw
Speaker 1: this brochure and I was like, oh, you know, I'd
Speaker 1: love to do this, And and the school was ranked
Speaker 1: really high, the program at that you was ranked really high.
Speaker 1: So when applied and literally the ladies like oh no, absolutely,
Speaker 1: like you are so far from getting in this program,
Speaker 1: it's not even funny. So I said, no, she was awesome.
Speaker 1: Actually she was awesome. Yeah, but she said basically like,
Speaker 1: you are so far on the plate, it's not even funny.
Speaker 1: But why why do you even want to do this?
Speaker 1: You know? And I said, well, I and this is
Speaker 1: I'm not telling you this story to as a as
Speaker 1: a proponent of like yep, somebody told me I couldn't
Speaker 1: do it, and I just buckled up and did it. No,
Speaker 1: it was just I was so afraid of failure, so
Speaker 1: afraid of I watched tons of people around me flounder
Speaker 1: with drugs and alcohol and and as young kids. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm talking middle school on up. You know. That was
Speaker 1: like ment alive. I'm not very smart anyway, I'm not
Speaker 1: very bright to begin with. I'm in remedial classes all
Speaker 1: through high school. I bet her, damn buckle down and
Speaker 1: try to learn as much information as I can before
Speaker 1: I move forward and try to do something with my life.
Speaker 1: And I have a brother and a sister both are
Speaker 1: severe drug addicts and uh, and so I watched them
Speaker 1: just a constant. I were a lot of control and
Speaker 1: in and out of jail and stealing from my parents
Speaker 1: and they get kicked out and then they move back in.
Speaker 1: It's just this ship show. And so UM, this lady said,
Speaker 1: why do you want to do this? And I said,
Speaker 1: I just love wildlife. I'd love to do this. She said,
Speaker 1: I tell you what. You take all of these classes.
Speaker 1: And it was all of the Algebras. It was pre
Speaker 1: calcuant in two. It was a freshman English. It was
Speaker 1: a second language because I never had a second language
Speaker 1: in high school. Um. Basically, it was two years of classes.
Speaker 1: And she's like, you do all of these with absolute regularity,
Speaker 1: and you'd get good grades and I'll let you into
Speaker 1: the program. So it's great, went to school for two years.
Speaker 1: She let me into the program, went through the program.
Speaker 1: It sounds like you just needed to care it. It It
Speaker 1: sounds like you just need something. Yeah, I just needed
Speaker 1: to care and some support, I guess maybe, and and
Speaker 1: maybe an ounce of believing in myself. And then um,
Speaker 1: and then at the end of that program, you have
Speaker 1: a fields course in which we would go to this
Speaker 1: place called Douglas Lake in Lake Michigan. It sat on
Speaker 1: Lake Michigan, um in the northern part of the Lower
Speaker 1: Peninsula of Michigan. And and we go through this course
Speaker 1: and learning, you know, how to really classify plants in
Speaker 1: the forest, right, not textbook stuff, but like we're doing
Speaker 1: actual vegetation work here. We're looking at trees, reading a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff. And one of the one of the
Speaker 1: courses was run by this guy named Dr David Smith.
Speaker 1: He's a world famous tiger ecologist. So he in the
Speaker 1: beginning of the summer, the University of Michigan would radio
Speaker 1: caller raccoons and then they let them go and so
Speaker 1: we'd study their movements with radio telemetry all summer long.
Speaker 1: And then at the end of the summer what are
Speaker 1: you looking for there? Oh, just literally learning how to
Speaker 1: use telemetry equipment. So like, oh, he's in a dumpster tonight.
Speaker 1: And then here's what we frowned. No, raccoons are a
Speaker 1: little asshole. Literally, we'd locate and be like, oh, he
Speaker 1: he's in cabin for tonight, and or he's up on
Speaker 1: this hill, you know, and why is he up on
Speaker 1: this hill? And then we go up there and be like, oh,
Speaker 1: so somebody dumped a sack of apples up here and
Speaker 1: he's been sent up here eating so all these different things, um,
Speaker 1: and then at the end of the summer, the University
Speaker 1: of Minnesota would basically try and capture those raccoons to
Speaker 1: get their radio collars off of them. So there's this
Speaker 1: friendly little bet between your University of Minnesota University of Michigan.
Speaker 1: So the guy that I was working for, David Smith,
Speaker 1: the professor that I was studying underneath, he had me
Speaker 1: and another guy. He's like, why don't you guys take
Speaker 1: first crack. You go out tonight, triangulate the raccoons, set
Speaker 1: up traps, live traps, and see how many you can capture.
Speaker 1: Three of them now a radio color and the most
Speaker 1: anyone had ever caught up to that point, I believe
Speaker 1: was one and um, and long story short, we ended
Speaker 1: up catching all three in the first night. So then
Speaker 1: we started talking and we were at this basically a
Speaker 1: celebration party at the end, and he just said, uh,
Speaker 1: He's like, hey, I'm going over to Bangladesh and Nepal
Speaker 1: to go do some tiger stuff this summer. Um, would
Speaker 1: you like to come along? And I said, man alive,
Speaker 1: I would love. I was early twenties. Nobody says no
Speaker 1: to that. No, And then it was really cool. This
Speaker 1: is this guy's David Smith again. His basically Indiana Jones
Speaker 1: literally basically Indiana. He did wear a hat, yep, and
Speaker 1: he had white hair, and he he'd have glasses. He
Speaker 1: let his glasses slide down to the end of his nose,
Speaker 1: almost like Santa Claus, and he kind of suck on
Speaker 1: his bottom lip and go yeah, Ben, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And so he do these things. Oh, it's awesome, and
Speaker 1: then he um. One time he got gored. This is
Speaker 1: I was not there, but he got gored by an
Speaker 1: Asian ryin on one time with his son. Him and
Speaker 1: his son, Guy scooped up all of his intestines because
Speaker 1: they're everywhere. His intestines are all over the place in
Speaker 1: the jungle, scoops them all up, carries them and his
Speaker 1: son back to the camp and wanders in, peels out.
Speaker 1: They fly him, They put him in an airplane. They
Speaker 1: fly him emergently to Catman. You and the doctors and
Speaker 1: Kamin who were like, we're not touching this guy, like
Speaker 1: he's seen Yeah, I've seen the hospitals in Kevin. They're
Speaker 1: not you know, you're not there to you're not there
Speaker 1: to get a cavity fixed. And so they flew him
Speaker 1: to Bangkok and the guys at Bangkok, just crushed and
Speaker 1: put him all back together. But his stomach he looks
Speaker 1: like you know when you have your apendix out, he
Speaker 1: looks like he's had nineteen appendixes out. So that's the
Speaker 1: type of guy that this guy ever written Any books
Speaker 1: we gotta do, I'm sure this guy. I'm sure a film, yeah,
Speaker 1: where we recreate that. He's he's a sick dude. Man.
Speaker 1: He's just he's one of those guys. When he are
Speaker 1: around him or you know him, you're like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm and I feel this way today, I'm I'm in Amiba.
Speaker 1: Compared to this man, he's ten times smarter than I am.
Speaker 1: He's in his sixties, And when I was in my
Speaker 1: twenties and he was in his sixties, he was ten
Speaker 1: times tougher than I was, ten times smarter than I was.
Speaker 1: It's just you're around somebody like that and you're like,
Speaker 1: you're you really you realize what human beings can be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're laughing, You're basically he's basically superhero. Sure, Sure, it
Speaker 1: was good for you and your twenties to be around that.
Speaker 1: It's always incredible to give you and so it's remarkable
Speaker 1: to see what he would do. But he gaining this
Speaker 1: piece of paper and he had his glasses down on
Speaker 1: the end of his nose and he took his pen out,
Speaker 1: and he's like, uh, you know where you know where
Speaker 1: Bangkok is? You know, I'm like Thailand. It's like, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So you're gonna fly. What I want you to do
Speaker 1: is I want you to fly from Minneapolis. You fly
Speaker 1: at the Minneapolis right. Yeah, you fly to the Minneapolis
Speaker 1: and you're gonna fly down to Atlanta, Georgia. From Georgia,
Speaker 1: then I'm gonna have you fly to Bangkok. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have you overnight in Bangkok and uh and then from
Speaker 1: there in the morning, you're gonna go back to the airport.
Speaker 1: You're gonna fly through Tokyo and then um, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have you land in uh let's see here. I'll probably
Speaker 1: have you land in uh in Dhaka. Yeah, how many
Speaker 1: landing Dhaka, Bangladesh. And then and then you're gonna go
Speaker 1: out there's a big metal gate. You're gonna go out
Speaker 1: this gate and then you're gonna walk over to the
Speaker 1: domestic airport and you're gonna a charter an airplane, probably
Speaker 1: a twin prop or something and you're gonna fly that
Speaker 1: down to just shore. And then when you get down
Speaker 1: to the shore, don't talk to anyone because just there's
Speaker 1: some people down there. Just don't talk to anyone. And
Speaker 1: and when you get off the airplane, you're just gonna
Speaker 1: walk into town. It's talk going to be dirt and jungle,
Speaker 1: and don't don't talk to anyone. And then you just
Speaker 1: sit there on the street corner and I'll find you
Speaker 1: in a couple of days, in a couple of days,
Speaker 1: a couple of days, a couple of days from because
Speaker 1: it took me like three days to fly there. So
Speaker 1: you see this piece of paper and that's that's all
Speaker 1: it says on So I fly to Bangkok and through
Speaker 1: Tokyo to DCA and and then I go to walk
Speaker 1: through the metal gate that he told me to walk through,
Speaker 1: and there's a guy with a machine gun and he's
Speaker 1: like hey, hey, hey, and he's pointing his gun at me.
Speaker 1: And the guy going through customs in in DACA, guys
Speaker 1: point at a K at my chest safeties off pointy.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he had one in the chamber,
Speaker 1: but he's pointing the a K on my chest and
Speaker 1: he's like passport. I handed my passport. He drifts the
Speaker 1: mull's love his gun off me a little bit. It
Speaker 1: looks at my passport and go no no. He slides
Speaker 1: it back and he goes back to his weapon. I
Speaker 1: what do you mean? Knowing he's like, no, this is
Speaker 1: not not a good passport. Where'd you get this? Like
Speaker 1: Washington d C. He was no, no, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: And so he's kind of bickering with me. And I
Speaker 1: saw there's another military guy over here that's a little
Speaker 1: bit more decorated. And I called him over and said, man,
Speaker 1: I'm here from the university and studying tigers and and um,
Speaker 1: I gotta get in here. And and he's like, where
Speaker 1: are you staying? And I said, I'm staying in the jungle. Man,
Speaker 1: I don't have an address. And he's like, you need
Speaker 1: an address. And I'm like, I'm staying in the sunder Bonds.
Speaker 1: It's the world's largest main grove swamp, living on a
Speaker 1: boat in the jungle. There's no address, Like, man, you
Speaker 1: need an address. And I was like, okay, So I
Speaker 1: go to the next guy, and here's where you're staying.
Speaker 1: I go Hotel sunder Bond and the other guy looks
Speaker 1: at me like, you didn't just tell me that, And
Speaker 1: he's like, okay, you're staying at the hotel sunder Barn,
Speaker 1: which doesn't exist, and so he writes and so he
Speaker 1: So they finally let me in and I go to
Speaker 1: walk through the gate to go to the domestic airport,
Speaker 1: and the dude in the machine guns like, hey, if
Speaker 1: you go through the gate to shoot you, that's a
Speaker 1: no no walk zone, Like if you go through this gate,
Speaker 1: I have to shoot you, you know. And I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: well okay, so I'm not I won't go through the gate,
Speaker 1: And so where do I How do I do this?
Speaker 1: He's like, you need to take a cab. The only
Speaker 1: way you can get over there is if you get
Speaker 1: in a cab and go over there. So I go
Speaker 1: over this cabby parked nearby and I said, can you
Speaker 1: give me a ride to the domestic airport? And he's
Speaker 1: he just goes no, he just sucked on his lip,
Speaker 1: kind of sucked on his tooth, and no, I go, please,
Speaker 1: can you know? So all the sime, I see this
Speaker 1: police officer and he's kind of noticing this guy's given
Speaker 1: me a little gouff. So he comes over and he says,
Speaker 1: excuse me, what's you know? Who are you? I need
Speaker 1: to see your papers. I showed my papers. He's like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing. I said, I'm American. I'm here
Speaker 1: study tigers. They hold their tigers very, very high, you know,
Speaker 1: A they're all afraid of them because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of man eaters there. So the fact that you're coming
Speaker 1: to find tigers, they oh, okay, so you're going to
Speaker 1: the jungle, like you're going to go look for tigers,
Speaker 1: and you're here to help us with our tiger are
Speaker 1: poaching problem. So he looks at my passport, looks my
Speaker 1: papers like okay, he's like, what's going on? I like,
Speaker 1: he just won't take me to the domestic airport. He
Speaker 1: walks over there, smashes the guy in the head, smashes
Speaker 1: him with a right I mean smashes him. Then the
Speaker 1: guy his head kind of pops back out the window.
Speaker 1: The cops smashes him with an elbow. The guy is
Speaker 1: now bleeding profusely from his left temple, and then he goes, okay,
Speaker 1: he'll take you now, no charge. And I get in
Speaker 1: and the guy's bleeding from his head and he drives
Speaker 1: me over the domestic airport for free. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: lets me out. And then so I get in the
Speaker 1: airplane and fly down to just Shore. I get off
Speaker 1: the airplane, grab my bag, go down this gravel strip
Speaker 1: sitting on the street corner. It's midnight, one am, and
Speaker 1: this guy comes over in a rickshaw when those little
Speaker 1: three wheel bicycles got a little ring ring. He comes in.
Speaker 1: He goes, hey, where are you staying? And I said,
Speaker 1: I don't know where I'm staying yet, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: waiting for friends. And he says, no, no, no no, we're
Speaker 1: um where he's staying. I'll take you there. And I said,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know where we're staying. You know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be living on a boat. And he goes, well,
Speaker 1: there's a hotel right down the street here. Why don't
Speaker 1: you let me take you there. You can relax there.
Speaker 1: They have bottled water, because you don't drink anything out
Speaker 1: of the tap. There they have bottled water, the fresh
Speaker 1: food you can get, bite the you know, relax and
Speaker 1: and then i'll let your friends. You know, you know
Speaker 1: where you went. And so I said no, no, I
Speaker 1: was told to state here and not talk to anyone, remember,
Speaker 1: So that guy keeps coming by, and then finally, at
Speaker 1: like three thirty in the morning, I see a land
Speaker 1: rover coming on the street and open end, open air
Speaker 1: land rover and there's Dave and I'm like, this worked.
Speaker 1: This whole half a page of scribble notes worked. So
Speaker 1: he rides up. He's like, hey, how's your flight and everything.
Speaker 1: I'm like, everything basically how you described it, other than
Speaker 1: you almost got me killed going to the airport. And
Speaker 1: he's like, what do you mean you can't walk to
Speaker 1: the game. And he's like, oh yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: You gotta take a car over there. Thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for that. So then I get in the car
Speaker 1: and I go, yeah, I most was gonna wait for
Speaker 1: you guys at a hotel. And the driver goes, what
Speaker 1: a hotel? And I said, the guy there on the
Speaker 1: rickshaw and you could see him. I'm like, he said,
Speaker 1: he's gonna take me the hotel. He's like, oh no,
Speaker 1: It's like he was probably gonna murder you. It's like
Speaker 1: what they'll do is they'll get you in their rickshaw
Speaker 1: and then they'll just ride you over somewhere. They ring
Speaker 1: their bell, you know, guys jump out and slit your throat,
Speaker 1: take all your goods and off the races. And so
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, there's no hotel around here. So yeah,
Speaker 1: So then I jumped in a boat and went into
Speaker 1: the jungle. So that's how I got to there. But
Speaker 1: back to my original points, they are against hunting and
Speaker 1: hunters there, but they hold hunters in very high regard
Speaker 1: because all before um, late nineties, late nineties, and so
Speaker 1: before they became kind of a recognized society the civil War,
Speaker 1: to all of their elders, if you will, were all hunters,
Speaker 1: and so they hunters were revered there. But um, no
Speaker 1: longer do they do any hunting there. No, But it
Speaker 1: was quite an experience, it was, and I never saw
Speaker 1: a tiger the whole time. How long? How long are
Speaker 1: you there? Um? I was feeling people are like finished
Speaker 1: the story, Donny, Oh yeah, I know. I was there.
Speaker 1: I was there. I was in Bangladesh for several weeks,
Speaker 1: and then from there I went to Nepal for several weeks,
Speaker 1: and um, it was so close to seeing a tiger,
Speaker 1: Like I was in this room with tigers, but I
Speaker 1: just couldn't see them because the jungle tracks and yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd see tracks. So every time the tigers stepped. It's
Speaker 1: called a pug mark. Every time the tiger would step,
Speaker 1: the track would fill with water. And so you could
Speaker 1: take your hand or your foot, put it in a
Speaker 1: mud and pull push it to the same death of
Speaker 1: the tiger, pull it up and measure how long it takes.
Speaker 1: And so we had tiger prints for that were just
Speaker 1: dimpling with water, which is you know, four or five seconds,
Speaker 1: and so he was right here she or she was
Speaker 1: right here, but you can't see them because the jungle.
Speaker 1: These are what kind of tigers? Tigers? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: nowadays in Nepal, hunting has become They have one hunting
Speaker 1: district which I hunted in Um with Cool Kramer mutual
Speaker 1: friend Um. And this is you know, I want to
Speaker 1: say it's only been open for about four years, Okay,
Speaker 1: I always get that wrong, four or five years. It's
Speaker 1: called the Rokum District. And they they'll do uh each year,
Speaker 1: they do uh what we would call a tag draw,
Speaker 1: but they do like a tag auction and the outfitters,
Speaker 1: I think there's uh two or three outfitters that they
Speaker 1: lie up. Yeah, they just buy them up in an
Speaker 1: auction and there'll be a certain amount of blue sheep tags,
Speaker 1: a certain amount of um tar tags for things like
Speaker 1: that over there. So we've we got We were, you know,
Speaker 1: one of the first folks to do that. But we
Speaker 1: went to western Nepal, which, um it was pretty damn remote.
Speaker 1: We were, you know, the little the hamlet, the little
Speaker 1: village that we flew into. It was like six days
Speaker 1: walk from the nearest road. And which I I said
Speaker 1: a lot on this podcast, but that that like those
Speaker 1: dudes were, They're telling amazing stories in that part of
Speaker 1: the world. No tigers around, but all kinds of it's
Speaker 1: just completely different, right, unbelieved, completely different. You have no
Speaker 1: concept um and I say that in this latest film,
Speaker 1: this idea of I have this notion that I live with,
Speaker 1: and one of them is that we always must hunt
Speaker 1: well and good, no matter if you're on camera off camera.
Speaker 1: Just how we carry ourselves. And I don't mean so
Speaker 1: we don't get caught poaching, but even we need to
Speaker 1: leave the habitat better. We need to be conservationists. We
Speaker 1: need to educate those that don't know. We have to
Speaker 1: educate ourselves. We have to constantly keep asking ourselves difficult questions.
Speaker 1: Should we even be hunting these animals, should we be here,
Speaker 1: should be doing this that notion, and then also this
Speaker 1: this other notion of that. Um unless you go, unless
Speaker 1: you live there, unless you participate, you really have no
Speaker 1: opinion on what is going on. Like we love to
Speaker 1: sit back, particularly in the United States, and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I you know, this is how I would handle Nepoll
Speaker 1: or this is how I would handle Iraq or Afghanistan
Speaker 1: or Cuba whatever, and and from its wildlife to its habitat,
Speaker 1: to its people too, you know. And then but really,
Speaker 1: unless you're there, you know, what would people in in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: New York, how much do they have to say about, um,
Speaker 1: you know, the wildlife in Montana. You know, even though
Speaker 1: they're probably watching CNN. I'm making this all up. But
Speaker 1: even though they're probably watching CNN and seeing some you know,
Speaker 1: lands becoming privatized or becoming remaining public or becoming privatized,
Speaker 1: they might sit in New York as a you know,
Speaker 1: a big fact can be like, well, yeah, this is
Speaker 1: my opinion on it. You know that. But really, unless
Speaker 1: you're there Nepal, unless you're listening to these stories, unless
Speaker 1: you're walking the six miles to the village, unless you're
Speaker 1: listening to the people there. You you really have you
Speaker 1: don't even have an opinion then, but at least you
Speaker 1: have some wisdom in some That's what I say. It's
Speaker 1: so hard, Like I think my biggest challenge with going
Speaker 1: over there for a brief time was like being stressed
Speaker 1: out about learning enough. My stress was like, I want
Speaker 1: to learn, uh um, what has happened to here? What
Speaker 1: will happen here? I want to learn the culture. I
Speaker 1: want to learn their practices for hunting, if they have any,
Speaker 1: which they really you know, they have some traditional hunting practice,
Speaker 1: it's not they don't have any modern hunting practice other
Speaker 1: than kill animal if hungry. It's become a trophy, right.
Speaker 1: They try to provide that Western experience that we all
Speaker 1: I should say we all that I loathe, we participated.
Speaker 1: I say that all the time. Like one thing that
Speaker 1: bothers me about it is because you'll see and I've
Speaker 1: seen this happen. I'm not been around long enough to
Speaker 1: see it kind of like bloom, but I've seen it.
Speaker 1: I could see it. Where is it where a country
Speaker 1: like we there's a lot of dollars in these in
Speaker 1: this country, and another country is looking to to replicate
Speaker 1: that to like to kind of extract you know, who
Speaker 1: has the money, what are they spending it on? And
Speaker 1: can we create an industry in our country to extract
Speaker 1: that money and have have people travel and come hunt here.
Speaker 1: And so these industries pop up, and man, I'll be
Speaker 1: flat honest, places like News Zealand, um, where they're basically
Speaker 1: just catering to a certain type of hunter, and that's
Speaker 1: because that hunter has dollars. Then they created a tourism industry.
Speaker 1: It's supply and demand, it's economics. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: this goes back to some of my original hypocrisy that
Speaker 1: I was telling you about. I don't want to go
Speaker 1: to New Zealand and Hanatar or Shammy and be a
Speaker 1: tourist and all this stuff. Not Now, if I went
Speaker 1: to New Zealand for sixty days and I was living
Speaker 1: in a little village or camping or hiking or doing
Speaker 1: whatever it is, it's so funny because it's just semantics.
Speaker 1: But to me it's serious. If I was enveloping myself
Speaker 1: into the culture and then found myself in the mountains
Speaker 1: and some guy was like, Hey, I'm going on a
Speaker 1: tar hunt this weekend to go get a bunch of
Speaker 1: tar meat for my family. Do you want to come
Speaker 1: along and help me backpack the tar meat off the mountains? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And then when I'm up there, he says, hey, do
Speaker 1: you want to shoot one? You know, you don't need
Speaker 1: a license for it. You can use my rifle or whatever.
Speaker 1: Do you want to shoot one? Yeah? And then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, that whole experience, to me is me
Speaker 1: living my life in New zealand participating with a local
Speaker 1: or participating with the wildlife in the habitat and going
Speaker 1: about my days and learning the culture and really having
Speaker 1: this barrier entry of belonging, which is a complete opposite
Speaker 1: of a ten day hunt in the Mabia where I'm
Speaker 1: trying to say, hey, I shot eight planes games. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a depth, depth of perspective, you know, like I've
Speaker 1: always you know. That's why I think storytelling is great,
Speaker 1: because you can tell a story, right, You can tell
Speaker 1: a story about your experience without without coming by, without
Speaker 1: you know, coloring it as an expert, like this is
Speaker 1: just my experience. I was only there for ten days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I can't tell you. I can tell you what I experienced,
Speaker 1: and hopefully you know if you've never been to that area,
Speaker 1: of the world experienced that it gives you a little
Speaker 1: bit of a window into what might be happening. But
Speaker 1: what you're talking about is just purely a depth of experience.
Speaker 1: You know, like the more time you spend, the better
Speaker 1: UM you're able to, you know, take that experience across
Speaker 1: other folks. It adds up to so much more. It
Speaker 1: adds up to so much more in and UM. I
Speaker 1: learned this from a pilot. One time I tried to
Speaker 1: do this. I was fly fishing in Alaska. I was
Speaker 1: up there doing research for the US Fishing Wildlife Service.
Speaker 1: I was doing a bunch of fly fishing, and I
Speaker 1: had maybe six or seven days before I had to
Speaker 1: fly out too before I had to go home because
Speaker 1: I had another project I had to work on. And
Speaker 1: I talked to this pilot friend of mine, Doug Brewer,
Speaker 1: and I said, hey, dog, this was back when, um
Speaker 1: there was a herd in western Alaska called the mold Chatten,
Speaker 1: a herd of caribou. So I said, Doug, he can
Speaker 1: fly me there and in a day, not even a day,
Speaker 1: a couple of hours. So I said, Doug, will you
Speaker 1: fly me and drop me off? Um and by myself
Speaker 1: in the middle chatten herd or by the mold chatten herd.
Speaker 1: I just want to camp. I have two and a
Speaker 1: half days to hunt and then I'll meet you fly back.
Speaker 1: And he said, no, man, he's like, I'm not going
Speaker 1: to fly you in there and for two and a
Speaker 1: half days a hunt. I said why not. He's like,
Speaker 1: because the animals deserve more than that, and and he said,
Speaker 1: if you can stay for five days, it's it. That's
Speaker 1: that's the beginning. If you can stay for seven days.
Speaker 1: And the math doesn't add up here, so don't don't
Speaker 1: your listeners, don't hang me on this. But if you
Speaker 1: can stay seven days, that's ten times more than five days.
Speaker 1: If you can stay ten days, that's ten times more
Speaker 1: than seven days. If you can stay fourteen days is
Speaker 1: ten times more than ten days. And he's basically saying
Speaker 1: like every two days that you give this, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have ten times the experience that you would have had.
Speaker 1: And so he's like for two and a half days, no, No,
Speaker 1: I'm not flying you in there. You might with a
Speaker 1: high part rifle, or you get lucky with the ball,
Speaker 1: you might smash a big bowl um before I have
Speaker 1: to com pick you out. But He's like, that's not hunting,
Speaker 1: you know. And I was still learning my own wisdoms
Speaker 1: and learning my own ropes and even what it meant
Speaker 1: to be a hunter then, and so you know, to me,
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, zip in there, shoot a giant bowl.
Speaker 1: Quarterm up, carrying back to camp, get back in then plane,
Speaker 1: take some photos. Great hunt, I go home. I go yeah.
Speaker 1: I killed the caribol and one of them for two
Speaker 1: and a a half days, expert, patting myself on the back,
Speaker 1: you know. And then Doug's like no, no, no, And
Speaker 1: and it was funny because fast forward several several years.
Speaker 1: I spent twenty five days in the Arctic and the
Speaker 1: guy picked me up pilot pick and it was really
Speaker 1: cool because they dropped this off as basically summer. Everything
Speaker 1: was green, the bugs were bad, it was warm during
Speaker 1: the day. Picked me up. Twenty five days later, the
Speaker 1: river was frozen solid and no attack was frozen solid
Speaker 1: snow on the ground. The moose had went through their
Speaker 1: complete rot cycle, and we're moving on with their lives
Speaker 1: are in the breeding cycle now, and and um, you know,
Speaker 1: we went from watching black bears and grizzly bears lazily
Speaker 1: loaf around the tundra, eating grass and nipping in this,
Speaker 1: and nipping in this, going into hyper hyper um feeding
Speaker 1: to get ready for hibernation, and watching them cross ground
Speaker 1: squirrels and blueberries and all this stuff trying to get ready,
Speaker 1: trying to and so literally watched the evolution of this
Speaker 1: landscape over twenty five days. And when the pilot picked
Speaker 1: me up, you know, we're flying back and he's like, uh,
Speaker 1: did you see any seeny wolves. I'm like yeah, I
Speaker 1: got surrounded by two different packs twice and he's like,
Speaker 1: oh cool. He's like seeing grizzly bears. I'm like yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I saw ten different grizzly bears, two giant boars.
Speaker 1: One charged me. And he's like, did you see any
Speaker 1: black bears. I'm like, oh, I saw twelve big, plump
Speaker 1: black bears and and stocked a couple of them and
Speaker 1: took photographs and you know, you see any moves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw fifty moose And he's like, yeah, I seen
Speaker 1: any bowls over sevent I'm like yeah, most of them.
Speaker 1: Like I saw moose fighting, and I saw them, you know,
Speaker 1: breeding cows, and I saw them with giant harems, and
Speaker 1: I saw them form these harems and everything. He asked me.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, do you hear any wolves? How? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: you see the northern lights? Yeah, all this stuff, like,
Speaker 1: but it took twenty five days to do all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And still it's just I mean, you think about it.
Speaker 1: I watched it go from summer to what you could
Speaker 1: nearly confuse his winter in twenty five days, and uh god,
Speaker 1: that's all I want to do. Ever. Now it's just
Speaker 1: like if I can go, why to hunting and I
Speaker 1: wa for days or thirty days or yeah? Great? Well
Speaker 1: and as a traveling hunter, right, I I recently moved
Speaker 1: to Montane and a big part of that for me
Speaker 1: was I got to thinking, and this is a fucking
Speaker 1: first world problem if there ever was one. But I
Speaker 1: got I got to thinking. I do a lot of traveling, right,
Speaker 1: travel around the world hunting and done all this and
Speaker 1: the one thing I feel like I'm missing in my
Speaker 1: hunting life, and moved around for work a lot, you know, Illinois, Texas,
Speaker 1: different places, Like I want to plant my flag somewhere
Speaker 1: and not not only go travel the world and like
Speaker 1: get and gather perspectives and meet from these places and
Speaker 1: experiences and bring them back But have you know, have
Speaker 1: a place where I live that I have such an
Speaker 1: intense relationship with that could be informed and informed by
Speaker 1: these other places I go on hunt because I felt
Speaker 1: like I had all these great traveling hunting experience, But
Speaker 1: when I went back in this just in this context
Speaker 1: of Texas, it could have been anywhere. I'm looking around like, man,
Speaker 1: I don't have any relationship with this place, and that
Speaker 1: it kind of disconnects everything else, because what am I
Speaker 1: really trying to build upon if it's not to go
Speaker 1: home and be better at what I'm doing in my
Speaker 1: backyard and your backyard is I told people that all
Speaker 1: the time. If you being in Montana. Now this is
Speaker 1: not a very grand statement to make, but I currently
Speaker 1: live in Hudson, Wisconsin, and if somebody told me, I
Speaker 1: love it too. But if somebody told me, hey, for
Speaker 1: the next I'm forty four years old, that they said,
Speaker 1: from from today to the day you die, you can
Speaker 1: only hunt within twenty five miles of your house, Okay,
Speaker 1: no problem. I love the things that I go do,
Speaker 1: I love the place that I get to go see,
Speaker 1: but I will be like a kid in a candy
Speaker 1: store within twenty five miles of my house, catching little
Speaker 1: itty bitty trout, shooting three pheasants a year, um hunting
Speaker 1: white till deer nearly every day of the season, rough grouse,
Speaker 1: huge Canada geese, docks, catching walleyes, moski smallmouth bass. Like,
Speaker 1: there's so much. I'm not talking about the people live
Speaker 1: in New York City, but there's so much in your neighborhood.
Speaker 1: People say, oh, man, I wish i'd go sheep hunting.
Speaker 1: I say, I wish you could go sheep hunting two.
Speaker 1: And I know it's really expensive, but you want to
Speaker 1: know something. The first seven sheep hunts I went on
Speaker 1: were me backpacking for friends of mine that were going
Speaker 1: on sheep hunts. And I paid my own airfare, I
Speaker 1: paid for my own hotel, and I paid for my
Speaker 1: own food. And I walked in their footsteps on the hunt,
Speaker 1: watched them kill a sheep, helped them cut it up,
Speaker 1: filled my backpack two and hiked it out. And I
Speaker 1: consider those sheep punts every bit is. I don't the
Speaker 1: horns sit in their homes, but every ounce of that
Speaker 1: sheep hunt was ours. You didn't send the bull, but
Speaker 1: he's still You're still there, He's still a part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that's what I mean. Like when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, um, I was in Alaska one time. I
Speaker 1: don't remember. I was there fishing, and I was in
Speaker 1: the hotel and anchorage. And if you've never been an anchorage,
Speaker 1: it's so amazing because you can walk out of your
Speaker 1: hotel room and the chewcatch mountains are right there. I mean,
Speaker 1: you walk out of your hotel room be looking at
Speaker 1: a gas station and also looking at some of the
Speaker 1: finest all sheep and moose habitat in the world in
Speaker 1: the same view. And so I remember I came out
Speaker 1: of I was staying at a hotel called the puffing In.
Speaker 1: It's a little crappy hotel in here. The it's really nice,
Speaker 1: actually puffing In. I'm sorry, I said that, it's actually
Speaker 1: really nice. But I'm at the puffing In. I might
Speaker 1: get a coupon, but I'm at the puffing In. This
Speaker 1: guy comes walking out of his door on the outside,
Speaker 1: and he was wearing blue jeans and a flannel shirt
Speaker 1: and kind of looked like Tom Selleck. And he goes, hey,
Speaker 1: how are you doing. I said, I'm good. He's what
Speaker 1: are you doing? I said, I'm here fly fishing. He's like, cool,
Speaker 1: So what are you doing. He's like, I'm doll sheep,
Speaker 1: just like, man alive, Are you serious your dolls sheep?
Speaker 1: And he's like yeah, And I'm like back then a
Speaker 1: doll sheep and was like eight grand, Like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: you bought a eight doll dollar sheep on He's it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm going before as soon as you purchased it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I sat there and talked to that guy
Speaker 1: like he was king in the world, and I I wished,
Speaker 1: I wish we could have coordinated our trips to where
Speaker 1: I could hurt his stories afterwards. But I was so
Speaker 1: enamored with doll sheep, with Alaska, with the things that
Speaker 1: I was doing. And on that particular trip, I packed
Speaker 1: using candle light because my electricity was shut off and
Speaker 1: I couldn't even shower before I head to there approached
Speaker 1: my water was also shut off, and so but I
Speaker 1: was I wasn't paying my bills necessarily on time, but
Speaker 1: I was still going to Alaska because that's where I
Speaker 1: wanted to be, And so talking to this guy, I
Speaker 1: was just like, it's just such a dream, Like I
Speaker 1: can't believe I'm talking to a doulshep onter. I can't
Speaker 1: believe I'm talking to a dollshep onter right now. And
Speaker 1: and that stuff is just always enveloped my life always,
Speaker 1: and so I whether it be Bozeman or hot some
Speaker 1: Wisconsin or whatever. Like you look in your yard, sincerely,
Speaker 1: have this idea of adventure in your head. Sincerely, embody
Speaker 1: what it means to be a hunter, whether that be
Speaker 1: a gray squirrel, on antelope, a mule deer, a white
Speaker 1: till dear, a pheasant. You embodied these things. And whether
Speaker 1: you're breaking down a gray squil, you're breaking down an antelope,
Speaker 1: it is the exact same thing. It's the exact same thing.
Speaker 1: Shooting two snowshoe hair, walking out wearing wool slacks and
Speaker 1: a flannel shirt and your dad's jacket, and you have
Speaker 1: an old shotgun and two fat snowshoe hairs in your knuckles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might as well be holding onto a fourty inch
Speaker 1: dollar ship as far as I'm concerned. Do you feel
Speaker 1: like that's I always think about that. It's like, is it?
Speaker 1: It's I feel like it's a perfect hunting life to
Speaker 1: have that at home. But then also be lucky enough,
Speaker 1: like you have been, and I have been to go
Speaker 1: out and travel and see those things and be able
Speaker 1: to you know, have both those at the same time.
Speaker 1: And that's fair. Yeah. I hear guys all the time.
Speaker 1: They talk about and we all do. They talk about,
Speaker 1: Oh man, this guy like owners the Eddie, like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, they sold their company for hundreds of millions. WHOA, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: like that's really cool. But I don't even know. If
Speaker 1: I was a billionaire, I would still do this because
Speaker 1: I still want to go to these hunts. I'd still
Speaker 1: want to see these places in North America. I still
Speaker 1: want to tell you about him. I'd still be hiring
Speaker 1: guys that are as talented and I could find, which
Speaker 1: doesn't even matter how much I pay the guys that
Speaker 1: work with me, because I can only pay him so much.
Speaker 1: And there's such soulful individuals and such craftsmen that I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna say it wouldn't matter what I pay them,
Speaker 1: because you know they we're all in this together. But
Speaker 1: it's it's what we love to do and in the
Speaker 1: craft that we love doing, love doing it for other companies.
Speaker 1: You know, we've never worked with Yetdie, but like working
Speaker 1: with Shields or we're gonna like love what we do,
Speaker 1: love going to these places, like it doesn't matter necessarily
Speaker 1: that you have all this money. That's why I like.
Speaker 1: If I run into a guy at the show and he's, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a grand slammer man when I got all four sheeps, like,
Speaker 1: oh okay, that's great. Well, um, that's cool. I don't know.
Speaker 1: But if I run into Chuck Adams, if Chuck Adams says, hey,
Speaker 1: Donny and trust me, Chuck Adams has no idea I'm
Speaker 1: even alive. But if I run in, it's I got
Speaker 1: up and he says, hey, um, let me. If I
Speaker 1: had a cup of coffee, I'd like to sit down
Speaker 1: and tell you about my four sheep hunts. I'd like
Speaker 1: to sit down and tell you about what my grand
Speaker 1: slam meant to me with my bow and the equipment
Speaker 1: I was using, the bows I was using, the places
Speaker 1: that I went, and the shots that I took, and
Speaker 1: the things that I saw. I would freak out what
Speaker 1: I would freak like coffee, but I will chuck some seriously.
Speaker 1: I would if I had the opportunity to sit down
Speaker 1: with him and hear him tell me his hunting stories,
Speaker 1: what the gear he's using his approach why he shot
Speaker 1: the one he did, Like, yeah, there's so much flip out, man,
Speaker 1: there's so much respective in that. Yeah, And I think
Speaker 1: truly when you talk about the Grand Slams and now
Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking about the Grand Slam in
Speaker 1: Dolls Dream this year. I thought, I want to get
Speaker 1: the Grand Slam in Turkey, Yeah, in one year. And
Speaker 1: I thought, is that Am I wrong for this? Fucking
Speaker 1: doing it for the wrong reasons? But I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I don't think so. Then I was like, fucking,
Speaker 1: I'm doing it like I tend to. You may be
Speaker 1: like me. I tend to overthink all types of ship
Speaker 1: when it comes to hunting. Now, there are there are
Speaker 1: a number of people that I have in my life
Speaker 1: that if they listen to this, will be shaking their
Speaker 1: head yes, because I will. I got a lot of
Speaker 1: listeners who are like, listen, call the funk down. Man,
Speaker 1: it's just a picture, Like I don't know, see if
Speaker 1: you on the same way, and if you say something
Speaker 1: to me, I'll be like, did you see the way
Speaker 1: he was standing next? Like no, yeah, Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: but yeah, there's this somebody like that. It's like it
Speaker 1: got a little twisted in that the Grand Slam for
Speaker 1: somebody like Chuck Adams. I don't know Chuck, obviously, but
Speaker 1: it was more than just the collection of it, and
Speaker 1: right it was. It was his life's experiences in his
Speaker 1: way to um, you know, to express his hunting expertise
Speaker 1: and his hunting life. That's that's what it was. It
Speaker 1: was him taking his craft two different places, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've solved this maze. I heard they have a really
Speaker 1: cool mazing idahole um, So I'm gonna go out there
Speaker 1: and see if i can solve that maze. I hear
Speaker 1: there's another cool mazing Massachusetts. And so, like you said,
Speaker 1: it would be a mistake then to take that, take
Speaker 1: the number or and make that the achievement, right, because
Speaker 1: the achievement is honing your craft and using it and
Speaker 1: to be successful in that way. That the achievement is
Speaker 1: not the collection of the thing or the numbers. You know.
Speaker 1: The achievement is is finding respect from your peers through this,
Speaker 1: earning it. Yeah. Yeah, And so that's such a nebulous
Speaker 1: thing to figure out, but still it's there. It's still there,
Speaker 1: and if you're doing it right, I feel like, you know,
Speaker 1: you're doing it right. Yeah, and there's no question. Have
Speaker 1: you ever read um Aldo Leopold, Oh yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just like that guy, Sands County. Yeah, I mean like
Speaker 1: I I I travel with the Sand County Almanac in
Speaker 1: my backpack every day, and I'll it's just so perfectly written,
Speaker 1: so perfectly lived. He knows why he's a hunter, he
Speaker 1: knows what it embodies to be a hunter because of
Speaker 1: the craft that he is, of the steward that he
Speaker 1: is for the land, and he realizes the relationship between
Speaker 1: the plants and the berries, and the grouse and the
Speaker 1: woodcock and the songbirds and the white tail deer and
Speaker 1: the dock. And it's just it just I've learned so
Speaker 1: much from that, man. I know, you know you talked
Speaker 1: to guys like Steve Ronella. I'd say the same thing.
Speaker 1: Read that and it defined me. Do you want to
Speaker 1: know what I'm embarrassed. I've never talked to Steve. I've
Speaker 1: never met Steve. I've never listened to a single podcast
Speaker 1: of his. It's gonna change, It's gonna change, and I have.
Speaker 1: I was given recently. I was given his book The
Speaker 1: American Bison, American Buffalo, American Buffalo Um so somebody just
Speaker 1: gave that to me, and it's very high on my
Speaker 1: list of my opinion. And I just and somebody who's
Speaker 1: into the history of these these wild creatures. You will
Speaker 1: love that book. I'll live for it. And so and then, um,
Speaker 1: somebody just got me his cookbook for Christmas. Good good.
Speaker 1: We said a lot of those things. Um yeah, it
Speaker 1: turns out people like to go to stuffy. In fact.
Speaker 1: Um so I have one, two, three, four, five, six
Speaker 1: guys in my crew, and four of us got the
Speaker 1: book for Christmas. That's all from different people. That's like, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: that's a product of like this, this product of And
Speaker 1: Steve says it all this time, and I think you're
Speaker 1: me and Steve have that's not an argument, But I come,
Speaker 1: I I fall on the y side, right. I'm always
Speaker 1: asking why are we doing stuff? Why are we doing stuff?
Speaker 1: That's why I have a podcast, because I just want
Speaker 1: to like find everyone's why and explore it and use
Speaker 1: that the paint a picture of kind of maybe they're collective. Um.
Speaker 1: And the point Steve may we did him and I
Speaker 1: did a podcast last week in Mexico, and he made
Speaker 1: the point of, like some people just want to have
Speaker 1: a good time. They want to always be saying like
Speaker 1: why why why? Some people just want to enjoy their
Speaker 1: time outside and enjoy nature and not have to be
Speaker 1: saddled with this you know, pretentious why why why? And
Speaker 1: you put out probably the first time I ever really
Speaker 1: thought hard about it, you put out a video called
Speaker 1: why we Hunt? Who we Are, Who we are? We
Speaker 1: are who we are, which was about why we hunt.
Speaker 1: And um, I've listened to the story of how that
Speaker 1: kind of came to be and how you did it,
Speaker 1: and um, I think that was one of the first
Speaker 1: times that I thought like this, non hunters and people
Speaker 1: that don't do this need this. It's it's we can
Speaker 1: you know, all of us is in the hunting bubble
Speaker 1: can criticize what Donnie might have said there, or we
Speaker 1: might not agree exactly with the why he said. It
Speaker 1: was not for us, man, this is like, this isn't
Speaker 1: medicine for us, it's medicine for for the illness outside
Speaker 1: of And that wasn't glad you said that, because that
Speaker 1: wasn't well orchestrated. Yea, you made that temper tantrum. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you made that for Nagio. Correct that that's correct, because yeah,
Speaker 1: because this this girl from l A. Her name is Naomi,
Speaker 1: but she sat down, really stunning African American woman and vegetarian.
Speaker 1: But she said, yeah, Natio wants to know why you hunt,
Speaker 1: you know, And I was like oh. And then literally
Speaker 1: I couldn't come up with an answer, you know. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, yeah, I hunt because I'm trying to
Speaker 1: come up with, you know, ecological reason. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: like the North American Wildlife model, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: think of really a y, a single y the base
Speaker 1: of the pyramid of wise and I couldn't really come
Speaker 1: up with one. So then we were in the Northwest
Speaker 1: Territories and and Um, William Altman, the guy that was
Speaker 1: shooting me on that triple he shot me on all
Speaker 1: the trips, but he was there and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: let's just answer some of those questions as to why,
Speaker 1: you know, in a big rainstorm was coming and and
Speaker 1: um and so he hit record and I was talking
Speaker 1: in the camera and I'd lose my way or I
Speaker 1: talked to the camera and I fumble over my words,
Speaker 1: and I'd see this rainstorm coming and I just keep talking.
Speaker 1: I was looking and had the anxiety of the rainstorm
Speaker 1: coming and just getting piste off at myself that I
Speaker 1: kept fumbling over my words and my ideas and I
Speaker 1: didn't orchestrate anything out. And so then it got to
Speaker 1: where the rain was right there and and and Williams
Speaker 1: kind of like, dude, you gotta like we gotta do this,
Speaker 1: like the rain is coming, and I was like, cover
Speaker 1: off the camera, get out of my face, walk away,
Speaker 1: and I just had, you know, seven minute temper tantrum.
Speaker 1: And then that's what. So we talked about it a
Speaker 1: number of times that I would love to apart two
Speaker 1: and actually flesh out, like come up with an outline,
Speaker 1: flesh it out, really talk about it, um and do
Speaker 1: it still in an off the cuff manner, because that's
Speaker 1: how things are delivered the best for people to absorb.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, Um, but you're right, like that is
Speaker 1: that was just a poorly orchestrated temper tantrum. But answered
Speaker 1: a few. Yeah, And it was fun for me to watch,
Speaker 1: you know, not I fell non endemic. It's just people
Speaker 1: who don't think that we think it's it was fun
Speaker 1: for me to watch, like Outside magazine pick it up
Speaker 1: and other places to pick it up. And it's fun
Speaker 1: to me to just you know, just like you watched
Speaker 1: the person, the non hunter watched the other side. You know,
Speaker 1: something that I like to do is just watch that
Speaker 1: reaction and try. You know, you're you're always going to
Speaker 1: get the murder or murder. You're gonna get it, like
Speaker 1: we know you're gonna get it. But every once in
Speaker 1: a while, every ten comments or so where every you know,
Speaker 1: you'll get somebody like huh interesting. And that goes back
Speaker 1: to in my very first podcast with Ronnella, we talked
Speaker 1: about out of Loophole in in the Sans Cainli Almanac,
Speaker 1: the San kind of Almanac, and he said his brother
Speaker 1: read it and had a conservation epiphany and the ideas
Speaker 1: that were presented in that writing, and that in those
Speaker 1: writings like it was just not even through us, most
Speaker 1: was like directly affected his life. And that that exchange
Speaker 1: of ideas the person he's never met, changed who he was.
Speaker 1: And I think that's probably what we're all trying to
Speaker 1: do it and I and yeah, and I could say
Speaker 1: the same, like it changed. I fell into the hunting.
Speaker 1: I fell under the hunting umbrella that I see here
Speaker 1: in this room and that I see at the a
Speaker 1: t and I see in the hunting camps while around
Speaker 1: the country, and I felt this way a long time.
Speaker 1: And I don't mean this to be disrespectful or to
Speaker 1: make to elevate myself, but I'd go to all these
Speaker 1: hunting camps around the country and I talked to other hunters,
Speaker 1: and I would think, I have nothing in common with
Speaker 1: any of these guys other than we're we're both here
Speaker 1: hunting the white til deer in Illinois or whatever, like
Speaker 1: I and so. And it's just that I I assimilated
Speaker 1: with Aldo Leopold, like his connection to the land that
Speaker 1: he had, and I didn't really put two and two together.
Speaker 1: And I just kind of when I first started hunting,
Speaker 1: it was kind of that cause and effect, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I remember one time I shot a either shot.
Speaker 1: I think I shot a black cat chickeny once with
Speaker 1: a twelve gauge when I was a kid, just boom
Speaker 1: off this limb, you know, and it hit me hard,
Speaker 1: like I you know, I shot at this black capped
Speaker 1: chicken ee um, shot at it missed like it fluttered
Speaker 1: away before it shot at A miss shot at a
Speaker 1: miss shot at killed it. And then I went over
Speaker 1: there and saw its dead body, and of course had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it. It's a black cap chicken.
Speaker 1: I just shot at the twelve gage. Yeah, so here,
Speaker 1: I literally just was. I popped a balloon, right, I
Speaker 1: flipped the light switch. But this animal lost its life,
Speaker 1: and I did so as an egotistical, little monstrous kid
Speaker 1: sayings or something, and it was terrible. It's horrible, And
Speaker 1: I was like, this is nothing of what our lives
Speaker 1: are to be or what this animal's life was to be.
Speaker 1: And even when I started hunting instantly, I was you know,
Speaker 1: you'd see these guys out are doing things greater than
Speaker 1: you were in the outdoor space. And for me, I
Speaker 1: was lucky enough. Like you said about my beginning, I
Speaker 1: started reading guys like Jack O'Connor that was very well written.
Speaker 1: Knew exactly why they hunted, although they didn't always tell
Speaker 1: you why. They knew exactly why and how they hunted,
Speaker 1: and they talked about big, plump, hearty animals. Is funny
Speaker 1: when those guys talked about trophy animals. When those guys
Speaker 1: talked about trophy animals, there's all about their body condition,
Speaker 1: about their horn condition, And the reason they were liked
Speaker 1: is because of premier habitat and being left alone and
Speaker 1: being and so it's really fantastic, whereas we have made
Speaker 1: the transgression now into yeah, look at his and his
Speaker 1: bases for this and this and this, and those guys
Speaker 1: wrote for a completely different reason, and so I felt it.
Speaker 1: I grew up reading those original guys, and I had
Speaker 1: a very good understanding of wanting to go and do
Speaker 1: the things that they did. But once I started hunting,
Speaker 1: actually hunting and running into hunters, they kind of sucked
Speaker 1: me into that shallow field of Hey, let's just kill
Speaker 1: a big box. This is how you kill a big box.
Speaker 1: You need you know, you don't, I'm making all this up,
Speaker 1: but you dump corn on the ground, or you do
Speaker 1: this or this, and this is the shortcut. You're you're
Speaker 1: gonna need a slug gun that shoots this far because
Speaker 1: this is instantly came a gear. Then you're hanging on
Speaker 1: your wall. You put the pictures up, and I remember like, dude,
Speaker 1: you gotta get a wall hanger, and that you need one,
Speaker 1: and then you need two wall hangers, and this is
Speaker 1: how you do. And if you have two wall hangers,
Speaker 1: then when I introduce you to a buddy of mine
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, Hey, this is Nick. He's got two
Speaker 1: wall hangers, you know. And and so I fell into
Speaker 1: that trap. And then once I started actually hunting on
Speaker 1: my own, getting away from these guys, I started enveloping
Speaker 1: myself with the chicken eas and the birds and the
Speaker 1: weather and the animals, and I slipped right back into
Speaker 1: the writings of all the Leopold and Jack O'Connor and
Speaker 1: all these guys. And so then I started realizing, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I really am different. Either I'm different or these guys
Speaker 1: are putting on the facade, just like I was putting
Speaker 1: on the facade and never really got out of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when I was, when we were talking about that on
Speaker 1: the on the last recording, it got got I got
Speaker 1: me thinking, I'm like, man, this is gonna sound pretentious
Speaker 1: if I say it in the podcast, but funk it.
Speaker 1: I'll say it anyway. Like the guys who just want
Speaker 1: to have fun and go hunting, I got no problem
Speaker 1: with that either. I want you to have fun. I
Speaker 1: think you need me, though, and you need people like
Speaker 1: you that are thinking about the why, that are thinking
Speaker 1: about different ways to do it, that are examining like
Speaker 1: the tough issues and trying to tell stories that promote
Speaker 1: the right things, like if you want to just go
Speaker 1: and have fun, you need you need people that are
Speaker 1: questioning these things. And he and he like the front
Speaker 1: line of defense for anyone that might want to take
Speaker 1: away your privilege to do this. Yes, and I agree
Speaker 1: with Steve. Some guys just want to go and have fun.
Speaker 1: But you need and this is a big idea or
Speaker 1: easy idea to compartmentalized, but you need guys that are
Speaker 1: thinking men and women are thinking about Okay, so you
Speaker 1: just want to go and have fun in the outdoors, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's great, but you have to have fun under these parameters.
Speaker 1: Because we went out in the outdoors and we all
Speaker 1: just went out and had fun around the turn of
Speaker 1: the century and we shot the entire continent out of animals.
Speaker 1: It was it was fun, a lot of personal gain
Speaker 1: we shot you know whatever sixteen million bison or whatever
Speaker 1: was that we shot. And like, yeah, that's what happens
Speaker 1: when you out and have fun. So we need regulatory
Speaker 1: we need seasons, we need licenses, we need habitat, we
Speaker 1: need you know, with ever increasing people we now have,
Speaker 1: this drives me nuts to again another rabbit hole. But
Speaker 1: this whole private land public land. Right on this program,
Speaker 1: everyone wants to talk about that, and and and and
Speaker 1: what annoys me is I'll kill the big sheep, or
Speaker 1: I'll kill a deer, I'll kill a gray squirrel. And
Speaker 1: everyone goes first thing, Hey, is that public or private land?
Speaker 1: Used to public? Private? Public or private? Yeah, so I'd
Speaker 1: get at and I say, I, uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: hunt of everything. I hunted on public land, as with
Speaker 1: most of us, because if you hunt anything in mountains
Speaker 1: or anything that you're generally hunting on, if you really
Speaker 1: like to hunt, you're going to go and do a
Speaker 1: whole lot of things that are accessible. First. Yes, absolutely
Speaker 1: for the gate open, that's right. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we kind of have this idea of this, the fence
Speaker 1: being built between the two. I had a great conversation
Speaker 1: last night with Lee Chose about this. The problem is
Speaker 1: that we have so many people right now, and we're
Speaker 1: obviously making more every second of every day, and the
Speaker 1: wealthy and the poor, the span is growing, and so
Speaker 1: the private sectors growing more powerful than the public sector.
Speaker 1: And so we need these two types of land to
Speaker 1: talk to one another. So you need the fat cat
Speaker 1: rich guy that owns this ten thousand acres to start
Speaker 1: talking to the state wildlife biologists that owned own this
Speaker 1: tenth represent this ten thousand acres, and we need to
Speaker 1: start talking about how this ten thousand acres can talk
Speaker 1: to this ten thousand acres and we can do things together.
Speaker 1: And like Lee and I are talking about last night,
Speaker 1: he was talking about in in the Degradation of water
Speaker 1: following and waterfall hunting, and and the thing is that
Speaker 1: he's like, all these wealthy guys are creating these hunting
Speaker 1: clubs that are beautiful hole, but they're all creating hunting
Speaker 1: clubs for killing ducks, not raising docks, not creating habitat
Speaker 1: for ducks, for killing ducks. Like we have these bunkers,
Speaker 1: we fled flood, this rice field, this cornfield, and so
Speaker 1: you it's just as hunters, you know, we want to
Speaker 1: know did did you shoot on public land? You shooting
Speaker 1: on private land? Did you hire an outfit? Were you guided?
Speaker 1: Because if you're guided, you don't have many woodsmanship And
Speaker 1: then you know, I see guys ripping other guys all
Speaker 1: the time like oh you're guided, Oh you have no woodsmanships?
Speaker 1: Like no, man, I was hunting in Alberto, which is
Speaker 1: illegal to do with so you know, these are these
Speaker 1: are the things that we have to do. But I
Speaker 1: do believe that as we populate this the mothership Earth here,
Speaker 1: that we need to protect our public lands, like I mean,
Speaker 1: to the point of war. We need to protect them. Um,
Speaker 1: the fat cats are not going to have our best interest.
Speaker 1: And a few of them that are building beautiful hunting properties,
Speaker 1: kudos to you. I would do the same damn thing
Speaker 1: if I was a billionaire, I would buy up as
Speaker 1: much land as I possibly could. Would I keep you out?
Speaker 1: I keep some of you out. But what I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, like, yeah, I really want to get risk,
Speaker 1: I can buy land. That's right. That's right, I mean literally,
Speaker 1: that's that's that's the next door that opens for me.
Speaker 1: Because everything I have right now is what I want.
Speaker 1: I can't grow anymore as a person. I can only
Speaker 1: get better as a man. I can get more kind,
Speaker 1: I can get smarter, I can I can work with
Speaker 1: people more. I can mentor people more. I can get
Speaker 1: mentored more. I can grow my own wisdom. But I can't.
Speaker 1: I have everything at my fingertips really that I want
Speaker 1: in life, and and there are other things that I
Speaker 1: want to chase. But but I'm not looking at them
Speaker 1: as a goal to say, hey, I've accomplished this, Now
Speaker 1: I can retire. I'm never going to retire. We all
Speaker 1: know I'm gonna die in a small airplane, and so
Speaker 1: I just want to keep chasing every day and getting
Speaker 1: this point. But I really think that we have to start,
Speaker 1: you know, like these two sectors are going to have
Speaker 1: to start talking. And then I was talking to a fellow.
Speaker 1: It emailed in about um he's works. He's a professor
Speaker 1: UC Berkeley and he studies land use. His name is
Speaker 1: Luke McAuley. I believe his name is. I want to
Speaker 1: have him want to talk about it was doing a
Speaker 1: land you study. I don't believe he was a hunter,
Speaker 1: and I don't I don't believe he ever hunted. What
Speaker 1: he it was doing land you study, and had was
Speaker 1: looking at the best habitat the best land, the best
Speaker 1: chunks of private land for wildlife. And he was telling
Speaker 1: me he stumbled upon this trend that big chunks of
Speaker 1: private land that were um leased up or or or
Speaker 1: at least by outfitters or had outfitted hunts on it,
Speaker 1: that had hunting that was for sale basically was some
Speaker 1: of the best managed habitat in the country, you know,
Speaker 1: and so at somebody who I'm just like, you know,
Speaker 1: public lands, public lands, public lands, public lands, you always
Speaker 1: have to like spin it come back a little bit
Speaker 1: super trendy to say to say public lands. But it's
Speaker 1: like lands, just like healthy ecosistants lands. Whoever, I don't
Speaker 1: give a ship who owns it and managed it. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to be owned and managed well. So let's
Speaker 1: you know, so there's perspectives out there. We can't sell
Speaker 1: our public land to the private guys because they earn
Speaker 1: us down. Because certain guys like um, you know, if
Speaker 1: you if you sold it, if I was a billionaire
Speaker 1: and you've sold me, Let's say you have acres in
Speaker 1: in Illinois and you sold me that acres in Illinois,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna turn it into the best quail,
Speaker 1: wild turkey, songbird, white tailed deer, gray squirrel, fox squirrel
Speaker 1: habitat you've ever seen in your life, because I like
Speaker 1: to see that perpetual idea or even notion of harmony,
Speaker 1: because there's a hand in value and like you value
Speaker 1: the animal for the animal, and that's what this guy
Speaker 1: with this this private land you study like they value
Speaker 1: the animal for the cash money. Yes, it's work that
Speaker 1: works though as we know if that works, But the
Speaker 1: problem is if you sell that to the wrong billionaire,
Speaker 1: he's gonna say, oh, man, there's coal, there's coal ten
Speaker 1: feet down, and I heard there's maybe oil here, or
Speaker 1: I could sell off all this top soil for this
Speaker 1: development over here, and so then he starts. You know,
Speaker 1: then the thing just gets raped in pillage and you
Speaker 1: can't get burned down. So we have to keep the
Speaker 1: public land public. We have to encourage the private guys
Speaker 1: to do um um, to do good work on their land.
Speaker 1: I have a little hunting lease just east of my
Speaker 1: house in Glenwood City, Wisconsin. It's a hundred fifty three acres.
Speaker 1: The dead center of the properties a twenty six acre
Speaker 1: cornfield was a cornfield and when I was a cornfield
Speaker 1: and a bean field, it was just a chunk of raw, muddy,
Speaker 1: crappy ground. And I went in there and I planted
Speaker 1: all warm season grasses. I do do. I'm not totally
Speaker 1: self righteous. I have a couple of food plots that
Speaker 1: I plant that that for animals that I hunt and
Speaker 1: provide food for the deer over the winter. We have
Speaker 1: harsh winters, of course, but the majority of it I
Speaker 1: planted a warm season grasses and um and then let
Speaker 1: natural vegetation like big blue stem and gold rod and
Speaker 1: all this stuff come up and and repopulate. And it's
Speaker 1: funny because when I leased the land for several years,
Speaker 1: it was a cornfield or a bean field. I never
Speaker 1: saw snakes, I never saw rough grouse, I never saw pheasants,
Speaker 1: never saw turtles, saw very few songbirds unless I was
Speaker 1: in the woods. And even when I in the woods,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of noxious and a lot of nonindigenous
Speaker 1: plants that are really choking out the forest floor. So
Speaker 1: really like it was a really sterile property I put
Speaker 1: in all these grasses, and it's just remarkable now, I
Speaker 1: was telling this to lead last night. Remarkable the grouse
Speaker 1: that I see in here, drumming all. It's not pheasant
Speaker 1: country at all. And I'll still I'll bump three or
Speaker 1: four roosters when I'm going out to bowl hunt deer,
Speaker 1: wild turkeys. I'm seeing a ton of my favorite things.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing a ton of snakes, and I'm seeing just
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and I just like all I did
Speaker 1: was work on twenty six acres did I change the world,
Speaker 1: not one drop of it, but that neighborhood is better
Speaker 1: because of it. Yeah, And I think I've changed, I know,
Speaker 1: I don't think I know that I've changed. Over the
Speaker 1: last year or two, was talking to ecologists and folks
Speaker 1: like yourself, biologists and people that really care about wildlife.
Speaker 1: The answer to like, what's the main purpose of your hunting?
Speaker 1: And I would just say like being a part of
Speaker 1: this community, doing this and making the efforts that that
Speaker 1: I do, and trying to live the lifestyle the best
Speaker 1: way I can and hold myself accountable. I think the
Speaker 1: answer right now is is I'm for healthy ecosystems. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm for. Like even if that means you can't hunt, yes,
Speaker 1: And that's been I would never have said that before.
Speaker 1: I would always have said that, oh, you know the meat,
Speaker 1: you know, that's great. I like the Meat Conservation Show
Speaker 1: was having a seizure last night over feel the table.
Speaker 1: He was so angry, like it's I always like, I'd
Speaker 1: love to get your reaction to this I came up with.
Speaker 1: In fact, I was bear hunting with rogan Um as
Speaker 1: soon as you going, and we were just talking and
Speaker 1: he was challenging me and calling me an idiot on
Speaker 1: some stuff, and well, she he does and always does well.
Speaker 1: And I just came up, like I said, Okay, meat eating,
Speaker 1: meat and conservation are byproducts of hunting. They're not the
Speaker 1: reason I go hunting. They're they're things that I know
Speaker 1: are happening. They know I know the result of the
Speaker 1: thing I'm doing is is these two things. But they're not.
Speaker 1: I'm done saying these are the reasons I hunt. I'm
Speaker 1: done with that. You know, I can't do that anymore
Speaker 1: because I don't think it's true. I don't mean it's
Speaker 1: not true. Because you're just examining your own actions, you
Speaker 1: would almost immediately come to find that it's not you know,
Speaker 1: like why do you hunt with the bow if you're
Speaker 1: just there for the me you want? Like? What are
Speaker 1: you doing if you're just there for conservation? Why do
Speaker 1: you do this? This, this and this and so? If
Speaker 1: you would just examine your own actions, you would find
Speaker 1: that the reasons we often trot out as the reasons
Speaker 1: we go ye, and and that's really it. But the
Speaker 1: thing is is that a few of us, uh you, myself,
Speaker 1: other guys have the outside. Um, it's very this is
Speaker 1: more complex than I'm making it, but you might get
Speaker 1: somebody in let's just say l A right. Um, I've
Speaker 1: done a fair bit of work with William Morris Endeavor,
Speaker 1: the large talent agency out there, and they've flown me
Speaker 1: in there to. They always want me to find bigfoot
Speaker 1: or find gold in Alaska. Yeah, they want me to
Speaker 1: trap beavers and and uh so all this stuff, right,
Speaker 1: they want me to do all these TV shows that
Speaker 1: are popular right now and and um. But they're always
Speaker 1: trying to And it's the same reason I did Who
Speaker 1: We Are for Nacchio. If they're always trying to pin
Speaker 1: up why as to like there has to be just
Speaker 1: a singular reason, and like you said, it's tough to
Speaker 1: articulate because multiple But when they hear oh, yeah, I
Speaker 1: hunt for food, then they go, Okay, you're hunting for food,
Speaker 1: so you like organic food, that's why you hunt. You're
Speaker 1: hunting for organics. This is organic Donnie, Donnie the organic hunter,
Speaker 1: that's right. So then so then you get guys in
Speaker 1: this hunting show that have no idea why they hunt.
Speaker 1: They don't necessarily have to have an idea why they hunt,
Speaker 1: but they certainly have no idea why they hunt. Other
Speaker 1: than they can say, man, I like killing deer. I
Speaker 1: like hunting deer, which is nothing wrong with that falls
Speaker 1: into a little bit of the Steves like I just
Speaker 1: want to have fun. It also falls into a little
Speaker 1: bit of like what you just said, where I'm not
Speaker 1: hunting for food, I'm not hunting for conservation. I'm hunting
Speaker 1: because I'm because of our Really it probably comes from
Speaker 1: our ancestors right where really we step from hunters, so
Speaker 1: we have this innate piece of our DNA that's like
Speaker 1: you should go outside and do something hardy. For me,
Speaker 1: it was like this for me. It was a derivative
Speaker 1: of I can't. This podcast is a derivative of I
Speaker 1: can't figure this sh it out. Yes I can't. And
Speaker 1: so but you continue to ask the question, which continues
Speaker 1: to bring you wisdom, which continues to run you into
Speaker 1: interesting people and having fun stories and doing fun things
Speaker 1: and staying and really nice. But um, but the truth
Speaker 1: is is that it's not for food. It's not necessarily
Speaker 1: for conservation. But guys that don't have a good tagline
Speaker 1: as to why, then they'll say, oh, yeah, I'm you know, white.
Speaker 1: There's nothing more organic than a white till deer. And
Speaker 1: then you say, well, you sprayd all of your food
Speaker 1: plots with round up, and so there's like cafe in
Speaker 1: your deer's meat, and so really it's not very organic
Speaker 1: and so buzz words. Yeah, there was a man. It
Speaker 1: was like a Wall Street drillers. An article I read
Speaker 1: the other day hipster hunters. What was the headline? I
Speaker 1: want to look this up because the headline. I was
Speaker 1: just like, the article is not bad, but the headline
Speaker 1: was like ship. Yeah, I just put they put down
Speaker 1: their kombucha and pick up their crossbows. That's what it was.
Speaker 1: It was hipster hunters. Colon put down your camp but
Speaker 1: they put their putting down their combuch. The cross a
Speaker 1: terrible a turn of phrase, like and it's funny because
Speaker 1: I know guys now that I've met that would I
Speaker 1: would categorize as I want to categorize them. But if
Speaker 1: we're going to categorize them, I would say they're hips
Speaker 1: or hunters there lack of a better term. Their cover
Speaker 1: and tattoos. They wear skinny jeans. There had stocking caps
Speaker 1: much like my owner, hanging off the back of their head.
Speaker 1: They're wearing trendy little flannels much like myself and but
Speaker 1: I do. I do it because this is what I've
Speaker 1: basically always done. They're doing it, um a bit more
Speaker 1: out of fashion. Right like going to a Filson store
Speaker 1: in any city in America right now, you're not standing
Speaker 1: amongst hunters. You're standing amongst hipsters. And these guys have
Speaker 1: not realized that they can go and buy a bow
Speaker 1: and go to the Parks system in Minneapolis and get
Speaker 1: a Metro area hunting permit by take asking a test,
Speaker 1: and they can go and shoot organic food. Man. And
Speaker 1: they can buy a hatchet, and they can hang the
Speaker 1: hatchet on their wall, and and they can talk about
Speaker 1: the stuff at their dinner parties and you know, and
Speaker 1: and it doesn't mean there are any different from us.
Speaker 1: It just came means they came to hunting in a
Speaker 1: different roundabout. It's like it's for them. They're you know, adults,
Speaker 1: most of them. When they're doing this is like this
Speaker 1: easier for them to do, right that it's easier for
Speaker 1: them to explain in the beginning. But I guarantee them
Speaker 1: somebody would say like, man, I'm an organic hunter. Um,
Speaker 1: I just go out to get organic meat and that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, listen, I bet they come back in
Speaker 1: five years, hunt for five more years, and I bet
Speaker 1: you when you come back and five more years, you
Speaker 1: will tell me that it's more complicated than just the meat. Now,
Speaker 1: you may start out thinking it's just field table, but
Speaker 1: you're gonna learn and be enriched by so much, so
Speaker 1: many different things in those experiences that you'll you will
Speaker 1: find it impossible to say that's just from organic meat. Then,
Speaker 1: and even when we were in an original society, even
Speaker 1: when it was about starve Asian survival, I'll guarantee you
Speaker 1: those people, our ancestors still hunted for a different reason,
Speaker 1: certainly hunted for me. And then some people hang their
Speaker 1: hats on that and say, oh, those people, you know,
Speaker 1: I'll get that's the I don't get very much hate mail.
Speaker 1: It's I feel bad for people that do. I see
Speaker 1: some of the I see some of the um. You know,
Speaker 1: people in the industry just say, oh my word, I
Speaker 1: get lit up. And luckily I don't get that lit up.
Speaker 1: But um, I don't either from like you mean, like
Speaker 1: from anti hunters. But I don't either, which I get
Speaker 1: very little. It's every once in a while bare photo
Speaker 1: will go up and then some two or three people
Speaker 1: will say something, but you just write it off and
Speaker 1: go on. But yeah, you're right, I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: need here and I don't I don't think that says
Speaker 1: anything about me or you. It's just like, how do
Speaker 1: you how do you get exposed to it? And I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of what you're doing. It's the same
Speaker 1: thing because when I posted, when we posted about hunting
Speaker 1: mountain lions, like, that's the easily the most I've gotten ripped.
Speaker 1: And it's still continues, and I don't pay attention to
Speaker 1: it because most people are they're so far off base, right,
Speaker 1: But um, but yeah, I think it's Um, I kind
Speaker 1: of lost my train of thought. But um, we're just
Speaker 1: talking about that so many different things. I can't believe
Speaker 1: I just lost my train of thought. But anyway, so,
Speaker 1: but it is this, It is this digression of hunting
Speaker 1: for me or we're hunting for a particular reason and
Speaker 1: and uh, and we give ourselves this this notion of
Speaker 1: of that we have to prove why we're hunting. And
Speaker 1: I'll guarantee you even though our ancestors were hunting for food,
Speaker 1: certainly that they're still wash you know something like I'll
Speaker 1: guarantee you lions and hyenas and cougars and black bears.
Speaker 1: I'll guarantee you they get this. You know, when a
Speaker 1: when a black bear is able to sneak up on
Speaker 1: a snow shoe hair and chase it down and pounce
Speaker 1: on it and bite the back of its head, I'll
Speaker 1: guarantee you there's more than just this is a meal.
Speaker 1: I'll guarantee there's a euphoric feeling to them of of
Speaker 1: their you know, their hardiness. And and so I just
Speaker 1: think that I think even back then when we were
Speaker 1: certainly hunting for food and ins and tools, they're probably
Speaker 1: still was you know, probably still got goose bumps. Yeah,
Speaker 1: something in the age. And I think this whole conversation
Speaker 1: we're having is modern luxury. I mean, we have the
Speaker 1: modern luxury to like choose to do it or not
Speaker 1: do it, and choosing to do it is somehow um
Speaker 1: requires a why. But you go back to your parents.
Speaker 1: My parents, My dad never had to walk in a room.
Speaker 1: But like, I'm a hunter, and people like that great,
Speaker 1: And what you know, I I walk into a room
Speaker 1: in a lot of places, and I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time and places where they're not a lot of
Speaker 1: hunters around and I walk in the room, They're like,
Speaker 1: what do you do for living? I'm like, while I'm
Speaker 1: in the hunting industry, I have to almost immediately then explain, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what why why hunt? So that's what caused me to
Speaker 1: kind of break into this whole um song and dance
Speaker 1: around why we do what we do and try to
Speaker 1: figure it out because because not because I really wanted to,
Speaker 1: but people kept asking me, and I'm like, have a
Speaker 1: good answer. I guess you know, same for me, and
Speaker 1: and and I enjoy it because I'm happy that these
Speaker 1: people have asked me these questions what I've been Because
Speaker 1: then I started to ask my self these questions. And
Speaker 1: I always asked. I always sought out the adventure. And
Speaker 1: also Jack O'Connor's going to the Yukoni hunting dollar sheep.
Speaker 1: So he had to you know, he had to wear
Speaker 1: his pack, and he had to go through here, and
Speaker 1: they got some weather and they ran into some grizzly bears.
Speaker 1: So always looking at solving the house and the wise
Speaker 1: of the hunt. But really, when I started asking myself,
Speaker 1: you know, when you go to the Yukon and you
Speaker 1: go hunt, and you go pay to hunt and you're
Speaker 1: now in the Yukon territories. You paid to hunt a
Speaker 1: dollar sheep, and now you're in the mountains, honey doll sheep.
Speaker 1: What are you leaving that place better than when you
Speaker 1: found it? And obviously there's a footprint, you know, because
Speaker 1: we're using up av gas to the airplane wasln't fly
Speaker 1: if we weren't there, And we're obviously leaving maybe a
Speaker 1: bit of litter or something like that on accident, or
Speaker 1: even the litter of our footprints and the litter of
Speaker 1: stepping on tundra or whatever it is. We're leaving our
Speaker 1: marks certainly by being present. But really that also falls
Speaker 1: back on what Steve was saying that, you know, there's
Speaker 1: this idea of fun, and so my idea of living
Speaker 1: my life, my ride on this earth is that. And
Speaker 1: I want to go to the Yukon. I want to
Speaker 1: see dollshep, I want to see moose, I want to
Speaker 1: see grizzly bears. I want to feel the burn, I
Speaker 1: want to be in the rain, I want to see
Speaker 1: the mosquitoes, and and that that's this, This is my
Speaker 1: ride that I want to do on the earth. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to be so selfish that I know
Speaker 1: my candle is going to burn out when I'm fifties, sixty,
Speaker 1: seventy whatever, And then I I know I don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about the conservation of this mothership, this earth
Speaker 1: that we have. I don't have to worry about that
Speaker 1: after I die, So I get to just freaking go
Speaker 1: through life like a comet, just burning and destroying everything
Speaker 1: behind me. I don't want to do that. We want
Speaker 1: to I want to leave it better. And because the
Speaker 1: intrinsic value of being a hunter, you know, exactly what
Speaker 1: we talked about in the beginning, what what being a
Speaker 1: hunter used to mean. I want being a hunter to
Speaker 1: still mean that. And if it doesn't mean it for everyone,
Speaker 1: I certainly wanted to mean it from me. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: that's that's man, That's that's well put. And then I've
Speaker 1: you know, I said, recently, we've had these conversations. I've
Speaker 1: had some people right in and I don't know if
Speaker 1: you're like me, but I read all the positive comments
Speaker 1: and go right to the negative one, and I'm like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: And I've had some people right in like you're you know, listen, man,
Speaker 1: I appreciate the conversation, but you're overthinking it, and you know,
Speaker 1: it comes off seeming pretentious, and I'm like, listen, maybe
Speaker 1: it does. I'm willing to admit that it is or
Speaker 1: might be. I'm not better than you. I don't want
Speaker 1: to be better than you. I want to be one
Speaker 1: of you. Um, but boy, there's some real heavy stuff
Speaker 1: here that we gotta work out. We're taking a little
Speaker 1: bit more work it out together. It doesn't mean we
Speaker 1: have to come up with this hierarchy, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we have to speak intelligently and be articulate at
Speaker 1: all times. We can still hoot and holler and be
Speaker 1: village idiots and in the process, but we should probably
Speaker 1: ask ourselves big, differ go questions, and as we approach
Speaker 1: eight billion people on the Earth and growing, we should
Speaker 1: probably keep asking ourselves with difficult questions with greater frequency. Yea,
Speaker 1: how do we get here? How do we get you?
Speaker 1: How we get where we are? Yeah? Well we got
Speaker 1: here in to Vegas with via airplane and it's kind
Speaker 1: of weird. What else? What other shots shre stuff you
Speaker 1: got going on? Nothing? We just have, um a couple
Speaker 1: of meetings that you know. We own Sigmanta, so we
Speaker 1: do a lot of production for other companies. And we're
Speaker 1: here meeting with Shields. We have some projects that we're
Speaker 1: doing with Shields, and UM meeting with some other companies
Speaker 1: that are interested in in hiring us to to shoot production,
Speaker 1: do commercial work, catalog work, things like that. Where can
Speaker 1: people will go see the other side and and you know,
Speaker 1: obviously if you haven't, if you're listening to this, you
Speaker 1: can need to go watch the Rivers divide. The Rivers divide,
Speaker 1: Terranova and the Other Side are our three now and
Speaker 1: and so then go to don Evenson dot com UM
Speaker 1: and we sell it as DVD and Blu ray and
Speaker 1: uh mobile download is not a true download is kind
Speaker 1: of more like a streaming UM and we're working on that.
Speaker 1: Everyone always wants us to put on iTunes, but iTunes
Speaker 1: is way way too expensive for our type of platform.
Speaker 1: It's way it's just people are like put on iTunes
Speaker 1: because everyone wants it at their fingertips, but it's it's impossible.
Speaker 1: So Donny Vinson dot com and then we're We have
Speaker 1: played the Other Side in three theaters so far, once
Speaker 1: in four Collins Colorado sold out as Awesome sold out
Speaker 1: to theaters in Minneapolis, and we're gonna do. We'd like
Speaker 1: to do like a ten, twelve, thirteen fourteen theater tour
Speaker 1: across the country and just to bring it into in
Speaker 1: front of other people. But yeah, well good, I can't
Speaker 1: wait to watch it. It's good the first ten minutes.
Speaker 1: And then you showed up. I'm like ship, yeah, so
Speaker 1: you'll have to watch it and then and then Texas
Speaker 1: later on. I will appreciate taking the time, man, what
Speaker 1: you do, and I really appreciate it. All right, thanks,
Speaker 1: thanks boss, all right, brother, that's it. That's all Episode
Speaker 1: number forty six in the books. Thanks to Donnie for
Speaker 1: hanging out uh in Vegas with us, for taking some
Speaker 1: time from the shot show to tell us his stories,
Speaker 1: to give us a little bit about his life is
Speaker 1: and what he's done with it, which is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: So go to the Downy Vinceent dot com. Check out
Speaker 1: what he's done, check out his work. His latest film
Speaker 1: was talked about, The Other Side, is out there for
Speaker 1: you to watch, and it's a feature length film, which
Speaker 1: is not all that common in our space, So give
Speaker 1: it a watch and check out time. What else? What
Speaker 1: else we got we got? Yeah, hey, we got the
Speaker 1: meat Eator dot com. You go over there to the
Speaker 1: metator dot com and you'll find while you're there the
Speaker 1: newsletter subscribe button. And when you subscribe to the newsletter,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get gifted from us to you all the
Speaker 1: great articles and content from our crew every Wednesday morning
Speaker 1: and your inbox. Ryan Callahan just sneezed. That was a
Speaker 1: good one. Bless you. Um what else? What else? Currently?
Speaker 1: If you? If you, if you're listening to this currently,
Speaker 1: I we're in our hotel room and shot we're recording,
Speaker 1: of course the oltro to this current podcast. I'm in
Speaker 1: my underwear and Ryan Callahan is sitting across from me
Speaker 1: and he just sneezed into his breakfast and ruined and
Speaker 1: ruined what was a wonderful hot pocket that he's eating. Um,
Speaker 1: anyway back to but yeah, it's about growing up. Back
Speaker 1: to uh what we were talking about, which was the
Speaker 1: meat Eator dot com. If you got your newsletter, then
Speaker 1: you're gonna go to want to go to the shop
Speaker 1: and you're gonna want to You're gonna want to buy
Speaker 1: stuff there, right, you wanna buy T shirts, You're gonna
Speaker 1: want to buy hoodies, You're gonna want to buy all
Speaker 1: kinds of stuff. That's there, Hunting Collective logo, you get
Speaker 1: your pro Nuance anti bullshit shirt, you got Eddie tumbler
Speaker 1: with our logo on it, all kinds of stuff. And
Speaker 1: if you don't like us for some reason and you
Speaker 1: want to buy meat eatter gear, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: meat eater gear there. And if you don't like meat
Speaker 1: eater for some reason, there's Ryan Callahan's smell Us Now
Speaker 1: Lady t shirt and all profits good a conservation on
Speaker 1: that one, so you should check that out as well.
Speaker 1: And if you have a little bit more time and
Speaker 1: energy and you don't have a lot going on, then
Speaker 1: you're gonna want to look at the events page on
Speaker 1: that website and you're going to see all the places
Speaker 1: we're going on the live tour um, most notably where
Speaker 1: I'll be, which is Reno, Sacramento and Boise and hopefully
Speaker 1: it'll be announcing in Austin stop soon, which I know
Speaker 1: I'll be taking part it. So all you need to
Speaker 1: do is go get the newsletter, buy some gear, and
Speaker 1: then sign up for an event. That's it. That's all.
Speaker 1: That's that's nothing. Uh, there's plenty of fun stuff from
Speaker 1: the Mediata crew. Proud to be a part of it.
Speaker 1: Proud to put out this podcast and thank you all
Speaker 1: for listening to it as always, And next week we're
Speaker 1: gonna get back to you with episode number forty seven
Speaker 1: with a man named Ian Harrison who is the editor
Speaker 1: of Recoil Magazine, a native of England and has a
Speaker 1: great story about why and how he came to this country.
Speaker 1: So enjoy that next week on the Honey Collective. Bye